Specialist Leonard A. Clark, a member of the Arizona National Guard serving in Iraq, was demoted to Private First Class for allegedly releasing classified information on his blog.  According to press accounts, Clark's blog was openly critical of the war in Iraq. The Army punished Clark after his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel James F. Switzer, found him guilty in a nonjudicial proceeding on July 19, 2005. Clark's blog and its host site, LeonardClark.com, are no longer active.

According to a U.S. Central Command press release, the charges and specifications against Clark included failure to obey an order or regulation under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by releasing information about the movements, tactics, and rules of engagement of U.S. troops, as well as information about improvised explosive attacks on U.S. convoys, thereby violating an order against releasing such information. Clark was also charged with reckless endangerment under Article 134 for revealing this type of information and "encouraging its widespread publication," such that "with that information it was likely that the enemy forces could cause death or seriously bodily harm to U.S. forces."

Some military bloggers familiar with the content of Clark's blog posts doubted that the posts revealed any military secrets or compromised the security of military operations. Others argued that Clark should have known that his posts were in a gray area and in any case were subject to Army approval.

Clark could have requested a court martial instead of a hearing before his commanding officer, but he declined to do so. According to the press release, Lieutenant Colonel Switzer found Clark guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and sentenced him to a 1-grade reduction in rank, forfeiture of $820 pay per month for two months, 45 days of travel restriction, and 45 days of extra duty. The restriction and extra duty were suspended for 5 months.

In May 2007, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians banished Robert Port from the tribe's lands for publishing an article, "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations," on the Dakota Beacon website and on his own blog, Say Anything Blog.  The banishment order also alleged that comment threads on the Say Anything Blog included "anti-Indian and anti-reservation comments," including that "reservation peoples are living on the Government's 'welfare tit.'"  The order also purported to require the Dakota Beacon and its editor, Steve Cates, to publicly retract the article.

Steve Marshall, an English travel agent operating out of Spain, had approximately 80 of his websites shut down as a result of the U.S. Treasury Department's placing them on its blacklist. Many of the sites discussed Cuba, some offering commentary about Cuba, and others offered online travel services to European tourists interested in travelling to Cuba.

According to the Treasury Department, the websites were added to the U.S. Treasury Department's Blacklist because they breached the U.S. trade sanctions with Cuba by enabling U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba.  Treasury claims that its action was part of a broader effort to prevent tourist dollars propping up the "oppressive" Castro regime.

Marshall's US-based domain registrar eNom, Inc. disabled the domains in October 2007 when it was contacted by Treasury and informed of the blacklisting. Marshall reports that he has chosen to put the sites up using new, non-U.S.-registered sites.

There is some dispute over whether Marshall's company helped U.S. nationals to evade U.S. government travel restrictions. According to Treasury, it targeted U.S. citizens (see Press Release). According to Marshall, who is quoted in the New York Times, he is not interested in American tourists: "They can’t go anyway."

Egyptian law student Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suliman ("Kareem"), using the psuedonym Kareem Amer, posted a series of articles critizing the Islamic faith, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Al-Azhar University to his blog and websites, Modern Discussion and Copts United. He was first arrested for his posts in October 2005, at which time he was detained for 12 days and forced to surrender his books and some personal articles and writings. In March 2006, Kareem was expelled from Al-Azahar University because of his posts. (For more information on the expulsion, see the CMLP database entry, Al-Azhar University v. Abdul Kareem Nabeel.)

Al-Azhar informed the Public Prosecutor's Office in Alexandria of Kareem's writings. On November 06, 2006, Kareem was arrested. When he refused to recant, he was held in solitary confinement until he could face trial. He was charged with three basic crimes: contempt for religion (both generally and Islam in particular), defaming President Mubarak, and disrupting public order.

On Feb. 22, 2007 in Maharram Beik Court, after what reports have described as only five minutes of consideration, Kareem was was sentenced to four years in prison for his speech -- three years for contempt of religion and one year for defaming Mubarak. The charges relating to alleged disruptions of public order were dropped.

On March 12, 2007, the Court of Appeals in Alexandria upheld Kareem's conviction and four-year sentence. The court also approved a civil claim brought by a group of Egyptian lawyers seeking to fine Kareem for "insulting Islam."

Status:

Several sources, including freekareem.org, have reported that Kareem's lawyers intend to appeal the case to the Court of Cassation, Egypt's highest appeals court.

Mary Jean is the operator of Conte2006.com, which describes itself as being "designed for the sole purpose of stopping the re-election of [Worchester, MA] District Attorney John J. Conte." Jean posted a video to the site that showed state police engaging in a warrantless and possibly unconstitutional search of Paul Pechonis' home. The police depicted in the video allegedly were from a unit that reported to Conte and acted under his supervision. The video was recorded by Pechonis' child-security system (or "nanny cam"), and Pechonis himself gave the video to Jean.

On Feb. 14, 2006, the Massuchetts state police sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Jean remove the video within 24 hours or face criminal action. The letter cited a Massachusetts law regarding unauthorized recording and wiretapping as the basis for the takedown request (the police later clarified by stating that only the audio portion of the recording was at issue). Rather than removing the video, Jean filed a lawsuit in federal court requesting an injunction to prevent the Massachusetts police from pursuing legal action. The complaint named the state police, Massachusetts State Police superintendent Thomas G. Robbins, and Massachusetts attorney general Thomas Reilly as defendants.

Jean's complaint sought both an immediate temporary restraining order and a permant injunction that would prevent the police from taking action against her related to the video. The court granted the restraining order on the day the complaint was filed.

The district court ultimately granted the injunction as well. The court assumed for the sake of argument that Jean had reason to know that the recording might have been illegal when she posted it. Finding a public interest in Jean's publication of the information contained in the video, the court decided that the police's duty to restrain illegal recording could not counterbalance Jean's free speech rights. Key to this decision was the fact that Jean did not engage in recording herself, and thus punishing her would not serve the same deterrence goals as would punishing the recorder.

On appeal, the First Circuit upheld the injunction, echoing the lower court's comments regarding the balancing of free speech versus the police's law-enforcing goals.