Thoughtcrime

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/05/thoughtcrime.html

by panarky • 11 years ago

344 257 11 years ago

nodata• 11 years ago

I COMPLETELY missed what Cameron said the first time. Like, completely:

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'."

Obeying the law is no longer enough. Great.

scrollaway3• 11 years ago

I've actually gotten depressed at the results of the election. I was scheduled to go back to the UK in a few months, but decided to move to another country instead.

Cameron is on a rampage. I've never feared rapid descent into dictatorship until now. I'm well and truly afraid of what the UK will look like in 4 years.

higherpurpose2• 11 years ago

Can anyone share why exactly the Liberal Democrats, who seem to have been against this sort of stuff, got crushed at the recent elections? Was it because of some unpopular positions or were there many "scandals" that appeared regarding their candidates (perhaps about personal issues?).

teh_klev• 11 years ago

As someone living in Scotland I am rather hoping this will expedite our eventual independence.

RobertoG• 11 years ago

Good luck in your new country but this looks like a global trend to me.

petercooper2• 11 years ago

Cameron is on a rampage. I've never feared rapid descent into dictatorship until now. I'm well and truly afraid of what the UK will look like in 4 years.

A lot of people said that about Bush in 2004. People are alarmist. Status quo is generally maintained with only minor changes in course - that's what our political systems are designed to do.

gadders8• 11 years ago

Well, a very large proportion of the population is pleased at the results of the election. I think that things would be much, much worse if the hard-left Milliband Labour Party had won the election.

danieltillett• 11 years ago

I am not sure of the context in which Cameron's quote came from, but societies and governments interfere all the time in activities that are legal. Take smoking tobacco for example, totally legal yet there is tremendous effort put into discouraging this activity.

restalis• 11 years ago

"societies and governments interfere all the time in activities that are legal"

Actually, societies and (especially) governments are the ones defining what is or isn't legal.

mikeash5• 11 years ago

Some context: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/counter-terro...

Smokers are still left alone. We discourage smoking by limiting where it's legal and making it more expensive, but smokers are still totally free to do what they like within the law. Cameron seems to be saying that people who don't share his values will be harassed somehow.

paganel• 11 years ago

I'm afraid you can't buy a copy of the Glorifying Terrorism SF anthology (it's out of print, and not going to be reprinted or published as an ebook any time soon, because of the ongoing VATMESS headache)

I wonder if in this day and age a 500-year old book like "Vindiciae contra tyrannos" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos) would land his/her author in jail. I suppose it would. And I cannot remember the exact title, but there were books similar with this one, written at about the same time, which were advocating for even more drastic measures: i.e. the assassination of the tyrant/king.

Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say "I want to kill the President of the United States of America" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY), the UK had remained one of the few countries where a liberty of speech "loophole" was still in place. Sad to see it gone.

declan• 11 years ago

Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say

Note the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this threat against the life of a sitting president was protected by the First Amendment:

"If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J."

Here's the text of the opinion; it's a famous 1A case: http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/705.html

Radle• 11 years ago

I thought I'm fucked in my country, guess what, this has blown my mind.

Lawtonfogle19• 11 years ago

I've been moving more and more to the notion that freedom of speech is an all or nothing proposition. On a technical level when dealing with systems that protect the transfer of information such as encryption, this is an absolute, because the technology that provides the security (and thus freedom) cares not the content and any backdoor would destroy all integrity regardless of how it is used. But there has been a notion that laws, rights, and duties do not have the same requirement. We can build compromises in the laws, so we should be able to create a system where only the stuff that should be banned is banned and all other speech is free, no? But now I doubt that, as any ban sacrifices the integrity of the entire system. Maybe in theory it is still possible, but as many of us have seen time and time again, theory and practice differ far more in practice than in theory.

From this, I've moved to adopting an ever stricter view of all speech as being free. I will not say it is perfect as it does have flaws. But the flaws are a small price to pay to ensure one of the axiomatic rights is defended. For without free speech, we lose the power to criticize, to discuss, to be democratic.

While I know the author isn't regarded quite as highly in the UK and the US, I think the following passage captures the importance of the exchange of information being free.

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

collyw4• 11 years ago

I thought that it was fairly obvious that it is an all or nothing. "Freedom of speech, except you can't say that" isn't freedom of speech.

hahainternet4• 11 years ago

What utter nonsense. "Freedom of speech, except you can't harass rape victims".

It's still freedom of speech.

rmc11• 11 years ago

By that logic, no-where as freedom of speech, and it's highly unlikely that anywhere every will, since it will require abolishing many laws that many people desire (like medical privacy or copyright).

po8crg5• 11 years ago

"freedom of speech, except you can't lie under oath in the witness box"?

higherpurpose2• 11 years ago

The Washington Post had a recent article on this saying that basically there is no "hate speech" loophole in the 1st Amendment:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015...

The problem (as usual) with the US law system is that it allows unconstitutional laws to pass through the legislative and executive bodies (which aren't specialized in the Constitution, just in the "will of the People") without official judicial preview. It can then take decades (if ever) to verify if a law that makes something illegal is actually constitutional (at the Supreme Court).

That's how you end up with unconstitutional laws 5 decades later, and some lower Court judges just end up upholding that law because they don't want to upset the cart, allowing for the existence of the law decades more.

See the recent ruling on Patriot Act's bulk collection. It took 14 years just to reach an Appeals Court. If the USA Freedom Act reinstates some of Patriot Act's unconstitutional powers, it may take another 14 years before it reaches the same level.

ikeboy3• 11 years ago

Bullshit. The bulk connection was not found unconstitutional, it was found illegal because the Patriot act didn't authorise it.

vacri9• 11 years ago

I have it on clear authority that Lawtonfogle is a thief; a liar; an adulterer; responsible for a toxic spill that poisoned kids; stole from the pension accounts; rigged elections; and whatever political affiliation the reader might have, Lawtonfogle is the extreme opposite... and thinks your fashion sense sucks. Ultimately, Lawtonfogle can't act, can't sing, and can only dance a little.

It's actually pretty hard for someone with little or no resources to fight defamation as it is. Take away their recourse in an 'all or nothing free speech!' drive, and it's game over. It's also hardly 'a small price', if socially powerful people can just outright lie about a person and never be compelled to back it up.

And hey, fuck it - as a boss, I could say "Black people are inherently stupid, don't hire them". My hypothetical staff then take me at my word and don't hire them. There's no formal policy, it's just something I said. But I point at "no limitation on freedom of speech" and then any laws on discrimination are basically null and void.

Insurance companies in the US already have departments dedicated to getting them out of their contracts. Imagine how much easier their jobs would be if they could just flat-out lie, with no legal repurcussions? People can jaw all they want about 'the market would correct itself', but if you've already captured the market, fighting dirty keeps you strong - especially with a product with a very high barrier to entry.

The idea that freedom of speech is an all-or-nothing event is a simplistic, extremist position, that doesn't survive contact with the real world. You can still criticise, discuss, and be democratic with some restrictions on freedom of speech - pretty much all the nations we call 'western democracies' do exactly that.

JupiterMoon17• 11 years ago

So basically people shouldn't lie about things that harm other people?

Having the potential for civil action over defamation does not exclude people's right to say what they want. They are merely restricted to saying accurate things or else having to pay some money to the person they've lied about.

I do find it slightly surreal that defamation is being discussed in the context of the UK - a country with (even following the excellent reforms of 2013) the most ridiculous libel laws around.

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

The idea that freedom of speech is an all-or-nothing event is a simplistic, extremist position, that doesn't survive contact with the real world. You can still criticise, discuss, and be democratic with some restrictions on freedom of speech - pretty much all the nations we call 'western democracies' do exactly that.

See, you are casually ignoring he is talking about top-down Government censorship rather than the kind of speech that opens you up to civil liability (defamation).

Defamation, libel, etc. laws are necessary to prevent abuse of speech to the point it causes financial damage via falsehoods.

However, it does not require government censorship and prior restraint which is what the UK Government is advocating.

----

EDIT (to get around post timer, this is the last time I'm responding to you because your argument is just disingenuous at best):

...that is such a disingenuous argument that I'm assuming you are just are oblivious.

So let's change it to government censorship: an absolute stance with no restrictions on freedom of speech now means that there is now no longer any confidential or secret information. No need for spies - senior government employees can just sell national secrets to the highest bidder, and if they're found out, hey, speech is not restricted.

No one is suggesting people are suddenly immune to contract law or NDAs, which solve this problem. You simply sue such people for breech of contract until its not financially profitable to sell such information.

And privacy laws go out the window. It's not defamation if it's accurate, right? So now people in the NHS can quite happily spread around gossip of your private medical history. Privacy laws are specifically, at their core, top-down government censorship.

...no?

NDAs also solve this problem and/or a requirement for NDAs.

The problem with free speech restriction is not that you can't ask people to sign NDAs in return for a job. The problem with free speech restrictions is when it restraints everyone.

I really don't think you are getting the concept that:

A) Everyone has a right to exercise their freedom of speech without restriction.

B) If they lie, break a contractual obligation, or otherwise cause destruction...they can still be forced to suffer civil financial penalties via the Courts to deter such activities without massive justification. None of this requires Government censorship beyond "NHS employees must sign NDAs" [e.g. Snowden would have stayed in the US if he would have been bankrupted rather than thrown in prison for decades, I bet]

Lawtonfogle19• 11 years ago

I have it on clear authority that Lawtonfogle is a thief; a liar; an adulterer; responsible for a toxic spill that poisoned kids; stole from the pension accounts; rigged elections; and whatever political affiliation the reader might have, Lawtonfogle is the extreme opposite... and thinks your fashion sense sucks. Ultimately, Lawtonfogle can't act, can't sing, and can only dance a little.

All that put together isn't even half as bad as some of the things others have called me.

if socially powerful people can just outright lie about a person and never be compelled to back it up.

They already can. Those with enough resources can get lawyers that allow them to get up next to the line without crossing it.

And hey, fuck it - as a boss, I could say "Black people are inherently stupid, don't hire them". My hypothetical staff then take me at my word and don't hire them. There's no formal policy, it's just something I said. But I point at "no limitation on freedom of speech" and then any laws on discrimination are basically null and void.

Official policy has never been a requirement for discrimination lawsuits.

Insurance companies in the US already have departments dedicated to getting them out of their contracts. Imagine how much easier their jobs would be if they could just flat-out lie, with no legal repurcussions? People can jaw all they want about 'the market would correct itself', but if you've already captured the market, fighting dirty keeps you strong - especially with a product with a very high barrier to entry.

Freedom of speech still means you are held to that speech when you sign it as a contract. Trying to stretch contract laws as being related to freedom of speech is showing an extreme attempt to stretch.

a simplistic

It has far more thought to it than the notion that free speech means contract law is void or that discrimination is legalized.

extremist

Being such a core right, any position is that of an extremist.

that doesn't survive contact with the real world

Neither does the very concept of rights. Out in a jungle, no right you have will protect you from someone or something that wants your resources.

You can still criticise, discuss, and be democratic with some restrictions on freedom of speech

Yes, for the issues that those in power don't reall care about. Those are the bread and circus; hope we enjoy it.

pretty much all the nations we call 'western democracies' do exactly that.

Appeal to popularity? All goverments also engage in rights violations that we would not stand to defend.

cookiecaper• 11 years ago

And hey, fuck it - as a boss, I could say "Black people are inherently stupid, don't hire them".

You can already say this and not get in trouble, though it definitely wouldn't help your case in the event that a rejected black applicant chose to sue you for discrimination. The plaintiff would need to show a preponderance of evidence that they were passed over specifically because of their race and they would've surely been hired otherwise. A general statement showing a dislike for black people isn't sufficient. Discrimination is a civil, not a criminal, offense.

IANAL, this is to the best of my knowledge.

bsenftner• 11 years ago

I've always felt that "free speech" is only one side of the coin, our civilization needs to promote the education of critical thinking. In a free speech society, critical thought is essential, as it is the tool to filter all speech one encounters, from political to commercial to religious to nonsense.

Lawtonfogle19• 11 years ago

It is important, so important that much of modern day schooling is designed to brutally eviscerate it.

adnam• 11 years ago

It was Thomas Paine who said it was only the absence of knowledge that could keep a man ignorant; but while he maybe kept ignorant he cannot be MADE ignorant. Therefore free society should recognise people as rational beings and leave them to discover the truth by their own devices. Incidentally, most arguments for totalitarianism start with the opposite view: people need protecting from "dangerous" ideas.

The truth will out. You can't fool all the people all the time. Etc.

woah• 11 years ago

What about child porn?

JupiterMoon17• 11 years ago

Pictures of people being harmed (child abuse images are not porn) are not speech they are evidence of a crime.

EDIT To make things clear.

I used the words child abuse images.

This may have been a hint that I was talking about images of actual child abuse rather than selfies taken by teenagers.

We are in a discussion about an ideal world. Let's imagine that if we were really in a position that governments were legislating about absolute freedom of speech they could also draw up some non stupid laws to protect victims of child abuse?

Munksgaard• 11 years ago

What about it? It is certainly detestable, and we should prosecute whoever produces it, but censoring is censoring. There are some good articles by Rick Falkvinge[0] that has been discussed here a couple of times[1].

0: http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/11/child-porn-laws-arent-as-bad...

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4495914

ctdonath8• 11 years ago

Impose severe punishment for the process of creating/acquiring that content, and for subsequent actions inspired by it. (Presumably I need not elaborate on the details.) Like "life in prison" severe.

Lawtonfogle19• 11 years ago

What of the reddit sub that hosts pictures of dead children? What of videos of adults being sexually abused (not staged, actual abuse)? What of videos/images of other crimes that could cause emotional damage to those victims if the content were to spread? What of the abuse of the current laws to punish teens for engaging in what is quickly becoming normal behavior? What of the potential for the government to create systems to catch this one exception we make that we then once again find being pushed to cover other areas? What of making drawings/computer generated images illegal?

I will say this one area is probably the harshest test of the viewpoint, especially giving current social norms and morals. And I will say that the view point isn't perfect, only the best of the limited choices available. As such, there are areas where the outcomes are less than ideal.

And of course, production of such material would still involve a horrific crime that would be met with extremely harsh punishment. It may even force authorities to focus on producers, which would increase the number of children rescued.

ikeboy3• 11 years ago

I used to feel like this as well. Then I read http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo... , and started thinking some restrictions may work.

sillygoose7• 11 years ago

The article seems to be suggesting that it's alright to limit freedom of speech a little, as long as some "suitable" Schelling points are established.

But that doesn't work because Schelling points are subjective. You can't reliably convince everyone that some specific arbitrary threshold should never be crossed, because it will surely lead to doom. Some might agree, and others will see things in a different way.

That's why it's pointless to even try, and that's why it's pointless to think about freedom of speech in terms of Schelling points.

So how about just pretending there's a Schelling point at 100% of freedom of speech? Any concession from that will inevitably lead to more, and besides, losing our freedom of speech is not a clear-cut phenomenon anyway.

It's a bit like new currency entering circulation at various points in the economy - some people's perceptions of what's acceptable will shift before others', but will in turn affect the perceptions of others around them. Freedom of speech rots in arbitrary, unpredictable and uneven ways.

rayiner3• 11 years ago

There are two dimensions here: when is speech protected, and what is speech? If speech is just speech, it's easy to give it very broad protections. But we also consider physical actions to be speech (e.g. protesting). Clearly you can't allow people to engage in any action as long as they call it free expression. So it's a "nothing" proposition, where the government can ban any sort of protest activity.

Lawtonfogle19• 11 years ago

Even spoken words can be magnified til they cause physical damage. In general, it is the information itself that must be held immune from restriction, not the physical expression via sound, light, or other physical medium.

Also, I'm not as clear yet on my views of the rights of protesting and assembly. I consider these important, but I have not yet thought through them and they may not need to be so binary in nature.

john_b2• 11 years ago

I think it's relatively easy to distinguish "speech" from "speech plus other action," such as protesting. Even someone who supported free speech and a person's right to protest wouldn't likely support them protesting on their front lawn because other rights besides freedom of speech exist (such as property rights).

I don't think it's controversial in Western societies that freedom of expression, especially in spoken or written form, is one of the most important rights of a free society, and as such is worthy of protection. Other actions associated with that speech may not be protected, so we need to distinguish between them.

ctdonath8• 11 years ago

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...

Well put ... and does not absolve anyone of the consequences of their speech. People keep forgetting that exercise of rights have consequences for which they may/must be held accountable for. Say what you like, but be aware that you are still accountable for how you obtained that content, or what happens as a result of what you say.

sillygoose7• 11 years ago

Say what you like, but be aware that you are still accountable for how you obtained that content, or what happens as a result of what you say.

In other words, say what you like, but don't be surprised when they haul you off to a concentration camp for being a naughty little thought-criminal, huh? It's your fault for saying whatever you said! You should have been more careful!

ecdavis3• 11 years ago

To counter your opinion, I will quote to you from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The US Bill of Rights is simply an acknowledgment of the inalienable right to free speech, is it not a definition. The role of the US Constitution is to define the powers of the US federal government. The absence of a protection from private attacks on free speech is not an endorsement thereof. It's simply the nature of the document.

All too often I see the expression, "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences." In fact, that's precisely what it is. The freedom to say what you want without being punished for doing so, whether that punishment be execution, imprisonment, social exclusion or anything else. Society seems to be accepting some limitations to free speech (i.e. shouting fire in a crowded theater, personal political opinions having professional ramifications, etc.). If we've decided, as a society, that it is necessary to limit free speech then let's be honest about it. We should not present those limitations as some inevitable part of having free speech in the first place.

Freedom of speech is freedom from consequences. That we have decided consequences are sometimes necessary is a testament to how much we value freedom of speech.

learnstats29• 11 years ago

Free speech as a right to criticise government is exceptionally important.

Free speech as a right to abuse people is not something I want to see in Europe.

I don't see these as being the same. I think there is something wrong with the common English language usage that we use the same term to cover multiple definitions.

bmmayer13• 11 years ago

That is the question of course: who gets to decide what constitutes 'abuse'? Do you trust anyone in your government to decide which of the words, writings, blog posts, comments or tweets you make constitute 'abuse' of another person?

Given that the go-to rhetoric of so many political and religious groups is to be "offended" as a substitute for being right, laws that restrict 'hate' speech or 'abuse' speech create more legal cover for the people who are least willing to cope with criticism than the people who are most vulnerable to abuse.

And, usually, you will find that the people who are least willing to cope with criticism are the people who should be most criticized, because no one's ideas are sacrosanct.

Freedom of speech is also the freedom to listen, or not to listen. Abuse and hate can be countered with more robust freedom of speech, more social shunning, more economic boycotting--it does not require government intervention to curb all the 'isms'.

Singletoned2• 11 years ago

I agree that there is potentially a distinction. Speech that is restricted in public (eg through a public libel trial) is different to speech that is restricted by preventing the person from ever speaking.

In the former, you get to state your opinions publicly but then have to defend them, but no secrets are kept.

angersock3• 11 years ago

So, the devil of it is, governments--especially ones with elected officials--are made of people, and so criticizing the government and its officers often looks quite a bit like abuse.

john_b2• 11 years ago

Nobody wants to see abusive speech being used. The question is whether or not the law should "protect" people from it. I'm not talking about making credible threats, because the crime of assault already covers that.

If a society decides that abusive speech is a special case that must not be tolerated, it also has to define what "abusive speech" is. This requires, by its very nature, a subjective and often emotional interpretation. That society must also determine whether unintentionally abusive speech is a crime.

If the law is charged with protecting people against abusive or potentially abusive speech, it has to have powers necessary to do so. This requires the power to censor, the power to silence dissenting voices, and the power to (re)interpret the words of others based on the emotional reaction of anyone who hears those words (which may not be the intended audience).

Those powers undermine the use of speech for all purposes, not just ones that society deems appropriate.

I don't understand why people seem to think that any kind of distinction here can be enforced without undermining free speech as a whole. By way of example, you have property rights and if, by exercising them, you erect a hideous statue on your property which your neighbor finds offensive, your neighbor has no right to have the statue torn down simply because he finds it distasteful.

Freedom of speech is only really valuable when you're saying something that someone might want to censor. Nobody cares if you're saying something everyone already agrees with.

bmelton2• 11 years ago

"Free speech as a right to abuse people is not something I want to see"

And if you take that to mean "people" as any group of people, then it means you aren't free to speak out against ISIS, or the attackers at Charlie Hebdo, or those doing things you think are objectively wrong.

In parts of the world now, it is not socially acceptable to speak out against the actions of Israel, as such critiques are considered anti-Semitic. Maybe this is fair, but if the Israeli state begins decapitating innocent people in the streets, should you be allowed to condemn it publicly?

It's a nice fantasy that the disenfranchised could somehow be immune from hateful or critical speech, but to suggest that there's ever any group that qualifies as saintly enough to deserve such protections is, I think, naive at best.

jwally2• 11 years ago

Completely Agree.

To play devil's advocate, what about treason (or some other form of state secret sharing)? When Julius (and allegedly) Ethyl Rosenberg shared secrets from the Manhattan Project with the Soviets, should it have been a crime, let alone a capital one?

Conversely, if the government can say that certain speech is Treason, what stops it from declaring any speech it doesn't like Treason?

Lawtonfogle19• 11 years ago

I think the notion of security through obscurity has been sufficiently handled.

Also, the ability to classify nothing is preferable to the ability to classify anything as the power will be abused with increasing extents.

kingmanaz• 11 years ago

Rather than freedom being defined as "doing what one wants", Kant defined freedom as man "rising above his animal instincts" (sp).

In other words, it's perfectly natural and convenient to behave like the "free" and "extreme" tattooed apes pandered to in modern television commercials, whereas it takes relative effort be polite and follow the golden rule.

Ask yourself who is more "free", the chair-throwers on Jerry Springer, or, Scott's Rob Roy who was shackled for refusing to lie about a stranger.

America, given its near constant prating about freedom, is itself in dire need of a dialectic on its essence.

angersock3• 11 years ago

That's well and good, but you've done little to address the notion of free speech.

Sure sounds pretty, though.

anExcitedBeast• 11 years ago

You are talking about two distinct concepts. The Constitutional Convention was concerned about individual liberty and protection from overbearing government, not personal enlightenment.

aidenn0• 11 years ago

It takes some herculean logic twisting to claim that someone who is not shackled is less free than someone who is.

If you are locked away and your speach censored, then rising above your animal instincts does you, at best, only personal good. If you are not locked away, then rising above your animal instincts could let you do good to some larger fraction of the world.

api• 11 years ago

You're conflating private spirituality and philosophy with civic matters like law; inner with outer. The latter is powerless to affect the former. The chair thrower and the erudite intellectual must be subject to the same law. Otherwise the law becomes arbitrary.

ams61102• 11 years ago

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

-- John Adams

angersock3• 11 years ago

I would consider myself a free-speech absolutist. I support, unconditionally, anybody's ability to say anything without government intervention.

Unfortunately, the only checks on this vast power--vast especially now given the ability of mass point-to-point communication--are caused by a decent education and the ability to use said education to think critically about things.

The sad fact of the matter, though, is that at least half of everyone is below-average in this regard, and not only not worthy of such freedom but indeed likely to make life miserable for the other half by way of doing such things as parroting nonsense or abuse.

aagha• 11 years ago

Though I agree, I can't help but think of Anwar al-Awlaki [0]--the first US citizen killed by JSOC [1] for what seems to be his expression of anti-US sentiment (and calls for violence against America & Americans). That said, he was a) an American citizen and b) expressing what one might consider his freedom of speech.

Is speech protected only in so far as that we agree with it and that should someone say something we're not comfortable with (e.g., "I hate the US policy in Country X and think the US should be stopped") we should have the right to stop them, or should there be no barriers on it whatsoever?

0 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Special_Operations_Comman...

bmmayer13• 11 years ago

His situation was markedly different. He actually took up arms against the United States. That isn't protected by the First Amendment.

snickerdoodles• 11 years ago

and the other amendments (to the US Constitution) are all absolute too. It's not a right if it can be restricted.

thewarrior• 11 years ago

Ah the irony of this happening in George Orwell's own country.

I think Orwell intended it as an extreme dystopian vision meant to serve as a cautionary tale for future generations.

Instead it seems that our leaders are using it as a blue print for a technological panopticon that could way beyond what even Orwell imagined.

contingencies• 11 years ago

Yes. Fun fact: Orwell lived in a cheap hostel in Whitechapel known as Tower House, Stalin was another occupant. At the time it was next to a Jewish synagogue, these days that's closed down and it's behind London's largest mosque, next to a very well regarded (by Londoners) Indian restaurant. Later the building was abandoned and gained a reputation for drugs and violence... people used to throw themselves off the upper storeys to effect a quick suicide. Later on it was fixed but by a Cypriate real estate investor and carved up in to cheap units. I had a go at living there, and successfully sublet a room to a guy on the interest rate committee of the Bank of England. Hosting this social mobility in a hundred years ... not bad for a building on a backstreet!

EthanHeilman• 11 years ago

More details on the Stalin, Orwell, Whitechapel connection. Jack London visited it as well.

Stalin "fetched up in London in 1907, living in a Jubilee Street tenement flat – the future home of Golda Berk."[0].

"Tower House was immortalised in 1933, when George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, praised it as the 'best of all common lodging houses with excellent bathrooms'."[1]

"Jack London, the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang was first in the line of anarchists, authors and lost souls to shelter here. He christened it The Great Monster Doss House in his seminal work of living among the East End poor, People of the Abyss, in 1902."[1]

[0] http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-ea...

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy...

gress• 11 years ago

I'm not sure that Orwell had much faith that he was writing an extreme cautionary tale, rather that he was just exposing what he saw as real forces acting in politics.

JupiterMoon17• 11 years ago

I would encourage UK based people to join the various pressure groups and political organisations (e.g. the Liberal Democrat party, the Open Rights Group etc) that campaign (and in the case of the LibDems actually vote in the commons against) against the sort of Stasist legislation that Cameron's government is trying to push through.

Do remember that the UK's informal version of a constitution does not allow the Lords a lot of scope to change or reject e.g. the Snoopers charter. (It is convention that the Lords doesn't oppose things that were in the ruling party's manifesto..) Therefore there is not a lot of time to act on these issues.

vdaniuk• 11 years ago

So, is V for Vendetta still legal in UK?

JupiterMoon17• 11 years ago

We are not there yet. When one boils a frog one must increase the temperature slowly.

dghf3• 11 years ago

Never mind V for Vendetta, what about Robin Hood? Hard-left propaganda glorifying armed robbery and violence against public officials under the guise of wealth redistribution.

In the eighties series Robin of Sherwood, the Sheriff does at one point describe Robin and his gang as terrorists.

gadders8• 11 years ago

That's strange, as Robin Hood is a right-wing hero, fighting against excessive taxation and oppressive government.

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

A second foreign policy adviser to Mr Romney said: “Cameron’s contacts with Republicans are really quite limited, and have been going back to when [George W.] Bush was president.” The adviser added: “In many respects Cameron is like Obama.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/94274...

I think we need to be honest with ourselves and realize:

A) The US and the UK are basically operating under the same "security at any cost except raising taxes" mindset.

B) The logical conclusion of that mindset is to take away freedoms, minimize restrictions on law enforcement, minimize restrictions on espionage, and maximize government's ability to control the message to avoid "leaks".

The only real difference is the US was attempting to do it domestically under the radar with tactics like parallel construction that allowed them to bypass the firewall between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence.

It seems Cameron has decided to take the opposite approach and say "Fuck it, we are doing this openly and publicly." We'll hack machines, we'll suppress speech of anyone we consider a danger, and anything else we have to. The really sad part is there is a large segment of both country's populations who will go along with it just because it promises to make them "safer" and ignores the fact terrorists are as dangerous as lightning strikes with pre-9/11 procedures and funding.

Is it really worth giving up freedom to reduce the risk of a threat that is fundamentally less dangerous to the population at-large than lighting strikes or bee stings? Especially given that to do so we are removing safeguards that protect the general population from law enforcement whom kill more people (particularly in the US, in the UK the numbers are much closer) than terrorists?

http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-ki...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9...

collyw4• 11 years ago

Yet its tops the UK's list of fears. The western propaganda machine is working well.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/europe-european...

vacri9• 11 years ago

The flip side of the coin is a voting public who refuse to accept terrorism as part of life. Demanding that politicians do something when a terrorist act happens, and blaming them for not stopping it.

Here in Australia we've been ridiculously safe from terrorism. If we get a serious terrorist event, people here are going to lose their marbles, rather than accept that 'one got through' the net. You see a similar thing in the US, where the public quite happily throw hundreds of thousands of US soldiers at muslim countries, but then complain that they die, and that they aren't supplied with enough armour and equipment. There's a very weird disconnect going on there. In general, the voting public want this surveillance, to protect them from the 'bad guys'.

mikeash5• 11 years ago

The flip side of that flip side is that people in "our" camp (against ubiquitous surveillance, believing terrorism isn't the biggest threat, accepting "one got through," etc.) seem to have great difficulty accepting that the public largely disagrees with them.

Look at the discussion over NSA dragnet surveillance. It's almost always discussed in terms of an abuse of power against an unsuspecting public. Politicians set it up to further their own ends, or the NSA itself is grabbing power by blackmailing politicians, or at least implicitly threatening blackmail if anybody gets out of line.

The reality as far as I can see it is much more mundane. Things like NSA dragnet surveillance are happening because it's what the people want. Terrorism is seen as a threat that justifies almost anything required to counter it. The politicians are just giving their electorate what it wants.

If we want to fight this stuff, we need to win the war of public opinion. Unless the plan is to subvert the government ourselves and institute some sort of enlightened dictatorship, the only way to get this stuff to change is to convince people that our position is actually better, because most of them don't think that right now.

mark_l_watson8• 11 years ago

A friend of mine, a very smart local restaurant owner, had a long talk broadly on this subject yesterday. We both believe the same thing: 1) the US government and other major governments have been negotiating and executing for a long time on a smooth as possible transition from the US dollar being the world's reserve currency to using special drawing rights (SDRs) as the reserve currency. 2) This will badly effect the economy of the USA for several years and the economies of other countries for a much shorter readjustment period of time. 3) A lot of moves to reduce privacy and rights is an attempt to make sure that society remains civil during this transition. 4) It is crazy to not be at least a little prepared by having 3 or 4 weeks of water and food in your home just in case there are supply disruptions.

We also talked about the normalization bias of most people we know - people are so uncomfortable talking about this that they simply deny the possibility of this happening. Best thing: do a little prep work, try not to take on new debt, and after preparing live life and don't worry about the future.

oskarth• 11 years ago

Could you provide some pointers on where to read more about this? Both objective information as well as why your interpretation is reasonable.

mark_l_watson8• 11 years ago

I subscribe to Katherine Austin Fitt's solari.com report - she and her guests usually seem very well informed. She was the under secretary of HUD in the George H. Bush administration, but got it some trouble for publicly speaking about how US government finances work. She claims that Dick Cheny tried to ruin her life.

I also like James Rickards' two books "The Currency Wars" and "The Death of the Dollar."

mikeash5• 11 years ago

Can you explain what SDRs are and what the implications of such a move would be, in particular why it would be disruptive and why major governments would want it?

jchrisa• 11 years ago

To save y'all the search http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights

mark_l_watson8• 11 years ago

Thanks for posting that. SDRs are a basket of currencies, including the US dollar.

The thing that will change, if I am correct in my prediction, is that all countries whose currencies are part of SDRs (including the USA) will have a difficult time printing money out of thin air.

tosseraccount• 11 years ago

Do you have any evidence for your belief that "Special Drawing Rights" will replace the the US dollar as reserve currency?

This kind of sounds like ZeroHedge style paranoia.

mark_l_watson8• 11 years ago

The argument, that makes sense to me, is that other countries pay a high "tax" for the US dollar being the world's reserve currency, and they don't like it.

I don't read ZeroHedge but my son in law does.

My attitude is that the things to do to prepare for "The Death of the Dollar" are the same things that make sense even if this does not happen (or happens far in the future): don't take on extra debt, have job skills that are globally valuable, keep a reasonable amount of emergency supplies in your home (the US government has a web site with recommendations: http://www.ready.gov/kit (except I would argue having more than just a few days of emergency supplies, a few weeks would be better)).

mark_l_watson8• 11 years ago

Sorry, in my other reply I didn't state any hard evidence. Assuming my theory/prediction/opinion is true, it is unlikely that there would be a public release of information concerning secret inter-government negotiations.

However, this did happen: 1) three countries (Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea) in the early 2000s publicly stated their intention of going off of the US dollar for trading (the first two, Iran and Venezuela are oil producers). 2) shortly afterwards, all three countries were labeled "axis of evil" states. I am no fan of any of the governments of any of these countries but it seems like more of a coincidence that strong actions were taken right after the declarations to go off of the dollar. In addition to sanctions against Iran, shortly after Venezuela made its announcement, the US Navy had it largest ever peace time prolonged naval exercise right off of the coast of Venezuela.

So, I admit that I personally don't have any hard evidence, just my own analysis. That said, I thought that I made it clear in my top level comment that what I was saying was the shared opinions of my friend and I.

netcan2• 11 years ago

Absolutes are a powerful thing, in rules, in law, in communication and in all sorts of other ways. Absolutes make all sorts of things easier. Laws deal with them easier. Technology too. Compromises and caveats are trickier.

That's kind of what rights and freedoms are supposed to be, some abstract fundamentals we can all agree on that don't need much detail or qualifications.

The pursuit of absolutes (or ideals) is a problem though. Trying to stick them where they don't fit is a problem.

panarky• 11 years ago

This is all about unintended consequences.

During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and security services. But that power always gets used to subvert democracy and silence dissenters.

This is not a new problem. There's a bunch of literature about this, starting with Robert K. Merton's 1936 paper The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposeful Social Action [1].

Maybe the best way to counteract the perverse outcomes of feel-good social policy is to acknowledge these mistakes and teach future policy makers how to anticipate the second- and third-order effects of their actions [2].

Stross shows this in his hypothetical Labour Party communication:

  The party recognizes that that our own legislative program
  of the late 1990s and early 2000s established the framework
  for repression which is now being used to ruthlessly suppress
  dissent.

[1] [PDF] http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/T...

[2] [PDF] http://www.au.af.mil/info-ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_mil...

mercurial2• 11 years ago

This is all about unintended consequences.
During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and security services. But that power always gets used to subvert democracy and silence dissenters.

In France, the currently in power socialist party seemed well aware of the "unintended consequences" when the conservatives were voting their own think-of-the-terrorists laws. One has to think that they either think this doesn't apply to them, or that they in fact don't really care.

ams61102• 11 years ago

Never let a crisis go to waste

Tomte• 11 years ago

It will be impossible to really discuss free speech issues on a venue that is predominantly American.

America has a very idiosyncratic view of free speech, embodied in their constitution. Good for them.

Unfortunately they usually categorically deny that any other variant of free speech, other than their own specific formulation, can ever be free speech at all.

That ties in with the general feeling in America that the US constitution is the best constitution there is and could ever be, to the point where the Founding Fathers are venerated beyond belief, and changes to the constitution are next to impossible.

To make a tangential point: America often criticizes Germany for not having the right flavor of free speech. While having more than just influenced our constitution.

So basically they approved our constitution (after demanding a few changes), especially the parts that were designed to counter Nazism. Understandable, after World War II. Unsurprisingly that ran counter to the American view of free speech, but that was intended at the time.

Decades later everyone is surprised...

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

Your attempt to pin the blame on the Americans is quite tortured. Absolving the governments who actually pass the laws leads to much worse laws.

peterfirefly• 11 years ago

No, Tomte just knows more about the German Constitution (Grundgesetz) than you do.

Insulting your betters is bad form.

adventured4• 11 years ago

Starting out your comment by intentionally insulting most of your audience is an even better guarantee of not being able to have a good discussion about free speech issues.

Singletoned2• 11 years ago

More and more, I'm starting to think that free speech and privacy are opposed to each other.

adventured4• 11 years ago

Quite the opposite, free speech and privacy demand each other and cannot exist without each other.

Consider these two scenarios, taken to the extreme to elaborate a point.

Unfettered free speech, with zero privacy.

Total privacy, no free speech.

Both examples are impossible in a human society (maybe in a robot society).

In scenario one, there can be no free speech if you have no right to privacy. The concept of chilling comes into action. If humans were robots, one might say that zero privacy would encourage and illuminate perfect speech because there would be greater total information and understanding. However that is not how people function. When faced with zero privacy, people will always self-censor, often dramatically. We can see this in practice time and time again, in numerous countries throughout just the last century.

In scenario two, if you have a government enforcing zero free speech, there's no chance they're going to simultaneously grant their people complete privacy (they can't, they have to constantly monitor speech).

The point of these examples, is to show that one can't exist without the other, not in actuality. As one erodes, the other will go with it.

A government willing to use extreme violence (which is what it would take) to stop all privacy, is not going to give you free speech. No such contradiction can exist for long. Any government willing to use violence to stop your freedom of speech, is not going to respect your privacy because they'll need to monitor you constantly to check against your speech (not to mention a violent government in reality simply isn't going to respect individual rights anyway).

unwiredben• 11 years ago

...and here in the US, a major party candidate for president just said "If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL [Islamic State], I’m not gonna call a judge, I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/18/w...

Hearing that made me sick to my stomach.

zimpenfish• 11 years ago

Even by Republic standards, Lindsey Graham is on the crazy end of the spectrum. Luckily, there's almost zero chance anyone would put him anywhere near any power.

lhc-• 11 years ago

Other than, you know, a position in the US Senate.

mikeash5• 11 years ago

There's a big difference between somebody saying that who will never be given the chance to act on his promise, and somebody saying that who has actually been elected and is talking about what he plans to do with the power he has.

gadders8• 11 years ago

I think the main upshot of all this is that drawing the line on freedom of speech is hard.

burritofanatic• 11 years ago

HBO has a documentary on the so called called Cannibal Cop, who was convicted for conspiracy, a so called "thought crime". He never really acted out on the underlying criminal act in question, and it's difficult to say if he conclusively took a substantial step in furtherance of the crime with someone else. Though, much of the evidence that did stack instead him included chats and search queries from Google.

I always thought that the crime of conspiracy was ahead of its time, but I really don't know how it fits in today's context where everything can be tracked. Not that conspiracy shouldn't exist, but that the world has finally caught up to the law.

Thoughtcrime

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