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Go To Jail For Visiting a Web Site? Top Law Prof Talks Up the Idea (slate.com)
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.
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...
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.
He debated AGAINST someone from The Open Society Foundation.
Sure, it's pretty easy to agree that ISIS are a bunch of nasty fuckers, even by terrorist standards; but I am utterly sick of people hyperventilating and pretending that they are some kind of bold, unprecedented, super-threat that thererfore totally negates all historical arguments in favor of free political speech.
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.
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.
Well here in France we're already experimenting with the idea: this guy was home-jailed based solely on his Google search history. 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.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Veolia a firm he is conflict with for disability denounced him for having being near a water plant and doing various activity which he was not allowed to, like visiting, and they found he researched article on how to make water toxic. Do you really think the FBI would think twice before jailing his ass ? So it was not coming only out of a google search. But afterward once it was known that that firm he was in conflict and it was research for his invalidity (25%) at that point it should have ended, and the firm getting a reprimand. The mise en residence was not the thing which you should be wary of, but that it stayed for so long and the firm was not even punished afterward. So yes it was not very good but it is not as clear cut as you push it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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.