Go To Jail For Visiting a Web Site? Top Law Prof Talks Up the Idea (slate.com) 563
David Rothman writes: Eric Posner, the fourth most-cited law professor in the U.S., says the government may need to jail you if you even visit an ISIS site after enough warnings. He says, "Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective way—and by this I mean ideas that lead directly to terrorist attacks that kill people. The novelty of this threat calls for new thinking about limits on freedom of speech.
The law would provide graduated penalties. After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government; subsequent violations would result in fines or prison sentences. The idea would be to get out the word that looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden" There would be exemptions for Washington-blessed journalists and others. Whew! Alas, this man isn't Donald Trump — he is a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member writing in Slate.
The law would provide graduated penalties. After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government; subsequent violations would result in fines or prison sentences. The idea would be to get out the word that looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden" There would be exemptions for Washington-blessed journalists and others. Whew! Alas, this man isn't Donald Trump — he is a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member writing in Slate.
Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he'll realize why it's a horrendously idiotic idea. Probably not though, people who envision draconian laws always do it believing that they'll never become a victim of their own fuckery.
Re: Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Insightful)
Adds a whole new dimension, to the clasdic game of Rick-rolling ;-)
Re: Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, we already have Swatting so it's not going to be a huge surprise there.
Add to it the possibility of having adbanners and a kiloton of other things involved in activating the links.
Daesh (IS) makes Lemonparty seem like eyebleach.
Re: Send the prof a shortened link (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Insightful)
Jail for those who view proscribed web sites? What could possibly go wrong?
Well, how about the obvious thing that HTML links typically do not display the actual link, but rather a terse description? Your neighbor's dog barks all night? Send him a link to "Free Porn, and lot's of it" that actually links to violent.deathtoalinfidels.sa. Be sure and wave and smile brightly when he is carted off to the big house. Then call animal control and complain that with your neighbor in jail, the dog will not be adequately cared for.
Then there's that first amendment thing (not that we americans pay all that much attention it). Possibly someone should slip Posner a false link to one of the many sites displaying the US constitution.
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Funny)
That's easy. The law will provide protection from prosecution for people that use a government approved web filter.
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Insightful)
Which, oddly enough, won't let you browse websites that are known as hot-beds of unacceptable activity, like discussing the Constitution.
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:4, Insightful)
To add something to your well thought out analysis... once a law was established there would be nothing to stop it from extending into other areas. I'm sure the MPAA/RIAA would love it to be a criminal offense to even visit a P2P website. And why stop there? Once precedent has been set make it a criminal activity to even visit any site the government deems subversive.
And of course to enforce such laws, you would need to destroy any privacy. Ban VPNs. Ban Tor. Ban encryption. And so on...
"Protect the children" is always use a method to pass draconian online laws but I don't think the children would want these laws in place once they grow up enough to understand their rights are being stripped away. A rational person would take their chances with a few terrorists and criminals getting away then giving government this sort of extreme power.
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. A whole new version of swatting is born...
The thing is, how are you supposed to make any kind of informed decisions if you don't have all of the information.
We may not like what terrorists have to say, but somewhere deep down there is a grievance or possibly an injustice.
This is the proverbial slippery slope. Once the government deems a group a terrorist organization, all information about that organization suddenly becomes filtered through approved channels. What if they were misidentified accidentally or purposefully? What if there are multiple "wings" of the same organization, some being non-violent who are just trying to affect change?
Yeah I don't like this idea at all.
By all means, put the repeated visitor of the site on a watch list or something, but don't lock them up for viewing proscribed content.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory " , uhmm , this is exactly why we have a Second Amendment. Fascist regimes use things like Motherland, Fatherland and Homeland to drum up support for all these SAME OLD TIRED IDEAS, the ideas are not new at all.
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"been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory"
He's quite wrong about that. And even if he weren't, "dangerous" or offensive speech is precisely what the First Amendment particularly protects.
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:4, Informative)
That's a variation on the classic imagefap troll.
Imagefap is a large porn site, and searching for "lolita" will result in a message telling you that you might get investigated for child porn. It is just to scare you away, and also a way to remind people that pedophilia is not welcomed.
This resulted in trolls tricking people into getting to that page with shortened URLs or misleading instructions.
Re: (Score:3)
Other search engines started displaying a warning on searches for "lolita" too, which is unfortunate because it's a real name. There is even a popular French pop artist with that name.
I was trying to remember the name of a child soap star the other day. She was in an Australian soap and they were always at the pool or the beach, selling that dream lifestyle to dreary Brits. Well, poor actress now has her name forever flagged as child porn now because some guys (who were probably kids at the time) said she w
Even the NSA knows this is a bad idea. Intelligenc (Score:3)
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He gives an example of a normal, but lonely, teenager, who found 'friendship' among ISIS advocates, who slowly turned him over to the dark side. Eventually they convinced him to do something illegal, and he was caught, and jailed for 11 years. The article claims that if we had banned him from visiting those web sites, it would have saved him from doing illegal things, and saved him from
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He's a moron. People were becoming radicalized long before the Internet came along. They even managed to become radicalized under previous historic tyrannical regimes. Deciding to embrace Nazi or pre-Soviet style tactics to suppress dissent and disolusionment isn't going to do squat.
The idiot should crack open a history book, or perhaps acknowledge that such things as books exist.
Yes it's time to start banning websites (Score:4)
No, he's right some websites are dangerous and need to be banned for the people's own good. We should start with banning any website that promotes authoritarian ideas, those are the most dangerous to a free society, it should be terrorism so that they get no trial and a felony so that they can't vote. And we should ban all lawyer's websites, those incite people to cause financial harm to others. Anyone who calls a lawyer over the phone needs to be put on a watchlist.
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And are usually right too. Draconian laws aren't used to maintain order, they're used to maintain social hierarchy - they're basically tools for the powerful to hide their oppression behind the appearance of law. Where ever you find draconian laws, you find a tyrant. And where ever you find someone pushing for dracon
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I guess now I understand why this annual event is held in Australia rather than the US.
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Send the prof a shortened link (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between people that are supposed to be legal scholars and some random nut bag. You should be able to expect more out of a professor than a random nut bag. The fact that you actually can't, is the really sad thing here.
There will always be idiots.
land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
USA how deep will you sink? Please stop.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lower and lower every day...
The great experiment is done and has failed.
Just like socialism and communism and every other form of government, "democracy" has failed because of people, their greed, and their lust for power...
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Great Experiment hasn't completely failed - we still have a chance to turn this boat around.
We can still vote. You may say that it doesn't matter, but it does. Stop voting for people that you know are crooked. Stop voting for people who use fear as an excuse for everything. Stop voting for people who have "a pen and a phone" to get things done, and damn what the laws say.
Start voting for people who know the constitution and use it to guide their decisions. It will take time to flush all the shit down the toilet, but after a few election cycles, flooding the government with people of principal will make a difference. A huge difference.
Educate yourself. Then educate your family. Then educate your friends. It doesn't take very much.
The failure of education and the rise of apathy is our biggest enemy right now. The government is only as shitty as it is because we, as a citizenry, keep electing the same people over and over and over again. We bitch and moan, but then next time we do it again anyway.
There is a way out and there is still time - just not much.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Be nice if candidates worth voting for actually ran, but all we get to choose from are the "lesser of two evils"
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bernie Sanders - He's worth voting for, actually his whole life narrative has been consistent and shows him to be someone worth voting for.
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Stealing from thieves is practically a duty.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Educate yourself. Then educate your family. Then educate your friends. It doesn't take very much.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to do this though. How can you trust any information coming from the government or media when the messages they spout are deliberately designed to deceive and to push an agenda?
How exactly do you go about educating yourself about a program that has been classified by the government for "national security reasons?" There's not much you can do except wait for the next Edward Snowden to come along to give you accurate information.
I do agree that a democratically elected government is best served by an educated voting populace, but that is a tall order given the barriers currently in place to keep the truth from the American people.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that ship has sailed in America, mainly because corporations control the election process. Corporations own the Presidential Committee on Debates and set a high threshold to keep third parties out and send out the talking points for the debates beforehand so there are no surprises (the push for open debates largely falls on deaf ears - opendebates.org has pushed for this for years). Corporations own the media and control the media through money from superPACs that they fund. Even Bernie Sanders realized that he had to affiliate with the Democratic party to even have a chance of being heard, much less winning. Once you join a party, you are bound to a base platform dictated by your corporate masters.
Corporations are also becoming too large again, with many behaving like monopolies and in some areas, are monopolies (Comcast, for instance). Where's Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?
The other problem you have is people just voting for the party because doing anything else is throwing away your vote. The best way to fix that would be to have ranked choice voting or something similar, but that will never happen - the corporate overlords won't allow it as it would break their chokehold on the system they now completely control.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop what? Allowing people to state their opinions, no matter how idiotic they may be? No, we won't.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't some random dude. He is a law professor. And one of the most cited in the country. Come on. He should be fired immediately.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
And thus he must realize that such a law would almost certainly fail a First Amendment challenge. Such a law would be similar to the Sedition Act, and numerous legal scholars have held the view that that kaw would have been struck down to eventually.
This is nothing more than book banning somehow declared as being different because "on a computer!* and it's utterly ludicrous. It is not as if American citizens couldn't get their hands on Marxisr-Leninist, Maoist or Nazi literature, or dozens of other writings some held as a threat to the American way of life long before the internet.
If the US can tolerate Neo-Nazis matching down Main Street, or Christian Identity types dreaming of transforming America into a theocracy, I'm sure it can survive som extraordinarily small number of would-be Jihadis reading an IS web page.
And that's not even dealing with the technical difficulties of monitoring and enforcement. Yes, you might catch the low-hanging fruit; technically unsophisticated Jihadis, but it wouldn't prevent the more knowledgeable, and savvy. It would just be more overreach that would not accomplish its stated goal.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Theocracy? Oh yes they DO want it. (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't want a theocracy
Theocracy [brucegourley.com] is is exactly what they want. [wikipedia.org]
When they are not planning to bring about Armageddon by looking for loopholes in the Bible. [pbs.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Some Fundamentalist Christians believe that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ cannot occur until the Third Temple is constructed in Jerusalem, which requires the appearance of a red heifer born in Israel.
Clyde Lott, a cattle breeder in O'Neill, Nebraska, United States, is attempting to systematically breed red heifers and export them to Israel to establish a breeding line of red heifers in Israel in the hope that this will bring about the construction of the Third Temple and ultimately the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.[9]
P.S. Dear moderator, we can do this until I run out of copy/paste... or you run out of mod-points.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
But some jackass saying he thinks there should be restrictions does not actually equal restrictions. So I am wondering what, exactly, America is supposed to stop. The only possible answer is that America should stop people like this from speaking, which I object to.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let me get this straight. Because you fear, I should be restricted.
You fear terrorists, so I must not visit a terrorist web site.
You fear bombs, so I must not know how to make a bomb.
You fear guns, so I must not own a gun.
What I understand is, you are a fascist, who has decided that you must dictate how I live my life, to assuage your baseless fears.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Touche'
And, we're going to have to explain things before the hoplophobes even begin to understand what you just said.
The REASON the founding fathers were so careful to enshrine the right to keep and bear arms for the PEOPLE, is so that we can defend ourselves from our GOVERNMENT!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, you're right of course. Europe is totally safe. 20 million Russians weren't murdered there in the last century. And, another 10 million Europeans weren't murdered in Germany. Totally safe. Well - I guess you people have some justification for your hoplophobia. You would do better to disarm your governments, than to disarm your citizens.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I downloaded and read every issue of Dabiq (the ISIL/ISIS,etc..) magazine. I want to know what the hell these people are teaching and thinking. It's called being informed, not an act of treason. http://www.clarionproject.org/... [clarionproject.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard about the Dabiq publication but I never really spent the time to look for it. Since you posted a convenient link, I decided to go take a look.
I gotta say - this is not some low budget, crappy publication. It's a very high quality production.
The most important thing to keep in mind: They believe that they're fighting a holy war. Yes, it may seem crazy to you and I, but it doesn't matter what WE think. What matters is what THEY think. What THEY think is what is driving their actions.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the anti gun crowd, has never seen or held a gun in their lives.
And are happy to keep it that way.
Disclaimer: I live in urban Europe, not rural US.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the anti gun crowd, has never seen or held a gun in their lives.
And are happy to keep it that way.
Disclaimer: I live in urban Europe, not rural US.
And there is part of the problem. We out here in Rural USA do not like the liberal idiots in urban USA, or any of Europe who think they know what is best for us. We tired of their stupid "One Size Fits All" laws that may be great in the big city, but suck for us in the country. For instance, a .222 high-power rifle with a 20 round magazine might be an "assault weapon" in New York, and totally not needed there... BUT our here in rural Nebraska, if I am working with cattle out in the pasture, and a mountain l
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, for WWII, specifically, I was too young (not born) but my family was there. I, myself, served as a Marine and had the opportunity to participate in combat. Details of which are available.
Oh, wait, you thought I was one of those who wasn't willing to serve and just liked things that go boom. No, I love things that make noise. I am, however, still willing to serve and aid those who can not or will not do so on their own. It's the neighborly thing to do.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:4, Insightful)
What a stunningly stupid argument to defend gun ownership. You don't have to own slaves in order to be allowed an opinion on slavery or for that to be an informed one.
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:land of the the free ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just between us girls, you do realize that you contradicted yourself in your response, right?
No, I didn't.
Early in your response, you mention that the NRA is consistent with "training, responsibility, and safety"
Yep.
and then later say that their role (yes, through their "political wing", but that's hair-splitting, IMO. If you, as an organization support something, your "political wing" expresses it.) is to be a "rabid dog" defender of gun rights.
This is wrong on two counts: First, because you're assuming without support that rabid dog defense of gun rights is irresponsible. Second because it is *not* hair-splitting to claim that the organization is focused on training, responsibility and safety given that the bulk of the organization and its funding goes toward those ends.
I would submit, sir, that if the NRA was *truly* concerned with "training, responsibility and safety" that they would - independent of any law or regulation - require any gun dealer who sports their logo to require that the dealer prove to their (NRA's) standards that the person ready to walk out with their very first AR-15 have some basic knowledge, understanding and competence with the thing.
Why should the NRA be responsible for policing this? The NRA makes educational resources available, including providing pamphlets for gun makers and dealers to distribute. Requiring formal education (or even just testing), merely adds an additional obstacle to gun ownership. I'm all in favor of training, the more the better, but I agree with the NRA that it's up to personal responsibility, not something that should be mandated.
All you you have to do is visit any gun store (or Walmart) and watch the average yo-yo buy one as their very first gun, waving it around, doing their Rambo impersonation, etc. It's a bad situation, I think.
Is it really? Do you have evidence to support your claim that it's a bad situation? The sort of problem you're assuming seems to be one of accidental gun deaths and injuries, which are actually very low (<600 per year, in a nation of >300M people and >300M guns), and declining steadily. The gun problem in the US is one of suicide and intentional homicide, neither of which are the result of "yo-yos" buying their first AR-15.
My perspective on this question -- as a certified pistol, rifle and shotgun instructor -- is that people take guns pretty seriously, and seek out training and education. Perhaps my perspective is skewed, because obviously the people who come to me are obviously the responsible ones, but in my personal and family life I also don't see a lot of clueless people buying guns and "waving them around". And the CDC accidental death statistics bear out my perspective.
Till then, their just shills for the gun makers who love it whenever something terrible happens cause their sales go through the roof.
Thank the anti-gun lobbies for the massive surges in gun sales after terrible shootings. Its their calls for restrictions that cause Americans to buy guns in droves. Also, it's worth pointing out that nearly 3/4 of the NRA's funding comes from individuals, not gun makers. This figure is slightly skewed by the gun dealers who include a "free" NRA membership with each gun sale, but (1) there aren't that many of those and (2) that's only a one-year membership. Contrary to anti-gun propaganda, the NRA isn't a front for the gun makers.
(And, BTW, make it damned difficult and expensive to buy ammo these days! .357 Magnums and .45 ACPs are bad enough, but .22s are impossible to find.)
I still don't understand why the factories haven't ramped up production of .22LR. For the first two or three years, okay, they were probably concerned that the shortage was temporary and did
Dangerous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see this being taken advantage of to quell free speech. For example, visiting a Tea Party or Libertarian website could land you in jail someday. Who gets to decide what is dangerous?
Also, wouldn't blocking certain websites be more effective? If they were using a foreign VPN, the US government wouldn't necessarily know anyway.
Re:Dangerous idea (Score:5, Funny)
Remember you're dealing with a group of people (US leadership and US political candidates) who believe that there is a big ON/OFF switch for the Internet located in Bill Gates' basement.
Re:Dangerous idea (Score:5, Funny)
Now you have done it, the terrorist know where it is!
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry, it's not in Gate's basement, it's in Gore's garage. That's why I've double-ROT-13'd this message, so the terrorists can't read it.
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There is. It's called "Silverlight".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Love it...
wouldn't blocking certain websites be more effective?
1. Government wants to censor the web.
2. Public outcry.
3. Government threatens jail.
4. Public asks for censorship instead.
Already done in France (Score:5, Informative)
Well here in France we're already experimenting with the idea: this guy was home-jailed based solely on his Google search history [numerama.com]. Best part is, no judge was involved, no hearing was done, not even a single formal accusation levied, it all happened on the Police's sole authority and discretion, by demanding his search history from Google (they complied) and then issuing an administrative order.
This guy was actually documenting possible work-related health hazards.
A firm he is sueing denounced him (Score:5, Informative)
How could this possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I can imagine this getting abused rather quickly, like someone important getting tricked into clicking a link.
I could see Anonymous hacking a bunch of websites to redirect to ISIS sites, even if they're at "war" with each other. They can't arrest everyone.
Re: (Score:3)
Citizens are important? How naïve. They are just gasoline for the engine to get important people where they need to be.
...dangerous ideas... (Score:5, Insightful)
""Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective way"
I first thought he was talking about the idea that people might go to jail for merely visiting webpages.
Re:...dangerous ideas... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another way to state this is that the US now needs thought police.
How about the we spend our time looking for the REAL troublemakers instead of deciding certain broad groups, i.e. "Muslims," 'Web site users," etc. are all bad.
Of course that would take reasoning ability, and that's at an all time low in our leadership and our general population.
Re:...dangerous ideas... (Score:5, Insightful)
the risks are also vastly overstated, roughly 30000 people die in traffic accidents in the US every year so if people want to be scared of something it should cars not terrorists
Re:...dangerous ideas... (Score:5, Insightful)
It almost reads like something from the McCarthy hearings, where they attacked film makers who made films with allegedly procommunist messages because of their influence on the american people. But this is worse, it would imprison anyone who had ever even seen the movie, let alone produced it. That is a dark path indeed that Mr. Posner wants to go down.
Another Great Progressive (Score:2, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Brought to you by George Soros and The Open Society Foundation.
Where open society means you can be open to what they want you to be.
Re: (Score:3)
I see from your link that this guy doesn't think there's a real problem with the NSA hoovering up everything on the web either.
NOT a big advocate of privacy OR free speech.
So, we should care about what this guy thinks why? I mean other than so we can laugh and point, of course....
Re:Another Great Progressive (Score:4, Informative)
He debated AGAINST someone from The Open Society Foundation.
A bad case of WTF blindness (Score:5, Informative)
Something has going seriously wrong when a well respected professor of law begins saying that there are dangerous ideas, and that ideas can be the direct cause of terrorism.
Re:A bad case of WTF blindness (Score:5, Insightful)
Something has going seriously wrong when a well respected professor of law begins saying that there are dangerous ideas, and that ideas can be the direct cause of terrorism.
Huh?
There are dangerous ideas.
Ideas are precisely the cause of terrorism.
Conversely his idea (having thought police) is also deeply dangerous.
Finally your idea of pretending something you don't like doesn't exist is also dangerous, because if can lead to quite amazing blindness.
That's the thing though, just because ideas are dangerous, doesn't mean they should be illegal.
Re: (Score:3)
Anger, disillusionment, hopelessness, unemployment, fear... Those enable terrorism.
Reality disagrees with you. Many of England's home grown terrorists have been from decent backgrounds with education, jobs and prospects. Jihadi John, for example.
Learn from Putin (Score:5, Insightful)
Those willing to give up their freedoms... and all that.
Re:Learn from Putin (Score:5, Insightful)
State is more than capable of effective propaganda (or counter-propaganda). If ISIS is such existential threat, then correct approach to defeat their speech is more speech. For a fraction of what it costs to bomb them US Gov't can create top-notch documentaries and satire to effectively neutralize the threat.
It is hard to criticize ISIS without sounding like you are criticizing Islam. It is much more politically correct to bomb a country than to criticize a culture.
I like his approach (Score:4, Insightful)
Never before indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
He could equally be talking about radio transmission, the ability to print and distribute pamphlets, or satellite TV broadcast.
I always find it a bit disturbing when legal theorists talk about ways to work around the constitution, seeing it as an impediment rather than a set of ideals. Amend it, by all means. If you genuinely think that freedom of speech is an outdated concept it would be hypocritical of me not to support your right to say so.
The evolution of the Rick Roll... (Score:2)
This sounds like Swatting might get easier and harder to trace.
Typo (Score:5, Funny)
he was a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member writing in Slate.
FTFY.
We need limits on free speech? (Score:5, Funny)
No. No limits on speech. But... (Score:3)
No. No limits on speech. That is exactly the wrong idea. But being on a CT watchlist if you're immersed in ISIS propaganda, and don't have a clear reason otherwise for doing so? Yep, that's gonna happen.
Problem with watchlists?
Quiz:
1. Should the government have the ability to keep ANY list(s), to include names and other attributes of people, for counterterrorism and intelligence purposes?
2. Should the government be able to watch non-protected aspects of a US Person suspected of terrorism, foreign intelligence ties, etc., without a warrant?
3. Should the government be able to watch protected aspects of a US Person suspected of terrorism, foreign intelligence ties, etc., with a warrant?
4. Can the government keep secret the fact that a US Person (or any other person) is on any CT watchlist and/or is subject of a CT/CI investigation?
5. Should the government be able to deprive a US Person of Constitutional rights without due process, or by virtue of appearance on a CT watchlist?
Answer key: 1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. Yes. 4. Yes. 5. No.
Shut down the internet in some way (Score:2)
I really think we should just end the Internet if this is the alternative, I really do. Lets just cut the cables and make it a domestic only affair.
"Most cited" doesn't mean "most *positively* cited (Score:2)
Nothing New (Score:3, Interesting)
These same sorts of people were saying the same things about Communist writings back during the Cold War. The bottom line is that there is a significant segment of the population that abhors freedom of speech, and they'll use whatever is convenient to get at it.
Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that the United States founders would agree that "genuinely dangerous ideas" (let's remember that not so long ago, things like homosexuality, transgenderism, interracial marriage would have all been on that list - hell my parents were married in 1955 and his parents didn't go to the wedding because my mom was LUTHERAN) should very much BE discussed in the marketplace of ideas. The only way stupid ideas die is when they're revealed to be stupid.
Of course, part and parcel of their worldview was that if you were deemed enough of a threat to society, they just killed you and didn't wring their hands over the injustice of it either.
Scary train of thought (Score:4, Insightful)
What's scary about this is that he has even written books on Constitutional law but proposes ideas such as this. I guess it is pretty telling though that according to his Wikipedia page he is a big proponent of the NSA and its pervasive collecting of US citizen's data. I'm assuming his books on constitutional law just skip over the 1st and 4th Amendments.
I also wonder what effect this would have on scholars and researchers. Had ISIL been around in it's current form 4-5 years ago I would have most likely written my Master's thesis on them and possibly might have attempted to access some of their propaganda sites for research. Besides, wouldn't criminalizing this information just make it seem that much more powerful and also make it harder to refute? People will seek it out just to see what is so bad about it.
Oh, dis gon' be fun! (Score:3)
this is a great idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Anti-abortionist and ultra conservative right wing christian websites are going to fall under this umbrella too right, after the recent domestic terrorist shooting, right?
Professors are morons too. (Score:3)
The Supreme Court would have a field day with that idiot.
He needs to take more class the Constition, rather than teach them.
The reason for the first amendment still makes sense - better to letter fools speak freely so you know who they are, rather than punish men for doing doing so. The most powerful and dangerous of speech is true speech and by stopping speech you are more likely to spread lies than truth.
The US government needs a good way to track ISIS supporters, and spying on those that visit their websites makes a lot more sense than arresting them.
Profoundly stupid assumptions (Score:4, Interesting)
Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective wayâ"and by this I mean ideas that lead directly to terrorist attacks that kill people. The novelty of this threat calls for new thinking about limits on freedom of speech.
There are two things to note. First, the "danger" is not novel or unusual. Nazism is a good previous example of such a dire threat. And we have plenty of over-the-top, hysterical examples throughout the history of the US of foreign ideas like socialism, Catholicism, and other such things (usually imported by immigrants) threatening the US. Somehow the fabric of US society endured.
Second, we have the ludicrous argument that this propaganda is effective on the basis of a single, two person terrorist attack in California (as well as a few others throughout a world of over seven billion people).
Using the law to force Facebook and Twitter to do more to block ISIS propaganda would make sense but also falls short of what is needed. No approach is perfect, but there is a way to deal with these problems.
Blocking ISIS propaganda is "makes sense". "No approach is perfect". We have two more assumptions here. First, that blocking ISIS propaganda is a good idea. and second, that we can ignore how terrible an idea is. Why not advocate the nuking of say, two billion people who happen to be or live near Muslims? No approach is perfect.
Consider Ali Amin, the subject of a recent article in the New York Times. Lonely and bored, the 17-year-old Virginia resident discovered ISIS online, was gradually drawn into its messianic world, eventually exchanged messages with other supporters and members, and then provided some modest logistical support to ISIS supporters (instructing them how to transfer funds secretly and driving an ISIS recruit to the airport). He was convicted of the crime of material support of terrorism and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Amin did not start out as a jihadi; he was made into one.
Dude had his computer hacked. He didn't mean to try to help kill people. It just sort of happened with all this bad content forced on his computer screen. Here, the implicit assumption is that people can't be responsible for their actions when it comes to this insidious jihad stuff.
In one case the seemingly naÃve individual posted general questions about religion, to which ISIS supporters quickly responded in a calm and authoritative manner. After a few weeks, the accounts of hardened ISIS supporters slowly introduced increasingly ardent views into the conversation. The new recruit was then invited to continue [conversing] privately, often via Twitterâ(TM)s Direct Message feature or on other private messaging platforms such as surespot.
This reminds me of the hysterical exhortations about the danger of recreational drugs and how drug users are lured into a shadow world of sin and iniquity.
But there is something we can do to protect people like Amin from being infected by the ISIS virus by propagandists, many of whom are anonymous and most of whom live in foreign countries. Consider a law that makes it a crime to access websites that glorify, express support for, or provide encouragement for ISIS or support recruitment by ISIS; to distribute links to those websites or videos, images, or text taken from those websites; or to encourage people to access such websites by supplying them with links or instructions. Such a law would be directed at people like Amin: naÃve people, rather than sophisticated terrorists, who are initially driven by curiosity to research ISIS on the Web.
Because punishing people for reading the wrong websites will work. When he discovers that sending people to jail, als
hmm (Score:3)
It seems to me that tracking who visits such sites would yield more useful information to be followed up on.
From TFA:
"Consider Ali Amin, (blah blah blah)...convicted of the crime of material support of terrorism and sentenced to 11 years in prison."
Poor Ali Amin. TFA makes it out loke Ali Amin is not to blame for becoming radicalized. That if he hadn't visited IS websites, etc, that he'd be a fine, upstanding young man contributing to society.
Well fuck Ali Amin. He made his choices and for the choices he made he should rot in prison for the rest of his life - not just 11 years.
Track the visitors to the sites. Use such visits to justify warrants and use the existing legal framework to monitor them, track their contacts, intercept them on their way to do whatever helps the enemy and lock them up forever.
What's next? A crime to look at websites that say things that the government doesn't want people reading?
As usual (Score:4, Insightful)
"After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government;"
Wow! How would the government know my address? I'm sitting in a Starbucks with free WIFI and obviously an active VPN.
I guess he has more knowledge about the law than of that series of tubes, like all those morons with the 'great ideas'.
Bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
By western body count, they are still lagging Al Qaeda, though their media arm appears to be better; and in terms of killing random foreigners we don't much care about they lag behind Boko Haram, a wide variety of respectable nation states quite possibly including us; and they are no closer to magic-super-brainwashing-propaganda than anyone else is.
The 'argument' in favor of keeping the scary ISIS social media away from the kiddies to prevent their little minds being poisoned could just as easily have been applied to 'communist propaganda'(and, unlike ISIS, Team Communism actually had enough thermonuclear ICBMs to burn us into a smoking crater); basically any pacifist group during one of our wars, assorted unpopular sects, and all kinds of other things.
They are mediagenic, and they aren't nice guys; but They. Are. Not. That. Novel. Any nonsense about their being some bold, new, existential threat is simply false. It's just the same old bad arguments for censorship, with a new boogieman. Plus, even if you ignore any principled objections; are you really going to win a war of ideas by looking like an utter coward? "Ohh, jihad is so attractive that we can't let kids hear about it or they'll adopt it for sure and go out and start attacking our decadent immoral civilization!" That's not fighting 'the terrorists', that's agreeing with them. Get your head out of your ass and do what it takes to have a culture where contempt for the opposition's message is all it takes. No, you won't win everyone, some people really do love the most sociopathic flavors of abrahamic blood god they can find, which is what actual police operations are for; but cowering at the power of the opposition's message is both pathetic and strategically dubious.
Aside from my usual distaste for antiliberal 'national security' bullshit; the sheer cowardice of this really rubs me the wrong way. If you actually think that your own cultural offering is so weak that you need to live in terror of somebody's jihad-blog making it through the great firewall; surely you should be working on solving the real problem? Again, can't win em all; but if you can't compete with 'join in our glorious sandbox hellhole where the war is constant and everything fun is forbidden' message; you have issues.
Comment removed (Score:3)
2nd Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
That we are even talking about such measures... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hurray for thought crimes! (Score:3)
Reading about hacking? Same as hacking!
Reading about [BLANK]? Same as [BLANK]!
This guy is a FUCKING IDIOT.
U of C is a right-wing echo chamber (Score:3)
Unfortunately, the schools of economics and law at the University of Chicago are packed with hard-right supporters. Much of the `intellectual' backing for the republican right wing policy is backed up by these guys. It is no surprise that this sort of stuff comes from there.
Re:Terrorist Negotiations are strong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just WTF is he referring to? (Score:4, Funny)
Osiris: "So apparently ISIS just bombed another hospital and the boys asked me if it was your time of the month."
Isis: "You know it wasn't me honey, I was busy playing fallout."
Osiris:"yes I know, but this is getting embarrassing. I keep on telling everyone it wasn't you but the rumors keep coming."
Isis:"That's not my fault dear."
Osiris: "...You know, you could always change your name."
Isis: "No way! Why should I change? They're the ones who suck."
Re:Widely respected? (Score:5, Funny)
he was previously a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member . . .
here - fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3)