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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.
I can imagine this getting abused rather quickly, like someone important getting tricked into clicking a link.
""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.
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.
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.
Eric Posner suggest we jail people we find engaging in objectionable ideas. I find Eric Posner's ideas highly objectionable, therefore following his suggested approach we should throw him, and anyone visiting Slate, into jail and throw away the keys.
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.
he was a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member writing in Slate.
FTFY.
Ok, let's start by jailing anyone calling for limits on free speech.
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....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
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.
Now there will be a managed list of reporters. I'm sure any ISIS related hits will still trigger SOMETHING, which will surely lead to [more] surveillance of the press, even if it doesn't lead to a 'three strikes' letter. What other websites did they visit? Who did they contact? What else are they searching for? Who in the government is leaking information to that reporter? What are their other sources? Are they talking to a known leak? Can we plant a leak for them to speak to? If they're willing to publish that information can we imprison them for leaking 'secrets' to eliminate the chances of reporters talking to whistleblowers?
No sir, I don't like it.
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
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.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
All of us outside the US will create the "Prison Roll"! It'll be like a rickroll, only the links will all go to illegal websites. We laugh, you go to jail.
He debated AGAINST someone from The Open Society Foundation.
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?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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?
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
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?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
"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'.
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.
Goes to show that even the most ostensibly eminent law professor can get basic constitutional questions wrong. There is no such thing as crimethink in American law.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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."
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
This is a perfect example of why ANY attempt to undermine or diminish the intended scope of the 2nd Amendment should not be tolerated by the American public. Even the "scholars" will perform mental gymnastics to justify their arbitrary notion of what is "protected" and what is "criminal".
he was previously a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member . . .
here - fixed that for you.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Sign me up. I'll visit every last one of these banished sites, repeatedly, until the police come knocking.
...means the terrorists win. Again. We should never consider giving power to bat-shit crazy fundamentalist types (of every stripe) by suggesting that their doctrine is "dangerous". What we should be doing is something like the equivalent of a giant marquee with flashing neon arrows, announcing "Look at this bat-shit crazy ranting". Ideas deserve the light of day. Bad ideas deserve derision in that light.
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 ?
Not only is this absurd on civil liberties grounds, it would be stupid even if you didn't care about civil liberties. Suppose for a moment that you are a famous U of Chicago law professor who doesn't care about the Constitution, and you want to stop terrorists. You could send a letter to a potential future terrorist saying "hey we noticed you visited this web site once, and we'll notice if you return to that site", or you could very discreetly log who visits suspicious sites and query for patterns, perhaps cross-referencing their Facebook posts or other public information, so you know who is likely to actually be a threat. Then when these queries identify the few people most likely to actually be a threat, you investigate those people further. That would be the smart thing to do, if you believed, as the U of Chicago law department seems to, that the Constitution is "an old piece of paper".
Good to know that merely thinking about bad things is the same as doing bad things.
Reading about hacking? Same as hacking!
Reading about [BLANK]? Same as [BLANK]!
This guy is a FUCKING IDIOT.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
His goal is to prevent people from becoming radicalized by preventing them from visiting websites that radicalize people.
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 jail. He wouldn't have met those false friends.
Of course, the supreme court has found this to be unconstitutional, but the article advocates that the supreme court change their opinion. GLWT.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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
"A broken clock is right twice a day?"
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.
They don't want a theocracy
Theocracy is is exactly what they want.
When they are not planning to bring about Armageddon by looking for loopholes in the Bible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens