Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world. It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments in the field.
“The ruling reminds us of the value of collective action,” investigative journalist Mauricio Weibel Barahona told CGFoE in a video interview about the recent landmark court victory for press freedom in Chile. Weibel emphasized CGFoE’s role in the case: “CGFoE’s amicus curiae brief showed the Chilean judiciary that this was not an isolated domestic crime, but an attack on journalism as a matter of international concern. That, in my view, was the most important aspect.”
On June 30, the Seventh Court of Guarantee of Santiago sentenced former Army Intelligence director Schafik Nazal and former appellate court judge Juan Poblete to five years in prison, permanently revoking their political rights, for illegally tapping phones and using false information in official records. Both orchestrated an espionage operation against Weibel when he investigated large-scale corruption in Chile’s military.
In an amicus curiae brief submitted before the Court, CGFoE argued the case “serves as a paradigmatic example that highlights the structural risks facing investigative journalism in Latin America.” CGFoE urged the Court to reaffirm, in accordance with the international human rights standards Chile is bound to uphold, that “surveillance of journalists without a legal basis constitutes a serious form of censorship and an unacceptable interference with the exercise of fundamental rights.”
The ruling marks the first time in history that a court convicted a judge and a military official for spying on a journalist, establishing an important precedent for the protection of freedom of expression. In reasoning consistent with one part of the framework proposed by CGFoE, the Court held that the surveillance violated Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and ordered both men to complete a human rights course intended to prevent similar abuses—see our analysis of the decision here.
Press freedom organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Media Defence, welcomed the ruling, stressing CGFoE’s contribution, amplified by leading Chilean media outlets. “This ruling has the potential to become a turning point,” Mauricio Weibel told CGFoE. “Our challenge now is to ensure that it does not remain an isolated exception, but instead becomes a legal doctrine that takes root, is consolidated, and expands across Latin America and, hopefully, around the world.”
In this video interview, produced by CGFoE Program Coordinator Estefanía Mullally and conducted by her alongside former Prize Manager Alejandra Negrete Morayta, investigative journalist Mauricio Weibel Barahona speaks about the recent landmark court victory for press freedom in Chile and the significance of CGFoE’s intervention in the case.
Photo: Courtesy of Mauricio Weibel Barahona
The Case of Chilean Journalist Mauricio Weibel II
Decision Date: July 2, 2026
The Seventh Court of Guarantee of Santiago (7° Juzgado de Garantía de Santiago), Chile, convicted former Army intelligence director Schafik Nazal Lázaro and former appellate court judge Juan Antonio Poblete Méndez of illegally intercepting telephone communications and falsifying official records. Between 2016 and early 2018, Nazal Lázaro requested the interceptions, and Poblete Méndez authorized them through judicial orders that falsely described journalist Mauricio Weibel Barahona, Army whistleblowers, and their contacts as Bolivian agents. Both defendants admitted the facts and accepted the evidence, allowing the Court to resolve the case without proceeding to trial (judicio oral). The Court sentenced each man to five years’ imprisonment but permitted both to serve their sentences in the community under intensive supervision. It also permanently disqualified them from exercising political rights and barred them from holding public office during the five-year sentence. The Court held that the surveillance violated the rights guaranteed under Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and ordered both men to complete a human rights course intended to prevent similar abuses.
United States
NetChoice v. Griffin
Decision Date: April 20, 2026
The United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas granted a preliminary injunction, holding that Arkansas Act 900 of 2025 likely violates the First Amendment and is unconstitutionally vague. The case arose after Arkansas enacted legislation imposing age-related restrictions on social media platforms, including prohibitions on “addictive” practices, mandatory default settings for minors, and parental dashboard requirements, which NetChoice challenged as unconstitutional restrictions on online speech and platform operations. The Court found that NetChoice was likely to succeed on the merits because several provisions either burdened substantially more speech than necessary or failed to provide clear standards for compliance. In particular, the Court held that the “addictive practices” provision was likely void for vagueness because “businesses of ordinary intelligence cannot reliably determine what compliance requires,” especially given the statute’s strict liability framework and undefined standards. The Court further concluded that the notification, privacy-default, and dashboard provisions likely violated the First Amendment because they imposed broad burdens on platforms’ dissemination of speech while failing to meaningfully advance the State’s asserted interests. It also found irreparable harm from the likely loss of First Amendment freedoms and held that the balance of equities and public interest favored injunctive relief.
Patterson v. Meta
Decision Date: July 28, 2025
An Appellate Court in the State of New York, U.S. reversed the order of a lower court and dismissed the civil cases brought by survivors and family members of victims of a racist mass shooting against social media platforms. The victims and their families had argued that the platforms were defectively designed to create users’ addiction and to push racist and violent content. The majority of the Court held that Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, legislation that immunized publishers from liability for the content of third-party content, applied in this case and that the First Amendment’s protection of free speech provided an alternative basis for the dismissal of the cases.
CGFoE Congratulates Leopoldo Maldonado on His Appointment as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Expression. CGFoE celebrates the appointment of Leopoldo Maldonado, currently Regional Director of the Office for Mexico and Central America at ARTICLE 19, as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. We wish him every success in this new role and look forward to opportunities for collaboration in pursuit of our shared goal of strengthening freedom of expression globally.
● US: The House Passed The KIDS Act—The Senate Should Reject It. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) calls on the Senate to oppose the KIDS Act, which would require online services to introduce “age-gating” and police lawful speech. “There is no way to determine a user’s age online that is both privacy protective and accurate,” EFF said, urging Congress to pass a robust privacy law benefitting every user instead. The American Civil Liberties Union also opposed the bill on grounds that it would violate “the First Amendment rights and privacy of all online users.”
● EU: Report by Special Panel on Child Safety Online. The EU Special Panel on Child Safety Online presented a report on protections for children online, stressing that “social media and other digital services providers retain primary responsibility for the safety of the services they develop and provide.” Amnesty International responded by noting that the panel opposed a blanket ban for older teenagers and made national bans on those over the age of 13 conditional on ongoing evaluation, recognizing such restrictions as temporary measures. Tech Policy Press unpacked the report in detail.
● EU: Commission Preliminarily Finds Meta’s Addictive Platform Design Breaches the DSA. As part of formal proceedings investigating Meta’s compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission preliminarily found that Meta failed to adequately assess the risks of its addictive design—infinite scroll, autopay, personalized recommendations—on the wellbeing of users, including minors. “The case represents one of the EU’s most significant attempts to regulate platform design rather than online content,” writes the Digital Watch Observatory.
On Wednesday, July 8, in Beit Lid, the occupied West Bank, Ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters clashed with soldiers while storming an Israeli military base, as protests against the military draft continued. (On July 14, the Israeli Knesset passed a law temporarily banning the arrest of Haredi draft evaders.)
Last Thursday, in Budapest, Hungary, thousands of Fidesz supporters rallied against the new government’s plan to remove President Tamás Sulyok; the Fidesz party—itself responsible for dismantling the country’s democratic institutions while in power—declared the move an assault on the rule of law. (The president’s removal, part of a constitutional amendment package, was criticized by some human rights groups for lacking due process safeguards.)
On Monday, in Berlin, Germany, Greta Thunberg and other activists were detained protesting arms production they said was linked to attacks on Palestine and Lebanon. (Last week, similar actions took place in the UK, with arrests of activists.)
Find our new web tool documenting protests since January 2026 here.
Ahead of and during the NATO summit, which was held in Ankara on July 7-8, Türkiye’s authorities orchestrated a mass crackdown on freedom of expression.
Background: On June 22, Ankara’s Governor imposed a blanket 13-day ban (effective June 28–July 10) on all public assemblies, demonstrations, and even leafleting. A few hours later, mass arrests began in the capital, targeting activists, lawyers, an academic, and a journalist who is an LGBTQI+ rights activist. NATO itself denied accreditation to independent Turkish media outlets to cover the summit, based on vetting supplied by Turkish authorities. Anti-NATO protests took place in multiple cities on July 5.
Significance: “Anti-terror” raids occurred across the country. Street protests spanned Ankara (despite the ban), Istanbul, Izmir, Adana, Samsun, and Çanakkale. The state responded with force and more detentions.
State Response: 225 people were arrested on June 23, on vague “terrorist organization membership” charges, with 178 sent to pretrial detention, 34 placed under house arrest, and 6 released. During anti-NATO street protests on July 5, the police used tear gas and detained over 100 people, mostly members of the Communist Party of Türkiye. Between June 23–July 7, at least 11 journalists were detained or arrested, with device confiscations, password demands, and denial of legal counsel reported.
FoE Violations: Türkiye hosted the NATO summit amid far-reaching freedom of expression violations, in a climate of sweeping persecution of independent media, political opposition, and other critics. Human Rights Watch described the mass arrests as “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly,” and 27 press freedom and human rights organizations called for the release of detained journalists.
● The CJEU’s Judgment on Algorithms and Hosting Liability—and What It Means on Both Sides of the Atlantic, by Lawrence Gallick, Nina Graw, and Christoph Nuessing. The blog reviews platform-liability disputes in courts of Europe and the United States, analyzing how the two legal systems mark the boundary between neutral hosting and algorithmic control.
● Call for Applications: Sub-Saharan Africa Litigation Surgery. Media Defence welcomes submissions from lawyers working and living in the region by July 31.
This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression. For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.
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