U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship

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112 pointsnextparadigms35 comments

It's really hard to not chuckle when the US government condemns the Iranian crackdowns on 'online freedom' while themselves pushing for similar restrictions and threatening our freedom of speech.

By the people for the people?

After seeing this, I really don't think there's a difference anymore. Americans are starting to be treated the exact same way, despite the fact that the "freedom of speech" 1st Amendment is the strongest part of their Constitution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c...

Seeing how things are going, I predict there will be a real revolution within 2 years in US, especially if Ron Paul doesn't become president. I see him as the only hope to revert the whole trend back. He even predicted everything that's happening now back in 2002, with specific examples and within a 5-10 year time-frame:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifJG_oFFDK0

Yeah, but he's a nutbag, so there will be other issues if he does become president.

Seeing how things are going, I predict there will be a real revolution within 2 years in US

I'm assuming you don't live in the US, since you refer to Americans in the third person.

This prediction of yours could not be more laughable. The people who actually care about issues such as these are a small minority. Most US citizens are content with privacy and freedoms curtailed in the name of "security". If not content, we're mostly unwilling to make a big stink about it.

There would have to be some vastly negative policy changes in the next couple years to incite revolution, and, even then, law enforcement and the military are far too strong and well-trained (and far too willing to take action against fellow citizens) for any kind of revolution to take hold and be successful without a level of organization that is likely beyond the citizenry.

Obviously a full-scale violent revolution isn't going to happen but I wonder if like-minded people moved to an area / city where they could re-invent the political system there, vote out the police chief (or city council members who appoint the police chief, however it works) and reform the local government to where no one there is willing to enforce the more egregious laws. It has already happened to an extent in California with medical marijuana so there is some precedent for a region (I say region because there is a divide in how its handled even within California itself) being able to make its own set of rules that conflict with mandates from the federal government, with some succcess.

Seeing how things are going, I predict there will be a real revolution within 2 years in US

Has there ever been a revolution over free speech or anything similar? It seems like the vast majority doesn't care at all. Can any revolution be attributed to something other than how much you can buy?

Part of me is starting to love all these government calls for censorship because I think we may finally be starting to reach the "breaking point" where more of the general population begins to awaken to what a sham these politicians are and to the fact that they have been on a huge power grab ever since 2001. Maybe I'm just delusional but as the internet has taken hold more and more, and the "internet generation" continues to grow up and gain more influence in society its only a matter of time, I hope, before the current era of politics ends.

The calls for censorship, in my opinion, amount to one last "stand" to hold onto power and restrict information, they know that more people are on to their "games" than ever before and they are collectively acting like a cornered dictator under siege by making these attempts to keep up the facade.

> I think we may finally be starting to reach the "breaking point"

Until someone comes up with a credible answer to the question, "So what are you going to do about it?" this will continue.

People are doing things, just look at the boycott of GoDaddy, that was effective and got media attention. Obviously its a collective effort, one person, unless they already hold significant power in a company, etc can't do a huge amount. Personally, I have ideas for projects to develop and are working on them but they are long-term, nothing is going to happen overnight, I just have a feeling they can't keep this up forever as things like this are going to piss off more and more people. Suggesting something such as censorship is something that people perceive as being fundamentally "un-American" and I think people as a whole are getting a bit worn out by the whole terrorism song and dance.

They will attempt to massage the language into something that is easily digestible by the vast majority as politicians have always done. The aims of which language would include disarming or flustering the passion of the opposition.

The breaking point is when there's a credible answer to that question.

well, I don't know if this is any indication of the overall public opinion, but every comment I've looked at on the CNN article is anti-SOPA, I don't know if its the "reddit-types" who have found the article and are commenting or if its really indicative of the average CNN-reader but, if it is, I think that simply voting these clowns out of office may be becoming a more real possibility.

You don't vote against a candidate, you vote for one.

Are there credible candidates that aren't part of the same system that you could vote for, that don't come associated with some other baggage that might make them toxic to large numbers of votes?

> You don't vote against a candidate, you vote for one.

Which is a shame. Always seemed much better and more popular election scheme would be to vote against the one candidate you couldnt stand.

Maybe you should get one upvote and one downvote per election.

Exactly. That's why I don't think we're there yet.

Nobody has found an outlet for all of this frustration that's capable of creating change just yet.

I think the only answer is technology. A communication network that can't be controlled governments and which is anonymous by default (unless you communicate something which deanonymises you like "My name is x").

I don't believe that a practical technology exists that would allow such a network to materialise. When I look at the technological advances that have happened in the last hundred years though, I can't help but believe that such technology will be developed during my life time. And if not, soon after.

They tweeted, blissfully unaware, while Rome burned around them.

On the other hand, once the Internet generation become parents and begin recalling painful (or guilty) memories of various kinds of cyber-bullying they might be even more amenable to censorship.

Cyber-bullying, child porn, piracy, etc, are all a red herring. It's virtually impossible to stop it completely unless the Internet was either taken down or completely monitored and controlled.

The first step to controlling content is to be aware of the content. Would they be happy for the government to look through their emails to prevent cyber-bullying, of course?

I think cyber-bullying is something that could easily be handled within the portal itself (in this case it always seems to be facebook), why can't kids just be taught if someone starts saying something "mean" they can just block the person and tell their parents. I don't know how we have gotten to a point in our society where people think the government is needed to solve every miniscule problem that pops up in our lives.

I agree with you for the most part but what I'm talking about is stuff like spreading rumors and disseminating embarrassing pictures and videos.

I was in downtown Charlottesville, VA today and came upon a wall (basically a giant chalkboard) that encourages anyone to write on it. On it is engraved the first amendment to remind us how great free speech really is. It probably wouldn't have meant that much to me if I hadn't been reading so much about SOPA and similar bills. It's strange how we often overlook some of the most beautiful and fundamental aspects of life until they are threatened.

In case anyone else needs a reminder of the words, here they are...

"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."

Given the "breaking news" quality of Twitter feeds, it is not unreasonable to be able to extend the "press" tag to it. So the first amendment would apply doubly so - "or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" No?

I'm all for "badge incentives" of some sort, that would show you can expect higher quality of service from someone. Kind of like the "approved" names on Twitter. But that doesn't mean you should ban all the other names. And it also doesn't mean you should ban all the other "non-press".

If we had that since the beginning, we wouldn't have blogs now. We'd just have online divisions of the print media. Plus, I think we should focus our attention on "acts of journalism", like Jeff Jarvis put it, not "journalists".

If I see something, I can make an act of journalism, without having a journalist ID. I think it's for the best and a nice evolution of news gathering. It's just that it's also another form of decentralization and empowering of the individual, and Governments hate that. They like stuff to be centralized, so they can filter out what they don't like. It's clear all the traditional media is filtering stuff out that the Government wouldn't like these days.

"It's clear all the traditional media is filtering stuff out that the Government wouldn't like these days."

Yes, and that's why one solution is to consume media from countries which are intensely critical of the US. For example, I regularly watch Russia Today, online. Even though some of it is Russian propaganda, they usually have some information about, or a different perspective on, US-related events that I can't get in the US media.

http://rt.com

EDIT: I just went over there, and coincidentally, one of the top stories is quite relevant to this thread.

http://rt.com/usa/news/homeland-security-journalists-monitor... (Homeland Security monitors journalists)(2012-JAN-07)

Yes, RT is pretty good. Better than pretty much anything in US right now.

Generally "press" has been interpreted to just mean "writing", in part because it's hard to see the Constitution's authors considering "press" to refer only to a specific occupation like "journalist" or "publisher", when many of their own political publications during the Revolution, which seem like the sort of thing the First Amendment was intended to protect, were DIY pamphlets or single-sheet flyers.

Eugene Volokh has an article arguing that as well: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802229

"Freedom of the press" does not mean "freedom of news agencies". Remember, the Constitution was written back in the 1700s when "the press" was an abbreviation for "the printing press", the only mechanism of mass content distribution available at the time.

"Freedom of speech" means you can say what you want at a rally, assembly, or just walking down the street, and "freedom of press" means you can print (or "press", i.e., use the press to create and distribute) what you want.

I'm not sure I follow, does one anonymous official, a private law firm, and one US senator constitute the US government?

Lieberman seems to at least give that impression, because he did manage to get Amazon, Paypal and Visa/Mastercard to censor Wikileaks in the very same way.

As far as censorship goes, it starts with "terrorists" and the usual handful of bogeymen who only ever actually constitute a minuscule minority of internet activity, but it doesn't end there.

I think the back story is that sites like Twitter seem to have been a key component of popular uprisings in 2011, and this has probably not escaped the notice of even the most luddite politicians in many countries. If they can get a foot in the doorway with regard to censoring this type of communication then they can potentially head it off at the pass in the event that any similar uprisings occur in the near future. Ultimately it's about preserving their own power and trying to prevent democratic change.

make twitter.ch, problem solved.

Under SOPA they could ban twitter.ch domain in US, and under Patriot Act they can have access to those accounts if the servers are in US.

That's why you use a VPN/proxy to access it. If the servers are not in the USA there's not much that the government can do, unless they want to block proxies/VPN.

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