FREE SPEECH: Record of Obama's Attorney General Pick Examined

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Dec 2, 2008 | Legal Issue: Freedom of Speech | 0 |

Declan McCullough, reporting for CNET News, reviews past positions taken by Eric Holder, President-elect Barack Obama's pick for attorney general, on issues ranging from laws mandating Internet traceability, to limits on domestic use of encryption, to increased restrictions on free speech online.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, believes that Holder's past statements on encryption and surveillance "are fair topics to pursue at the nomination hearing."

But Rotenberg said any statements should be read narrowly and in contextsuggesting that Holder may have been referring to data preservation after receiving a court order instead of preemptive data retentionand generally applauded his nomination. "Eric Holder is an outstanding public servant and would be a great attorney general, particularly after the last several years," Rotenberg said. "He is extremely well qualified, highly regarded, and has a deep commitment to the rule of law."

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

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