And if you dare to use Twitter in Brazil, you will be fined a year's salary.
... how authoritarianism shapes public discourse
... how authoritarianism shapes public discourse
"It's only illegal if you get caught."
See I was onboard with this reasoning until last week - we arrested the boss of Telegram and charged him with allowing illicit activity, which obviously happens on WhatsApp and other apps too. Isis was literally recruiting members on western social networks!
And we spent months discussing banning of TikTok, my major politicians in mainstream parties. so we aren’t far
What are the fines for using a banned service in the US?
In general, users never face fines in the US even for visiting "banned" pages.
You might be oversimplifying. Yes, the US does have particularly free speech, and especially for listening to it. But using kiddie porn sites, president threatening sites, ISIS recruiting sites, US govt leaked secrets sharing sites, perhaps ghost gun or bomb making sites, stalking ex girlfriends... I think a good bit of that has legal consequences for people under many circumstances. Evidence used to convict you is not much different than... evidence.
Some of the things you list are actual criminal acts, not Web sites. Yes, if you stalk your ex, that's criminal, but simply visiting some Web site is not in itself illegal.
If there is some US law that might purport to forbid just visiting a Web site, I've never heard of any attempt to enforce it.
What the hell is a "president threatening site"? Threats to public officials as a service?
The fact that something can, in some circumstances, be evidence doesn't mean it's a crime, and the distinction is absolutely critical in the context we're dealing with here.
It's pretty clear that this person thought there were such penalties, but in fact the US has absolutely nothing analogous. No order remotely like that would be issued in the US, because it's so obviously unconstitutional. If some third-tier hick judge did issue such an order, it would be overturned on appeal. If it were issued by the Supreme Court (and, no, not even the current Supreme Court would do that), all hell would break loose throughout the political system. It'd be a constitutional crisis. There are no such fines in the US. The US does lots of things wrong, but this is one of the areas the US tends to get right.
You're dredging up unrelated scenarios involving not-even-hypothetically-existent crimes that nobody was talking about. This is not about trying to use Web site visits to set somebody up for some crime they didn't commit, or even for some crime they did commit. Your weird scenario about, I don't know, being wrongfully charged with something else because your Web history somehow made somebody think you'd done it, is completely out of left field. The issue is entirely whether there's a penalty for visiting a Web site, and what you're talking about is totally irrelevant. And the hypothetical you seem to be trying to spin sounds less like being convicted of murder when there's no body, and more like being convicted of murder when the victim is known to be alive.
How about the website for Iran's supreme leader[1], with headlines like "ZIONIST REGIME FACES SEVERE CONSEQUENCES FOR ITS ACTIONS"? It's not blocked in the US.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/lula-says-musk-must-respe...
https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/Decem...
"From approximately 2005 through 2006, IQBAL, through a Brooklyn and Staten Island-based satellite transmission company he helped operate, HDTV Limited, provided satellite transmission services to al-Manar, in exchange for thousands of dollars in payments from al-Manar. IQBAL provided these services knowing that al-Manar is Hizballah's television station."[2]
It's hard to work out exactly what this means.
Another article[4] does some sleuthing and claims that Iqbal had an FCC licensed earth station that was uplinking in the Ku-band to "ALSAT". That implies that he was actually repeating the al-Manar broadcasts onto a satellite that had a footprint over the US.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism links[5] to some documents for the case, including the original indictment[6]. Some of the "overt acts" listed in this indictment included signing a contract in Lebanon in which his company agreed to provide broadcasting services for al-Manar in exchange for a fee. Additionally, he was charged with providing access to these broadcasts to satellite customers.
I wonder if he would have gotten in trouble if he had only done the latter - helped consumers to tap into al-Manar without actually being part of the technical broadcast chain.
Very interesting case, thanks for the rabbit hole!
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/nyregion/25tv.html
2: https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/newyork/press-releases/200...
3: https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/Decem...
4: https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/fbi-raids-backyard-interna...
5: https://www.investigativeproject.org/case/190/us-v-iqbal-et-...
6: https://www.investigativeproject.org/case_docs/us-v-iqbal-et...
Imho you should all stop that. It's too simple. It doesn't really increase credibility.
Why not start dealing with actual discussions there, and maybe have a little less "everything was already said; just not yet by everyone" discussions in other places?!