Category Archives: Free Speech

Social media giant Facebook has warned against curtailing freedom of expression as the EU considers measures to clamp down on disinformation campaigns across online platforms.

In the online world, the scope of what we deem to be acceptable speech has narrowed over recent years, leading to potential erosions in freedom of expression, said Nick Clegg, Facebooks Facebooks VP for Global Affairs, at Romes LUISS Guido Carli University on Tuesday (21 January).

Even though other social media companies, such as Twitter, have committed to ban political advertising online, Facebook has repeatedly resisted pressure to take action against political advertising across its platforms.

In the end you need to be careful once you have curtailed free speech because once you have curtailed it you cant turn it back, he said, adding that Facebooks position is to err on the side of free expression where that fine line has to be crossed.

Despite Facebooks commitment to ensuring that free speech is allowed to continue across its platforms, Clegg renewed previous calls for regulation across four areas of its operation: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.

EU fight against disinformation

Meanwhile in Brussels, the European Commission revealed that the EUs Democracy Action Plan, set to be released later this year, will establish measures in the fight against disinformation while also attempting to ensure free and fair elections, as well as addressing media sustainability.

A project team on media pluralism and media freedom as part of the Commissioners Group on European Democracy has been established to work on issues related to sustainability in the industry, Vra Jourov, the Commissions Vice-President for Values and Transparency, said yesterday. Members of the group include Jourov and Executive Vice-President Vestager, as well as commissioners Breton, Gabriel, Reynders, and Vrhelyi. The first meeting of the collective has been planned for early February.

Throughout last year, and particularly in the run up to the May 2019 elections, the European Commission had attempted to do its part to quell the spread of fake news with the introduction of a code of practice against disinformation.

Thecode was a voluntary framework aiming to stamp out the spread of fake news online. Signatories to the set of measures included Facebook, Google and Twitter.

In October, as part of the release of the first annual self-assessments reports of the code, the European Commission highlighted substantial concerns regarding access to data for independent scrutiny of tech platforms efforts against disinformation.

In a statement, the Commission said tech platforms have not been permitting sufficient access to their data to meet the needs of independent scrutiny and there is an urgent need for platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Google to establish better relationships with researchers and fact-checkers looking to probe the work platforms conduct in order to stifle disinformation.

More broadly, at the start of this year, Facebook announced plans to stamp out political manipulation online ahead of the November 2020 US Presidential election, allowing users to turn-off certain ad-targeting tools.

The decision comes after serious concerns related to Russian interference in the 2016 election and the misuse of user data as part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

[Edited by Frdric Simon]

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Facebook 'on the side of free expression' as EU steps up disinformation fight - EURACTIV

Principles are pretty easy to have. It doesn't take much effort to say that you believe in things like free expression, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, a limited government, social justice or fiscal austerity.

Principles are pretty easy to have. It doesnt take much effort to say that you believe in things like free expression, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, a limited government, social justice or fiscal austerity.

The problem, though, is that living out those principles is made quite difficult by our flawed, tribal, primate minds.

An evolutionary holdover of 200,000 years of human development we yearn for small, close-knit groups of us, that are distinct and better to the barbarians that are them.

This is why cliques form in high school. This is why many people join Greek organizations in college. Its why we join message boards for our favorite sports teams, and participate in social media. And yes, this is why people join political parties.

Man is a social creature, but he does not have a universal love of all his brothers. He craves a tribe.

So, when a persons supposed principles come into conflict with their tribal allegiances, the caveman DNA emerges and demands loyalty to the tribe, above that of the principle.

And so, as we have seen lately, supposed advocates of free speech are quite happy to attempt to shut up people they dont like. People that arent in their tribe.

For much of American history, there were brave groups of people that understood how important it was to place principle over tribe. There were those who were willing to set aside those tribal loyalties, in favor of the larger ideal.

The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, rather famously defended the free speech rights of members of the Ku Klux Klan in the landmark Supreme Court case of Brandenburg v. Ohio.

The American Founders understood this. He that would make his own liberty secure, Thomas Paine once wrote, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Last week, here in Maine, we saw just how far we have fallen from Paines ideal, and the ACLUs example.

Michelle Malkin was invited to Maine to speak by the local chapter of the College Republicans at the University of Maine. She is a controversial speaker herself and has drawn fire from the left and the right for refusing to disavow America First nationalist Nick Fuentes for some of his more disgusting opinions. This was the reason cited for their faculty adviser, Amy Fried, withdrawing from the group, which decertified them with the university.

Then a maelstrom happened, whereby the group was forced to move the event not once, not twice, but three times, before finally settling at their fourth venue. The university says they did not pressure the venues to close the event, and after speaking with some of the venues in question myself, I actually believe that.

It was made clear to the venues that holding the event would be detrimental to their operations, and so they decided to cancel the events.

Look, Malkin has never really been my cup of tea, and I find Fuentes to be troubling and dangerous. But if you really have that much of a problem with either, the solution to speech you find so reprehensible should never be to shut it down. That only inspires resentment, and makes people more curious about what could be so scary about a speech, and aids in the message being spread.

The solution to speech is more speech. Have a protest, but do not threaten businesses for allowing people to speak. Make a speech of your own. Use social media and make a better case for why they are wrong.

In the end, any attempt to shut someone up merely makes their voice that much bigger, and yours smaller. So ditch the tribe, and fight for a principle we should all believe in for once, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us.

Matthew Gagnon of Yarmouth is the chief executive officer of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. A Hampden native, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.

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The answer to speech we don't like is more speech - observer-me.com

President Donald Trump holds up an executive order on antisemitism in the East Room of the White House December 11, 2019. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)Requiring the government to consider someones political views to determine whether their conduct is punishable leads to no good.

These are challenging times to be Jewish in America.

I attend synagogue, and my children attend Jewish day school, under the watchful eye of armed guards. When I explained to my young daughter why my husband was out the other night he attended a simulated security drill at our synagogue, where he serves on the board she asked whether I thought bad people might come to our synagogue and whether I would find her and protect her if they did. Needless to say, my heart broke into a million pieces.

Whats particularly distressing about the current moment is that the antisemitism feels like it comes from every direction. White supremacists and the progressive Left, for example, have practically nothing in common, yet members of both groups can be found trading in antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. Its a bit too much like that line from Tom Lehrers National Brotherhood Week, where he sings,

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,and the Catholics hate the Protestants,and the Hindus hate the Muslims,and everybody hates the Jews.

And yet, antisemitism often goes unacknowledged, particularly at Americas colleges and universities.Thats why, in December, many people cheered the presidents new executive order on antisemitism for addressing a problem that too many have turned a blind eye to: the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.

Last spring, for example, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hosted a conference entitled Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities. The conference featured Tamer Nafar, a Palestinian rapper, performing what he proudly called an anti-Semitic song. Undercover video taken by filmmaker Ami Horowitz showed Tamer asking the audience to join in, saying, I cannot be antisemitic alone followed by audience members singing gleefully along as Tamer sang, Im in love with a Jew ... When confronted with the recording, UNC defensively stated that it misconstrued the breadth of discourse that took place at the conference. It is difficult to imagine such indifference from a university if similar rhetoric had been directed at almost any other group.

As both an advocate of free speech on campus and an observant, pro-Israel Jew, these problems have been on my mind a great deal. Unfortunately, the relief at finally having the reality on campus acknowledged has, for many people, obscured problems with the executive order that threaten everyones freedom of speech in the long run.

First, the good news: The order promises robust enforcement of campus anti-discrimination laws to prevent antisemitic harassment. The longstanding policy of the Department of Education is that discrimination against Jews is covered by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically its prohibition of discrimination based on national origin, and the portion of the executive order locking in this policy signaled the administrations commitment to robustly enforcing it.

But unfortunately, the executive order did not end there. Instead, it directed federal agencies, in considering whether conduct was antisemitic, to consider a very specific definition of antisemitism and very specific examples of it. Those examples include protected political speech, such as drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Many Jews may find these views noxious. And yes, some of the people who hold these views may, in fact, be antisemitic. But requiring the government to even consider someones political views to determine whether or not their conduct is punishable is a recipe for disaster and will ultimately only hurt the people it was intended to help. Do we really want the federal government defining all of the worlds -isms? What happens when President Joe Biden issues an executive order on Islamophobia directing the government to consider things like denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination or drawing comparisons between Hamas and the Nazis as evidence of a prohibited anti-Muslim or anti-Arab motive? Or when opposition to affirmative action, or even a vote for Donald Trump, are legally considered evidence of racism?

When we open the door to drawing distinctions among speakers based on their political views, that door will not easily be closed again and all of our rights are at risk.

We are already seeing evidence that people are seeking to use the executive order to justify censorship of protected speech. For example, several Jewish organizations are demanding that the University of Michigan cancel an upcoming Youth for Palestine conference being hosted on its campus, and are citing the new executive order in support of their argument that the conference could lead to harassment of Jewish students. Now of course, if conference participants do harass Jewish students, that could indeed be grounds for a Title VI complaint. But the idea that the university should impose a prior restraint by canceling the conference because of the views of its organizers and attendees is wholly inconsistent with the most basic principles of free speech and association.

The fear that I and other Jewish people feel right now is real. But that fear cannot justify infringing on our most fundamental liberties. Instead, we should focus our energies on ways to fight antisemitism, on campus and beyond, without compromising freedom of speech. For example, we can support legislative efforts to forbid, at institutions of higher education, discriminatory harassment based on religion. We should also work diligently to expose campus antisemitism to public scrutiny, as Ami Horowitz did when he took and publicized video of the viciously antisemitic rhetoric at the UNC conference.

As Supreme Court justice and committed Zionist Louis Brandeis famously said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

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An Executive Order against Antisemitism Is Being Used to Justify Censorship - National Review

In 2015, PEN America, an organization I belong to and admire, gave its first Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French weekly. Four months earlier, two jihadists had slaughtered most of the papers staff at its weekly meeting in Paris. The award caused a lot of controversy among American writers. More than 200 PEN members denounced it, including some of the countrys most illustrious writers, and half a dozen table hosts refused to attend the awards ceremony. Charlie Hebdos satire, often juvenile, also took aim at intolerance in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Judaism, but the PEN writers found its crude caricatures of angry imams and the Prophet Muhammad beyond the pale. Theocratic Islam should be off-limits to satirists, the PEN writers argued, because French Muslims belonged to a marginalized, embattled, and victimized group. So do French Jews; so, at that moment, did French satirists. In fact, it took some nerve to argue that the balance of power between the heavily armed jihadists and the defenseless cartoonists was with the latter. These 200 writers wouldnt honor other writers who had paid the ultimate price for expression. They were members of an organization dedicated to free speech, but they wouldnt defend it in the face of murder. As Salman Rushdie said, I hope nobody ever comes after them. To its great credit, PEN held its ground.

Two years later, PEN gave the same Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the Womens March. This time there was no controversy, because PEN members overwhelmingly supported the cause. The next year the award went to three student gun-control activists, and the year after to Anita Hill. However admirable, however courageous, the winners were no longer writers, and the issue was no longer freedom of speech. Perhaps the searing experience of 2015the murders, the controversy that divided PEN, and then the incredibly tense awards ceremony, with riot police and bomb-sniffing dogs all around the Museum of Natural Historyhad taken some of the heart out of freedom of expression courage. After Charlie Hebdo, it became an award for American political activism. PEN was honoring heroes on its sidepublic figures whom the majority of American writers wholeheartedly support. The award became less about freedom than about belonging. As Charlie Hebdo showed, free speech, which is the foundation of every writers work, can be tough going.

Among the enemies of writing, belonging is closely related to fear. Its strange to say this, but a kind of fear pervades the literary and journalistic worlds Im familiar with. I dont mean that editors and writers live in terror of being sent to prison. Its true that the president calls journalists enemies of the American people, and its not an easy time to be one, but were still free to investigate him. Michael Moore and Robert De Niro can fantasize aloud about punching Donald Trump in the face or hitting him with a bag of excrement, and the only consequence is an online fuss. Nor are Islamist jihadists or white nationalists sticking knives in the backs of poets and philosophers on American city streets. The fear is more subtle and, in a way, more crippling. Its the fear of moral judgment, public shaming, social ridicule, and ostracism. Its the fear of landing on the wrong side of whatever group matters to you. An orthodoxy enforced by social pressure can be more powerful than official ideology, because popular outrage has more weight than the party line.

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The Enemies of Writing - The Atlantic

When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendshipthough I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

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Free Speech Quotes (164 quotes) - Goodreads

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January 17, 2020

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This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

A sack of money, the Supreme Court has decreed, is just another form of speech, which is why Mike Bloomberg will have vastly more to say about the 2020 presidential race than almost every other American. Bloomberg intends to shell out $1 billion for his "free" speech about why President Trump must be defeated (and why Bloomberg is the Democrat best suited to beat him). That's about 10 times what any individual has ever spent to influence a presidential race and Bloomberg promises to keep spending even if another Democrat gets the nomination. The former New York City mayor, 77, is worth about $58 billion, so he can easily afford this indulgence.

With no sane limits on political spending, it was inevitable that attempts to buy the White House and Congress would escalate. In the 1976 Buckley ruling, the Supreme Court struck down Watergate-inspired caps on the amount of money wealthy individuals could spend to influence a race or donate to their own campaigns. The 2010 Citizens United ruling, which removed limits on political spending by "outside" groups, unleashed a tsunami of contributions from the superwealthy, including Charles and David Koch, George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, and Tom Steyer. In 2010, the top individual contribution was $7.5 million; by 2018, it had soared to $122 million (by Adelson, mostly in Trump's behalf). Now Bloomberg is raising the ante into the billions. Money alone, of course, does not win elections. But the blizzard of ads, get-out-the-vote operations, and skilled campaign staff that only money can buy can make a crucial difference. In the majority opinion in Citizens United, Justice Anthony Kennedy insisted that "the appearance of influence or access" that donors get for massive contributions "will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." Ordinary citizens, after all, still have the same constitutional right to free speech as any billionaire. Just a lot less of it.

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All the free speech money can buy - The Week

It seems like everyones talking about bribery these days but I, and anyone else who works for the federal government, have to limit what we can say about what does or does not constitute an ethical or illegal lapse.

I am an ethicist who teaches leadership, ethics and law, and I believe a recent bribery case in the U.S. military offers an interesting and distinctive perspective through which to consider these issues.

Unfortunately, due to current restrictions on what federal employees can and cant say about political matters, I cant discuss all the ways that case might apply to a broader debate.

Nonetheless, there is one thing I can say without caveat or equivocation. Bribery laws for government officials have a powerful ethical principle at their core: If you work for the government, your actions in office are meant to serve the public interest not your own.

Trouble in the 7th Fleet

The so-called Fat Leonard scandal is the largest bribery and corruption case in U.S. Navy history.

The key player is Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian-born businessman based in Singapore who was commonly referred to as Fat Leonard because of his 350-pound weight. He ran a company called Glenn Defense Marine Asia that had U.S. government contracts to provide various services to Navy ships in Asian ports docking, refueling, sewage removal and shore transportation for both cargo and personnel.

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In 2015, Francis pleaded guilty to plying Navy officers with cash and favors in exchange for their efforts to steer the Navys Pacific fleet to ports where his company could provide services. Then, the company would fabricate bids by nonexistent companies to make its own charges look competitive, overbill the Navy for services and even draw up fake invoices to collect money for goods and services it never provided to the ships and crews.

The case is perhaps best known for the fact that one of the most common favors Francis provided were paid sexual partners: He even kept meticulous notes about the peccadilloes of different officers.

More significant for U.S. taxpayers is the fact that the decade-long scam ultimately bilked the Navy out of more than $35 million.

Whistleblowers and corruption

In some ways the Fat Leonard scandal is a textbook bribery scheme, with clandestine meetings, envelopes full of cash, and explicit arrangements to perform clearly illegal acts. In fact, one of the biggest questions raised when Leonard was finally arrested in 2013 was how his company had been able to get away with the scheme for almost a decade.

There were, in fact, several whistleblowers along the way, but as is often the case when corruption is widespread, those in on the scheme were notified of the complaints before word got to those who would hold them responsible.

So rather than being lauded, whistleblowers were instead widely vilified.

Nonetheless, the truth was eventually brought to light. To date, more than 20 people have pleaded guilty to federal crimes, including the first-ever conviction of an admiral for a felony.

Significantly, however, the scope of the scandal is even more far-reaching. Dozens of officers, including several admirals, have been reprimanded and removed from office for more minor related violations, without going to jail.

Reciprocity and bribery

These last cases are particularly interesting, because they help demonstrate not only the high standards of military, but also the ways that bribery schemes often dont conform to common, stereotypical, preconceived notions.

Many of the officers charged didnt accept cash payments, but rather the kind of favors that they couldnt or wouldnt be able to obtain for themselves: travel, champagne, scotch, luxury hotel rooms, ornamental swords, handmade ship models, spa treatments, Cuban cigars, Kobe beef, Spanish suckling pigs, concert tickets and even a culinary internship.

Ultimately, it shouldnt be surprising that bribery often begins with small favors rather than thick envelopes of cash. Human beings are social creatures; favors strengthen peoples social bonds and make them more likely to reciprocate in turn.

Thats why federal ethics rules regarding favors are generally so strict, prohibiting government employees from accepting all but the most minimal gifts (even modest meals) from contractors and foreign agents.

Those prohibitions have obvious exceptions, but the principle behind the general rules is all the more important in their exceptions: Official actions are meant to serve public, rather than private, interests.

In the Fat Leonard cases, the evidence is clear: Even in the cases in which leaders have been merely reprimanded and removed from office, the kinds of favors the officers accepted demonstrate they were acting for their own benefits not those of the nation.

Why I cant say more

There may well be lessons the Fat Leonard saga has for other cases in which the alleged exchange of official acts for something of personal value is a key element of the crime.

Those considerations might seem even more relevant given that in 1998, Mississippi Republican lawmaker Roger Wicker took to the House floor and declared the rule of law means that the commander-in-chief of our armed forces could not be held to a lower standard than are his subordinates.

More than two decades later Wicker, now a senator, has recently reaffirmed that standard.

However, I am a federal employee, and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel has issued unusually broad guidance about the Hatch Acts limits on federal workers partisan political activities.

The law generally bars federal employees from advocating in favor of or against the election of a particular candidate, as well from participating in other partisan political activities in an election. Yet the current guidance which itself has been criticized for taking sides on a political divide has been taken by some to apply to any analysis of any aspects of the presidents impeachment and trial.

Limiting public discourse

This is a free-speech problem, but its more than that. When federal and state governments hire experts and researchers as, in effect, public servants, I believe that expertise should be welcome in the public sphere, helping to inform the people we work for.

I work at a federally run university, which is why I come under these particular government rules. There are relatively few institutions like mine, so it might seem a minor issue.

However, numerous states have laws similar to the Hatch Act, at least some of which apply to employees of those statespublic universities. If the current federal rules stand, public state university employees may well find themselves facing similar, or even more problematic, limits in the future, especially if analysis is taken to be a form of advocacy.

Regardless of those concerns, the Office of Special Counsels current guidance remains, for better or worse, the rule for federal employees.

Given that fact, there very may well be another reason to follow it: Doing so can help further differentiate those who attempt to respect the significant distinction between campaigning and governing from those who seek to minimize, or even eliminate altogether, the difference between the two.

As a result, I leave any lessons of how the Fat Leonard scandal might apply to any other case as an exercise for the reader.

A former major in the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Marcus Hedahl is an associate professor of Philosophy in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the United States Naval Academy and a faculty affiliate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. His views, which he cant fully express, dont necessarily reflect those of Navy Times or its staffers.

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Op-ed: A Navy bribery scandal and the limits of free speech - NavyTimes.com

A true commitment to free speech requires defending the right to express the most vile, transgressive, and unpopular ideas. And the truest demonstration of that commitment is to hold one's own political tribe to account when it fails to walk the walk on the principle.

You won't find such introspection in "No Safe Spaces," a new documentary that exemplifies the growing "free-speech tourism" on the right.

The film's protagonists and executive producers are Adam Carolla, the comedian and host of the most downloaded podcast in the world, and Dennis Prager, the conservative talk-radio host and founder of the hugely popular YouTube channel PragerU.

The doc lays out an assemblage of the most publicized "politically correct social-justice warrior college-campus snowflakes out of control" stories of the past five years, which the film frames as harbingers of a free speech apocalypse.

While the movie provides solid cases against the logical fallacies made by left-wing activists, it fails to address free-speech violations on the political right and takes the safest route possible by preaching to the choir.

The film's interview subjects include members of the "Intellectual Dark Web" and right-wing YouTubers who are positioned as free-speech warriors. But many of these subjects take an la carte view of free expression seeking government or legal intervention against speech that offends them.

They're not free-speech absolutists. They seem to defend the idea only when they have easy targets, like college students. They're free-speech tourists.

Adam Carolla at the premiere of "No Safe Spaces" at the TCL Chinese Theatre on November 11, 2019, in Hollywood. Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

In a December interview with Insider, Adam Carolla said that while he's never been overtly censored, he has had some indirect experience with it.

"Hollywood has its own version of that ... the version where they don't hire you or they don't let your film into film festivals or they give you horrible reviews on your films," Carolla said. "There's an adult working version of what's going on on the college campuses in Hollywood."

Carolla contends that part of why he's been able to avoid being directly muzzled is that he doesn't work for anyone.

"I write books, I do stand-up, I do a podcast," he said. "I don't have a boss. I don't work for a corporation. I don't work within the Hollywood system. I'm not on a network. If it wasn't for podcasting and stand-up and touring and live shows, I'm sure I would be censored."

When asked why there's no mention of threats to free speech that don't come from college campuses but directly from the government, Carolla said he was unaware of them.

Some of these include the Trump administration order to two universities to amend their jointly run Middle East studies programs to include more positive depictions of Christianity and Judaism or the dozens of state bans that forbid public institutions (such as colleges) from boycotting Israel, and the Texas state policy that actually compels speech from government employees namely, a pledge that they won't boycott Israel.

To his credit, Carolla essentially pleaded ignorance on the topic and expressed his support for the right to boycott: "I'm pro-Israel just because I'm sane. But if you want to protest Israel, you certainly have the right in my world otherwise I'd be a hypocrite."

This is clearly a missed opportunity, as "No Safe Spaces" free-speech street credibility could only be bolstered by having the protagonists of the documentary forcefully defend the rights of people whose politics run pointedly counter to their own.

The self-styled "professor against political correctness" Jordan Peterson at the Cambridge Union. Photo by Chris Williamson/Getty Image

"No Safe Spaces" is indicative of a frustrating trend in an era where the freedom of speech is regularly under attack from both sides. Instead of soberly addressing threats to free speech, the movie relies on some dubious "free-speech warriors" who often don't practice what they preach.

Among them are Jordan Peterson, the professor who rose to fame opposing (and some have argued misconstruing) a Canadian law that he said would "require people under the threat of legal punishment to employ certain words," specifically gender-neutral pronouns for trans persons. But as is noted near the end of the film, Peterson is engaged in two lawsuits against university officials who called him mean names.

Also featured is YouTube host Dave Rubin, who offers such insights as his belief that words like bigot, racist, and homophobe are "nonsensical buzzwords." He has also hinted at lawsuits against people who refer to him by labels he doesn't like, and supports "mass lawsuits" against news organizations for libel.

A third "expert" on free speech presented in the film is PragerU host Candace Owens, who has called for people who burn the US flag to lose their citizenship, a decidedly anti-free-speech notion.

The film repeatedly decries the concept of de-platforming a practice of removing controversial figures from social media and other platforms on the idea that bad ideas will go away if they are not provided oxygen. But in an ironic twist, Prager's own company de-platformed the disgraced alt-right friendly comic Owen Benjamin.

Benjamin's "anti-PC" comedy repertoire previously praised by the conservative free-speech crowd despite being replete with racist and homophobic slurs started to feature overt anti-Semitism in 2018. Not too long after, his PragerU videos disappeared without explanation from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

As a private nonprofit, PragerU has the right to remove videos and de-platform whomever it chooses. But if the idea of de-platforming is truly anathema, a bit of transparency about why they erased Benjamin's videos from the archives would be expected. An explanation of why Benjamin's jokes featuring racism and homophobia made him a free-speech comedy beacon, but anti-Semitism placed him beyond the pale, would also be expected. (PragerU did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.)

It's no surprise that free-speech devotees have genuine concerns about the growing climate on the left of zero-tolerance word-policing, cancel culture, and an unwillingness to engage in good-faith contentious debate. But it's hard to believe anyone watching this film is unaware of any of that.

The doc's inability to grapple with growing animosity toward free speech on both sides of the political aisle shows just how hollow these concerns among conservative "free-speech tourists" are.

For instance, "No Safe Spaces" doesn't find time to address the seven states with bans on positive portrayals of homosexuality in public schools. Or the Republican lawmakers who use the force of their government bully pulpits to intimidate and silence people who offend their delicate sensibilities. And of course, there's no mention of President Donald Trump's consistent hostility to free speech.

There's a documentary film to be made that thoughtfully examines the perpetual cycles of outrage and cancellation in modern discourse. One that skewers performative hypersensitivity and mindless tribalism. One that takes both sides of the aisle to task for their censorious instincts, and for petitioning authority figures to protect their sensibilities from discomfort. That movie is not "No Safe Spaces."

If you don't call out your own side or loudly defend the First Amendment rights of your political enemies, you're not a free-speech warrior. You're a free-speech tourist.

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'No Safe Spaces' ignores the attacks on free speech from the right - INSIDER

When can the law stop you from saying things about me in order to protect my privacy? Pretty rarely, it turns out.

Let's just make clear what kind of "privacy" we're talking about. The Supreme Court has sometimes discussed a "right to privacy," but that's generally a right to personal autonomyfor instance, the right to buy and use contraceptives. We're not talking about that right here.

We also often have a right to physical privacy in the sense of freedom from trespass or surveillance. The Fourth Amendment, for example, protects us against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by the government. The law of trespass protects us against physical intrusions by our neighbors.

The tort of "intrusion upon seclusion" protects us from other kinds of surveillance, such as people photographing into our bedrooms using high-powered magnifying lenses or people telephoning us repeatedly in the middle of the night. We're not talking about that here, either.

Rather, we're talking about "informational privacy"restrictions on communicating information about me when I think that information is highly private.

Here are the five rules of free speech and privacy:

Rule 1: We usually have a right to speak about other people, not just about ideas. We can express opinions about them, even if those opinions are insulting. We can say true things about them, even when they'd rather keep that information private.

Newspapers and TV programs are chock full of such speech about people, many of whom would rather not be spoken about. The same is true of biographies. Even autobiographies usually reveal information not just about the writer, but about his family, friends, lovers, business associates, and more.

Rule 2: We have a nearly absolute right to reproduce information drawn from government records. Newspapers can quote arrest reports, or documents from court cases, even when they describe the private details of the defendant's lifeor of a victim's life. For instance, in 1989 the Supreme Court struck down a statute that forbade the media from publishing the names of sex offense victims. Such a statute, the Court held, wrongly limited the right to publish information drawn from government records, such as arrest reports.

And this right doesn't vanish with time. There can be no European-style "right to be forgotten" under American law, at least when it comes to material taken from government records.

Rule 3: Our free speech rights extend to speech about private figures, and not just about government officials or famous people. Indeed, newspaper stories often disclose information about ordinary people who have never sought publicity.

Rule 4: Lower courts have allowed some civil lawsuits for so-called "public disclosure of private facts." The Supreme Court has never decided whether this tort is constitutionally valid. But even if the tort can be constitutional, courts agree that it's sharply limited.

First, it applies only to revelations of highly embarrassing or personal information, such as sexual history or medical conditions.

Second, it's limited to statements that aren't "newsworthy." That's a vague line, but courts have read the newsworthiness defense quite broadly: So long as the facts are linked to newsworthy events, such as a crime, people are free to repeat them.

Third, as Rule 2 notes, material borrowed from government recordsagain, such as trial transcripts or arrest reportscan pretty much always be published.

Rule 5: The strongest protection for privacy is generally contract. If a business, for instance, promises not to disclose information about its customers, that promise can be enforced in court. Same if, for instance, someone who is working for a celebrity signs a nondisclosure agreement as a condition of employment.

Such contracts aren't always enforceable; for instance, if a court orders you to disclose information about a customer, you can't just insist that you had promised the customer to keep it secret. Likewise, a federal statute bars businesses from requiring consumers to sign "non-disparagement" clauses, in which the consumer promises not to publish critical reviews of the business.

But if a contract not to speak is otherwise enforceable, the First Amendment doesn't prevent its enforcement. And that extends to promises of privacy as well as to other nondisclosure agreements.

Written by Eugene Volokh, who is a First Amendment law professor at UCLA.Produced and edited by Austin Bragg, who is not.Additional graphics by Joshua Swain

This is the ninth episode of Free Speech Rules, a video series on free speech and the law. Volokh is the co-founder of The Volokh Conspiracy, a blog hosted at Reason.com.

This is not legal advice.If this were legal advice, it would be followed by a bill.Please use responsibly.

Music: "Lobby Time," by Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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The First Amendment and Privacy: Free Speech Rules (Episode 9) - Reason

Quillen explores how the world might look to college studentsand its not always pretty. Instantaneous access to information has raised the stakes of expression, creating a world in which free speech can mutate into violence in the blink of an eye.

For young people who have known no world but this one, the line between speech that invites violence and violent criminal acts seems paper thin, she writes.

If we want to engage our students, rather than belittle them, we might consider changing the subject from free speech per se to how words lead to action in the world.

Quillen asks readers to focus on our collective vulnerability to tribalism and how technology has made us less likely to connect directly.

Such a change of subject would invite all of us to pose timely political and ethical questions, as many college professors nationwide are doing she writes. In fact, freedom of speech has a better chance of flourishing if weon the left and the rightwould lay down our arms and listen.

The op-ed is available in its entirety at The Hill

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Quillen Op-Ed: 'How to Protect Free Speech in the Age of Mass Shootings' - Davidson News