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Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

To me the core of this issue is that sometimes government officials truly believe their missions are more important than free speech. They may think that their job is actually to suppress free speech unfortunately.

Especially common is for national security to override free speech in the minds of government officials. They can easily convince themselves that they need to suppress certain viewpoints in order to save many lives. It just coincidentally also saves their own jobs.

I think unfortunately that young people would prefer less free speech and for the government to enforce more confirming perspectives.

One other core issue for people who want the tech companies to stop listening to government to consider is the fact that the government has police, guns, prisons, and legal sanctions available to enforce it's policy decisions.

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>Especially common is for national security to override free speech in the minds of government officials. They can easily convince themselves that they need to suppress certain viewpoints in order to save many lives. It just coincidentally also saves their own jobs.

Non-disclosure of secret information that you willingly make yourself privy to is not suppression of free speech.

No it isn't. But OP is talking more about government suppressing public information. Like when the FBI told Zuckerberg to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story because it was Russian disinformation.

Over-classification is a free speech issue. There's a moral difference between information being classified to protect the country, and information being classified to protect inept politicians and government officials from having to face the accountability of the public.

For instance, the CIA spent the equivalent of several billion dollars trying to lift an obsolete Soviet submarine from the ocean floor, against the recommendations of the US Navy which thought they could recover the relevant materials using deep sea remote control 'drones' from a spy submarine, rather than using a surface ship to lift the whole sub, which they said would fail and risked discovery. Well it did fail, and they did get discovered and the US Government was forced to explain itself to the Soviet government. But in the aftermath of this boondoggle, the US government was more candid with the Soviets than with the American public. The rational for sharing information with the Soviets but not with the American public can only be to protect the CIA/etc from public accountability. They continue to use the ambiguity created by their secrecy to lead people to believe they were more successful than they actually were. The Soviets/Russians can get ground truth about this incident by sending their own drones down there to see what was left of the submarine. The CIA's classification of the incident serves to obscure the truth from the American public, not the Russians.

How is this not a limitation on freedom of speech? You have a piece of information that you aren't allowed to talk about.

I think this is just a limitation that we're all mostly ok with.

basically agree as a US Citizen - let's think about the psychology of public policy just for a minute. When given an "order", upon hearing information that directs behavior that is not your choice or is new in some way, combined with restriction, inconvenience or most directly, feels threatening.. then a common personal reaction is to deny, disclaim, reject or attack the messenger and/or the message.

Public policy is much older than the USA.. people with skills and methods in this area are not new to this reaction.. So the playing field is set.

The age of Monarchy saw many obviously awful abuses of mono- or unilateral messaging.. "By decree of the King .. this that or the other"

Certain religious groups in association with Monarchy did so even more.. into the private lives of people. So a founding principle of the purposefully diverse USA was.. free speech. You cannot be sent to prison for making fun of the King nor publicly defending prostitution .. for example. But here it gets difficult.. Obviously strong minds and wills have strong reactions. The social upheaval politically in 20th Century Europe had a high cost socially.

But now, in the USA, we have credentialed experts in Science being silenced, not refuted. This is a new modern "low" and the use of technology to de-platform harkens directly back to ANATHEMA or ex-communication reaction.. it is very, very dark days for speech in the USA.

Would you post here if people were allowed to say whatever they wanted?

Absolutely.

I post here now because the locally-enforced Overton window is much larger than alternative platforms, which makes conversations much more interesting, challenging, and productive.

If people could say whatever they wanted here, I’d expect to see a lot more comments I wouldn’t bother engaging with at all, but that’s okay.

I’m not a horse — I don’t need blinders to prevent me from getting spooked.

This question seems disingenuous. Your comment equates the U.S. Government attempting to suppress speech critical of their own decisions with dang moderating an internet forum. These are not the same.

The first amendment protects speech in the United States for good reason. There are bad people in the world. Those bad people can end up in government. The government wields incredible power. The three branches are meant to keep each other in check - but so are the citizens. The ability to vote in/out candidates is a balancing force. The humans in power being able to distort speech in the country to favor keeping them in power breaks that balancing force.

This article is asking "did the government attempt to suppress speech." That has nothing to do with moderation on HN.

dang is not a representative of a government. It's entirely reasonable (IMO) for the mods here to suppress speech critical of decisions a government is making - it's their site. It is entirely unreasonable for a government to suppress speech critical of decisions the government is making. Blurring that line is how you do a fascism.

There's a lot there, but you know, I'm just tired of seeing people die from what are almost certainly (vaccine) preventable illnesses. I've stood in enough funeral processions. I wonder if there is any way for the government to try and prevent that? It seems like they attempted to work with private companies (and passed no laws to coerce them into it). And what about the companies? Perhaps they agreed with those in government they were in contact with and worked to police their platforms. Would that look much different from coercion?

“Terrorists” and child pornographers are bad. A three letter agency without the 4th amendment is worse.

Racists on Twitter telling you vaccines cause autism and that you can fix your phone’s water damage by microwaving it are bad. A U.S. President without the 1st amendment is worse.

We intentionally limit what government is able to do with broad strokes - it has a high risk for abuse.

Anything you yield today is going to live through multiple regime changes. You aren’t just trusting the current government with this power - you’re trusting everyone that will inherit it. The seeds of fascism are sowed through good intentions.

Was there a violation of the 1st or 4th amendments here? It would seem that the charitable interpretation of the big tech companies' actions is that they are willingly working with the government to provide the best information to their citizens in order to promote the general welfare.

This may be one of the most asinine things I have read on this website. Child pornography is worse than a corrupt government. I would rather have my rights stripped from me and be sent to a concentration camp than for someone to force a child to have sex.

You know a lot of children would be raped in those concentration camps, right?

It's possible that national security to be more important than free speech. Doesn't this happen all the time?

> It's possible that national security to be more important than free speech.

There is no national security without free speech. There might be oligarch security, but not security for the people.

So troop movements should be public?

Definitely. If you're not fighting an unpopular war far overseas somewhere it's not really a problem.

What about a popular war where a country invaded the US.

What about the locations of nuclear weapons?

If the government can't keep its locations secret, that should be on them.

Limiting their employees/military from blabbing the secrets is a separate issue.

Who's going to invade the US? Much easier to buy the politicians like how it currently works. This would also require several years of naval and long range bombardments to even be a possibility. Just a non-factor if the planet looks anything like it does today.

> What about the locations of nuclear weapons?

Security through obscurity. I'm sure some of the US's adversaries know where at least some nuclear weapons are located, and it seems to have not been a problem so far.

What's everybody so scared of? The US could cut its military by 75% overnight and little would change for the US itself. So-call 'allies' overseas might have to start footing their own bill for defense or attempt to make peace with their neighbors, but for the US nothing changes.

Why are you picking apart my hypothetical examples ?

Is it your argument there is no reason ever for the government to censor information?

I don't believe the government has any legitimate power that an individual does not have.

well said.

If everyone (or no one) has legitimate power of violent aggression, it's pretty much impossible to run a democracy as the minority would either have legitimate use of force to stop the majority, or the majority would have no legitimate use of force to impose their vote on the minority.

Now I'm in agreement with you.... but the logical conclusion is basically some form of anarchism.

>What about the locations of nuclear weapons?

You mean Montana and North and South Dakota? You can't really hide a silo location from satellites. This was the impetus behind the MX missile program back in the 80's or whenever, it was going to create a huge chain of silos that missiles were constantly shifted around between so the Soviets couldn't know where they were and couldn't target them.

You should not be prosecuted for announcing troop movement data that you've lawfully acquired.

If you burglarized an American government facility or hacked into a computer system or committed fraud to trick someone or drugged/tortured a government agent, you should be prosecuted for that.

But if an agent leaves information somewhere, you read it, and publish it? No, you should not.

And that in fact is how the law works, with of course a couple of fringe cases [0]. If you're walking down the street and stumble over a folder of TS/SCI/SAP material, you can publish it all you want. The only time you have a duty to protect classified material is if you signed a non-disclosure agreement.

[0] exceptions: nuclear secrets as outlined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, and the identities of intelligence officers acting clandestinely. The former is a wreck of a law (how would Grandma Smith know a document marked S/RD is special, plus there's the whole 'Born Secret' bit), and the latter hasn't been tried out that much in court.

But you are now limiting your original argument

If you define national security as preserving the American system of government, then no national security cannot be more important than free speech. There is no American system of government without free speech. Attempts to 'secure' the government by limiting free speech indicate the government we sought to protect no longer exists.

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