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That Link Is Illegal
buzzdecafe writes with a snippet from a Declan McCullagh piece on news.com today: "The University of California at San Diego has ordered a student organization to delete hyperlinks to an alleged terrorist Web site, citing the recently enacted USA Patriot Act.
School administrators have told the group, called the Che Cafe Collective, that linking to a site supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) would not be permitted because it violated federal law."
Gotta love that 1st Amendment. Now, where'd that thing go anyway?
What's the problem with this? Its a school computer, they get to say whats OK.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
And that's kinda sad. Unfortunately, someone's going to have to die on this hill (perhaps literally) before we get that shred of freedom back.
to quote Voltaire: "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
What's worse, is that now that someone making "subversive speech" can be labeled a terrorist, they can be treated as an enemy of the state, regardless of their citizenship or the rights therein guaranteed by the Constitution.
What if a website had a link to a anonymous website of links that has a link to a terrorist website? Wouldn't be fair to be guilty by association.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
If I understand the story correctly, the Contraversal Website resides on a UC-owned computer, and uses a UC-owned domain. UC has the right to restrict content on it's own computers... for years, they've maintained the right to restrict content on student flyers on the campus. This is similar...
Solution? Get your own computer, and get your own domain name.
Or am I missing something...
Now, another question I have is: Why does UC San Diego allow student organizations use a subdomain under ucsd.edu ? It's asking for trouble...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
We've come so far to go full circle. Fortunately, the following didn't last too long.
Section 2 of the Sedition Act (July 14, 1798)
SEC. 2. And be it farther enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.
This administration scares me.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Doesn't the school have the right to restrict the content on their servers??? If you set up a web site that is against your company/college/school's policy or beliefs, I think they have the right to ask you to take down the objective material.
100% Insightful
It's the fact that by linking this site the organization is provided the terrorist's with a vehicle for communication...
This is preposterous. The company or organization hosting the "terrorist's" Web site is the one that's providing the vehicle for communication, not any Web pages that link to it. By your logic, we ought to shut down Google and all other Internet search engines since I can run a search on "FARC" and end up with a web page that links to this same Web site.
Incidentally, the irony here is that if the school had left this issue alone, then virtually nobody would have seen the offending Web site. Now that they've raised a big stink about it wrapped up in the PATRIOT act, you can expect the URL to appear in countless places (as it already has done several times in replies to this story.)
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
The part of this article that I will rememeber and that annoyed me the most at first glance, was the incorrect spelling of Colombia.
1. In a Pittsburgh campaign stop last month, the Bush people made local law enforcement herd sign-carrying protestors into a fenced off, "designated free speech zone" (that's what they called it! I'm not joking...) more than 1/2 mile from the event. One protestor, carrying a sign saying "Bush must love the poor, he's created so many of us", decided that a "designated free speech zone" is a contradiction in terms (and unconstitutional). He decided to hop the fence and stand next to the people carrying pro-Bush signs. He was arrested. He violated no law, but was considered a "threat" because he had the nerve to carry an anti-Bush sign where Bush might see it.
2. The voters of California decided, through ballot initiative, that medical use of marijuana was legal. The Ashcroft justice department, deciding that the 10th ammendment doesn't apply anymore, decided to arrest Marijuana growers in California who were growing it with the expressed permission of the California government. "States' Rights" Republicans are apparently only worried about those rights when it comes to the 2nd ammendment and abortion laws, apparently.
3. And finally, the U.S. Patriot Act. Practically authored by Ashcroft, and passed overwhelmingly by a fearful and gutless congress (only Russ Feingold having the intestinal fortitude to stand against it in the senate), the Patriot Act effectively eliminates all remaining protections of the 4th ammendment... The "drug war" weakened it, and the Patriot act killed it.
With the current group in charge, you can bet that every ammendment in the Bill of Rights, save for the 2nd, is in danger.
Wait until some alleged terrorist tries to "plead the 5th". Then we'll be down to 6.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Okay, before we all predictably get up-in-arms about how this violates the 1st amendment and all that, let's take a moment to review what we actually know about the situation:
1) The article cites the portion of the PATRIOT act regarding "providing material support to terrorists." It's not clear to me from that snippet what "material support" means. So there might be something to fight on these grounds -- but I'd bet that 90% of us aren't familiar enough with the act or pertinent case law to answer the question.
2) They're not actually providing FARC info, just a link. So they're at least not "acting" as a terrorist group, they're just telling people where you can find 'em. Which might or might not constitute some kind of support -- if the link said "can you believe these jerks?", you might be able to argue that it's actually anti-FARC, but I doubt the context of the link was such as that.
3) We'd all like to think that there is some kind of due process available here. The group should be able to appeal to someone who can make a review of whether the information being linked to is truly covered by the act. Of course, this being on (to my understanding) institutionally-owned hardware, the school's own internet policies may trump that kind of review, even though it's a public institution.
and, MOST IMPORTANTLY,
4) We have not yet established that linking is protected. At least as far as I can recall, some people won in the "linking to DeCSS" case, and some people lost, in different districts, and it hasn't hit the Supreme Court. So, everyone who is so damned sure that this is an illegal restriction of free speech, well, you can't really say that, 'cause it hasn't been decided yet. (though I think that one of the pro-"linking-as-speech" decisions was in California, so they'd be bound by that decision). Morally, I'd agree that it should be protected, but legally, nobody can say for certain.
Anyway, I just thought I'd point these things out up front, before everyone starts posting their own defiant links to FARC and complaining about the bill of rights being trampled and armchair lawyers trying to sound smart by summarizing the whole complex issue in four bullet points.
Oops. Too late.
Also in news today the British Empire has arrested several Colonial presses because they printed material that references those who would "revolt" against the empire.
Now that we have the Revolutionary Eradication and Destruction Covert Operations and Threat (REDCOAT) ACT we can further supress these threats to colonial safety and stability
Fine, just go ahead and start a political debate why don't ya? :)
It's real easy to tell that the FARC is a terrorist group. The US doesn't like them, thus they are a terrorist group. This seems to be about the only qualification to get labeled a terrorist by this government.
Genuinely I think you can say that the FARC is a terrorist organization because they have been responsible for military attacks on civilian targets. Having said that though, so's the columbian government and the militia groups that said government backs. And you might even imply, by extension, that the US government is a terrorist organization since they back the columbian government. But now I'm splitting hairs.
It all boils down to the fact that "terrorist" is the new version of "communist" which was itself a newer version of the term "witch". You apply it to anybody who interferes with the way you want the world to run and see how long you can get away with it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Thoughtcrimes are double plus ungood.
Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.
Rocky J. Squirrel
I find it distressing that this has happened. The Patriot Act seems to violate the first amendment. They don't even host the FARC material, they just link to them.
And as far as FARC - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Who are the terrorists who have killed hundreds of union leaders over the past few years in Colombia, it certainly wasn't FARC. The government is pretty bad, but made much worse with their close ties to drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries.
The US has been messing with Colombia for over a century. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt decided he wanted Northern Colombia for the Panama Canal, and bankrolled a revolution in Northern Colombia, now called Panama. Then they called Colombia's leaders (or rebels, depending on who was in charge) Russian proxies, then they became drug couriers, now they're terrorists. Ironic since FARC had a ban on drug growing for years, with the right-wing paramilitaries making money from the drug growing. The US army's top anti-drug guy in Colombia, James Hiett, was arrested (in the US) because he was trafficking drugs into the US from Colombia. These are the people stopping drug flow from Colombia into the US? That's accepting the premise that the US has a right to go into Colombia militarily because they're shipping deadly drugs to US consumers trying to procure them. Imagine if Thailand invaded North Carolina for shipping the deadly tobacco drug to them. Thailand doesn't want to import US tobacco for health reasons, but the US used GATT to force them to import it.
This is an attempt to censor political opinions, pure and simple. The White House, which via the FCC has a lot of leverage over the media, called in TV stations and major newspapers and told them they didn't want Bin Laden's statements printed or broadcast. Only the New York Times refused. The powers-that-be in the US want only one side and one side only of the story to be put out - theirs. Not that Bin Laden's side is right, but when his statement's are censored a priori, I begin to wonder what he had to say. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship, and the US has had a massive military presence there for over a decade, Bin Laden and the hijackers were almost all from Saudi Arabia, is there a connection there? From Bin Laden's statements there seems to be. Bush would rather say the US military guarding ExxonMobil's oil supplies has nothing to do with the attacks, and they're just fanatics who hate America for no reason. That might make sense to the As someone once said, government's do not desire to shut down magazines like PC world. They start with views they do not want you to here, like FARC's, or whomever's. If the Colombian rebels are so ridiculous, and every American would automatically side against them, why is there the rush to silence them? To me it's almost a clear sign that the one source we've been hearing it from (the State Department) hasn't been totally honest and they do not want people to hear any other view. Why have hundreds of union organizers been killed in Colombia? Who was shipping cocaine to the US when FARC had a ban on coca growing in areas they controlled? And I'm not suggesting a "conspiracy", but is James Hiett the only American military or intelligence officer involved in shipping drugs from Colombia to the US? Hiett is significant because the billions we send down there every year to fight drugs seems to wind up bringing even more drugs in. There are many Americans who sympathize with FARC, the dead (and living) union organizers, the indigenous tribes liek the U'wa and so forth, but it seems not only is our tax money going billions a year down there in guns so as to protect a non-Middle East oil supply, we can't even hear what's going on down there do to US Patriot Act censorship. The people controlling the US aren't satisfied with just the billions in arms going down there, now we can't even have free speech in the US about it, that my tax money is funding all of this death can't even be discussed.
Now that I read the article more thoroughly, I see that the college's problem with the page was that it might be providing "material support" to FARC by sending people to their page. To answer my own question, then, they probably can't pull that trick, because any action to send people to that page would (I presume) still be "material support". Probably. At least, until a case like this ends up in court.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Having a link to a web site is not providing "material" support. It's not providing anything except a link to information.
Following that logic, libraries should eliminate all books which discuss al Qaeda, even if they are just historical. Magazines and newspapers discussing any terrorist organization should be banned. Any articles discussing where to find more information on terrorist organizations would be banned.
The university is being ridiculous.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Too Much Sex != Nymphomania. Too Much is a relative term, nymphomania describes an addiction, not the condition of having too much sex. Oversexed does however, but that's not proof that such a thing exists
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
I feel it important to counter the flood of posts talking about how the first amendment is irrelevant. First, it's quite obvious that the links are NOT against the Patriot Act. The school probably knows this. The administration is probably doing this to try to make the Act look unconstitutional.
Not being a lawyer, or being extremely familiar with the Patriot Act, I can't state if any parts of it are unconstitutional. The part they quote in the article does not seem to be. It is not in your First Amendment right to plot to overthrow the government or kill people. It's also not your right to materially help people to do so. Obviously, a link is not doing that and I don't think any judge is going to see it that waySo let's keep the topic on hand: Does linking violate the Patriot Act? Is that section of the Patriot Act unconstutitional?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Hey, if linking is illegal, then providing a domain name (farc-ep.org) is surely also illegal! If they didn't have a domain name, then everyone would have to type their IP address. That's a lot of hassle, so providing the domain name is supportive of that group.
.org domain to the registrar.
ICANN oversees domain registration, and Network Solutions administers the root nameservers and the delegation of the
If this student collective is breaking the law, then ICANN and NS are. If ICANN and NS aren't, then the student collective should go free.
And I don't see the government suddenly making demands on ICANN and NS after so many years of letting them run rampant in all kinds of areas.
That's not what made the "hidden messages" argument so asinine... while Bush & co. were wringing their hands over hidden messages that could survive a (probably semi-competent) English translation, the original Arabic videos were being broadcast in full over Al-Jazeera, available via satellite anywhere in the United States.
"Hidden messages" was a smokescreen for censorship, pure and simple.
What you are seeing now is exactly what the social revolution of the '60s really was. The people who are now in power, and fought so hard under the banner of peace and love during the '60s, were mostly just arrogant whelps who thought they had the answers to all the world's problems.
That same arrogance shines through today as they make decisions that assume that the american people are not competant enough to think for themselves. Anytime something doesn't go their way, they threaten to sue, and anyone who doesn't agree with them is obviously stupid.
To make it all complete, we now have a brand new generation of 'hippies'. Just like their ancestors, they too shun authority, traditions, or anything else that came before them. They have all the answers, they know exactly how to fix everything, and know exactly where they'd like to tell those in power to shove it.
Yes, today is very much like the days of 30 years ago. Except now we make heroes out of people who spent the good majority of their youth completely stoned.
If you're talking about Hamas or Hezbollah, or any of the other Palestinian groups, he supports the secular ones, but not the Islamic fundy ones. If that's the case, then most every predominantly Muslim country in the region should also be invaded.
I realize that the mainstream media doesn't seem to make these distinctions, and the administration would prefer if you just took their word for it, but if you scratch the surface, things aren't as black and white as they seem.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Unfortunately, for us the Columbians, isnt funny