German police raid homes over Facebook hate speech
theverge.com
theverge.com
Even Canadian free speech laws are much more limited than the US. See the ridiculous "twitter harassment case" from last year/early this year.
tldr; if you don't want police to raid, don't break the law.
Freedom of speech is working fine aside from NSLs.
In your opinion (and that of the US), "violence" in this context is defined as physical violence. However, one can argue that non-physical violence should be considered too. In that case, it could be said that hate speech is a form of indirect threat or intimidation against a minority.
> no government should be allowed to oppress the free expression of ideas
Are you okay then, with an intelligence or military defector (not a whistleblower), revealing all government secrets and publishing it publicly without any selection or redaction?
My belief in whistleblowing is as follows. If the act of whistleblowing violates laws and go beyond the provisions in whistleblowing laws, but you or I dearly believe in what we are doing as proper and just, then we do it but understand the consequences and don't and should not seek understanding or forgiveness. If we believe so much, then it's our duty to sacrifice our selves in the face of adverse conditions. I compare it to revolutionaries. You believe in your cause enough that the negative consequences are part of the deal and you don't expect leniency or official pardons, else the issue is not that dire.
> In the law of some countries, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it incites violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.
So would you consider it censorship to forbid hate speech?
But no, I don't speech that simply disparages an individual or group of people (without inciting violence as defined above) should be a crime. There's a difference between disgusting speech and speech that should be outlawed and it's very dangerous to say simply that this speech or that speech is icky and therefore the person who said it should literally lose their freedom.
I'm also going to leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... here because some people seem to be under the misapprehension that the US has no restrictions on speech.
Edit: Instead of silently downvoting please provide even a single link to an HN comment espousing that freedom of speech actually means you can say anything at any time to anyone without any repercussions.
Then you're not arguing against the current raids then. From the source [1]:
Bedrohung, Nötigung, Erpressung, Verunglimpfung, extremistische Inhalte, die Androhung von Gewalttaten oder der öffentliche Aufruf zu Straftaten
Threats, coercion, oppression, slander, extremist content, inciting violence and calls to commit crime.
I said nothing of the sort and it takes some impressive mental gymnastics to reach that point.
Extremist speech, on its own and in isolation, is not necessarily violent and should not be a crime automatically. It obviously can espouse violence and is therefore already outlawed. It may even be the fact that 99.9% of extremist speech advocates violence in one form or another. But until it does, someone should be able to spew as much racist, hateful garbage as they want.
It really doesn't. You used the explicit phrase "extremist content [falls] under speech which does not necessary advocate violence" as an argument to exclude "extremist content" from the list of examples of actionable material, without further elaboration.
Try this: go to a playground and say to a parent: "I want to beat up your child." Then stand there and wait until the cops arrive and claim it was just freedom of speech. Remember to exactly repeat it to the cops.
This is exactly what the laws in Germany are against. Hate speech that ultimately leads to violence.
Compared to Europe, apparently yes
> Try this: go to a playground and say to a parent ...
I doubt this would have the outcome you imagine. What would the police officer arrest me for? Expressing an opinion?
"Officer": "What seems to be the problem"
"Woman": "This man said he wanted to beat up my child"
"Officer": "Is this true?"
"Me": "Yes"
"Officer": "Why did you say that?"
"Me": "Someone on the internet told me I would be arrested if I did"
"Officer": "Go home."
Your example is not mere "hate speech that ultimately leads to violence", its -- while somewhat ambiguously worded so it might not actually be prosecutable in the US, its right on the boundary -- something that could (depending on other elements of context) be seen as a threat coupled with present capacity for execution directed at a specific person.
Its not a clear example of something outside the bounds of protection in the US, and to the extent that it might be seen as crossing the line in the US, its very much not analogous to the kinds of things prohibited by the more expansive German restrictions on speech.
The "why" part, actually. Why is hate speech illegal? Where is the line drawn? Who gets to draw the line? Can the line move over time? Could politicians eventually move the line to suppress undesirable speech (political dissension) under the guise of hate speech?
We (i.e., the US/the internet) have a tendency to view basic human rights through a very US-centric framework. We value freedom of speech above all else (well except the right to bear/bare arms...). However, our framework of what rights there should be is not entirely universal, nor should it be. We tend to be not so great at articulating a basic right to exist or to be free from harm created by others. I hear many conversations about the constitution, which is our law, but I rarely hear people discuss the declaration of independence which was a much broader statement about the rights of human beings. The constitution is our codification and does not, nor should it, be applied as a universal critique of other systems.
And none of that is to say that we have unlimited free speech anyways in the US. The standard framework for restriction is strict scrutiny, which requires a compelling governmental interest to restrict free speech (e.g., preserving the health and welfare of many citizens is why you can't yell fire in a crowded theater). Because the law is not ahistorical, I think you could make a fairly compelling argument that it is in the German government's interest to make laws that do things like make denying the holocaust illegal or placing some limits on hate speech. The potential damage of those things is something that Germany has experienced in ways we haven't, and I would generally defer to them making laws within their own society rather than judge them with ours.
Most people in this discussion seem not to know this, so you see that what these people (whose homes got raided) must have had a effect on the real world to be punishable.
Furthermore, in Germany if you get charged with something at first there is an investigation by the police. The result is handed over to the prosecutor who decides if there is going to be prosecution (first hurdle), then it is going to court. The judge first decides if the prosecution is even accepted(!!!) (second hurdle) and THEN there is a trial (third hurdle). So it is not like these people are put in jail just because there is an investigation.
I am seriously baffled by the comments that lack significant knowledge of that the hell this news mean.
If you believe the rights enumerated in our founding documents are truly inalienable human rights that exist simply by virtue of us being human, then yes you should also believe that they should be codified in every other country's laws as well.
OTOH, if you believe that they are one, almost certainly imperfect, attempt to protect actual inalienable human rights rather than a flawless articulation of the exact bounds of actual inalienable human rights, you can easily accept that there may be alternative mechanisms attempted to protect the actual underlying rights that are no farther from the ideal than those in our founding documents.
Treating the results of the political compromises that went into creating our founding documents as if they were carved on stone tablets by God's own hand and handed down to Moses as eternal law is, well, about as sensible as doing that with the output of any randomly-chosen more recent political compromise by our governing bodies.
People crack me up sometimes..
For hate speech in Germany, I firmly believe that the story should not end at "police raids" but rather at "and the neo-nazi was adopted by Syrian immigrants and shown great love and compassion, and he fell in love with a nice Syrian girl and they will be married in the fall." But that has more to do with what the punishment is.
While I'm against hate speech laws in general because of the withering slippery-slope argument, Germany really is a special case because of the holocaust.
Last but not least, this news article implies that we are being monitored. We might not trigger visible action, or any action, but our messages are running a gauntlet of predicates that, if any flip to "true" will get human eyeballs on our messages, which may yield humans wielding guns in our living rooms. Such is life.
Even China's constitution says "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
Of course, that doesn't apply in practice, but that is my point. Just having an article in the constitution granting you a right does not guarantee that right in practice.
You are referring to article 10 which comes with a very big caveat:
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Compare it to the 1st Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So yes, the US is pretty much unique in the way it refers to freedom of speech both de jure and de facto. Article 10 pretty much says, yeah we respect the fact that in theory you should be able to say what you want, but make sure it doesn't offend anyone.
Obviously, the ECHR, being between countries which lack the commonality of legal history and political culture had to make express what would be understood from context in a framework where the participants shared more deeply in a common legal history and political culture, but the substantive meaning isn't all that different.
You won't see things like this in the US http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1937_en.htm
Some European countries (such as Sweden and Germany) and the EU as a whole have been stepping up censorship of both social and traditional media these past few years. While it's easy to classify this as just fighting "right wing extremist" much of what is being censored wouldn't be considered right wing nor extremist in the academic sense in any way.
This does not only include traditional "hate speech" like immigrants are bad... mmkay or jews are evil but goes deeper and threatens to classify any criticism of EU policies or anything that causes political disturbance as "hate speech". Whats even more disturbing is that many of these measures are enacted on the back of terrorist attacks in Europe and over the world, but end up being used in combating local political dissent.
If you'll want to make an analogy to what happens in the US then the latest EU movements to cramp freedom of speech are not that different than the massive surveillance program that the US embarked on post 9/11, if anything it is probably worse. While surveillance might have a negative effect on expression and it sure can help breed homogenous group think, dictating what can and cannot be said, and what should are should not be thought is considerably more dangerous.
>Freedom of expression is granted by Article 5 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, which also states that there is no censorship and freedom of expression that may be limited by law.
The US is in fact the only developed country that has no laws banning hate speech, including no legal recourse for outright lies like Holocaust denial.
Not in a way that would make sense as "free speech" to an American.
It's probably more accurately parsed as freedom of the press.
There are plenty of things in USA you can say on social media which will at best add you to a watch list, at worst place you in jail.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/15/9329119/facebook-germany-h...
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Facebook-Hasskommenta... (German)
It's not too far-fetched to assume that they have access to IPs.
So the police statement is rather misleading. To be sure, some official institutions have been involved in questionable campaigns against "hate speech" recently, so perhaps they wanted to show that they are making progress. It seems likely to me that the raid was actually about real illegal activities, rather than hateful opinions.
I think even in the US calling for somebodies death is not really protected by "free speech"?
Nevertheless it is worrying that official institutions lent their name to the questionable campaign against hate speech. (Questionable because it was initiated by several people with a track record of hate speech, and because it seems to be designed to simply silence unwelcome opinions, as hate speech is not clearly defined by the campaigners).
I don't believe that government forces should enter peoples homes and imprison them for expressing their opposition to immigration, which could easily be cast as "xenophobia".
Does "private" Facebook means what I think it means? I.e. outsiders won't see this at all? What's the problem there then? Next time they'll raid my bedroom because they don't like what goes on there?
> most of the suspects were accused of posting... xenophobic... messages
What's wrong in being xenophobic, from moral perspective? Is it now a requirement for me to avoid feeling emotions against people who I don't approve?
> "strong rise in verbal radicalism"
It's definitely easier to combat verbal xenophobes than real terrorists. First of all, they don't shoot back at you.
Raiding homes of people posting stupid private shit on the internet is also great way to get more physical radicalism.
Laws that stop this kind of "expression" have existed in Germany a while now, for historical reasons.
From the article, "Attacks on refugees are often the result of radicalization, which begins on social networks."
You don't restrict rights based on how others respond to people exercising those rights.
Meanwhile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-merkel-...
edit: citing the decision to allow prosecution of Böhmermann reveals how little you understand the German legal system. The article is misleading at best and not covering the legal grounds and background correctly at all.
If I am parsing what you wrote correctly then you are asking me to draw a distinction between different types of speech which should be allowed under law.
I don't believe any should be restricted. That includes the classic "shouting `fire' in a crowded theatre" or making threats to someone. Certainly in both cases if actual physical or financial harm results then the speaker can be deemed to have caused harm and measures taken against them. But the outlawing and punishment of the act of speech in and of itself is illogical.
In effect hate speech and other laws conflate locution, illocution and perlocution[1].
The effect on the discussion of ideas (e.g. the criticism of Erdogan) in a democracy strike me as obvious, so I won't go into them further.
At least for me, this makes a difference.
edit: I am going out on a limb here, but I thought exactly this was one of the purposes of RICO. Telling someone to commit a crime in a formed group is a crime and not free speech. I am a total amateur in US criminal code, is this understanding correct?
This even goes all the way back to the concept of "assault" in anglo-saxon legal traditions[1] (which is the simple threat part of the pair "assault and battery". Many of us use "assault" to mean a physical attack, but it seems originally to be simply causing someone to fear.)
Again, though, you are arguing that because something is the law then that in itself makes it moral and useful.
Those who make slippery-slope arguments about the vesting of power in the state seem increasingly persuasive when we see the turning of the act of speaking into a crime itself. For further examples of "European" countries which illustrate the dangers you could look at Ireland's blasphemy laws which still stand.
I am not interested in the personalization of the argument or grounding it in lived experience of any sort.
Objectively the system which you extoll results in censorship, in this case of criticism of a near-dictator involved in genocide against the Kurdish people.
I believe that enabling a state to censor what people can say is dangerous to democracy. I think this is adequately demonstrated through numerous historical and current examples.
Your statement of "tolerance" is meaningless because you will be unaware of other viewpoints of which you must be tolerant when they are censored.
Ironically as this discussion is deemed offensive to the moderators of HN this entire discussion has been effaced.
I have the feeling you are just cherry picking this to troll on and not interested in talking about the different dogmatics of legal systems. I didn't want to personalize the discussion, just replace "you" and "me" with "any person from your belief system" and "any person from my belief system". It looks to me that you are not interested in thinking about other people's opinion and/or belief system. Now THAT was a personal remark.
Really? So, you can't see the link between the German state's power to choose which speech acts can be punished and the punishing of someone for speech acts?
You cannot see the link between the Turkish bombing and starving of the Kurdish people and the historical assaults by your own country on minority populations?
I am not going to reply any more to you as you have descended to personalized abuse, but I will close with thanking you for illustrating exactly why the policing of free speech can never be allowed: there are too many people like you who are incapable of exercising tolerance and rationality, and once a lever of power and control is in your hands you will pull it.
Thank you, and god bless the USA.
I'll pose my earlier question with a different group--how would you feel were this being done to conservative Christians or Muslims? Both groups express misinformation and sometimes call for restrictions on others (covering women in public, treatment of homosexuals, this sort of thing).
We can't get everyone to get along. However, we can seek to eliminate state powers that are ripe for abuse.
No, that's not an accident. It's an evolutionary necessity: https://www.myind.net/tolerance-intolerance-and-game-theory
I am unfamiliar with German law, so if you would like to educate me on the nuances of the charge, I would appreciate it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a
Specifics are hard to judge without the actual content and context of the posts, this stuff keeps courts busy.
There are BTW other "Äußerungsdelikte" (statement offenses, free translation), like slander and deformation. All these are based on the human right that no harm should be inflicted on you because somebody says something wrong about you (in a very simplistic way, you normally would have a lots of hours of law lectures just on this offenses, their reasoning and distinction).
Exactly. This is like how posting negative things about the communist party leadership in a wechat group can get your house raided. Break the law, and police might show up.