Johns Hopkins Bows To USAID Censorship Push

An anonymous reader sends us to Wired's Threat Level blog for news that the federally funded Popline database at Johns Hopkins University, said to be the largest source of information on reproductive health, has begun censoring searches that contain the word "abortion." Apparently they took this stop due to pressure from USAID, the federal agency that provides foreign aid to developing nations. From Wired: "Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that 'actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.' A librarian at the University of California at San Francisco noticed the new censorship on Monday, while carrying out a routine research request on behalf of academics and researchers at the university. The search term had functioned properly as of January. Puzzled, she contacted the manager of the database,... who replied in an April 1st e-mail that the university had recently begun blocking the search term because the database received federal funding."

Comments

Re:Why not sue?

[superwiz]

why doesn't Johns Hopkins simply sue the federal government? Two reasons: (i) you can't sue the Federal Government (ii) they have nothing to sue them for. The Federal government gives away money (in the form of loans with subsidized interest). It's the government's prerogative to decide on the criterion for receiving that money. To sue for money is to sue for damages. You can no more sue someone who decides to exclude you from their charitable donation than you can sue someone who choses not to pull you out of a burning building. In both cases, that someone is free not to help you.

Re:Pathetic

[khayman80]

I'm not sure they actually are blocking the term anymore. When I tried to search for the term "abortion" in the subject field at the website http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/basic.html , I got 13 hits. Perhaps they quickly realized how wrong this censorship was?

Re:Not true

[deadtree9]

I assure you it's not a joke or hoax. My wife works within the public health sector and will attest to the fact that it's real. I tried it and netted 0 results. Even if you had 52 results returned, it's still off. You should have gotten waaaaaay more than that. Oddly enough, according to friends that work at Hopkins, if you are within their walls you can see all 25k+ results. Leaving the walls and attempting the search nets 0 results.

Re:Why not sue?

[superwiz]

IANAL, but I read.

IANAL, but "sue federal government" on Google links to a great deal of news articles, including from LexisNexis, involving that very action. These are not "torts" -- suits for damages. These are suits to clarify, interpret or strike a law for reasons that the law (as written) does not comply with the standards for writing of laws that we have established. You can't sue the federal government for damages.

Where there's a will there's a way. Isn't that what punitive damages are for? Punitive are a legal contraption. There are laws that allow for punitive damages to be awarded. A suit is a claim that you've been damaged and a request that a the counterparty be forced to compensate you for the damages it caused. There are laws which establish certain types of damages to be so egregious that they must be actively discouraged. Thus in addition to damages, you can request punitive damages. Since these are established by law and the federal law does not establish such types of damages against itself, you can't sue for punitive damages.

Just because somebody is employed "at will" doesn't mean an employer can terminate an employee due to his or her religious affiliation. I am not sure that religion is a protected class, but certainly you can be terminated for your political affiliation (otherwise, you'd be able to sue politicians for not hiring members of the opposing parties and such). You can argue that's censorship, I would disagree. Freedom of association cannot exist if there is no freedom of disassociation. The law (as it stands) does not always agree.

Since this is government, censorship does apply, and censorship is censorship no matter the vehicle. False and true. The vehicle of censorship does not matter, but dissassociating from an opinion is not censorship. This is as true for the government as it is for individuals. Censorship requires coercion. Chosing not to engage in an interraction with a party is not a coercion. If your arguement worked, then you'd be able to sue an organization for (for instance) boycotting a store. But you can't. And since the (elected!!!) government functions on the premise that it gets to represent the people, it can chose not to act in certain cases even though they are similar to the cases where it choses to act. To put it plainly, closing your ears while someone is talking is not censorship, but closing their mouth is. By not paying those who voice certain opinions, the government is closing its proverbial ears.