Amy Kroin

How soon can you win a legal victory and end this nightmare? The soonest Free Press can file in court is after the order is published, either by the Federal Communications Commission itself or in that Federal Register. (There are some complicated timing rules that can apply differently to different parts of the FCC’s vote, so that’s why there’s some flexibility.) Once that publication happens, we’ll file within 10 days — a timeframe set for making a first appearance and starting the process to determine which federal appeals court will hear the case.

People from across the country have already generated more than 1 million comments and signatures opposing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s destructive plan to kill network neutrality. And outside the agency’s headquarters May 18, a range of advocacy groups, members of Congress and nearly 100 activists rallied to preserve the open internet.

Among the speakers were Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Jared Polis (D-CO). “The debate we’re here to begin is over democracy itself. It’s over whether we have a free and open internet for all voices, all competitors,” said Sen Markey. “The Trump administration is intending to shut down Net Neutrality at the behest of a few corporate behemoths. … This is the beginning of a historic fight to save Net Neutrality.” Advocates from groups including the ACLU, the Center for Media Justice, CREDO Action, Color Of Change, Common Cause, Demand Progress, EFF, Faithful Internet, Free Press Action Fund, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Popular Resistance and Public Knowledge all gave forceful speeches testifying to the need to preserve the internet’s level playing field. Daily Kos, Fight for the Future, The Nation and Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press were also represented at the rally.

More than a dozen protesters from Free Press, Demand Progress, Open Media, Popular Resistance and the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press took a stand for Net Neutrality at the Federal Communications Commission.

Activists wearing “Protect Net Neutrality” T-shirts filed into the room where the commissioners were holding their monthly open meeting. Once FCC Chairman Ajit Pai kicked off the meeting, the protesters stood and faced him. Security swooped in right away and escorted the activists out. FCC security forced a couple of protesters (and musicians in the punk bands Downtown Boys and Bad Moves) to take off their “Protect Net Neutrality” shirts before letting them in the meeting room — where the First Amendment no longer appears to apply.

[Commentary] “Predictive policing” sounds good on paper. After all, what could go wrong with a data-based approach to law enforcement? It turns out: plenty. That’s why Free Press joined a broad coalition of civil rights, privacy and technology groups in sounding the alarm about how predictive policing reinforces racial bias. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights mobilized the coalition, which counts the ACLU, the Brennan Center for Justice, Color Of Change and the NAACP among the 17 signers. The statement released last Wednesday notes that “the data driving predictive enforcement activities — such as the location and timing of previously reported crimes, or patterns of community- and officer-initiated 911 calls — is profoundly limited and biased.” Indeed, a damning report from the tech consulting group Upturn, which surveyed the nation’s 50 largest police forces, confirms this view. Upturn found “little evidence” that predictive policing works — and “significant reason to fear that [it] may reinforce disproportionate and discriminatory policing practices.”

While the idea of using data to direct police resources sounds like an effort to remove human bias from the equation, that isn’t how it works in practice. In fact, predictive policing embeds police bias in an algorithm that then has the appearance of being neutral. The police response to low-income communities — in particular communities of color — is completely different from the response to wealthy white communities.