Montgomery County Government Censors Ads Opposing Question B // ACLU Demands Equal Access for Both Sides

UPDATE: Patrick Lacefield, a spokesperson for Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, has responded to the ACLU's press release and provides new details. The Leggett administration will allow the FOP to run bus ads, but rejects the idea that they were engaging in viewpoint discrimination:

MONTGOMERY COUNTY: The County Executive decided yesterday to make an one-time, specific exception to the County's policy against any outside political advertising to allow the FOP to purchase space. Our standing policy is not viewpoint-based and therefore there is no issue of "censorship." Prior to this exception, the County would not have sold space to outside Pro-Question B advocates either. That has been a consistent policy that the ACLU has never agreed with.

A letter is being prepared by the County Attorney. We had told the ACLU we'd have a response before Thursday but they jumped the gun with a release. The ACLU acknowledges that the County can establish rules governing access to forum in this case (Ride-On buses), including content-based rules, so long as there is no viewpoint discrimination. The County’s rules governing access to advertising space are straightforward: the County, through its contractor, accepts commercial advertising and government-sponsored speech. Those are the only two categories of speech permissible in buses advertisements. There is no viewpoint discrimination within those two categories. The FOP’s proposed advertisement does not fall within either of the permissible categories. It is not commercial speech and it is not government-sponsored speech. Thus, the County properly rejected the proposed advertisement.

If recent accounts by the ACLU are accurate, Montgomery County may have gone too far in its attempts to repeal "effects bargaining" rights (Question B) for members of the county's police union (FOP Lodge 35). Maryland Juice previously reported on Montgomery County's aggressive advertising blitz urging a "vote for" Question B. Their PR offensive included web videos, flyers, email blasts, and more. The FOP called for an investigation of "misuse of taxpayer funds," but some argued that the law permits the County expend resources on advocacy for referenda.

THE RETURN OF CHAIRMAN MOCO 

MONTGOMERY COUNTY GOVERNMENT CENSORS POLITICAL OPPOSITION: Today, the ACLU is announcing that the Montgomery County Government is also running "FOR Question B" ads on its buses. But what caught their interest is that MoCo is simultaneously censoring ads from those who are opposing the government's position. Maryland Juice has previously noted a fondness for censorship from the Montgomery County government. Our #1 most-read article of all-time is still our reporting on MoCo's censorship of their employees' Internet searches. See the alarming report from the ACLU below:

MEDIA RELEASE

ACLU Protests Censorship of Political Speech by
Montgomery County Government
Full details at the ACLU of Maryland website: http://www.aclu-md.org/press_room/82

TAKOMA PARK – Concerned that Montgomery County government is unlawfully censoring ads opposing the “FOR Question B” ads that the County itself is running on public transit buses, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland (ACLU) today contacted Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett detailing the constitutional violation inherent in this viewpoint discrimination by the government. The ACLU asked for a quick resolution to the matter, given that the political question at issue will be decided by voters on November 6.

“If the County wants to prohibit political advertising on county buses, it can, but it cannot run its own political ads on county buses and then claim that political advertising is not permitted,” said David Rocah, staff attorney for the ACLU of Maryland. “When the government privileges one side of a political debate in a forum open to private speakers, as Montgomery County is doing here, it engages in viewpoint discrimination clearly prohibited by the First Amendment.”

The ACLU’s letter concerns actions taken by or on behalf of the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, Division of Transit Services, in connection with ads that the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 35 (FOP) sought to place on Ride On buses concerning the referendum on Question B on November 6. Montgomery County is currently running its own ads on both the inside and outside of county Ride On buses stating “Who Do You Think Should Run the County Police?  The Police Chief or Union Leaders?  Vote FOR Question B.”  Wishing to respond to these explicitly political ads by the County, the FOP contacted the contractor responsible for managing the advertising program for the Division of Transit services, seeking to run its own responsive ads. Once the content of the FOP’s intended ad became clear, the FOP was told, on two different occasions, that because the ad FOP wished to run was political in nature, they would not be allowed to purchase the space. 

The ACLU letter argues that the County cannot impose advertising rules only on private speakers who wish to express a contrary viewpoint. Because the County ran its own ads with respect to Question B, it must now allow the FOP to speak on the same issue, on the same terms as are available to other private speakers.

Go to the ACLU of Maryland website for more details: http://www.aclu-md.org/press_room/82. The ACLU has not taken a position on the substance of Question B.

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Montgomery County "Explains" Workplace Internet Censorship // UMD Professor: "A Pity That Tax Money Spent To Filter"

INTRODUCTION: Last week a Maryland Juice reader alerted us to more Internet censorship for employees of Montgomery County's government. As we've previously reported, Montgomery County censors its Internet connections in government buildings -- including for public employees, in libraries, and more. In the past, this censorship has been clearly content-based and selectively targeted LGBT content, along with hilariously innocuous content, like a seniors center event calendar. This awesome public amenity costs taxpayers over $64,000 a year. What is the public purpose of this again?

Chairman MoCo is now randomly blocking images on the Maryland Juice blog -- including our Sam Arora ad, screencaps of Fox News Baltimore's previous anti-LGBT website, and more. We can surmise that this problem is more widespread than our single website. After complaining to Montgomery County's public information officer, we received a very unsatisfactory response -- which basically amounts to "all Internet censorship filters make errors." Yes -- we understand that, and it is precisely why we abhor ALL INTERNET CENSORSHIP FILTERS.

Below we print the response from Chairman Moco's Minister of Propaganda Patrick Lacefield, along with a critique from University of Maryland Professor Jim Purtilo:

PATRICK LACEFIELD: DTS tells me that this is a simple vendor miscategorization issue with the blogspot domain, which has nothing to do with the LGBT juice site. The process for fixing this is simple. We submit the error to the vendor. If the vendor determines that the images have been mis-categorized they usually fix them within 2 business hours after our notification.

All of the URL filtering vendors have a small number of mistakes in their categorization. Requests for re-categorization is a standard operational process that has been done by every customer to every vendor. We encourage every employee to report potential mis-categorized sites to the County's IT HelpDesk so that those sites can be sent to the vendor for review (and possible categorization change). Any site that is re-categorized will be applied to all of the vendor's customers at the same time.

JIM PURTILO: Yeah, images involving LGBT symbols, guns and potentially rebroadcast of other copyright protected material (Fox) would all seem to be pretty standard fodder for filters. The county gets what it pays for. What a pity that tax money is spent to filter any such things.

From the IT side, there are a variety of conventions by which images are determined to be in a filter list, after which page loads are dynamically replaced with the sort of images you found. But I think you'll find that in none of the methods used is anyone thinking very hard and long before clicking a yes/no option, if it even goes before the eyes of a human to be checked. So my suggestion here is the same as the last time we had such an exchange. Sure would be nice to see what instructions were part of the contract let by the agency. *Someone* has to decide which policy is being enforced, so either there is a list identifying types of things the commercial firm should not allow to be carried (hence an official can be asked to explain wtf, which could be very entertaining) or there is a 'standard package of services' purchased, in which case, again, someone in government signed off on the purchase, and if they didn't know what they were buying then, well, as you posed, wtf?

Indeed, Montgomery County -- and many other Maryland counties -- blindly censor the Internet like a bunch of @#$#@*!. These IT fogies clearly have too much money to spend on this nonsense and too few real problems to worry about. Except that they do. Maybe they should spend less time censoring the Internet and more time thinking about why their website looks like it was built in 1990. More importantly, that $64,000 a year that they spend on censoring the Net could go a long way towards bringing Montgomery County's online outreach and constituent interaction tools into the 21st century.

P.S. Not that I'm endorsing this project -- but one example is that MoCo recently decided it could not afford a $250,000 news site for residents due to the budget climate. There is no world in which four years of Internet censorship is a better value for taxpayers than providing them with information about what is going on in local government.

WTF: Montgomery County's Internet Firewall Censors Maryland Juice // Chairman MoCo Blocks Sam Arora Ad and More!

The all-time most popular article on Maryland Juice is our coverage of Montgomery County, Maryland's censorship of computers in their office buildings, schools and libraries. Our investigation led us to discover that Amtrak was also censoring its WiFi network, and that both MoCo and Amtrak had been censoring LGBT newspapers, seniors event calendars, and other ordinary speech. The County defended its system and claimed nothing was wrong with their vendor. Then later the vendor tweaked their system to supposedly fix the issue.

Today two Maryland Juice readers within Montgomery County's government buildings report that Chairman MoCo's Censorship Firewall is BACK. This time Montgomery County is censoring images on the Maryland Juice website. The censored images include our web ad calling Sam Arora a liar who should resign, and our image of Fox News Baltimore's misleading anti-LGBT website banner. See screencaps below:

This is really beginning to piss me off.  Do you know that they spend over $64,000 a year on this?