Tag Archives: free speech

She’s the Wrong Group

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Only members of some, special, groups are allowed to speak at schools, it seems.

She is a liberal icon and was America’s first female secretary of state, but not everyone at a California college [Scripps College] is thrilled that “white feminist and repeated genocide enabler” Madeleine Albright has been lined up to give next month’s commencement address.

And

Scripps students did not object when Angela Davis, a radical-turned-academic who was on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list for murder and kidnapping—spoke on campus earlier this year.

But that’s OK, though.  Davis is a member in good standing of an approved group—black “feminism”—and her political ideology—outright communism—is far more appropriate.

Censorship

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…and cowardice?

France’s privacy regulator, known as CNIL [National Commission for Computing and Liberties], last week fined Google €100,000 ($112,000) for not applying Europe’s “right to be forgotten” across the search engine’s global network of sites.

And

Now Paris contends that only a world-wide scrub will do. “For people residing in France to effectively exercise their right to be delisted, it must be applied to the entire processing operation,” the regulator says.  If it stands, this ruling would compel Google to remove links globally.

Aside from simple free speech questions in the land of Voltaire, this

limits the ability of non-Europeans to vet French prospective business associates or German job applicants.

To say nothing of the sovereignty of nations outside of France.  Or CNIL is saying the whole world is part of Metropolitan France.

This whole smelly affair should make it…difficult…to do business in France, for Google and for those non-Europeans.

Google says they’ll appeal, but then what?  Will they have the courage to ignore this idiocy, this arrogant power grab outside French borders?

Dissent Democrat Style

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The Democrats in the Federal government permit dissent: they dissent from anyone else’s right to dissent.  Here’s a case in point.

Attorney General Lynch told the Senate last week that her department had referred a request to prosecute climate dissent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Specifically, it was referred to the FBI’s criminal investigative division.

Yep.  President Barack Obama’s (D) Attorney General actually referred a case of disagreeing with the Left to the FBI for criminal investigation.  Or for a security review.

One of the Senators questioning Lynch at that hearing was Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI), of RICO the dissenters infamy.  While he wondered idly about using the FBI in a “civil” case of suing climate scientists for dissenting over global warming, he had nary a word about the criminal investigation, nor even Lynch’s decision to refer dissent for criminal investigation in the first place.

Free Speech

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…the way the Left sees it. And too many Republican Presidential candidates are misunderstanding the situation.

Recall last week: Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump was forced to cancel a rally in Chicago because “protestors” were out in force intending to prevent the rally from occurring.  They then bragged loudly about their success.

Over the weekend, at rallies in Missouri, Ohio, and again in Illinois, “protestors” again attempted to prevent Trump rallies from proceeding, charging him on the stage at rallies they couldn’t block.

These are not protestors exercising their own free speech rights; these persons are actively, cynically, dishonestly trying to prevent others from exercising their free speech rights.  These Leftists see freedom to speak as freedom only to speak what the Left approves.  These Leftists see listeners’ free speech not as their own choice, but only the choice to hear what the Left will permit them to hear.

We expect this sort of understanding out of the Progressive-Democrat Party Presidential candidates:

The ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous.  …  That’s not leadership.  That’s political arson.

The Left’s encouragement of violence and aggression is, indeed, wrong, and it’s dangerous.  When will Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders condemn the Left’s assault on free speech, when will Clinton and Sanders condemn the violence their “protestors” threaten Republican rallies with?

It’s especially disappointing, though, to hear Republican Party candidates choose to attack a fellow Republican for being attacked by this assault on speech, carefully not saying a word about the real assault, the one on Americans’ First Amendment right.  John Kasich, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz should know better.

Update: corrected a dumb___ typo.

Security Tradeoffs

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Here’s one.

A federal judge has ordered Apple Inc to provide software to the Justice Department to help it unlock a phone used by one of the suspects in the San Bernardino, CA, terror attack because investigators suspect the device may hold critical details of the plotting behind the mass murder.

The government’s justification is this:

Law-enforcement agencies say companies such as Apple make it harder to solve crimes including terrorist attacks, child abuse and murder by putting security measures on phones that make it difficult or impossible for investigators to open them and examine data inside.

That’s an entirely valid concern.

The problem, though, is that forcing a back door into citizens’ communications encryption utterly destroys citizens’ privacy and security. There’s nothing to prevent Government from abusing that back door to engage in snooping on general principles and then actively and maliciously snooping in order to preserve the power of the men then in Government. The lawlessness of the present administration demonstrates that progression.

Of immediate effect, though, is that a backdoor for Government is a backdoor for hackers, whether these be script kiddies, terrorist hackers, financial or identity theft hackers, or any other sort.

The privacy and the security of our private identities, of our finances, of our health records, of any aspect of our lives we find useful to protect from prying eyes are critical to our ability to engage with our neighbors and our businesses and our government free from threats or attack.

The privacy of our communications, the security of our speech, must absolutely be preserved. There is no security at all without our individual liberties, of which speech is one, held secure.

“Law-enforcement agencies” and this Federal judge know this full well. And they know full well the truth of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s statement in his letter posted to Apple’s Web site:

We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack.