TSA Screenings seem like an awfully petty thing to be concerned about considering the much larger glitches in the US culture.
A massive, egregious, plain-as-day violation of people's constitutional liberties is not and never will be petty. They molest everyone and violate their rights merely for trying to get on a plane. That is absolutely unacceptable.
Also, the logic of, "There are bigger issues than X, so X isn't bad." is nonsense.
Its sort of like the commenter farther below who put Road Side DUI checks on par with mass unwarranted surveillance of phone and email.
They are *all* constitutional violations, and *all* constitutional violations are serious matters.
There is another difference: In a restaurant, you're serving other people food, which, depending on how contaminated the restaurant is, may be dangerous. I still don't agree with the health inspections you speak of, by the way.
The kinds of health inspections you refer to might not be so different, which would make them unconstitutional. Did you think I would reach any other conclusion?
But there are still differences, and that is that the government may not just make you surrender your rights in exchange for being allowed to do something completely innocuous (and often essential) like driving a car. Anyone who supports such things is an authoritarian scumbag of the highest caliber.
Are you also in favor of the TSA ("You implicitly consent to giving up your 4th amendment rights by trying to get on a plane.")? How about we apply this logic to an entire city? "You implicitly consent to giving up your fourth amendment rights by living in or being in city X. If you don't like it, don't live or be there." It's just a bullshit way to get around constitutional restrictions. I will *never* accept this logic, so give up.
I take it that you object to a forced sobriety test, not the stop.
Yes. Whether or not traffic lights were replaced by a human doesn't matter to me. What matters is the sobriety test.
I think you're proving my point about the black-and-white nature of how people regard free speech in the USA.
How can you say it is black and white when you yourself tried to list an example where it is not?
The US is merely *very strongly* in favor of free speech (except for FCC censorship, obscenity laws, free speech zones, libel, slander, and... holy shit!).
The UK approach is a shades-of-gray one
The UK approaches one where speech is arbitrarily decided to be 'harmful' and is thus banned. It's subjective nonsense that has no place in any free society, much like obscenity laws, or the US's FCC censorship. The idea that speech can be banned for being offensive is simply absurd.
And you say the US is black and white about free speech? Please. We make random, arbitrary, and subjective exceptions to the first amendment all the time, even though it's blatantly unconstitutional.
I'll ignore the idiotic purposeful misreading of the Fire thing...
If you want to really be a pedantic idiot, you *CAN* shout "Fire" if there is NOT a fire as well, even "under our stupid rules," assuming you have functioning vocal cords, are conscious and breathing, etc. The repercussions will just be different.
From your post here, your solution seems to be censorship of "hate speech," and you also go on to make an unfounded claim about how revealing people's identities would halt online bullying, which I have no reason to believe or even care about.
I am 100% opposed to government censorship, and punishing people for "hate speech."
Even if he posted as an AC, why could Slashdot not hand over the IP address of a person who posted a certain comment? I don't think ACs are really anymore anonymous (outside of Slashdot) than pseudonyms.
And meanwhile, as you worry about a hypothetical threat from your government
1) It's not hypothetical; history has shown many thousands of times over that people with power will inevitably abuse it. To say it's merely "hypothetical" demonstrates that you're ignorant of history. 2) Banning anonymity would infringe upon freedom of speech, privacy, and various other rights in and of itself. The government need not 'abuse' it in order for it to harm people's freedoms.
Though I don't expect you to be capable of understanding that infringing upon fundamental freedoms in the name of safety (from fucking bullies, no less) is rather repugnant.
real people with real lives are really having them destroyed by people who put themselves above the law through the mechanism of anonymity.
It's much worse to surrender fundamental freedoms in the name of safety. In the real world, sometimes lives will be lost, and sometimes there isn't a moral solution. Your 'solution' (which won't work anyway) is completely immoral.
I'm happy for you that you're comfortable with a black and white view where there are absolute rights that are the only important things and where any unintended harmful side effects can be explained away somehow
Whereas I am consistently saddened to see that there exist authoritarian fools who would ban something like anonymity merely because it could be abused. That has no business in any free country.
This is why we need ever more advanced tools to make tracking more difficult, and why free software is so important. To make the jobs of you authoritarians that much harder. You will fail, and you will fail hard.
If one agrees that it is within the governments power to license driving, you are compelled to allow inspections to confirm compliance with the license.
Not if doing so violates people's constitutional rights! Once again, this is specifically a violation of the fourth amendment. You are compelled to do no such thing, and especially not by using methods that require searching and/or punishing everyone.
This is what you don't seem to get. You think the ends justify the means. That it's okay to punish innocent people in your pursuit of catching criminals. It is not.
Operating a vehicle on a shared public road is as public as it gets.
The vehicle itself is not public, so this is irrelevant.
Whole different story if there was random road checks to check, for example, for possession of illegal substances. because it does not relate to license compliance.
Except, using your awful logic, they could require *anything* in order to get a license. They could even require that you surrender *all* of your constitutional liberties, including freedom of speech.
This is the same logic used to justify the TSA: "By doing innocuous activity X (driving, trying to get on a plane, etc.), you implicitly consent to giving up some of your liberties." It's absurd, and there is no constitutional basis for this.
Also I don't think "we got along fine" before DUI road checks. I think a lot more families where crushed and maimed.
You said it was essential. I showed you that it's not. The fact is, we accept casualties in the name of freedom all the time, and that's absolutely fine.
So I do understand that it is a nuanced issue, and that YOU don't think they are constitutional. But your supreme court does and your constitution says they are the ones who make that decision right?
The Supreme Court makes many wrong decisions, as you noted. Here is a quote from one of the founders: "You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.
The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him.
The Constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs." -Thomas Jefferson
Judges can be replaced. The people can try to get the government to follow the constitution if they are not doing so. DUI checkpoints are blatantly unconstitutional, no matter what the Supreme Court says.
So that mass panic in the theater would have happened anyway, without anyone shouting "fire"?
Perhaps, but perhaps not. It doesn't matter. The speech does not force anyone to do anything; people choose to panic and trample over others, even if it happens unconsciously.
However, there is another solution to this that doesn't violate anyone's rights: The theater owner can kick morons out of the theater, since he/she owns the property! Wow, I'm a genius. Best of all, this doesn't violate the first amendment ("Congress shall make no law...").
or was it all on the person who committed the act?
It was the person who committed the crime. Of course, depending on the incentive given, the other person may have also committed a crime. In this case, I think saying it's a crime is unconstitutional, which means I disagree with many judges.
So your saying that restaurant health inspectors are unconstitutional?
Why don't you read my post more closely? Particularly, the paragraph after what you quoted. Restaurants are also a public place (in the sense that basically anyone can enter them), so it's not even comparable to a car in any way, shape, or form.
DUI checkpoints, however, are absolutely unconstitutional.
If you think road checks are unconstitutional, why isn't the whole process of requiring a license?
You obviously know nothing of the US constitution. Many issues are handled by the states, but the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the US constitution) were applied to the states via the 14th amendment, so the power of state governments became more limited. DUI checkpoints violate the fourth amendment of the US constitution. The Bill of Rights says nothing about forbidding the government requiring licenses, and since we're talking about the states, they are technically (as far as I know) not forbidden from doing so.
But they must respect both their own constitutions and the US constitution. Again, DUI checkpoints violate the fourth amendment.
"Bad" government is the problem (corrupt or incompetent or both) not any government.
I agree 100%. Bad government punishes or searches everyone merely because some people are criminals/terrorists/whatever.
I think DUI Road checks are a public good and are essential.
Violating everyone's freedoms in the name of catching criminals is not good in any free country, though it might be good in North Korea.
As for being essential, well, we didn't always have DUI checkpoints, and yet we survived. I'm more than willing to sacrifice safety in the name of freedom. So basically, I oppose your thinking 100%.
Notice that I've never commented on how effective DUI checkpoints are or aren't. That's because I don't care.
Having lived in the UK and the US for over a decade each, I have some perspective on this, and personally I think it's worth it
Because you're anti-free speech. I know not all people in the UK despise freedom, just like I know not all people in the US despise freedom; sadly, we may be a minority.
[*] It's not a real absolute in the USA, you can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in the US either
Yes, you can. Even under our stupid rules (most of which violate the constitution), you can at least shout "Fire!" if there is a fire. If you falsely shout it and it causes a panic, then you can be punished. What you said was simply wrong.
Ok how about a food health inspector showing up to inspect your restaurant?
If the constitution does not say the government has such a power, then they don't. That's the end of it.
In the US, many things are left to the states and to the people (it explicitly says that multiple times), so health inspections may be constitutional if the states handle it. However, the bill of rights itself has been applied to the states, so you can't just force people to surrender their rights when they get in a vehicle; that is 100% unconstitutional. That makes DUI checkpoints unconstitutional. There's no amount of ambiguity here for anyone who actually reads the constitution and makes an attempt to understand it.
Again, the solution is simple: Don't punish or search everyone merely because some people are criminals. Instead, have cops on the lookout for people who are actually breaking laws. For instance, swerving around randomly and putting other people in danger. Is not treating everyone like a criminal such a problem?
But it would have nothing to do with the constitutionality of DUI checkpoints. What concerns me is not safety, but freedom. The idea that everyone can be stopped merely because some people drive drunk is, to me, absolutely unacceptable, in addition to being unconstitutional.
Would that be unconstitutional in the USA? Having a step daughter who was at that party (but slept in her van at the party), I was thrilled that the cops responded so quickly.
Someone who was the victim of a crime might be thrilled to know that the police are busting into everyone's home on a fishing expedition looking for evidence. Does that make it right? People who are victims or are directly related to the event are usually biased and emotional; laws and rights become secondary concerns, no matter the consequences.
Perhaps you simply need safeguards.
That wouldn't fix the problem. The problem is that the DUI checkpoints are themselves unconstitutional.
The people on the receiving end of said hate speech would disagree
So you claim to speak for all people who are 'victims' of hate speech?
Furthermore, that's nothing more than an ad hominem attack; a fallacy. "You're not a victim of hate speech, so all of your arguments are invalid." Someone's arguments stand on their own merit, and whether or not they've had hate speech directed at them has nothing to do with whether their arguments are valid.
There are a number of people who will harass you for your viewpoints, and merely banning the behavior will not stop them. For instance, try speaking out against the "for the children" crowd and disagreeing with them about child porn, and you're going to be targeted and called a pedophile. Imagine if they had your real name, and then you might find yourself surrounded by an angry mob - literally. Unpopular viewpoints like that need to be anonymous.
Also, it is a violation of free speech. What happens if you communicate in such a way that you don't reveal your real identity? The government will presumably punish you. Therefore, they're punishing you for the way you communicate, which is definitely a free speech violation.
Everyone seems to forget that we had freedom of speech before the internet
And you could be anonymous even then. Furthermore, voting in many countries is anonymous, and for good reason.
You need to be able to stop people being hateful, terrorising or bullying each other.
We place all sorts of limitation on our governments that make their jobs harder. For instance, governments usually can't just bust into your house for no reason and search everything. Yet, if we allowed that, they might catch more criminals.
Could it be that freedom is more important than safety, and we should not allow the government to ban something merely because it could be abused...?
The restrictions we place on government make the government's job harder. We're under absolutely no obligation to make it easier for them to catch 'criminals' (in this case, people exercising their free speech rights). I'm sure we could catch more criminals if we allowed the government to break into every home for any reason. Hey, that would be people accountable!
In the end, though, freedom is more important than safety. If you disagree, I hear North Korea loves people like you.
Slashdot Mirror
You brush your teeth in the morning to sell yourself to your personal audiences over the people that DON'T brush their teeth in the morning.
I brush my teeth to prevent cavities and help clear up bad breath.
TSA Screenings seem like an awfully petty thing to be concerned about considering the much larger glitches in the US culture.
A massive, egregious, plain-as-day violation of people's constitutional liberties is not and never will be petty. They molest everyone and violate their rights merely for trying to get on a plane. That is absolutely unacceptable.
Also, the logic of, "There are bigger issues than X, so X isn't bad." is nonsense.
Its sort of like the commenter farther below who put Road Side DUI checks on par with mass unwarranted surveillance of phone and email.
They are *all* constitutional violations, and *all* constitutional violations are serious matters.
There is another difference: In a restaurant, you're serving other people food, which, depending on how contaminated the restaurant is, may be dangerous. I still don't agree with the health inspections you speak of, by the way.
How does this differ legally from a DUI stop?
The kinds of health inspections you refer to might not be so different, which would make them unconstitutional. Did you think I would reach any other conclusion?
But there are still differences, and that is that the government may not just make you surrender your rights in exchange for being allowed to do something completely innocuous (and often essential) like driving a car. Anyone who supports such things is an authoritarian scumbag of the highest caliber.
Are you also in favor of the TSA ("You implicitly consent to giving up your 4th amendment rights by trying to get on a plane.")? How about we apply this logic to an entire city? "You implicitly consent to giving up your fourth amendment rights by living in or being in city X. If you don't like it, don't live or be there." It's just a bullshit way to get around constitutional restrictions. I will *never* accept this logic, so give up.
I take it that you object to a forced sobriety test, not the stop.
Yes. Whether or not traffic lights were replaced by a human doesn't matter to me. What matters is the sobriety test.
I think you're proving my point about the black-and-white nature of how people regard free speech in the USA.
How can you say it is black and white when you yourself tried to list an example where it is not?
The US is merely *very strongly* in favor of free speech (except for FCC censorship, obscenity laws, free speech zones, libel, slander, and... holy shit!).
The UK approach is a shades-of-gray one
The UK approaches one where speech is arbitrarily decided to be 'harmful' and is thus banned. It's subjective nonsense that has no place in any free society, much like obscenity laws, or the US's FCC censorship. The idea that speech can be banned for being offensive is simply absurd.
And you say the US is black and white about free speech? Please. We make random, arbitrary, and subjective exceptions to the first amendment all the time, even though it's blatantly unconstitutional.
I'll ignore the idiotic purposeful misreading of the Fire thing...
I didn't misread it.
If you want to really be a pedantic idiot, you *CAN* shout "Fire" if there is NOT a fire as well, even "under our stupid rules," assuming you have functioning vocal cords, are conscious and breathing, etc. The repercussions will just be different.
That's a very good point, too.
Seriously, you're being an ass here.
I don't think so.
It's completely possible to not use Google anything, which was the point.
From your post here, your solution seems to be censorship of "hate speech," and you also go on to make an unfounded claim about how revealing people's identities would halt online bullying, which I have no reason to believe or even care about.
I am 100% opposed to government censorship, and punishing people for "hate speech."
I never said it should be banned.
Right, so implying the system is not perfect is grounds for shipping me to North Korea? Jumping the gun a little...?
Then why did you suggest a "middle ground" with a "minimal impact" on freedom of speech? What could that be?
Stop being lazy. The situation is not black or white.
The situation is black and white. If you suggest we get rid of anonymity or any other such thing, I oppose you 100%. That's black and white.
What is your suggestion that doesn't impact anonymity or freedom of speech one single bit?
You might disagree with how we should tackle this problem
I disagree with every fiber of my being, in fact. I would rather the 'problems' go unsolved than get rid of anonymity.
Even if he posted as an AC, why could Slashdot not hand over the IP address of a person who posted a certain comment? I don't think ACs are really anymore anonymous (outside of Slashdot) than pseudonyms.
And meanwhile, as you worry about a hypothetical threat from your government
1) It's not hypothetical; history has shown many thousands of times over that people with power will inevitably abuse it. To say it's merely "hypothetical" demonstrates that you're ignorant of history.
2) Banning anonymity would infringe upon freedom of speech, privacy, and various other rights in and of itself. The government need not 'abuse' it in order for it to harm people's freedoms.
Though I don't expect you to be capable of understanding that infringing upon fundamental freedoms in the name of safety (from fucking bullies, no less) is rather repugnant.
real people with real lives are really having them destroyed by people who put themselves above the law through the mechanism of anonymity.
It's much worse to surrender fundamental freedoms in the name of safety. In the real world, sometimes lives will be lost, and sometimes there isn't a moral solution. Your 'solution' (which won't work anyway) is completely immoral.
I'm happy for you that you're comfortable with a black and white view where there are absolute rights that are the only important things and where any unintended harmful side effects can be explained away somehow
Whereas I am consistently saddened to see that there exist authoritarian fools who would ban something like anonymity merely because it could be abused. That has no business in any free country.
This is why we need ever more advanced tools to make tracking more difficult, and why free software is so important. To make the jobs of you authoritarians that much harder. You will fail, and you will fail hard.
If one agrees that it is within the governments power to license driving, you are compelled to allow inspections to confirm compliance with the license.
Not if doing so violates people's constitutional rights! Once again, this is specifically a violation of the fourth amendment. You are compelled to do no such thing, and especially not by using methods that require searching and/or punishing everyone.
This is what you don't seem to get. You think the ends justify the means. That it's okay to punish innocent people in your pursuit of catching criminals. It is not.
Operating a vehicle on a shared public road is as public as it gets.
The vehicle itself is not public, so this is irrelevant.
Whole different story if there was random road checks to check, for example, for possession of illegal substances. because it does not relate to license compliance.
Except, using your awful logic, they could require *anything* in order to get a license. They could even require that you surrender *all* of your constitutional liberties, including freedom of speech.
This is the same logic used to justify the TSA: "By doing innocuous activity X (driving, trying to get on a plane, etc.), you implicitly consent to giving up some of your liberties." It's absurd, and there is no constitutional basis for this.
Also I don't think "we got along fine" before DUI road checks. I think a lot more families where crushed and maimed.
You said it was essential. I showed you that it's not. The fact is, we accept casualties in the name of freedom all the time, and that's absolutely fine.
So I do understand that it is a nuanced issue, and that YOU don't think they are constitutional. But your supreme court does and your constitution says they are the ones who make that decision right?
The Supreme Court makes many wrong decisions, as you noted. Here is a quote from one of the founders: "You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.
The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him.
The Constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs." -Thomas Jefferson
Judges can be replaced. The people can try to get the government to follow the constitution if they are not doing so. DUI checkpoints are blatantly unconstitutional, no matter what the Supreme Court says.
So that mass panic in the theater would have happened anyway, without anyone shouting "fire"?
Perhaps, but perhaps not. It doesn't matter. The speech does not force anyone to do anything; people choose to panic and trample over others, even if it happens unconsciously.
However, there is another solution to this that doesn't violate anyone's rights: The theater owner can kick morons out of the theater, since he/she owns the property! Wow, I'm a genius. Best of all, this doesn't violate the first amendment ("Congress shall make no law...").
or was it all on the person who committed the act?
It was the person who committed the crime. Of course, depending on the incentive given, the other person may have also committed a crime. In this case, I think saying it's a crime is unconstitutional, which means I disagree with many judges.
So your saying that restaurant health inspectors are unconstitutional?
Why don't you read my post more closely? Particularly, the paragraph after what you quoted. Restaurants are also a public place (in the sense that basically anyone can enter them), so it's not even comparable to a car in any way, shape, or form.
DUI checkpoints, however, are absolutely unconstitutional.
If you think road checks are unconstitutional, why isn't the whole process of requiring a license?
You obviously know nothing of the US constitution. Many issues are handled by the states, but the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the US constitution) were applied to the states via the 14th amendment, so the power of state governments became more limited. DUI checkpoints violate the fourth amendment of the US constitution. The Bill of Rights says nothing about forbidding the government requiring licenses, and since we're talking about the states, they are technically (as far as I know) not forbidden from doing so.
But they must respect both their own constitutions and the US constitution. Again, DUI checkpoints violate the fourth amendment.
"Bad" government is the problem (corrupt or incompetent or both) not any government.
I agree 100%. Bad government punishes or searches everyone merely because some people are criminals/terrorists/whatever.
I think DUI Road checks are a public good and are essential.
Violating everyone's freedoms in the name of catching criminals is not good in any free country, though it might be good in North Korea.
As for being essential, well, we didn't always have DUI checkpoints, and yet we survived. I'm more than willing to sacrifice safety in the name of freedom. So basically, I oppose your thinking 100%.
Notice that I've never commented on how effective DUI checkpoints are or aren't. That's because I don't care.
Having lived in the UK and the US for over a decade each, I have some perspective on this, and personally I think it's worth it
Because you're anti-free speech. I know not all people in the UK despise freedom, just like I know not all people in the US despise freedom; sadly, we may be a minority.
[*] It's not a real absolute in the USA, you can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in the US either
Yes, you can. Even under our stupid rules (most of which violate the constitution), you can at least shout "Fire!" if there is a fire. If you falsely shout it and it causes a panic, then you can be punished. What you said was simply wrong.
Ok how about a food health inspector showing up to inspect your restaurant?
If the constitution does not say the government has such a power, then they don't. That's the end of it.
In the US, many things are left to the states and to the people (it explicitly says that multiple times), so health inspections may be constitutional if the states handle it. However, the bill of rights itself has been applied to the states, so you can't just force people to surrender their rights when they get in a vehicle; that is 100% unconstitutional. That makes DUI checkpoints unconstitutional. There's no amount of ambiguity here for anyone who actually reads the constitution and makes an attempt to understand it.
Again, the solution is simple: Don't punish or search everyone merely because some people are criminals. Instead, have cops on the lookout for people who are actually breaking laws. For instance, swerving around randomly and putting other people in danger. Is not treating everyone like a criminal such a problem?
For example here in Norway all phone numbers must have an owner identified with our version of an SSN, even unlisted and prepaid numbers.
What a sad state of affairs.
It would be interesting to know.
But it would have nothing to do with the constitutionality of DUI checkpoints. What concerns me is not safety, but freedom. The idea that everyone can be stopped merely because some people drive drunk is, to me, absolutely unacceptable, in addition to being unconstitutional.
Would that be unconstitutional in the USA? Having a step daughter who was at that party (but slept in her van at the party), I was thrilled that the cops responded so quickly.
Someone who was the victim of a crime might be thrilled to know that the police are busting into everyone's home on a fishing expedition looking for evidence. Does that make it right? People who are victims or are directly related to the event are usually biased and emotional; laws and rights become secondary concerns, no matter the consequences.
Perhaps you simply need safeguards.
That wouldn't fix the problem. The problem is that the DUI checkpoints are themselves unconstitutional.
The people on the receiving end of said hate speech would disagree
So you claim to speak for all people who are 'victims' of hate speech?
Furthermore, that's nothing more than an ad hominem attack; a fallacy. "You're not a victim of hate speech, so all of your arguments are invalid." Someone's arguments stand on their own merit, and whether or not they've had hate speech directed at them has nothing to do with whether their arguments are valid.
There are a number of people who will harass you for your viewpoints, and merely banning the behavior will not stop them. For instance, try speaking out against the "for the children" crowd and disagreeing with them about child porn, and you're going to be targeted and called a pedophile. Imagine if they had your real name, and then you might find yourself surrounded by an angry mob - literally. Unpopular viewpoints like that need to be anonymous.
Also, it is a violation of free speech. What happens if you communicate in such a way that you don't reveal your real identity? The government will presumably punish you. Therefore, they're punishing you for the way you communicate, which is definitely a free speech violation.
Everyone seems to forget that we had freedom of speech before the internet
And you could be anonymous even then. Furthermore, voting in many countries is anonymous, and for good reason.
You need to be able to stop people being hateful, terrorising or bullying each other.
We place all sorts of limitation on our governments that make their jobs harder. For instance, governments usually can't just bust into your house for no reason and search everything. Yet, if we allowed that, they might catch more criminals.
Could it be that freedom is more important than safety, and we should not allow the government to ban something merely because it could be abused...?
The restrictions we place on government make the government's job harder. We're under absolutely no obligation to make it easier for them to catch 'criminals' (in this case, people exercising their free speech rights). I'm sure we could catch more criminals if we allowed the government to break into every home for any reason. Hey, that would be people accountable!
In the end, though, freedom is more important than safety. If you disagree, I hear North Korea loves people like you.
and I know how important others' opinions are to a person at that age.
Well, I don't. Not everyone was oversensitive as a teen.
Bullying is a form of harrassing, which tends to be illegal.
If saying something repeatedly to someone online qualifies as "harassment," and it's illegal, then that country is not a free country at all.
Furthermore, "bullying" is subjective. What is and is not offensive is subjective. Great standards there, fool.
Even in free-speech countries like the U.S. Terrorism-advocacy tends to have its own special laws.
Even if that is so, all it proves is that the government ignores the constitution. We need to fix that, not make it worse.
Shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater necessarily leads directly to the harm of others
Nope. Wrong. Panicking and trampling over people does that, but it's not the speaker who directly made them do that.