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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Free Expression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Expression. Show all posts

Saturday, June 15, 2013

UNC-Chapel Hill drops honor court case against student

By Phil Gast
CNN
Originally posted June 7, 2013

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has dropped honor-court proceedings against a student who said the school retaliated against her for a sexual assault allegation.

In an e-mail to faculty and students on Thursday, Chancellor Holden Thorp said an outside review indicated no evidence of retaliation against Landen Gambill, who accused her ex-boyfriend of rape.

Gambill is one of several students who sparked a Department of Education investigation into how the university handles sex assault cases.

Thorp said a section of the honor code pertaining to "disruptive or intimidating behavior" would be suspended pending further review.

"This action is not a challenge to the important role of students in our Honor System, but is intended to protect the free speech rights of our students," the chancellor said in his e-mail. Thorp said the "important issue" will receive further discussion.

Gambill's attorney, Henry Clay Turner, had written a letter to Thorp, saying his client believed the university was retaliating against her because it let the student-run honor court charge her with intimidating her former boyfriend.

Gambill did not file a sexual assault report with police, and her former boyfriend -- who has not been identified publicly -- denied her accusation, according to his attorney.

The entire story is here.


Friday, June 29, 2012

More transparency into government requests

By Dorothy Chou
Google Senior Policy Analyst
Originally posted June 17, 2012

About two years ago, we launched our interactive Transparency Report. We started by disclosing data about government requests. Since then, we’ve been steadily adding new features, like graphs showing traffic patterns and disruptions to Google services from different countries. And just a couple weeks ago, we launched a new section showing the requests we get from copyright holders to remove search results.

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This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.

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We’ve rounded up some additional interesting facts in the annotations section of the Transparency Report. We realize that the numbers we share can only provide a small window into what’s happening on the web at large. But we do hope that by being transparent about these government requests, we can continue to contribute to the public debate about how government behaviors are shaping our web.


Thanks to Ed Zuckerman for this lead.