Analyst's note: Information technology, like fire, can be used for good or bad.
The U.S. Supreme Court has long made surreptitious (unannounced) changes to its opinions -- which the decisions are public domain documents -- without telling anyone. In response, a coder has created a tool that flags and publicizes those changes.
"Until now, the only way to detect when a decision has been altered is a painstaking comparison of earlier and later copies — provided, of course, that someone knew a decision had been changed in the first place. Thanks to a simple Twitter tool, the process may become much easier."
Learn about a severe misuse of technology that will only result in the complete disintegration of the Internet from the greatest pinnacle of expression humanity has ever seen to a completely sterilized, tightly controlled medium no different than corporate-run cable news which stagnates the human condition.
"Blue Coat (software that categorizes billions of web pages in more than 50 languages into 85 useful categories that can be easily managed by IT administrators) .... is being used to help several known violent regimes silence free speech in large areas of the planet.)
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Clever piece of code exposes hidden changes to Supreme Court opinions
By
Supreme Court opinions are the law of the land, and so it’s a problem when the Justices change the words of the decisions without telling anyone. This happens on a regular basis, but fortunately a lawyer in Washington appears to have just found a solution.
The issue, as Adam Liptak explained in the New York Times, is that original statements by the Justices about everything from EPA policy to American Jewish communities, are disappearing from decisions — and being replaced by new language that says something entirely different. As you can imagine, this is a problem for lawyers, scholars, journalists and everyone else who relies on Supreme Court opinions.
Until now, the only way to detect when a decision has been altered is a painstaking comparison of earlier and later copies — provided, of course, that someone knew a decision had been changed in the first place. Thanks to a simple Twitter tool, the process may become much easier.
Code to the rescue
David Zvenyach is general counsel to the Council of the District of Columbia and, in his spare time, likes to experiment with computer code. Upon learning of Liptak’s column, which was based on a study by Harvard law professor Richard Lazurus, he decided to so something about it.
Last week, he launched @Scotus_servo, a Twitter account that alerts followers whenever a change is made to a Supreme Court opinion.
The process is fairly simple. As Zvenyach explained in a phone interview, it uses Node, an application written in JavaScript, to crawl the “slip” opinions posted to the Supreme Court website. If the application, which performs a crawl every five minutes, detects a change, it notifies the automated Twitter account, which tweets out an alert.
Shortly after, Zvenyach sends out a manual tweet that calls attention to the change — something he has already had to do, flagging a small change to a patent opinion this month:
In the short time since Zvenyach launched the tool, another coder has added a feature that highlights the changes, and likewise tweets them out. Here’s a screenshot:
Given courts’ frequent misunderstanding of technology, I asked Zvenyach if there’s a risk that the Supreme Court might block his tool from crawling the decisions. He says that he checked the court website’s terms of service, and that he doesn’t anticipate a problem (nor should he, I would add, since the decisions are public domain documents).
An easy tool for accountability
The @Scotus_servo account is just one example of how a simple piece of code can improve judicial transparency. Another is @FISACourt, which inspired Zvenyach, and which crawls the docket of the country’s controversial spy court and alerts the public when there is a new development in important cases about government surveillance.
The tools appears to be so cheap to create and deliver such obvious benefits, it’s a wonder that courts and government websites don’t integrate them as a matter of course.
Instead, in the case of the Supreme Court, it appears that one man’s simple script is for now the best way for the public to stay up to date on unannounced changes to the law of the land. Here, from Zvenyach’s GitHub page, is his self-proclaimed mission:
WHEREAS, It is now well-documented that the Supreme Court of the United States makes changes to its opinions after the opinion is published; and
WHEREAS, Only “Four legal publishers are granted access to “change pages” that show all revisions. Those documents are not made public, and the court refused to provide copies to The New York Times”; and
WHEREAS,
gitmakes it easy to identify when changes have been made;RESOLVED, I shall apply a
cronjob to at least identify when the actual PDF has changed so everyone can see which documents have changed.
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Web Filtering Company Launches Purge of Libertarian, Conservative Media & Places Them in the Same Category as "KKK"
by Kit Daniels with Infowars
UPDATE: It appears that Blue Coat has backed off and removed Infowars.com from the “Violence/Hate/Racism” category. If anyone is still encountering issues, please e-mail us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
A corporate web filtering service is blocking access to Infowars.com by falsely claiming the site promotes racism and extreme violence in yet another example of the ongoing censorship of independent media.
Infowars received numerous e-mails yesterday from viewers who could no longer access Infowars.com, including the free audio streams of the Alex Jones Show, because their companies had blocked access to the site.
Upon investigation, it was determined that every company used Internet filtering software by Blue Coat Systems, which miscategorized Infowars.com as a “Violence/Hate/Racism” site, placing it in the same category as the Ku Klux Klan and a cockfighting league.
Blue Coat described their Violence/Hate/Racism category as “sites that depict extreme physical harm to people, animals or property, or that advocate or provide instructions on how to cause such harm.”
A user-submitted photo showing Infowars censored by the software on a military installation.
“Also includes sites that advocate, depict hostility or aggression toward, or denigrate an individual or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, or other involuntary characteristics,” the description continues. “Includes content that glorifies self-mutilation or suicide.”
As it is very obvious that Infowars.com does not advocate racism or violence, the blacklisting of the site is simply covert censorship, textbook defamation and an act of war against public access to free information.
This is a severe misuse of technology that will only result in the complete disintegration of the Internet from the greatest pinnacle of expression humanity has ever seen to a completely sterilized, tightly controlled medium no different than corporate-run cable news which stagnates the human condition.
And Blue Coat even went beyond simple censorship by deceptively labeling Infowars.com as “racist” and “violent,” which only discourages what would be first-time viewers from visiting the site through unfiltered Internet access because they have been led to falsely believe that Infowars promotes violence and hate in complete opposition to the libertarian non-aggression principle.
Simply put, this is a technological iron curtain working against independent voices which are challenging the status quo and the establishment’s spin on world events.
A user submitted screenshot of the censorship screen he encountered when trying to access Infowars.com
Other alternative media platforms have similarly been targeted in the past under the guise of “cybersecurity” and “web content management.”
In 2010, for example, the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works told its employees to avoid the Drudge Report, claiming that the independent media giant is “responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.”
“On Monday DRUDGE served over 29 million pages with NOT ONE email complaint received about ‘pop ups’, or the site serving ‘viruses’,” read an announcement on the Drudge Report. “The site was seen 149,967 times since March 1st from users at senate.gov and 244,347 times at house.gov. [10,825 visits from the White House, eop.gov].”
“The Systems Administrator may want to continue taking her antibiotic until the prescription runs out.”
The international whistle blowing site Wikileaks was also subject to censorship after Australia banned two of its pages in the country.
And in 2007, American Airlines blocked World Net Daily as “hate speech.”
Other sites besides Infowars.com have also been miscategorized by Blue Coat.
In the past, the company also labeled New Braunfels Republican Women, the web site of conservative commentator Carolyn Gargaro and Reunion Ministries as “pornography.”
Interestingly, in 2012 Reporters Without Borders named Blue Coat a “Corporate Enemy of the Internet” for reportedly selling its Deep Packet Inspection technology, which can be used to censor the Internet, to some of the most violent and oppressive regimes in the world.
“With DPI, it is possible to look into every single Internet Protocol packet and subject it to special treatment based on content (censored or banned words) or type (email, VoIP or BitTorrent Protocol),” the organization reported. “DPI not only threatens the principle of Net Neutrality, which Reporters Without Borders defends, but also the privacy of users.”
“It makes single users identifiable and, in countries that flout the rule of law and violate human rights, often exposes them to arbitrary imprisonment, violence or even torture.”
Reporters Without Borders also cited a study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab which found that Blue Coat software is in use by multiple governments.
“Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all reportedly use a Blue Coat system that could be used for digital censorship,” the organization stated. “Citizen Lab also determined that Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela also used equipment that could be used for surveillance and tracking.”
In other words, the company that listed Infowars as a “violent” web site has allegedly helped several known violent regimes silence free speech in large areas of the planet.
We will consult with our legal counsel about this blatant miscategorization of Infowars.com and encourage everyone to stand up against this electronic blockade.
“If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately,” as Benjamin Franklin so eloquently stated.
