Category Archives: Free Speech

Senator Ivana Bacik calls for Debate on Homophobia and Free Speech
Senator Ivana Bacik calls for Debate on Homophobia and Free Speech, in Seanad Eireann, 4th February 2014.

By: Ivana Bacik

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Senator Ivana Bacik calls for Debate on Homophobia and Free Speech - Video

ANKARA, Turkey, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Turkish opposition parties and the international community are calling on the government to scrap a new bill they say would severely limit Internet free speech.

Leaders are calling on Turkish President Abdullah Gul to veto the bill, which passed the nation's parliament Thursday.

The legislation gives the government the authority to block any website without a court order and would force Internet providers to maintain data on users for as long as two years, and provide it to the government on request, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.

"The president should take up a position on behalf of democracy and freedom. The impartiality of the president means something different," opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu told reporters in Istanbul Friday. "To say that 'regulations against laws come and I sign them despite clearly [problems with them]' degrades the office of the president. The president pledges loyalty to the Constitution. And he has to do what is necessary. A president cannot defend bans. A president cannot defend legal regulations which were brought by a government saying they will limit freedom."

The U.S. State Department said the ban does not fall in line with international norms on free speech.

"We share the concerns recently expressed ... that these proposed measures are not compatible with international standards on freedom of expression," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

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Opposition protests new Internet ban in Turkey

A system that tolerates "hate speech" is probably superior to the alternatives, but defenders of an absolute right can't pretend no one gets hurt.

Millions of Americans support free speech. They firmly believe that we are the only country to have free speech, and that anyone who even questions free speech had damn well better shut the #$%& up.

Case in point: In a recent essay in The Daily Beast, Fordham Law Professor Thane Rosenbaum notes that European countries and Israel outlaw certain kinds of speechNazi symbols, anti-Semitic slurs, and Holocaust denial, and speech that incites hatred on the basis of race, religion, and so forth. The American law of free speech, he argues, assumes that the only function of law is to protect people against physical harm; it tolerates unlimited emotional harm. Rosenbaum cites recent studies (regrettably, without links) that show that "emotional harm is equal in intensity to that experienced by the body, and is even more long-lasting and traumatic." Thus, the victims of hate speech, he argues, suffer as much as or more than victims of hate crime. "Why should speech be exempt from public welfare concerns when its social costs can be even more injurious [than that of physical injury]?"

I believestronglyin the free-speech system we have. But most of the responses to Rosenbaum leave me uneasy. I think defenders of free speech need to face two facts: First, the American system of free speech is not the only one; most advanced democracies maintain relatively open societies under a different set of rules. Second, our system isn't cost-free. Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it. The only mature way to judge the system is to look at both sides of the ledger.

Jonathan Rauch: The Case for Hate Speech

Most journalistic defenses of free speech take the form of "shut up and speak freely." The Beast itself provides Exhibit A: Cultural news editor Michael Moynihan announced that "we're one of the few countries in the Western world that takes freedom of speech seriously," and indignantly defended it against "those who pretend to be worried about trampling innocents in a crowded theater but are more interested in trampling your right to say whatever you damn well please." To Moynihan, Rosenbaum could not possibly be sincere or principled; he is just a would-be tyrant. The arguments about harm were "thin gruel"not even worth answering. Moynihan's response isn't really an argument; it's a defense of privilege, like a Big Tobacco paean to the right to smoke in public.

In contrast to this standard-issue tantrum is a genuinely thoughtful and appropriate response from Jonathan Rauch at The Volokh Conspiracy, now a part of the Washington Post's web empire. Rauch responds that

painful though hate speech may be for individual members of minorities or other targeted groups, its toleration is to their great collective benefit, because in a climate of free intellectual exchange hateful and bigoted ideas are refuted and discredited, not merely suppressed .... That is how we gay folks achieved the stunning gains we've made in America: by arguing toward truth.

I think he's right. But the argument isn't complete without conceding something most speech advocates don't like to admit:

Free speech does do harm.

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Free Speech Isn't Free - Garrett Epps - The Atlantic

urbancure.org

Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501(c)(3) non-profit think tank which promotes market based public policy to fight poverty.

February 7, 2014|6:58 pm

The latest round of the IRS scandal, in which Tea Party and conservative groups have been selectively targeted for harassment by our tax collection agency, is now unfolding. This comes in the form of proposed new rules from the IRS regarding the operation of organizations falling under the 501c4 provision of the tax code.

These are organizations whose purpose is to promote "social welfare" and therefore their income is tax-free.

Because promoting a cause or agenda in our free and democratic country cannot be isolated from political activity associated with that agenda, such activity is permitted by 501c4 organizations, as long as politics does not become its main purpose.

These are the rules of the game that have existed since 1959.

But now the IRS wants to change the game.

The new rules they propose expand the definition of "candidate related activity" so broadly to include voter education campaigns and grass roots lobbying campaigns and to forbid even the mention of a candidate in any context 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election that it will make it impossible for these organizations to function.

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Using the IRS to Suppress Free Speech

IOC Says Hotels, Security and Free Speech a Go at Games
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Communications Director Mark Adams said in Sochi, Russia on Sunday (February 2) that complaints over the readiness ...

By: IBTimes UK

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IOC Says Hotels, Security and Free Speech a Go at Games - Video

Segment from Free Speech TV: Generic Drugs Free from Regulation
In this segment on Free Speech TV #39;s "Ring of Fire" program, Howard L. Nations, a nationally renowned trial lawyer, discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court and i...

By: HowardNations

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Segment from Free Speech TV: Generic Drugs Free from Regulation - Video

Coming soon to a campaign treasury near you.

Photo by George Frey/Getty Images

On Feb. 11, Future Tensea partnership of Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State Universitywill host an event on cryptocurrencies at the New America office in Washington, D.C. For more information and to watch the webcast, visit the New America website.

Charlie Shrem was an early adopter of bitcoin, a decentralized peer-to-peer virtual currency built around cryptography. By 2011 he co-founded BitInstant, a service through which users could exchange government-backed currency to bitcoin and vice versa. Considered one of the big faces of bitcoin, Shrem naturally became the vice president of the Bitcoin Foundation, the nonprofit organization that standardizes, protects, and promotes the use of Bitcoin.

Charlie Shrem was arrested on Jan. 26, but the wheels had already begun to turn on Jan. 24, when a sealed criminal complaint was filed in United States of America v. Robert M. Faiella, a/k/a BTCKing, and Charlie Shrem. The criminal complaint is centered around BTCKings activities on the Silk Road, a Tor-hidden online marketplace for drugs and other illicit goods that was shut down last year. Shrem, who allegedly helped BTCKing launder drug money, is no kingpin, not even if you take the government at its word. Yet the Department of Justice was oddly smug in its press release, taking pains to include the phrase Ceo of Bitcoin Exchange Company in the title. This arrest wasnt just about drugs. By arresting a vice president of the Bitcoin Foundation, the Department of Justice was firing a warning shot for the entire bitcoin community.

The criminal complaint in U.S. v. Ulbricht (otherwise known as the Dread Pirate Roberts case) had included this curious line: Bitcoins are not illegal in and of themselves and have known legitimate uses. That lineindeed, most of the description of bitcoinis repeated in the Shrem complaint. At the time of Ulbrichts arrest, it could have been understood as a sign that the government recognized that bitcoins Wild West days were over. After all, many of the exchanges had assented to regulation by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (a federal agency under the Department of the Treasury), thus launching the currency into mainstream respectability.

Now it seems that the government has merely shifted its focus. It is no longer concerned about whether bitcoin in itself is illegal: It is concerned with its capacity for anonymous, hidden payments. In other words, money laundering, as defined by 18 U.S.C. 1956a charge levied in both the Shrem and Ulbricht cases. It was also used to charge defendants in the Liberty Reserve case (which Ill describe further down), a case that might be a blueprint for things to come.

Transactional freedom is not synonymous with money laundering, no more than bitcoin should be synonymous with anonymity. (In fact, the open-ledger design of bitcoin doesnt guarantee privacy. In response to such concerns, innovations like Matthew Greens Zerocoin and Cody Wilson and Amir Taakis Dark Wallet have focused on preserving users privacy.) As the U.S. government ramps up its focus on money laundering through digital means, it is worth piercing through the concept of what money laundering actually is, and re-examining why we should care about anonymous payments.

In the wake of the diplomatic cables leak in 2010, members of the United States government convinced MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, and other payment processors to voluntarily block donations to WikiLeaks. Bitcoin had barely celebrated its one-year anniversary, but many early adopters had already spotted the potential to fund WikiLeaks through the decentralized, borderless currency. But bitcoins pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, vehemently opposed this use of bitcoin, because he was concerned that WikiLeaks controversy would rebound disastrously on bitcoin. WikiLeaks refrained from accepting bitcoin donations until Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared in the spring of 2011. Today WikiLeaks reports that the majority of its funding comes from bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, even though the financial blockade has since partially lifted.

Cryptocurrency is an appealing choice for prospective WikiLeaks donors. Not only does it bypass the fees, restrictions, and potential seizures that third parties might impose on these transactions; it can also help obscure the donors connection to an organization that her own government may be hostile toward. Of course, anonymity has never been a prominent design feature of bitcoin, but mixing services allow users to anonymize payments, and therefore offer possibilities for individuals to materially support unpopular causes without fear of government reprisal.

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Bitcoin as free speech? Regulating cryptocurrency has ...

Afghanistan Elections and Media Freedoms: Will free speech gains of past decade prove durable?
The remaking of the Afghan media scene over the last 12 years is arguably the most clear and visible silver lining to the fraught project of fostering a stab...

By: JewishNewsOne

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Afghanistan Elections and Media Freedoms: Will free speech gains of past decade prove durable? - Video

Published February 06, 2014

FoxNews.com

Republican congressional leaders are calling on the newly appointed IRS commissioner to scrap a new rule they claim would target politically active groups seeking tax-exempt status -- including the very same conservative groups the agency is accused of harassing.

"This proposed rule is an affront to free speech itself," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.

The letter -- signed by House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and others -- marks the most coordinated effort yet by the GOP to fight the rule change, first proposed in November.

The letter comes as more conservative groups testified Thursday about IRS targeting, before a House oversight subcommittee.

"They were harassed at the hands of their very government," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said.

The central complaint over the proposed rule is that it would effectively codify the kind of scrutiny that Tea Party and other groups were subjected to before the 2010 and 2012 elections. Those groups had been applying for what's known as 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status, as "social welfare" organizations. The rule change would limit the kinds of political activity that "social welfare" groups -- of any ideological leaning -- could engage in.

The proposal was described by the administration as a way to clarify the rules, and create "clear-cut definitions of political activity."

But Republicans now say the rule change would allow political targeting to continue unabated.

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FREE SPEECH MUZZLED? GOP urges IRS boss to scrap controversial rule

5 hours ago Feb. 6, 2014 - 3:23 PM PST

The Turkish government has long had a fractious relationship with the internet, marked by periodic bans on sites like YouTube for content that contravenes Turkish laws like the law that makes it an offence to insult Turkishness. But new amendments to the countrys internet legislation that were passed by parliament on Wednesday take this internet-phobia to new levels, and represent an unprecedented attack on the free speech rights of Turkish citizens.

Among other things, the amendments allow the authorities to block access to specific content on the internet with as little as four hours notice, and without a court order. The legislation goes beyond the kind of blanket site-wide banning that Turkey has used in the past against services like YouTube, and allows the government to block specific pieces of content at the URL level, in much the same way that Chinas Great Firewall does.

In many ways, the new Turkish law is the rough equivalent of SOPA and PIPA two anti-piracy bills that were proposed by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in 2011 and sparked a huge outcry about surveillance and free speech, to the point where both were withdrawn. The Turkish amendments, however, have been passed by parliament and now just require the signature of the countrys president, Abdullah Gul.

Like those laws, the Turkish legislation forces ISPs to act as agents of the government in a variety of ways, including a requirement to store virtually all data about their users online activity for at least two years. The amendments also authorize the government to use methods such as deep packet inspection in order to bypass anonymizing tools and other technologies that Turkish dissidents might use to get around content blocks or bans.

Turkish nationals, including University of North Carolina sociologist and social-media expert Zeynep Tufekci, have been criticizing the proposed legislation for some time because they see it as an infringement of their rights to free speech. Some see the crackdown as a response to the recent corruption scandal, in which some senior ministers have reportedly been receiving bribes. Turkey also routinely censors and restricts its national news media, making internet sources and especially social media an even more important factor.

As noted by the site BoingBoing, one Turkish citizen has written a goodbye letter to the internet and posted it on Medium, saying: This is a farewell to our freedom of speech, privacy and World Wide Web, and an unwanted welcome to Turkey Narrow Web. Ahmet Sabanci described the legislation in this way:

ISPs going to log everything we do together. Theyll keep these logs for years and government can check these logs whenever they want. Theyll use URL-based censorship on you. That means, if my essays on Medium counted as harmful, other people can see Medium but theyll never be able to read my essays on Medium. And most of the people wont be able to notice this.

In a recent interview with Wired magazine, the creator of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee said that one of his fears about the future of the global network was that it would become Balkanized, with countries taking control of portions of the net and restricting information. He said he wants a web thats open, works internationally, works as well as possible and is not nation-based. Unfortunately, that kind of free flow of information isnt in the interests of repressive regimes.

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Turkey passes draconian internet law, Turks say goodbye to their freedom of speech