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Support FIRE today: https://www.thefire.org/donate Is it legal to film police? This citizen journalist is about to give two police officers a lesson on the First Amendment. Know your rights, so when you go viral, it's for the right reasons. Transcript: CITIZEN JOURNALIST enters the scene – recording the Cop with his phone. CITIZEN JOURNALIST What the hell is going on here? COP What do you think you’re doing? CITIZEN JOURNALIST Were you shooting a TikTok video? COP That’s none of your concern. Stop filming me or you’ll be arrested.. CITIZEN JOURNALIST I have a First Amendment right to film police, as long as I’m on public property – which this is – and I’m not obstructing or interfering with police activities. COP Well, I’m gonna have to reshoot that whole dance routine again. So, yeah, you are interfering. CITIZEN JOURNALIST Don’t you think you can make better use of your time than TikTok? COP Police are allowed to exercise our First Amendment rights too. To show citizens like yourself a side of policing they never see. CITIZEN JOURNALIST Nobody wants to see that. COP Tell that to my 82 followers. CITIZEN JOURNALIST Ha! How many of those followers are your family? COP Psh. Joke’s on you. I don’t have a family. All I have is the job. CITIZEN JOURNALIST Can I speak to your superior? COP He’s over there. COP Lieutenant! We got a problem! This interrupts the Lieutenant's TikTok. He approaches, pissed-off. LIEUTENANT What’s going on? CITIZEN JOURNALIST I’m just explaining to your officer that I have a right to film you guys. LIEUTENANT Where’s this going? YouTube? TikTok? CITIZEN JOURNALIST That doesn’t matter. LIEUTENANT It matters to me. I have more of a following on YouTube – but we’re more likely to go viral on TikTok. CITIZEN JOURNALIST Look, I’m a citizen journalist, just doing my part to ensure police like yourself are held accountable for their actions. LIEUTENANT You “Citizen Journalists” – boy, you seem to always journalist the bad stuff police do. CITIZEN JOURNALIST Journalist isn’t a verb – but OK? LIEUTENANT So now it’s up to us to take it upon ourselves – to exercise our First Amendment rights – to show citizens like yourself a side of policing they never see. CITIZEN JOURNALIST He already said that. LIEUTENANT There is a lot that goes into policing. COP The dance moves. LIEUTENANT The down-to-earth commentary in our squad cars. COP The sick b-ball skills. CITIZEN JOURNALIST Where’d that basketball come from? COP I always bring one. Playing one-on-one with a local kid was the one time I ever went viral. You wanna go? CITIZEN JOURNALIST Nah. Look, I thought I was filming you guys on a crime scene, but – LIEUTENANT Oh shit, we forgot about the crime. COP Yeah, there’s a dead guy over there. LIEUTENANT Hey, could we do another take?

Support FIRE today: https://www.thefire.org/donate The Malaysian government is upset about a U.S. comedian's joke. And they want Interpol to do something about it. Did you know that Malaysia wants Interpol to be the world’s joke police? It all started when Joceyln Chia, a U.S.-based comedian who grew up in Singapore, discussed the relationship between Malaysia and Singapore during a set at the Comedy Cellar. She cracked a joke about the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, adding that “some jokes don’t land.” Clips of the set went viral on social media, resulting in outrage from internet users and government officials offended by the joke. TikTok took down the video, claiming it violated the app’s hate speech rules. But it didn’t end there. Malaysian police said she’s under investigation for insult, provocation and incitement. And Malaysia’s national police chief also announced that he intended to ask Interpol, which coordinates the international response to criminal matters, to hunt down Chia’s location — in the United States. This isn’t the first time governments have tried to use Interpol to crack down on free speech. Countries including Russia, Turkey, and Iran have weaponized Interpol to track down their critics over the years. Interpol is supposed to fight crime, not free speech. And it’s definitely not supposed to be the global joke police.

From our free 24-hour legal hotline to connecting student journalists with pro bono legal help, FIRE’s Student Press Freedom Initiative provides a number of resources to ensure the student press stays free, independent, and legally protected. If you work for a student publication, SPFI’s free resources are there for the taking. Find out more at studentpress.thefire.org.

Support FIRE today: https://www.thefire.org/donate FIRE lawyer Zach Greenberg reacts to a Harvard Law School grad’s TikTok video about recent shout-downs at universities that feature right-wing speakers. While peaceful protest is lawful, the “heckler’s veto” denies students the right to listen to what speakers have to say, and when events are canceled as a result, it denies the rights of students that disagree with these speakers to ask tough questions during Q&A. Transcript: TikTok Video: These are actively violent. Come on, Rachel. If these views were actively violent, they wouldn't be invited to speak at Harvard Law School Zach: Today we're going to look at a video trending on TikTok a couple of months ago about the heckler's veto. So this explanation here conflates free speech with the heckler's veto. The heckler's veto is an attempt to disrupt a speaker using violence or other disruptive tactics, to prevent the audience from listening to what the speaker has to say. In this case, a judge, federal judge came to Stanford Law to speak to the students about issues unrelated to homophobia or gay rights. What happened was the heckler's veto. The student shouted down the judge and the dean of the law school came out and said, “This is not okay. We support the right of free speech. We support the right of speakers to come to campus and express their viewpoints, even if they are offensive or annoying.” As the dean said, having the widest array of viewpoints on a law school campus allows lawyers to be the best they can be. It trains legal minds to contest with a wide array of views, and that is an important skill to have if you're going to be a zealous advocate for the viewpoints that you believe in. The First Amendment allows people to protest these speakers, allows them to have their signs, ask them questions, to really have their own events. That is fully protected by the freedom of speech. What The First Amendment does not allow it students to go up to the speaker, to shout them down, to drown them out, and to prevent others from listening to the speech. This speaker also conflates speech with violence. This is a very common technique for censorship. It allows people to de-legitimize ideas that they perceive as violent and open them up to being censored because if ideas are violence, then you can use violence to attack those ideas. You can shut them down and shut the people that say these ideas because they are allegedly violent. But simply ideas that people find disagreeable or offensive, that's speech protected by the First Amendment and by the freedom of speech. Two final points for this. The first is that these are free speech issues. Being shouted down at a law school, having an event where students are unable to hear the speaker because of the heckler’s veto, that is a free speech problem. And the dean and organizations like FIRE and other groups have rightly condemned that as an issue that implicates freedom of speech. It's a free speech problem. Second point is that the speaker talks a lot about prestige and legitimacy. And the First Amendment as a broad general matter, protects speech regardless of how prestigious or legitimate it is. It protects speech that is in the minority, that is unpopular, and that is a good thing. We want to be able to have a full and fair debate about what speech should or should not be allowed under the First Amendment. And that is what The First Amendment protects and that's a good thing.

Support FIRE today: https://www.thefire.org/donate Full transcript: Tweets take only seconds to post but, in Saudi Arabia, they can earn you decades in prison. The Kingdom has ramped up its suppression of its critics on social media, jailing activists for what they say on Whatsapp, Twitter, and other apps. A 29 year old women’s rights activist was recently arrested and jailed for Twitter and Snapchat posts calling for an end to the country’s male guardianship system. Last year, another Saudi woman was sentenced to an outrageous thirty four years in prison for retweeting and posting in support of dissidents after she returned from her university in the UK to visit her home country. This censorship campaign has even reached U.S. citizens. An American woman living in Saudi Arabia was temporarily detained, and is now under a travel ban, after tweeting criticisms of the male guardianship system. And another American who was originally sentenced to 19 years in prison last year while visiting the country was released, but is also unable to leave due to a travel ban. In this case, he was arrested for years-old tweets he posted while in the United States that criticized Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. The warning is clear: What you say in free countries can follow you to unfree ones — and land you in prison.

Support FIRE today: https://go.thefire.org/join-fire How much is a joke worth? In China, it can cost two million dollars — and may come with prison time. That may be the consequence for a comedian who compared dogs chasing a squirrel with the Chinese military's work ethic during a stand up set.

Support FIRE today: https://go.thefire.org/join-fire FIRE lawyer Zach Greenberg reacts to a student-selected speaker who criticized Israel, the university, capitalism, and more in her May 12 law school commencement speech, Link to the full commencement speech: https://www.memri.org/tv/sjp-activist-fatima-mohammed-cuny-law-school-commencement-speech-america-israel-empire-destruction

Got more questions about #freespeech? Then #lawyerup! Ask your question in the comments! #conlaw #lawyer #firstamendmentlaw

Support FIRE today: https://go.thefire.org/join-fire As China’s control extends over Hong Kong, libraries are purging political books — including information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Bill Maher is right: Feelings do not supersede free speech! #billmaher #drphil

FIRE Senior Fellow and former ACLU President Nadine Strossen takes the stage at the FIRE Gala to showcase individuals that have challenged the status quo, shared unpopular opinions, and with FIRE’s help, bravely stood up for their free speech rights — therefore promoting EVERYONE’s speech rights.

FIRE has expanded its mission to defend free speech on and off campus. That means looking for a new mascot. Should it be an alien? A cute dog? Should the mascot be on fire? Here's a funny look behind the scenes of the world's premiere Free Speech defenders. Support FIRE today: https://go.thefire.org/join-fire

Leading First Amendment lawyer and FIRE’s new Chief Counsel Robert Corn-Revere talks about the new Montana law SB 419 which seeks to ban TikTok. The law prohibits “a mobile application store from offering the TikTok application to Montana users.” How does this square with the United States Constitution and the First Amendment? Support FIRE today: https://go.thefire.org/join-fire

You can’t ban TikTok just because you’re scared of china.

Killer Mike with a powerful warning: “Once you become the ones in power, to use government as a tool to suppress speech and expression you disagree with is as evil as the masters who came before you.”

Writers are a ferocious bunch. In 1830, in response to King Charles X's declaring the end of freedom of the press, journalists and working class supporters started rioting in what would be called The Three Glorious Days. The takeaway? Restricting freedom can backfire—hard.

When we released a recent video featuring human rights activist Keshia Thomas, we couldn’t have been prouder or more excited. The video sends a compelling message about the power of nonviolence and free speech. But Google had other plans. Twice now, Keshia’s video has been flagged by Google, saying that the video features “negative events and imagery" — a reminder that algorithmic content moderation is a threat to online free expression.

Thems there fighting words, partner #freespeech #explainer

“It’s up to us to do our little part in defending free speech so that no one has to do a lot. It’s up to us to do our little part so that those we disagree with have the opportunity to express themselves.” – @KillerMike at #FIREGala2023 Watch the full keynote speech here: https://youtu.be/OBuXYtmQ8mw

Happy Star Wars Day from all the folks at FIRE! #freespeech #starwars #starwarsday #maythe4thbewithyou

Got more questions about #freespeech? Then #lawyerup! #conlaw #lawyer #firstamendmentlaw

LEGO policy in 2015 blocked artist Ai Weiwei from buying bricks for political artwork. #lego #freespeech #artist

In countries around the world, people don’t have free speech rights. FIRE is committed to ensuring that that never happens in America. Headquartered in Philadelphia, FIRE has been protecting the First Amendment for over 20 years — and we’re just getting started. Join FIRE today at https://join.thefire.org.

The publishing industry’s appetite for sensitivity readers — freelance consultants hired by book publishers to flag supposedly “problematic” content and suggest revisions — and the resultant sanitization of published books threatens free expression in the arts and our culture.

France is known for its art and culture — and maybe its censorship, too. #freespeech #france