Hopefully - if you are a M3 2305 student - you've waded into the section on civil liberties and have become familiar with how the Supreme Court balances the competing demands for individual liberty and the greater interest of society. In this case the liberty in question is the ability of people to access information and the greater interest of society is for the rest of us to be free from the consequences of that information - specifically that people ought to join a religious war and shoot at us.
The author - Eric Posner - is a well regarded federal judge who moonlights as a law professor and author. Here he argues that the nature of the threat is sufficient to punish people who access that information.
- Here is his argument.
Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective way—and by this I mean ideas that lead directly to terrorist attacks that kill people. The novelty of this threat calls for new thinking about limits on freedom of speech.Advertisement
What can we do? Proposals that Internet companies “shut down” dangerous communications have been met with howls of laughter from Silicon Valley. It’s easy for determined jihadis to replace shuttered websites with new ones and hard for Internet companies to keep track of billions of communications. Using the law to force Facebook and Twitter to do more to block ISIS propagandawould make sense but also falls short of what is needed. No approach is perfect, but there is a way to deal with these problems.
Consider Ali Amin, the subject of a recent article in the New York Times. Lonely and bored, the 17-year-old Virginia resident discovered ISIS online, was gradually drawn into its messianic world, eventually exchanged messages with other supporters and members, and then provided some modest logistical support to ISIS supporters (instructing them how to transfer funds secretly and driving an ISIS recruit to the airport). He was convicted of the crime of material support of terrorism and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Amin did not start out as a jihadi; he was made into one.
Researchers at George Washington University identified 300 U.S-based ISIS sympathizers who use Twitter and other social media to lure Muslim Americans into the arms of ISIS. These American citizens and residents—themselves the fruit of the recruiting efforts of foreign ISIS members as well as of other Americans—frequently use a graduated approach so as to avoid alarming people who are merely curious about Islam:
In one case the seemingly naïve individual posted general questions about religion, to which ISIS supporters quickly responded in a calm and authoritative manner. After a few weeks, the accounts of hardened ISIS supporters slowly introduced increasingly ardent views into the conversation. The new recruit was then invited to continue [conversing] privately, often via Twitter’s Direct Message feature or on other private messaging platforms such as surespot.
But there is something we can do to protect people like Amin from being infected by the ISIS virus by propagandists, many of whom are anonymous and most of whom live in foreign countries. Consider a law that makes it a crime to access websites that glorify, express support for, or provide encouragement for ISIS or support recruitment by ISIS; to distribute links to those websites or videos, images, or text taken from those websites; or to encourage people to access such websites by supplying them with links or instructions. Such a law would be directed at people like Amin: naïve people, rather than sophisticated terrorists, who are initially driven by curiosity to research ISIS on the Web.
The law would provide graduated penalties. After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government; subsequent violations would result in fines or prison sentences. The idea would be to get out the word that looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden. As word spread, people like Amin would be discouraged from searching for ISIS-related websites and perhaps be spared radicalization and draconian punishment for more serious terrorism-related crimes.
Posner's position has detractors though - I'll post counter arguments separately.
