Politics and Law

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a lightning rod for controversy, but a recent attempt to keep a low profile might just result in, well, more press. The onetime vice presidential hopeful Palin, who stepped down from the governorship this summer, will be speaking at a Right to Life event in Milwaukee, Wis., on Friday evening, and her team has mandated that there are no reporters allowed--or gadgets.

According to CNN, laptops, cell phones, cameras, and anything else that could potentially be used as a recording device will not be allowed into the auditorium. Tickets to the event were $30.

It's not an unprecedented move by any means. Advance screenings of movies, for instance, regularly have a no-cell-phones policy now that just about any phone can be used as a recording device. And Palin is hardly the only high-profile politician to put a no-press, no-recording rule in place for a speech: Former Vice President Al Gore did just that for a keynote address at the RSA security conference in early 2008.

But the funny part is that banning the press will generally do very little good, since anyone with a notebook or a good memory could easily post quotes or a synopsis to a blog or Twitter account within minutes of the event ending. In this case, as with Gore's press ban at RSA, it's likely that Palin's move will just end up stirring up more buzz.

Considering her book "Going Rogue: An American Life" is coming out in a matter of days, that might ultimately turn out well--or not.

Everyone in Austin, Texas always seems unusually charming to me.

The people in Starbucks always have time for a chat. And the staff at the wildly gothic Mansion at Judges Hill (which, I am told, used to be a very fine rehab facility) can induce a smile by merely looking at you.

However, it appears that when certain citizens of Austin get behind their computers, they turn into monstrous villains.

This, at least, appears to be the view of Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo. According to the Austin American-Statesman, the chief is considering pursuing commenters on blogs who have either impersonated him or his officers or maligned them beyond the boundaries of legal tolerance.

Austin. A place of unusual civility. Allegedly.

(Credit: mskogly/Flickr)

Options under discussion appear to be not only libel suits, but also criminal charges if the police believe these are warranted.

"A lot of my people feel it is time to take these people on," Acevedo told the Statesman. "They understand the damage to the organization, and quite frankly, when people are willfully misleading and lying, they are pretty much cowards anyway because they are doing so under the cloak of anonymity."

Among the suggestions allegedly implied under this cloak was behavior of an illegal and sexual nature, something the Statesman characterizes as "quid pro quo" arrangements.

The suggestion of lawsuits seems extreme. However, after the "Skanks in NYC" case, in which Google was forced (without trying too hard to fight) to give up the name of a blogger who targeted Vogue model Liskula Cohen, are anonymous bloggers or commenters truly immune from the consequences of their venting?

It so happens that Texas passed a state law on September 1 that specifically targets those who "use another person's name to post messages on a social-networking site without their permission and with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten." Such willful behavior is now a third-degree felony.

Is it possible, then, that the Austin police will be the first to test this law out? One can only imagine some commenters' reactions.

The Pirate Party UK, which is dedicated to technology and copyright-law reform, has become an official political party.

The party was registered by the Electoral Commission this week, the party's leader Andrew Robinson told ZDNet UK.

"We're still in the early stages of forming the party," Robinson said Thursday. "We're still very small."

The U.K. organization has around 250 active members, Robinson said.

Electoral Commission registration allows the party to raise funds and list Pirate Party UK candidates at the next general election, which must take place before June 2010. Similar parties elsewhere have won election victories: the Swedish Pirate Party gained a seat in the European parliament in May, while the German Pirate Party has an elected MP.

The Pirate Party UK intends to campaign before the next general election on issues such as patent and copyright reform, and freedom from excessive electronic surveillance.

It is proposing an exemption from copyright law for noncommercial file-sharing, which is essentially an extension of fair use. Under U.K. copyright law, fair use allows organizations such as schools and news agencies to use parts of a copyrighted work.

In May, government advisers estimated there were 7 million file-sharers in the UK. The government's Digital Britain report, released in June, put forward a statutory maximum fine of 50,000 pounds ($83,000) for copyright infringement.

"The government is saying that there are 7 million people that share files in Britain, and that file-sharers should be punished with a maximum fine of 50,000 pounds," said Robinson. "The fact that the government has threatened to bankrupt up to 10 percent of the population shows the need for a party that understands technology."

The party will press for the length of the copyright on works to be reduced from the life of the owner plus 70 years to a shorter term, said Robinson. Its membership has not yet voted on what the shorter copyright term should be.

One major campaign platform will be the reform of patent law to prevent one company building up significant market power in products such as medicines. "Monopolies maintained by companies producing life-saving drugs mean people are dying, as they can't afford (treatment)," said Robinson.

The party will also campaign to reform electronic surveillance laws, which will include defining which types of deep packet inspection and surveillance are allowed. Robinson offered Google Street View and behavioral ad-monitoring company Phorm as examples of technology not covered by U.K. law.

"Current law isn't taking into account advances in technology such as Street View," said Robinson. "There's no law to say it's OK to take pictures of streets, but not the inside of houses. Phorm is too much like surveillance. We're saying there needs to be a set of laws to handle technology such as Phorm and Street View."

Surveillance by government agencies, including the proposed Interception Modernisation Programme, must be made as transparent as possible, according to the Pirate Party UK. "We would like to expand the Freedom of Information Act so government information is published by default, unless there are security issues," said Robinson.

At the moment, the Pirate Party UK is recruiting members and seeking donations, and it aims to field as many candidates as it can at the next general election, Robinson said. The party leader intends to stand for election in either the Worcester or West Worcestershire constituencies.

The Pirate Party UK has no formal connection with similar parties around the world. "There are very informal links--we talk to each other," said Robinson. "We are structurally and financially independent."

There are 24 Pirate Party organizations around the world.

Tom Espiner ZDNet UK reported from London.

Social-networking sites and other Web services can't be held liable in a sexual assault on a minor that stemmed from a meeting online, according to a ruling in a California appeals court that consolidated a number of complaints against MySpace on behalf of teenage girls and their parents.

Reuters reported late on Wednesday that the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles cited the Communications Decency Act in coming to the conclusion. Claiming negligence and product liability, the plaintiffs had alleged that MySpace had failed to put in place age verification software or to keep profiles on a "private" setting.

Other federal courts have come to similar rulings. Last year, a Texas court ruled that the family of a 14-year-old girl who was assaulted by a man she met on MySpace could not hold the social network responsible. The girl in question had lied about her age when she created a profile, claiming to be a legal adult, and the court ruled that it was her parents' job, not MySpace's, to keep her safe.

This week's ruling in Los Angeles received a thumbs-up from MySpace and parent company News Corp. It could also have repercussions across other social networks and community-based Web sites, which have been subject to scrutiny from authorities over both safety and decency standards. Craigslist, for example, has faced a crackdown on sex-related ads after both allegations of rampant prostitution and a high-profile case in which a Craigslist encounter allegedly ended in murder.

The situation can be different, if there is actual harassment conducted through the social network, rather than an offline assault. In that case, if it appears that a Web service isn't doing enough to keep members safe while using the site, it can, in some cases, be held responsible.

Facebook and MySpace are working with state attorneys general to keep registered sex offenders out of their user bases, following allegations from lawmakers that they weren't doing enough to maintain a safe environment for minors.

On Thursday, the sentencing is expected in another Los Angeles court for Lori Drew, who has been convicted of three misdemeanors after impersonating a teenage boy on MySpace and harassing a 13-year-old girl allegedly to the point of suicide.

Drew could be sentenced to up to three years in prison and forced to pay a fine of $300,000, a far lesser sentence than she originally faced.

In a move that some Silicon Valley insiders had anticipated might happen, Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly has announced his exploratory bid for the elected post as attorney general of California.

He has set up the Web site www.kelly2010.com as his online campaign headquarters. Kelly also has an official Facebook fan page for his campaign.

(Credit: Kelly2010.com)

"Over the past year, many people I respect have asked me to run for California Attorney General in 2010. Today, after much consideration, I am announcing that I've launched a committee to further explore the race," Kelly, who is a Democrat, said in a statement. "As the next Attorney General of California, I would utilize my experience to protect California consumers, maintain an open and accountable government, and guarantee an effective legal system."

Kelly's background is in politics. In a video on his Web site, he explains that he got his start as a staffer on Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign and then at the White House, where he focused on establishing public service programs like AmeriCorps. Rumors that he was looking into a run for attorney general began to swirl late last year.

In his campaign, Kelly has indicated that he will run on a platform of high-tech innovation and accountability, particularly in the wake of economic decline and uncertainty.

"(At Facebook) I have dealt first-hand with the complex legal challenges and privacy issues that effect California businesses and consumers," Kelly explained in the video. "We need a strong consumer protection advocate as California's chief law enforcement officer, defending people against unfair practices and schemes. As California faces a budget deficit of more than $41 billion, rising home foreclosure rates, and an uncertain economic future, it is imperative that we prevent consumer fraud and protect California residents from scam artists offering once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for home ownership, phony foreclosure avoidance scams, and any financial fraud."

Among the other issues he mentioned were online safety and privacy for both adults and children, and tech-savvy improvements to law enforcement and border patrol.

Facebook said in a statement that Kelly is not leaving his post to run for attorney general, at least not yet.

"Chris Kelly is a valued member of the Facebook Team and has been for the past several years," the statement read. "Chris is currently exploring a possible run for California Attorney General on his own time and in compliance with all applicable Facebook policies. If, over the next few months, Chris decides to devote himself full-time to campaign, he's indicated that he will take time off or a leave of absence to do so."

As an executive at a social network with over 200 million members that has become a Silicon Valley success stories, Kelly has credibility as a digital-age candidate. Yet under Kelly's watch, Facebook went through a number of embarrassing privacy flubs, most notably the launch of its Beacon advertising program--which some critics charged as intrusive.

Facebook was also at the center of a legal back-and-forth with several states' lawmakers about whether it was doing enough to keep its members safe from known sex offenders. That, however, appears to have ended in agreement and cooperation.

Kelly won't be the only Silicon Valley type running for statewide office. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a Republican, is running for governor. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has appealed to the Valley set with green-tech initiatives and "Second Life" interviews, has also launched an exploratory bid for governor. The state's elections are next fall.

California's current attorney general is Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

This post was expanded at 1:35 p.m. PT.

Editors' note: This is a guest post. See Michael Songer's bio below.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, we have seen a number of well-known legal disputes: legality of peer-to-peer services such as Napster and Grokster, cybersquatting, laws (trying) to regulate porn, even "veejay" Adam Curry trying to use the MTV domain name.

As we head into 2010 and beyond, here are some legal issues that are likely to careen through cyberspace in the next few years.

1. Lawsuits related to stupid/silly conduct shown on the Internet.
The assimilation of broadband brought with it those "viral videos": Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa Dance, Aleksey "Impossible is Nothing" Vayner, and the like. The latest fad seems to be taking videos of crude behavior and posting it for all to see--think of the two girls bathing in the Kentucky Fried Chicken kitchen, or the Domino's employees creating a "special" meal for a customer.

Someone will be offended, someone will sue. In some cases, the lawsuits make sense (violating health codes for the KFC and Domino's videos); in other cases, they don't (Star Wars Kid sued, and Aleksey Varner threatened a suit, though the legal basis for these is shaky).

Expect to see a rise in these types of lawsuits related to conduct shown on the Internet and calls for Congress to do something. What, exactly, can be done is less clear; it's hard for the legal system to regulate conduct that, while not breaking the law, is merely stupid. But that won't stop people from trying and lawyers from garnering headlines.

2. Lawsuits related to social media.
The last few years have seen a number of lawsuits brought against Facebook and MySpace for conduct occurring on those sites--think of the Megan Meier case (Megan Meier was the teenager who committed suicide after a woman pretended to be her friend, and then turned on her).

The government prosecuted the offender in that case, though the legal basis for the prosecution is less than clear, and an appeal is under way. And there have been calls for regulating what you can and cannot do (no sock puppets!) on these sites.

These are likely to continue for the simple reason that more and more people are using these new technologies. With that increased use comes the increase in libelous statements, crude conduct, even illegal activity (think prostitutes using Craigslist to advertise their services).

I'm sure--if it hasn't already happened--that someone will sue over some "tweet" in the next year. Expect more of these lawsuits.

3. The next battle in the copyright wars.
The $1 billion battle between Google's YouTube and Viacom is churning away, with no end in sight. At issue is the liability of sites like YouTube for hosting content posted by others.

Like the earlier Napster decision, this case has major ramifications for content on the Internet. However, just as Napster begat legal file sharing (iTunes), consumer demand might work out a solution faster than the courts.

YouTube recently announced a deal with Sony to stream movies, with television shows on the horizon. But whatever the final outcome of the YouTube lawsuit, nagging copyright issues associated with liability and fair use of content uploaded into social sites will not go away.

Recently, the Associated Press threatened to sue aggregators and clamp down on the use of their articles, and others are sure to follow this path. Expect more content owners to use copyright lawsuits to shape what we view and read on the Internet.

4. Blogger liability for the comment section.
Currently, bloggers cannot be sued for libelous statements posted in the comment section of their blogs. Something called "section 230" (after the particular legal code) immunizes bloggers from legal harm caused by another's comments (bloggers, however, can be sued for libelous statements that they post).

This immunity was enacted in the mid-'90s and was designed to protect the "publishers" on the Internet at that time: the AOLs, CompuServes, and ISPs that enabled Internet access. The law never contemplated the explosion of bloggers, MySpace authors, and other "social publishers." And the law never contemplated the accompanying (usually anonymous) comments to those posts, as well as the ill will associated with the all-too-common flame wars.

Several courts have expressed dissatisfaction with the blogger immunity--particularly when the blogger knows that the comments are defamatory or wrong. Expect more challenges to this immunity, and perhaps calls for Congress to roll back section 230.

5. The taxman cometh.
Anyone who has read a phone bill has seen a dizzying array of taxes, assessments, and special charges. Your Internet access is free from such taxes until at least 2014, due to Congress and the Internet Tax Freedom Act. The law, passed in 1998 and extended by the Bush administration, prohibits federal, state, and local governments from taxing access to the Internet, and it bans "Internet-only" taxes such as bandwidth or e-mail taxes.

States remain free to tax sales on the Internet.) Of course, that was before the current economic crisis, and the general rise in taxes on everything from mobile phones to cigarettes. A bill has been introduced to make the tax ban permanent, but nothing is "forever" with Congress. Expect to see calls for Congress to tax these areas before 2014.

Of course, given a steady pace of new Internet technologies that allow different ways for humans to interact with one another, more unique, complex, and downright strange events will occur that give rise to legal disputes. (Think "upskirt" cams.)

The legal system is flexible and has dealt with much over the last 10 years, in many instances driving Internet growth in ways both good and bad. The next 10 years promise much of the same.

Mel King is a Boston-area community organizer locally famous for a housing sit-in, an almost-successful mayoral campaign, and the South End Technology Center, which provides low-cost computer training.

King, born in 1928, has long been a critic of telecommunications companies and an advocate of strict Net neutrality laws. He participated in an activists' "technology convening" in 2006 that fretted "companies who own the 'pipes' will control who gets on and what they can say." He joined a pro-Net neutrality coalition that opposed federal legislation backed by broadband providers.

Excerpt from a pro-Comcast, anti-Net neutrality op-ed in the Harvard Crimson newspaper supposedly written by Boston activist Mel King. To see the full article, click on the image.

Yet King placed his name on an opinion article in the Harvard Crimson in March that took the opposite position. It stated, "Most experts agree that broadband providers should be allowed to reasonably manage their networks," and it poked fun at the "idea that broadband networks should blindly treat each bit of information on the Internet equally."

King's article appeared eight days after the Federal Communications Commission held a hearing at Harvard University's law school in February where commissioners slammed Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent and promised penalties that were formally approved this month. In the op-ed, King dubbed the event a "dog and pony show" and an "obsequious effort to reassure Silicon Valley special interests--like Google."

There's one problem with this chronology. King may not have been the actual author. Instead, a secretive lobbying organization in Washington, D.C. called the LawMedia Group--hired by Comcast--did some or all of the writing. Comcast acknowledges that it "has a relationship" with LMG.

In a telephone conversation with CNET News, King confirmed the LawMedia Group's involvement. "I understand what they're doing," King said. "I don't think there's any mystique about any of this. It's getting the stuff into a place where we can have a kind of dialogue on it." When pressed for details such as whether he was paid for the use of his name, King hung up the phone.

Op-eds of dubious provenance are nothing new in political circles, and fake grassroots "astroturf" campaigns enjoy a long, although hardly distinguished, history. One of the most influential practitioners of this art is the LawMedia Group, which has emerged as a behind-the-scenes Washington advocate for Comcast in its Net neutrality tussle with the FCC. In May, the LMG began representing Microsoft in its attempt to use the political process to sabotage a Google-Yahoo advertising deal.

"LMG is one of several firms we work with in D.C.," Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said. "It's no secret that we oppose the Google-Yahoo deal and that there's been a great deal of opposition to it by advertisers, publishers, consumers, and legal experts." Evans points out that Google has hired a constellation of D.C. lobbyists and public relations groups to tell its side of the story.

Microsoft hired LMG in early May for what a source with knowledge of the situation described as a six-figure monthly retainer.

Immediately afterward, anti-Google coalitions of dubious provenance--an LMG specialty--sprouted. The American Corn Growers Association, the League of Rural Voters, and a group called the Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association (LISTA) sent a letter to the Justice Department asking it to investigate Google's "search monopoly." Prior to that time, those groups had no history of aggressive anti-Google advocacy.

On June 9, LISTA complained about the Google-Yahoo deal. The same day, the corn growers asked Congress (PDF) to investigate.

The effort was a media success. Articles with titles like "Google, Yahoo Potential Deal Worries Heartland," and "Civic groups seek antitrust probe of Google, Yahoo talks," and "Alarm at Google Yahoo partnering" appeared, without any mention of LMG or questions about what supposedly raised sudden antitrust alarms on the part of rural voters or corn growers.

A CNET News article published in June reported that the name of an LMG employee, Alexandra Esser, appeared in the metadata of the letter ostensibly written by the corn growers and other grassroots groups. LMG Vice President Gil Meneses told us at the time that Esser "merely PDF'd a copy before distributing it" to reporters.

LMG declined repeated requests during the past few weeks to be interviewed for this article. Meneses said on July 31 that "I am out of pocket and focused on a different matter right now" and has not replied to follow-up queries. An LMG spokesman--who insisted that a condition of the conversation was that he not be identified in this article--refused to answer questions on Wednesday.

A firm that prefers the shadows
Even by Washington standards, the LawMedia Group is highly secretive. Until recently, nearly all pages on its Web site were password-protected. No clients are listed. Perhaps the oddest aspect is that not one employee's name--not even the identity of its founder or principals--is publicly disclosed.

LMG was founded by Julian Epstein, a former high-ranking House Democratic aide and party donor whom The Washington Post once called a "dashing bachelor, a hip-hop aficionado who drives a soft-top Jeep Sahara and lives in an Adams-Morgan loft he designed himself." In an advertisement on the Democratic Party's Web site, LMG describes itself as providing "grassroots lobbying" and "issue/initiative" management. It also has filed disclosure reports with the U.S. Senate for outsourced lobbying. (LMG has told us that it prefers to be called a "public affairs firm.")

For a group that prefers to remain in the shadows, LMG recently has found itself in the uncomfortable glare of the media's klieg lights. In addition to our report from June, the Post published an article on July 29 reporting that LMG may have written an anti-Wal-Mart Stores op-ed supposedly authored by Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The op-ed appeared in publications including the Tuscaloosa News and accused Congress of "subsidizing Wal-Mart, a company that recorded $3 billion in profits in the first quarter of this year."

It happens that Wal-Mart is a donor to Steele's group. And Wal-Mart wasn't happy with the op-ed. Steele's attorney told the Post's Jeff Birnbaum that, "I believe LMG played a role in this scenario; I can't say how big a role. LMG is in that chain somewhere." LMG, which is representing banks and credit card companies that are opposing Wal-Mart, would say only that it was tangentially involved.

Who actually writes these op-eds?
Few seasoned political observers would be surprised that op-eds are ghost-written on behalf of corporations by lobby groups or public relations firms. There are plenty of shops that advertise rates, with one charging $749 per op-ed, and they tend to be staffed by former journalists hoping to better their previous salaries.

LMG is one of those shops. A Web profile of a former LMG staffer boasts that he "drafted op-eds for clients." Art Brodsky, a former journalist who opposes the cable industry's Net neutrality arguments as spokesman for Public Knowledge, says in his bio that he "helped to draft op-eds and releases and participated in issue strategy" at LMG on behalf of the cable providers represented by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

But even in Washington's cynical political circles, it's still considered bad form to be found out.

In the case of King, the Boston-area activist who defended Comcast on Net neutrality grounds in the Crimson, LMG seems to have been deeply involved in the publication of his op-ed. LMG's Esser appears to have sent him e-mail on February 20 saying: "Thank you again for helping with the op-ed. Pasted below, please find the final version. We will keep you posted on the issue."

The op-ed appeared in the Crimson soon after. (Esser was the LMG employee whose electronic fingerprints appeared on the letter that the corn growers claim they wrote.)

King's op-ed describes him as someone who "has taught as an Adjunct Professor at MIT." He is listed on MIT's Web site as "Adjunct Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning" and has a campus phone number and mit.edu e-mail address. MIT's directory calls him a "senior lecturer emeritus."

An MIT spokeswoman says King is "not on the MIT payroll--he hasn't been for some time" and declined to comment on whether ghost-written articles violate MIT's strict rules on academic integrity. (MIT's handbook (PDF) prohibits any student--let alone faculty--from presenting "as his or her own the work of another." Crimson policies say op-eds must be "signed by their authors" and ones representing viewpoints of a corporation must be disclosed as such.)

Malcom Glenn, the president of the Crimson, told us that the op-ed was not solicited by the paper and that it was placed by someone claiming to work for King. "The initial contact was from Amy Kennedy, who said she was the secretary for Mr. King," Glenn said.

A LinkedIn.com profile for an Amy Kennedy says she was a communications assistant and press secretary for LMG from June 2006 through June 2008.

In a telephone conversation, King initially seemed unclear about the content of his op-ed, which defended Comcast in no uncertain terms and warned that the "FCC is dangerously far off track." He asked us if we knew that Comcast had tried to pack the Harvard room with people it hired, saying "this is what is troubling."

When asked about the details of the op-ed, King replied: "You can talk to Kevin Parker, he's at the LawMedia Institute." Parker is listed on the Naymz networking site as a "senior advisor" to LMG.

King added, before hanging up abruptly: "Nobody pays me."

Jesse Jackson disavows his own statement
Another peculiarity of King's op-ed is that portions are identical to a Rainbow Push coalition statement attributed to the Rev. Jesse Jackson and dated three months before. The statement supposedly written by Jackson was a response to an FCC vote related to media ownership.

Both items include this word-for-word identical passage: "People of color make up 33 percent of our population but own just 3 percent of all broadcast TV stations--and research shows that the number of owners is plummeting at alarming levels." Three other passages are extremely similar. (See our PDF for a side-by-side comparison.)

Comparison of what Jesse Jackson supposedly said with what Mel King supposedly wrote, raising the possibility of a third-party ghost-writer such as LMG. See PDF for full side-by-side comparison.

A source with knowledge of the situation said that LMG has a relationship with Jackson that includes ghost-written articles on behalf of corporate clients. The source pointed to a February op-ed in the Washington Times talking about a $40 billion Air Force contract for aerial refueling tankers--supposedly written by Jackson, who's not known for his military expertise or concern with Boeing's profitability.

One explanation is that whoever wrote King's op-ed copied the text of Jackson's press release, without attribution, that appeared three months earlier. Another one is that the same author, perhaps to save time, used the identical anti-FCC language to write both pieces.

Another dispute over the legitimacy of a Jackson statement arose in February, at the same time as the FCC's field hearing at Harvard. A flier distributed by an unnamed public relations firm said there would be an anti-FCC protest organized by the NAACP's Boston and Cambridge branches, according to the Associated Press. (A person with knowledge of the event says that LMG was involved in organizing the protest.)

File photo: Jesse Jackson at so-called digital divide event in the San Francisco Bay Area.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)

The flier quoted Jackson as saying FCC Chairman Kevin Martin supported a "massive new and unjustified welfare for the rich program."

Jackson told the AP he never made that statement, which is an odd claim as the phrase appeared in a letter Jackson supposedly wrote to the FCC in October 2007. It took Comcast's side in the dispute over a la carte cable channel regulations, calling them Martin's own personal "obsession."

This raises the obvious questions: if Jackson didn't write that letter and send it to the FCC last year, who did? Could the NAACP's common cause with Comcast have anything to do with a $5 million "voter education" partnership? And what, exactly, was LMG's involvement?

Neither Jackson nor the Rainbow Push coalition responded to repeated inquiries.

Disclosure: Declan McCullagh is married to a Google employee

A secretive Washington, D.C., group linked to an anti-Google letter signed by corn farmers says cable providers, which have retained it as a client, have nothing to do with its attempts to convince Congress to hold hearings critical of the search company.

Guillermo Meneses, previously a press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, is now a senior vice president at the LawMedia Group. He said that he was "unaware" of any communications between the American Corn Growers Association--which has no history of being interested in the antitrust implications of online advertising--and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

We reported on Wednesday that the anti-Google letter to Congress, signed by a number of farmers' groups who insisted they were the only ones to write it, included the name of a LMG staffer in the PDF metadata. Meneses said that the staffer, Alexandra Esser, "merely PDF'd a copy before distributing it."

Meneses, who refused to disclose the identities of other LMG clients, added that: "LMG is a public relations firm, not a lobbying firm. I want to make that very clear...We're simply a public relations firm like any other PR firm that you've dealt with in the past."

An advertisement for LMG on Democrats.org lists Meneses by name and shows "grassroots lobbying" as a service that both he and the firm provide. The ad lists "government relations" as another LMG specialty. An old version of LMG's Web site saved by Archive.org--the current site is password-protected--boasts of being able to come up with "robust coalitions" to influence "lawmakers."

LMG filed disclosure forms with the U.S. Senate for outsourced lobbying work in 2008. A Washington Post article from 2005 talking about LMG said it was "expected to stop lobbying for non-Bell companies" after the AT&T-SBC merger.

When asked about LMG's advertisement offering to provide "lobbying" services, and how to square it with his claim that LMG does not do lobbying, Meneses said he was not able to answer the question on the record.

Disclosure: Declan McCullagh is married to a Google employee.

If you think there's something a little odd about a bunch of corn farmers lobbying Congress to hold hearings on the details of a Google-Yahoo advertising deal, you may be right.

A letter (PDF) that the American Corn Growers Association and other farmers' groups sent to the U.S. Congress on Monday appears to be linked to a Washington, D.C., lobby group that does work for cable providers, some of Google's most potent political adversaries.

The letter warned Senate and House committee chairmen that any such deal would "create a monopolistic concentration of power in the market for online search and related advertising."

Excerpt from PDF of anti-Google letter signed by a corn farmers' group. The author's name is the same as a staffer for a secretive D.C. lobby shop used by Google's adversaries.

An examination of the metadata in the PDF version of the letter shows that the author was Alexandra Esser. That's the name of a staffer at a secretive Washington, D.C., lobby organization called the LawMedia Group, which currently counts the National Cable and Telecommunications Association as a client and counted AT&T as one in the past.

The LawMedia Group was founded by Julian Epstein, a former high-ranking House Democratic aide who The Washington Post once called a "dashing bachelor, a hip-hop aficionado who drives a soft-top Jeep Sahara and lives in an Adams-Morgan loft he designed himself." LMG once described itself as providing "grassroots lobbying" and "issue/initiative" management; among its hires is Jason Oxman, a former vice president at Comptel, which counts Sprint and Time Warner Telecom as members.

In the technology-meets-politics world, Net neutrality has been the hottest political conflict pitting businesses against each other in the last few years (the conflagration really started with the 2005 Madison River case). After Google emerged as a leader of the pro-Net neutrality forces, it was inevitable that its adversaries would employ the political process to trip it up in unrelated business dealings (c.f. Rep. Joe Barton).

Washington types seem to want to distance themselves from LMG. AT&T acknowledged through a representative that it once retained LMG but adds "the new AT&T is not a client." A Comcast representative said "it isn't being done on our behalf." A National Cable and Telecommunications Association representative said that "LMG is one of the many consultants that we work with, and I'm sure they work with many others, but we are not involved in this issue at all." LMG's Esser did not reply to phone or e-mail messages on Tuesday. Google declined to comment.

LMG appears to be unusually tight-lipped about itself and what it does: its Web site requires a password even to click on the "contact LMG" link. A non-password protected version of the site saved by Archive.org offers to sell the ability to form "robust coalitions (that) can change minds--in the media, among lawmakers." Another page says "it is our longstanding policy not to disclose our client list."

Larry Mitchell, director of legislative affairs for the American Corn Growers Association, said in a telephone interview on Monday that farmers genuinely are interested in Congress holding hearings about the antitrust implications of a potential Google-Yahoo ad partnership.

"It's not unusual for farmers to look at technology," Mitchell said. Markets today "are very very concentrated. In fact all of us, in our day-to-day lives, are dealing with fewer companies and less and less competition, and we feel that's detrimental to a free enterprise system."

Mitchell said in response to a question that no outside groups were involved in the preparation of the letter to Congress.

One person who has been involved with creating fake coalitions said it was trivial to organize letters to politicians. "You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them," said the person, who requested anonymity. "You say, 'I can't use this one--I already used them last time...' We had their letterhead. We'd just write the letter. We'd fax it to them and tell them, 'You're in favor of this.'"

Anti-Google politicking: First farmers, then Latino groups
In what could be a coincidence, three hours after the corn growers forwarded their anti-Google letter to journalists on Monday, the Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association (LISTA) followed up by circulating its own.

LISTA is a political ally of cable operators. LISTA supported them last year before the Federal Communications Commission; it supported them in a tussle over set-top boxes; it supported them in a digital TV coalition.

In March, LISTA sided with Comcast in opposing Net neutrality laws. LISTA President Jose Marquez has warned that for "Latinos working in the information and telecommunications sector, the chill (of) new burdensome regulations placed on investment will kill jobs and opportunity."

The letter that LISTA sent on Monday posed five questions to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. An excerpt: "Google has in the past been accused of using its search algorithms to favor certain search results over others. Such accusations are of particular concern to Hispanic-owned small businesses that rely on Internet search for a competitive equalizer in a marketplace dominated by large corporations."

That's not all. The American Corn Growers Association (along with the American Agriculture Movement, a "farmer-created, farmer-built organization") signed another anti-Google letter (PDF) on May 9. It was sent to the U.S. Department of Justice and alleged that "Google's Gmail service has already repeatedly violated basic tenets of consumer privacy by scanning the actual text of individual customer e-mails in order to extract information for its advertising."

Another explanation is that the corn growers group, which is not the same as the National Corn Growers Association, simply believes in aggressive antitrust enforcement. It filed a private antitrust suit against Monsanto, for instance, last year. It has been involved in other policy debates before the FCC, and not always on the side of the cable companies.

Normally trade associations and nonprofit groups that engage in Washington politicking are eager to post their correspondence on their Web sites. (It makes them look busy, or at least like they're accomplishing something.) That's what groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Competitive Enterprise Institute do.

But the corn growers do not; the only press releases listed discuss renewable energy and corn prices. Likewise, LISTA's letter from Monday does not appear on the group's Web site.

Similarly, there appears to be no mention of the Google-Yahoo letter on the Web sites of the National Association of Farmer Elected Committees, the American Agriculture Movement, the League of Rural Voters, the National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association, or the National Family Farm Coalition. All of those groups (plus the corn farmers) signed Monday's letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

Surreptitious attempts by companies to influence the political process through front groups have a long, if not especially distinguished, history.

Astroturf campaigns in Washington have involved a Working Families for Wal-Mart (funded by Wal-Mart Stores) and the Save Our Species Alliance (funded by the timber industry). Comcast's hiring of people who showed up at a Net neutrality hearing and apparently applauded on cue may fit into that category too.

If there indeed is a broadband provider behind this flurry of farming-and-ranching outrage, an acute irony exists. The cable companies and the telecoms have the better of the Net neutrality arguments; technologists are now realizing that Google and its brethren backed legislation that would give far too much power to the FCC and do more harm than good. But hoping that proposals in Congress can be debated on their merits might be too much to ask.

[Update: 6/12 9:20 a.m.: We've posted a followup with LMG's response.]

Disclosure: Declan McCullagh is married to a Google employee.