Your daily round-up of some of the other stories in the news
Juno probes Jupiter’s giant red spot
NASA‘s Juno mission completed a fly-by of the giant planet’s iconic red spot on Monday, said the US space agency on Tuesday, gathering spectacular images of the 16,000km-wide storm that has been monitored from Earth since 1830.
The closest the Juno probe (pictured) got to the planet and the storm was 3,500km above Jupiter’s cloud tops on Monday, and shortly after that it logged a year in orbit after having been launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in August 2011.
“For generations, people from all over the world and all walks of life have marvelled over the Great Red Spot,” said Scott Bolton of NASA. “Now we are finally going to see what this storm looks like up close and personal.”
NASA is posting the amazing raw images the probe gathers on its website and is encouraging people to download them, mix them up and upload them to share with fellow space geeks, saying: “Creativity and curiosity in the scientific spirit and the adventure of space exploration is highly encouraged.”
Footage of politician ‘did not break the law’
Footage of the leader of the UK’s opposition Labour party on a train did not breach data protection rules when the train operator, Virgin Trains East Coast, published the footage in August last year, data protection authorities said on Wednesday.
The CCTV footage, of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn walking past empty seats on the train, was published by Virgin Trains after he had criticised the company for running packed services and had claimed he couldn’t find a seat and so had to sit on the floor.
However, the train operator had breached the law by not obscuring the faces of other passengers visible in the footage, said Steve Eckersley, the head of enforcement at the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection regulator.
“The ICO found that Virgin should have taken better care to obscure the faces of other people on the train. Publication of their images was unfair and a breach of the first principle of the Data Protection Act,” said Eckersley.
He went on to explain that although Jeremy Corbyn would normally also be protected, “the ICO’s view was that Virgin had a legitimate interest, namely correcting what it deemed to be misleading news reports that were potentially damaging to its reputation and commercial interests”.
Trump sued over blocking Twitter users
Donald Trump, the US president, is being sued by Twitter users he has blocked who claim that he has violated their constitutional rights.
The seven Twitter users, who are backed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, claim that the president’s personal Twitter handle, @realDonaldTrump, “is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another”.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, follows a letter sent by the Knight Institute last month which threatened the legal action. In the letter, the institute said that being blocked by the president “supresses speech in a number of ways”.
The letter adds: “Blocking users from your Twitter account violates the First Amendment. When the government makes a space available to the public at large for the purpose of expressive activity, it creates a public forum from which it may not constitutionally exclude individuals on the basis of viewpoint.”
Catch up with all of today’s stories on Naked Security
Mahhn
Even if Trump is a twit-er bock head ing, I don’t see how it could legally be a public forum since: It is a personal privilege/purchase to have a device, twit account and internet access. He can post in any media he wants to, just like anyone else. Our state reps also host pseudo public forums, but only a few people get the opportunity to ask questions, most never will get to. Remember “don’t taze me bro”, that’s the hard line of not being able to ask questions. This is just people being ignored.
Free Speech does not mean people “have to” listen to you.
I’m sure those 7 people post on twitter all day long about being butt hurt that one person is ignoring them, to bad. Twitter is a comment/rant forum hosted by one company. If that company dissolves, will the creators get sued for taking away a “public forum”, no, and neither did any radio station, or news paper that sank.
But that’s just one non-twitter users opinion, I’m sure there are billions others, thank god I don’t have to see them.
Max
“He can post in any media he wants to, just like anyone else.” That is true, and if he would use his personal twitter account for personal use, there wouldn’t be any debate. But he is using it to communicate as the president. Twitter aren’t the ones that made the public forum, the president did by the way he uses Twitter. So it’s not Twitters responsibility. I’m not sure I agree with the law suit, but I can see what their argument is.
anon
Existing Federal records management laws apply to the President’s tweets. These tweets are records that must be preserved for the public.
No government official should ever be allowed to be above the law. The oath taken by our public servants invokes a higher standard for their personal behavior. This protects the people from government overreach into our personal affairs, which includes human rights like free speech. Information is power.
This lawsuit is important to the future of our democracy because it will establish the degree of transparency allowed in official public debates. Our access to effective participation in government affairs bas winnowed to digital forums, be they email, social media, or big data stores. What rights will we have to peacefully challenge government actions if unlawful censorship of public comments is allowed?
Steve
“Existing Federal records management laws apply to the President’s tweets. These tweets are records that must be preserved for the public.”
I didn’t see any mention of the preservation of records being an issue.
“No government official should ever be allowed to be above the law. The oath taken by our public servants invokes a higher standard for their personal behavior. This protects the people from government overreach into our personal affairs, which includes human rights like free speech. Information is power.”
Well, the Department of Justice’s treatment of Hilary Clinton proves that certain people do seem to be above the law. And how exactly does President Trump’s use of Twitter, obnoxious as it may be, reach into our personal affairs at all? We are not forced to receive his tweets.
“This lawsuit is important to the future of our democracy because it will establish the degree of transparency allowed in official public debates. Our access to effective participation in government affairs bas winnowed to digital forums, be they email, social media, or big data stores. What rights will we have to peacefully challenge government actions if unlawful censorship of public comments is allowed?”
Censorship? How does censorship even enter into this discussion? You can respond as you see fit, via Twitter or any other media to which you have access. Whether anyone pays any attention to what you say is up to each individual, governmental official or otherwise. When we write letters to our elected officials, is there a constitutional mandate that they personally must read them all? Of course not.
Admit it: this is just another way for some people to raise a stink because they don’t like the person and/or party that won the election.
Max
“When we write letters to our elected officials, is there a constitutional mandate that they personally must read them all? Of course not.” No. But if they started to “block” you from even sending any more letters you would probably see an issue there, would you not?