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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.
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.
USA how deep will you sink? Please stop.
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.
""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.
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.
Those willing to give up their freedoms... and all that.
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.
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.
-Styopa
I also love how this is treated as a new problem ("A new quality of terrorism", as an European politician put it a short while ago), as if there never was an Unabomber, an IRA, a RAF, an ETA or a "top terrorist" Carlos The Jackal. And the fact that a mass shooting totally changes everything because it was political, in contrast to the several hundred other shootings that weren't ;-)
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.