Demand justice for Aaron

Support "Aaron's Law" and inquiry into his prosecution
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/aaron_justice

Robalini's Note: Some people wonder if Swartz's death was really a murder and not just a suicide.  In the end, it's a pretty minute distinction.  Either way, the primal cause of his death was the over-the-top harrassment of him by the DOJ due to opposition of White House hit lists and his defense of free speech against korporate power.  By suicide or "suicide" the death of Swartz has the fingerprints of the US establishment (including Barack Obama) all over the place...

LETTER ISSUED BY DEMAND PROGRESS AND HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR LAWRENCE LESSIG:

We spent Tuesday burying and mourning our friend Aaron. We're sad, we're tired, we're frustrated -- and we're angry at a system that let this happen to Aaron.  Now we want to set upon honoring his life's work and helping to make sure that such a travesty is never repeated.

We and Aaron's friends and family have been in touch with lawmakers to ask for help, and several of them -- who've worked with Aaron and Demand Progress on SOPA and other issues -- are beginning to take action.  We're asking them to help rein in a criminal justice system run amok. Authorities are encouraged to bring frivolous charges and hold decades of jail time over the heads of people who are accused of committing victimless crimes.

1) Representative Zoe Lofgren has introduced what's been named  "Aaron's Law."  It would fix a key part of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which is one of the statutes under which Aaron was indicted.  We need to pass Aaron's Law AND further amend the CFAA.

The CFAA makes violations of a website's terms of service agreement or user agreement -- that fine print you never read before you check the box next to it -- a FELONY, potentially punishable by many years in prison.  That's how over-broad this dangerous statute is, and one way it lets showboating prosecutors file charges against people who've done nothing wrong.

Aaron's Law would decriminalize violating these agreements: They're essentially contracts, and as with other contracts, disputes about them should be settled in civil courts rather than in out of control criminal trials under threat of decades of prison time.As currently written, Aaron's Law alone wouldn't have saved Aaron -- there is still more to do to make sure that victimless computer activities are not charged as felonies -- but this is a solid start that we can pass now and it's a law he wanted to change.  Then we'll keep pushing forward.

2) Additionally, we asked Congressman Darrell Issa -- who controls the powerful Oversight Committee -- to open an investigation into prosecutorial misconduct in Aaron's case. Amazingly, he's already responded and is dispatching a staffer to investigate the U.S. Attorney who was pressing charges against Aaron.

We want the inquiry to proceed, and to be broadened to include a more thorough investigation into rampant over-prosecution of alleged crimes with no victims -- as in the case of what Aaron was accused of.  And we want those who abused their power to be held to account.

We loved Aaron -- so many people loved Aaron -- and his death is tragic.  We and others who were close to him are overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, and the calls for justice.  Thank you for joining us in that fight.

The Supreme Court & Arizona Immigration

A common theme in news involving the Supreme Court and Obama lawyers is how woefully incompetent Team Obama appears.  This may be charitable at best: the Obama DOJ pretty much comes off as arrogant, dismissive of basic constitutional questions and ultimately spineless to take any principled stand even if they believed in any.  In short, the DOJ has become a perfect representation of Barack Obama.  That was the case in the Obamacare challenge, was the case in the Citizen's United case, and was the case in the recent Supreme Court battle over Arizona's immigration law.

An AP news story from June 25 had the title "High court rejects part of Arizona immigration law."  The story gets all the facts right: despite the extreme right-wing tilt of the court, the Supremes overwhelming rejected the reactionary law: "The court struck down these three major provisions: requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers, making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants."

Despite these rulings, one key part of the law was left in place: "that police must check the status of people stopped for various reasons who might appear to be in the U.S. illegally."  Prez Obama decried this provision being left intact, declaring in writing: "No American should ever live under a cloud of suspicion just because of what they look like."

That Obama presented his objection in writing rather than one of his supposedly awesome speeches should tell you something.  What was left out in the AP article: the reason didn't reject the "Show me your papers" provision as an in-your-face abuse of civil liberties is because the Obama DOJ never objected the law on this point.  In fact, many of the Supreme judges could barely conceal their disgust of the DOJ during arguments over this fact.  The reasons seem pretty obvious: the Obama political team felt that sticking up for the rights of Latinos would be an election loser.

The good news: though they didn't overturn the most offensive part of the law, the Court made it pretty clear that they would if anyone could present evidence to the court that the law has or could violate any person's basic constitutional liberties.  It's a shame that Team Obama weren't the ones who did it.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/high-court-rejects-part-arizona-immigration-law-142916381.html

The Obama DOJ and strip searches

Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday, Apr 3, 2012
Full Article:
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/03/the_obama_doj_and_strip_searches

Numerous progressive commentators are lambasting the Supreme Court for its 5-4 ruling yesterday in Florence v. Bd. of Chosen Freeholders, and rightfully so. The 5-judge conservative faction held that prison officials may strip-search anyone arrested even for the most minor offenses before admitting them to the general population of a jail or prison, even in the absence of a shred of suspicion that they are carrying weapons or contraband. The plaintiff in this case had been erroneously arrested for outstanding bench warrants for an unpaid fine that he had actually paid, and was twice subjected to forced strip searches; he sued, claiming a violation of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In essence, the Florence ruling grants prison officials license to subject every single arrested individual entering the general prison population to humiliating and highly invasive strip searches (that’s 13 million people every year, with hugely disproportionately minority representation), based on the definitive police state mentality — one that has been applied over and over — that isolated risks justify the most sweeping security measures. This policy has been applied to those arrested for offenses such as dog leash laws, peaceful protests, and driving with an expired license.

What virtually none of this anti-Florence commentary mentioned, though, was that the Obama DOJ formally urged the Court to reach the conclusion it reached. While the Obama administration and court conservatives have been at odds in a handful of high-profile cases (most notably Citizens United and the health care law), this is yet another case, in a long line, where the Obama administration was able to have its preferred policies judicially endorsed by getting right-wing judges to embrace them:

In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that in the interest of security, prisons could conduct visual body cavity searches of all detainees after they had contact with outsiders. For years after that ruling, lower courts ruled that the prison had to have a reasonable suspicion that the arrestee was concealing contraband before subjecting him to a strip search upon entering the facility.

But in recent years, some courts have begun to allow a blanket policy to strip search all arrestees.

The Obama administration is siding with the prisons in the case and urging the court to allow a blanket policy for all inmates set to enter the general prison population.

“When you have a rule that treats everyone the same,” Justice Department lawyer Nicole A. Saharsky argued, “you don’t have folks that are singled out. You don’t have any security gaps.”


As The Guardian said yesterday: “The decision was a victory for the jails and for the Obama administration, which argued for an across-the-board rule allowing strip-searches of all those entering the general jail population, even those arrested on minor offenses.” Civil rights lawyer Stephen Bergstein added:

This evidence suggesting that minor offenders are not smuggling contraband into jails was not good enough for the Obama administration, which is asking the Supreme Court to endorse the restrictive strip search policy in Florence. At oral argument, a lawyer for the Obama Justice Department told the Supreme Court that “[p]rotesters…who decide deliberately to get arrested… might be stopped by the police, they see the squad car behind them. They might have a gun or contraband in their car and think hey, I’m going to put that on my person, I just need to get it somewhere that is not going to be found during a patdown search, and then potentially they have the contraband with them.” This position would probably be identical to that advanced by a Republican presidential administration.


What makes the Obama DOJ’s position in favor of this broad strip-search authority particularly remarkable is that federal prisons do not even have this policy. As The New York Times‘ Adam Liptak explained, “the procedures endorsed by the majority are forbidden by statute in at least 10 states and are at odds with the policies of federal authorities. According to a supporting brief filed by the American Bar Association, international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.”

It’s rather strange to so vehemently condemn the ruling in this case as a warped, sadistic police state excess, and not even mention that the Obama DOJ vigorously advocated for this very result...

In a speech to the Associated Press today, President Obama boasted that his signature domestic policies were basically conservative (he labeled them “centrist”): his individual mandate, he said, was pioneered by conservatives and the Heritage Foundation; his cap-and-trade policy was first proposed by Bush 41; federal spending is lower now than it was during any year of the Reagan administration, etc. Even the successes most touted by his supporters — the Detroit bailout, TARP, the withdrawal from Iraq — were started by Bush 43. Obama’s foreign policy and civil liberties assaults also, of course, were largely shared by his predecessor and are frequently praised by the Right.

What is needed most — a strong countervailing force to these policies coming from a place other than the neoconservative Right and corporatist oligarchs — is exactly what is missing...

Obama Administration Defends 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/14/130575512/obama-administration-defends-don-t-ask-don-t-tell-a-policy-it-wants-to-repeal

Obama Administration Defends 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' A Policy It Wants To Repeal
October 14, 2010
David Gura

Earlier this week, Judge Virginia Phillips, from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, ordered the military to stop enforcing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an appeal against the decision.

As NPR's Rachel Martin reports, the ruling has forced the Obama administration to defend a policy it wants to repeal.

According to a DOJ spokesperson, the government is defending the statute because that's what is traditionally done when acts of Congress are challenged. At the same time, the filing goes out of its way to say that President Obama intends to reverse "don't ask, don't tell" through an "orderly repeal process."

White House officials say that means getting Congress to do away with the policy through legislation.

The filing raises questions about the injunction, which forced the Department of Defense to put a stop to all investigations and pending discharges under "don't ask, don't tell." It's likely the case will now go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Author of Torture Memos Admits Some Techniques Were Not Approved

http://www.truth-out.org/author-torture-memos-admits-some-techniques-were-not-approved-by-doj61392

Author of Torture Memos Admits Some Techniques Were Not Approved By DOJ
Thursday 15 July 2010
Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t

Jay Bybee, the former head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) who signed two infamous August 2002 legal memos which gave CIA interrogators the green light to torture "war on terror" prisoners, told a congressional committee that more than a half-dozen of the tactics detainees were subjected to were not "authorized" by the DOJ.

In a closed-door interview May 26 with members of the House Judiciary Committee, Bybee, now a Ninth Circuit Appeals Court judge, said OLC did not approve of the use of diapering, water dousing, forcing a detainee to defecate on himself or wear blackout goggles, extended solitary confinement or isolation, hanging a detainee from ceiling hooks, daily beatings, or the use of loud music or noise.

In an investigative report published by Truthout on April 17, intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee captured after 9/11, was subjected to repeated sessions of "water dousing," a method that, at the time interrogators used it on Zubaydah, was described as spraying him with extremely cold water from a hose while he was naked and shackled by chains attached to a ceiling in the cell he was kept in at a black-site prison.

The OLC did not approve the use of water dousing as an interrogation technique until August 2004. Use of the method is believed to have played a part in the November 2002 death of Gul Rahman, a detainee who was held at an Afghanistan prison known as The Salt Pit and died of hypothermia hours after being doused with water and left in a cold prison cell.

The use of blackout goggles is a sensory deprivation technique. Prolonged diapering was at one time included in a list of torture techniques the OLC had approved of in 2002. But it was removed, possibly because it may have resulted in a lengthy legal review and delayed the issuance of the torture memos. Yet it was OK'd by former CIA Director George Tenet, despite the fact it did not receive legal authorization from OLC.
According to declassified documents, published reports and interviews conducted by human rights organizations with prisoners over the past eight years, the CIA used the unauthorized torture tactics repeatedly on detainees in the custody of the agency. The unauthorized methods and the final 10 techniques Bybee said detainees could legally be subjected to amount to a violation of the Geneva Conventions and federal anti-torture laws.

Despite the fact that the memos have been condemned by Republicans, Democrats and several Bush administration officials and were withdrawn by Bybee's successor, Jack Goldsmith, Bybee still defended his work and said his critics have either "misread" or misinterpreted his legal analysis on presidential power.

"We might have been clearer in some places," Bybee said, according to a copy of the 283-page interview transcript released Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee. "But, in terms of the analysis, I am going to stand by the memo."

Bybee, whose responses to questions appears to be an attempt to absolve himself of culpability, told Judiciary Committee members that interrogators who employed techniques that deviated from the guidelines contained in the torture memos he signed acted without the approval of OLC.

"If the CIA departed from anything that it told us here, if it had any other information that it didn't share with us or if it came into any information that would differ from what they told us here, then the CIA did not have an opinion from OLC, " and the interrogation was not "authorized," Bybee said.

Moreover, Bybee said the memos prohibited the "substantial repetition" of torture techniques, such as waterboarding, which suggests its repeated use was part of a human experimentation program.

Justice Department documents and a report released by the CIA's Inspector General state that two high-value detainees, Zubaydah and self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were waterboarded 83 times and 183 times in the course of a single month.

Last month, the international doctors' organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) released a report that said "war on terror" detainees were used as human "guinea pigs" to gauge the effectiveness of various torture techniques. For example, PHR said waterboarding was monitored in early 2002 by CIA medical personnel, who collected data about how detainees responded to the torture technique. The data was then used in a 2005 torture memo advising CIA interrogators how to administer the technique.

Closed-Door Interview

Bybee's interview was a closely guarded secret. Civil liberties and human rights organizations contacted by Truthout were unaware that the Judiciary Committee had met with the former Bush administration official. It's unclear why Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, decided to conduct the interview privately rather than have Bybee testify publicly before the House panel.

Conyers conducted interviews behind closed doors with former Bush administration officials Karl Rove and White House Counsel Harriet Miers last year about their roles in the firing of nine US attorneys in December 2006. That arrangement was reached after months of legal wrangling that saw Rove and Miers ignore several congressional subpoenas citing executive privilege.

The Obama administration stepped in and brokered a deal between Rove, Miers and the Judiciary Committee that resulted in their closed-door testimony. By urging the former Bush administration officials and the Judiciary Committee to reach a settlement instead of litigating the matter, Obama's Justice Department lawyers avoided going to federal court and taking a position on George W. Bush's broad claims of executive privilege, which the former president said extended beyond his presidency.

Bybee's interview took place about three months after the Justice Department's internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), issued a long-awaited report on the legal advice Bybee and the torture memos' principal author, John Yoo, provided to the White House on so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."

That report concluded that the legal advice Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley, and Bybee gave the White House warranted stern punishment, including a recommendation to their state bar associations for possible disbarment.

In the OPR report, Yoo was found to have "committed intentional professional misconduct when he violated his duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough, objective, and candid legal advice."

Bybee was found to have "committed professional misconduct when he acted in reckless disregard of his duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough, objective, and candid legal advice."

But the judgment was softened by career prosecutor David Margolis, who was put in charge of the final recommendations and who said he was "unpersuaded" by OPR's "professional misconduct" conclusion, which faulted Yoo and Bybee for their approval of brutal interrogation techniques that were used against terrorism suspects after the 9/11 attacks. Margolis changed the "misconduct" findings to "poor judgment" and did not make a formal referral to their state bar associations to further review the matter and determine whether they should be disbarred.

OPR investigators added that their probe was hampered by the fact that Yoo's emails from July 2002 through August 5, 2002 - the crucial time period in which the Bybee memos were completed - were deleted and "reportedly" not recoverable.

Bybee said he could not recall whether he took steps to make sure Yoo preserved his emails as required by federal law. According to the DOJ's website, emails are federal records if they:

Document agreements reached in meetings, telephone conversations, or other E-mail exchanges on substantive matters relating to business processes or activities
Provide comments on or objections to the language on drafts of policy statements or action plans
Supplements information in official files and/or adds to a complete understanding of office operations and responsibilities
The DOJ rules for preserving records also said "the unlawful removal or destruction of federal records" could result in "criminal or civil penalties, fines and/or imprisonment."

Rep. Conyers and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, as well as the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, have asked DOJ and the National Archives to investigate the matter.

Investigation

Conyers said Thursday the revelations Bybee made during the interview are "highly relevant to the pending criminal investigation into detainee abuse."

Bybee's "testimony reveals that many brutal techniques reportedly used in CIA interrogations were not authorized by the Justice Department - the author of these legal memos has now admitted this on the record," Conyers said. "I have provided the Committee's interview to the Justice Department and directed my staff to cooperate with any further requests for information."

Last August, Attorney General Eric Holder expanded the mandate of John Durham, a US Attorney from Connecticut who has spent more than two years investigating the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes, to include about a dozen cases of torture that had been previously closed by Justice Department attorneys for unknown reasons. Durham was authorized to conduct a preliminary review of those cases to determine if there is evidence that warrants a full-scale criminal inquiry.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York), chairman of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights, who questioned Bybee during his appearance before the panel, said his "disclosures heighten the need for a special counsel to investigate the development and implementation of interrogation policies following the 9/11 attacks and, once again, I call upon the Department of Justice to ensure justice and accountability for these potentially grave abuses of executive power."

The Obama administration has refused to allow the Justice Department to launch a full-fledged investigation into the Bush administration's torture policies, and has also pressured Congress not to hold public hearings delving into the matter.

President Obama said last year, after he agreed to publicly release the Bybee/Yoo torture memos, that "those who [carried] out their duties relying in good faith upon the legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."

Holder added: "with regard to those members of the intelligence community who acted in good faith and in reliance with Justice Department opinions that were shared with them, it is not our intention to prosecute those individuals."

Bybee's testimony, in which he acknowledges that techniques were used that OLC did not approve of, puts the pressure back on the White House and the Justice Department to investigate, since it suggests that interrogators were not relying upon the legal memos.

However, Brent Mickum, an attorney who represents several high-profile Guantanamo prisoners, including Zubaydah, who Bush administration officials had claimed was the No. 3 person in al-Qaeda and played a direct role in 9/11, said he does not believe Bybee's revelations will result in an investigation or a congressional hearing.

"Everything I know about our government, everything I know about the CIA, Department of Defense and the DOJ, tells me they cannot be trusted," Mickum said. "They simply do not tell the truth. When they are caught in a lie they change their story. We do not have a judicial system that will allow us to take a hard look at what been done and we have a Congress that has been asleep at the wheel."

Mickum added that Bybee's revelations are not at all surprising.

"Judge Bybee has made clear in his testimony that there were techniques employed that were not approved. I have known that for years," Mickum said. "What was done to my client was vastly worse than what was approved in the [Bybee] memo. But I can't talk to you about that because the government hamstrings us by abusing the classification system and prevents me from tell you exactly what was done to [Zubaydah]. My client was tortured before [Bybee's] memo came out. My client was interrogated in ways that were not approved of by OLC and interrogated in ways that exceeded the OLC memo. I believe my client was tortured months and months before this [August 2002] memorandum ever came out. They knew he was tortured and they set about creating a record to make it appear he had not been tortured."

In the torture memo, Bybee asserted that Zubaydah "is one of the highest ranking members of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization," "has been involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by al-Qaeda," and was "one of the planners of the September 11 attacks." Bybee approved the harsh interrogation as necessary to thwart pending attacks on U.S. interests, which the CIA claimed Zubaydah knew about.

The government has since backed away from every major claim the Bush administration made about Zubaydah prior to and after his capture.

Throwing Yoo Under the Bus

Bybee was also harshly critical of his former colleague John Yoo, who he said was "at the White House on a regular basis," and was responsible for all of the discussion with the Bush administration on matters relating to torture.

Bybee said Yoo never disclosed to him that he had been participating in top-secret White House "war planning" meetings. Bybee told the Judiciary Committee that, based on the information he now has, he is "worried" that Yoo was far too close to the White House and that interfered with his ability to provide the Bush administration with objective legal advice.

Bybee made similar complaints against Yoo when he was interviewed by government officials about legality of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program.

Last year, a report released by the inspectors general of the CIA, National Security Agency, Justice Department and Defense Department said Bush justified his warrantless wiretapping by relying on Yoo's theories of unlimited presidential wartime powers, and started the spying operation even before Yoo issued a formal opinion.

Bybee was quoted in that report as saying that Yoo was "the White House's guy" on national security issues and complained that Yoo was "read into" the secret details of the classified Presidential Surveillance Program, while Bybee was kept out of the loop.

In his interview with the Judiciary Committee, Bybee said he was concerned that "John was involved with the White House in a number of apparently war-planning things" that Bybee "was not aware of" at the time.

Yoo did not respond to email queries for comment.

Rep. Nadler said Yoo's "close relationship" with the Bush White House "warrants further investigation."

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Ten Worst Telco Moments of 2007

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2007/12/17/five-worse-telco-moments-of-2007/

Ten Worst Telco Moments of 2007

A few years ago, President Bush pledged that every corner of America would have high-speed Internet by 2007. Well, the year is drawing to a close, and millions of Americans still do not have access. The United States has dropped from fourth to 15th in the world in broadband penetration in the past five years — a result of a telco stranglehold on both broadband markets and broadband policy that puts their profits before innovation and the public good.

But that’s not all. Even when Americans can get online, an open and neutral Internet is not guaranteed. In the past year, phone and cable companies have been throttling the free flow of information on the Internet and cell phones — giving us a harrowing glimpse of a world without Net Neutrality.

A review of the 10 Worst Telco Moments of 2007 (in no particular order):

1. White House Declares ‘Mission Accomplished’ for the Internet

“We have the most effective multiplatform broadband in the world,” the Bush administration’s top technologist, John Kneuer, told skeptical Web experts and the media in June, despite several international surveys that place the United States far behind countries in Asia and Europe.

Kneuer says the real problem is not bad policy, but faulty data in the surveys. While the Bush White House seemed over eager to declare broadband success, America’s failing report card told a story of a larger systems breakdown. “Previous generations put a toaster in every home and a car in every driveway as signs of economic progress,” Sen. John Kerry wrote in September. “To stay competitive, we should strive to do the same with nationwide broadband.”

Let’s hope our next president understands that ubiquitous broadband access needs to be more than a mirage.

2. Telcos Spy on Millions of Americans

For several years now, the nation’s largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own customers without a warrant. In the process, they delivered to the federal government the private records of millions of Americans. Their excuse — national security in the face of a known terrorist threat — holds little weight when one considers that they’ve been spying on us with the NSA well in advance of the September 11 attacks.

Now, they are pushing a bill — “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” — that would grant complicit phone companies retroactive amnesty from prosecution for violations of our civil liberties. While a few, brave senators have stood in the way of the bill and refused to let the telcos off the hook, the legislation still stands a good chance of getting through.

3. Comcast is Busted for Blocking BitTorrent

In October, an Associated Press investigation revealed that Comcast - technically a cableco - was secretly blocking peer-to-peer file sharing programs like BitTorrent and Gnutella. Comcast’s blocking is a glaring violation of Net Neutrality.

BitTorrent is rapidly emerging as one of the most successful online platforms for the sharing of large files. Comcast has a natural incentive to keep customers watching movies and television shows through their system, not the Internet.. Despite the evidence, Comcast’s David Cohen told Ars Technica that Comcast does not block access to file sharing applications and that their practice is just “content shaping.” In response, SavetheInternet.com members filed a petition urging the FCC to stop Comcast from blocking Internet traffic and fine them for their violations.

And what can you do if you find out that you’ve been blocked by Comcast? Switch to AT&T or Verizon and suffer with slow DSL speeds and their own draconian terms of service. Free Press has sifted through the agreements of several Internet and cell phone providers and found similar language that reserves their right to cut off users on a whim.

4. AT&T and Verizon Censor Free Speech

In September, Verizon Wireless blocked NARAL Pro-Choice America’s efforts to send mobile text messages to its members. After a New York Times expose, the phone company reversed its policy, claiming it was a glitch.

A month earlier, during the live Lollapalooza webcast of a Pearl Jam concert, AT&T muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric criticizing President Bush. AT&T launched its own bungled PR response after a flurry of criticism. But both companies refused to change internal policies which allowed them to censor in the future.

Their apologies aren’t cutting it anymore. Censorship by AT&T and Verizon is further proof that these corporate giants simply cannot be left at the controls of Internet content. These same providers handed customer phone records over to the NSA without a subpoena and are now strong-arming Congress for retroactive immunity (see No. 2). And they want us to trust them with the Internet?

5. Caught Red-Handed, Telcos Change Their Tune

For some time, phone and cable companies and their shills and lobbyists had been spinning Net Neutrality as a “solution in search of a problem.” But 2007 brought us a series of violations of Internet freedom which brought the “problem” into vivid relief for millions.

Undaunted, the shills quickly changed their tune, admitting that indeed some mistakes were made, but the telcos were merely implementing “reasonable network management” (aka content discrimination) to bring us the Internet that we all love and cherish. The moral of this story: Follow what the telcos do, not just what they say.

6. Media Insiders Suffer Telco-Vision

Don’t always believe the purveyors of conventional wisdom in Washington media. Some of these pundits are so steeped in their own “knowledge” that they get stuck spinning in place when faced with evidence to the contrary. This was the case for a chosen few who in 2007 hunkered down behind their laptops to write commentaries to convince the world that Net Neutrality was dead and gone. The issue is a “fading memory,” one crowed. It “barely raises a yawn” said another.

Their view of the world, however, rarely extends beyond the Potomac, where the Net Neutrality issue was leading the news and being vigorously debated along the campaign trail. Indeed, Net Neutrality emerged as the No. 1 issue that thousands of visitors to TechPresident selected to be answered by all the presidential candidates. So the next time an insider tells you that Net Neutrality is dead, I advise you to check his pulse instead. Then point out the more than 1.5 million Americans who are taking action to protect the free and open Internet.

7. The iPhone Gets Shackled

The introduction of the iPhone over the summer highlighted both the promise and the problems of America’s wireless marketplace. On the one hand, it demonstrated the promises of a truly mobile Internet. On the other hand, the iPhone raised serious questions about the fact that most every mobile phone consumer is locked into a long-term contracts, using a phone that has been “crippled” by carriers, with significant penalties for switching to a new provider.

The iPhone was shackled to AT&T. The reason? We have allowed carriers to exert almost complete gatekeeper control over all devices, services and content in the wireless sector — a move that has left U.S. innovation generations behind other nations. Reviewing the state of the wireless market in America, New York Times blogger David Pogue called American carriers “calcified, conservative and way behind their European and Asian counterparts.” Despite recent efforts to open devices, the lockdown of cell phones remains the dominant characteristic of most every user agreement in the country.

8. Bush’s Justice Dept. Files Against Net Neutrality

In September, departing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales filed a brief with the Federal Communications Commission, urging the agency to oppose Net Neutrality. The DOJ stated that broadband companies like AT&T should be able to erect toll booths and filter traffic — upending the even playing field that has made the Web an unrivaled engine of democratic discourse and new ideas.

The DOJ move once again proved the point: Powerful corporate and government gatekeepers are working together to dismantle Internet freedoms and impose their will upon the Web. By moving against Net Neutrality, Gonzales was merely pulling last-minute favors for friends in high places. Soon thereafter, Free Press submitted a FOIA request to shed light on the DOJ’s recent hit job against Net Neutrality and uncover whether industry lobbyists or White House politics had a hand in this unusual action. We’re still waiting for a response.

9. FCC’s Rosy Broadband Report Wilts Under Scrutiny

In February, the FCC released its biannual report on the U.S. broadband market. On the surface, the numbers sounded good. High-speed Internet lines increased by 26 percent during the first half of 2006, and broadband was reportedly available in 99 percent of all U.S. ZIP codes. But the broadband reality is much darker. According to Free Press Research Director Derek Turner, the FCC used an “absurd standard” to measure broadband — 200 kilobits per second. “That was barely fast enough to surf in 1999, but is far below what’s needed to enjoy streaming video, VoIP, flash animation or other common Internet applications.”

Indeed, speeds are much slower than what’s available in the rest of the world. Half of all U.S. broadband connections are slower than 2.5 megabits per second — yet in countries like Japan and South Korea, they’re rolling out 100 megabit services. And there’s no real competition. 98 percent of high-speed residential lines in America are provided by incumbent cable or telecom companies. Using ZIP codes alone vastly overstates the availability and competition for broadband services. While the FCC’s data has been widely debunked, the telco lobby crowed that the FCC had proven beyond a doubt that the American broadband marketplace was a haven of free-market competition — which leads us to our final “worst moment.”

10. More Astroturf Sprouts Up, Speads Lies

Washington policymaking has spawned a cottage industry of phony front groups put in place by phone and cable companies eager to spread misinformation about anything that threatens their control over the network. Nowhere is this more evident than in their campaign to defeat open Internet initiatives.

Throughout the year, companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have funneled millions of dollars toward “Astroturf” front groups such as the disingenuously named NetCompetition.org, Hands Off the Internet and The Future Faster. For example, Hands Off the Internet — which sounds like a citizens group to protect the Internet from gatekeepers — is actually a telco-backed lobbying group that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on video PSAs and “grassrootsy” Web campaigns aimed at eliminating efforts to restore Net Neutrality protections and spread open access.

True to form, these front groups spent much of 2007 cranking out phony PR, mouthing telco taking points and casting doubt against any effort to ensure that the Internet is open, neutral and free of interference by gatekeepers. And these groups aren’t going away soon. Expect to see them on our worst moments list at the end of 2008.