California Case Against Nike may Proceed

A consumer activist, Marc Kasky, brought a lawsuit against Nike Inc. in which he argued that Nike lied to the public when it denied in paid advertising that their overseas factories were sweatshops. Kasky charges that this public denial violates California law against false advertising and unfair trade practices.

What is astounding about the defense, is that Nike is not attempting to deny the sweatshop claims. Instead, they argued that the corporation has the same free speech rights as individuals. They argue that their assertion about their factory conditions is not an advertisement, and is instead protected political speech, and therefore its claims do not have to be factual.

The California Supreme Court last year rejected, 4-3, Nike's arguments. California Justice Joyce Kennard wrote, "When a corporation, to maintain and increase its sales and profits, makes public statements defending labor practices and working conditions at factories where its products are made, those public statements are commercial speech that may be regulated to prevent consumer deception."

Nike then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it upheld the California ruling. Kasky's case against Nike may proceed.
The implications that a corporation has free speech rights when marketing and selling their products is absolutely outrageous.

Keep tabs on this and other labor issues at Sweatshop Watch or the Garment Worker Center.

(Taken from this article at SFGate.com)

New Airport Body Scanner - What Price Security?

An article on The Drudge Report describes a new airport body scanner that promises to increase accuracy and reduce the need for physical searches (Read the original AP article at the Las Vegas Sun).

As you can see from the picture accompanying the article, increased security comes at a cost to your personal privacy. In this test, the subject can be seen with a concealed gun and bomb. Although no minute details of the subject's anatomy can be seen (it looks like a store mannequin), it nevertheless shows more details than one may be comfortable with. Enough so that the Transportation Security Agency began looking for ways to distort private areas in the image.

Comments from volunteer subjects were mixed. Some were uncomfortable while others preferred this method to a pat-down, or the more extreme strip-search

The driving force behind creating and using such a screener is the fact that metal detectors cannot detect plastic weapons, and that profiling is more controversial than effective in selecting likely terrorists. This looks like the most effective method short of having everyone strip naked before boarding the plane, but how much protection do we really need? One the one hand, just stopping one terrorist would make the privacy issue seem trivial. On then other hand, if a terrorist really wanted to take out a plane there is probably little we can do to stop him.