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California tries to criminalize journalism — to protect fraud

A bill moving through the California Legislature would give taxpayer-funded organizations the power to demand the removal of videos recorded in public spaces — and impose steep financial penalties on anyone who publishes them.

AB 2624, sponsored by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Oakland), is framed as protection for immigrant service providers against harassment and threats. The framing makes opposition look cruel.

Bills that need moral immunity to pass tend to deserve the scrutiny they’re trying to avoid.

The bill extends confidentiality and anti-doxxing protections to “immigration support services providers,” grafting those provisions onto laws originally written for narrowly defined, high-risk medical contexts.

The expansion sounds measured. What it creates is a broad, vaguely-bounded shield available to any organization that can plausibly claim to serve immigrants, including outfits receiving public money.

Under AB 2624, those organizations could invoke legal protections to force the removal of footage, backed by the financial threat of penalties against the person who filmed or published it. That mechanism doesn’t distinguish between stalkers and a citizen journalists.

The bill’s critics have taken to calling it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.” Shirley is a 24-year-old YouTuber from Utah widely credited with exposing fraud in day care facilities in Minnesota. He has spent the past several months filming California hospice offices, day........

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