Newt Gingrich Says Visiting An ISIS Or Al Qaeda Website Should Be A Felony (techdirt.com)

flopsquad writes: Following the July 14th terror attack in Nice, France, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called for U.S. Muslims to be tested for their belief in Sharia law, and if so, deported: "Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in Sharia they should be deported," Gingrich said in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity. While the cleverest few might try to defeat such a test by answering "No," Mr. Gingrich laid out additional steps to shore up the plan: "The first step is you have to ask them the questions. The second step is you have to monitor what they're doing on the internet. The third step is, let me be very clear, you have to monitor the mosques. I mean, if you're not prepared to monitor the mosques, this whole thing is a joke." Gingrich also opined that "Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS, or Al-Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. No word on the First and Fourth Amendment implications of his proposals, nor on where Gingrich plans to deport U.S. citizens who fail his Sharia test. Gingrich went on to say: "Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felon. It should be closed down immediately. Our forces should be used to systematically destroy every internet based source..." Mike Masnick from Techdirt writes: "Merely visiting a website should put you in jail? What if you're a journalist? Or a politician? Or a researcher trying to understand ISIS? That should be a felony? That's not how it works. This also assumes, idiotically, that merely reading a website about ISIS will make people side with ISIS. It's also not, at all, how the law works. Same with the second part about it being a felony to host such content."

Comments

Re:So what is YOUR plan? Better economics

[shanen]

Kind of surprised to see something along the lines of an insightful discussion on today's slashdot, so I'll give a shot to answering the question (since I haven't found such an answer yet). It's actually an economic model that could be of interest to slashdot, insofar as slashdot is some sort of journalistic enterprise.

Solution: STOP supporting the terrorists with FREE publicity. I'm not saying that the journalists shouldn't report the terrorist incidents, but they need to stop using deliberate publicity-seeking disaster porn as part of their business model. The never-ending quest for more eyeballs to sell more ads is giving the advantage to the terrorists. The more outrageous the terrorist act, the more free publicity and the HARDER the mass media works to give the terrorists more free publicity. In case you haven't noticed, it is NOT discouraging the terrorists from trying to devise ever more horrendous attacks.

Instead, ALL of the responsible mainstream media sources should agree NOT to compete for eyeballs with disaster porn produced by terrorists. The reports of terrorist incidents should be unified and limited. They should form a special consortium to prepare the reports on terrorists incidents, and all of the media sources would only broadcast the SAME stories about the terrorist acts. The stories would avoid sensationalism and simply report the terrible facts. Each media source could use all of the reports, or some of them, but it would not be a competition for eyeballs for terrorists. Actually, the incentives would now be reversed, and all of the media sources would be motivated to produce more news about other stories so they can compete for those precious eyeballs--but without helping or encouraging the terrorists.

Free publicity is an oxymoron. It is incredibly valuable. Just ask the Donald.

Re:What is the MightyMartian plan?

[ATMAvatar]

Mass murder is becoming common because of ISIS. You don't like Newt's ideas.

What are your ideas?

Don't bring us a problem, we have enough of those. Bring us a solution.

The Orlando massacre, while tragic, would have to occur daily to crack the top 5 causes of death. Even then, I'm not sure it would. If you took the combined global death tolls of every terrorist act in the last two decades and condensed them into a single quarter, then put it on repeat, it still wouldn't make the top 5 annual US deaths.

Terrorism is vastly overblown as a threat to any of us. Far more damage is done to our daily lives in the name of stopping terrorism than has ever been done in the name of it.

So, I agree the best solution is not to do nothing - the best solution is to dismantle all the somethings people have done in the last two decades under the guise of protecting us from terrorism.