U.S. Court of Appeals Orders Me to Take Down Blog Posts

You may recall that back in October of last year, I filed a brief that discussed secret information provided to me by the TSA under court order not to release, and the clerk of the court mistakenly published that brief for the world to see. It contained information that was quite embarassing to the TSA and undermined their assertions that abusing us at airport checkpoints is necessary and was picked up (and mirrored) by major news and social media sites across the world.

The attorneys at the Department of Justice proceeded to flip out on me for discussing this “secret information” that was no longer actually secret, through no fault of my own, and demanded that I refrain from talking about something that anyone can read in the news, effectively making me the only person in the world who is barred from speaking on the subject. The court today temporarily granted their request and ordered me to delete the contents of any blog post that contains the not-so-secret information, pending the outcome of the case, at which point they will decide whether to make their gag order permanent.

I’d say that the court’s order was obnoxious censorship, but thinking about it, it seems more likely that they just want the government to stop bothering them about this nonsense. I say this for two reasons. First, the court entirely ignored the issue for about 2 months, allowing my Web site to remain as-is, before finally addressing the issue, which suggests to me that they really don’t care. Second, the court specifically granted me permission to link to the news sites that discuss (and host a copy of) my leaked brief, meaning they acknowledge that the information is still going to be around.

So, if you’d like to read the information that the court has ordered me not to discuss, click here to read the news article about it, which includes a link to the full, unredacted leaked brief. I can’t discuss what you might find at the link above, I can only provide the link.

Censorship is stupid. Paritally because it’s wrong, and partially because it’s ineffective.