Tag: First Amendment

The Internet Is Not Facebook; Regulating It As If It Were Will Fuck Things Up

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Internet Is Not Facebook; Regulating It As If It Were Will Fuck Things Up

There’s only one problem: What is health misinformation? I know of no oracular source of truth about Covid-19. Scientific consensus has shifted dramatically during the pandemic, and even now experts are divided over important issues, such as whether everyone should get a vaccine booster shot. Klobuchar and Luján’s bill elides these complications. Instead they designate an all-knowing authority: Health misinformation, the bill says, is whatever the secretary of health and human services decides is health misinformation.

Since 9/11, FBI Has Destroyed People Based On Their Race, Religion, Or Country Of Origin

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

[Editor’s Note: To mark the 20th anniversary of the rise of the American security state after the September 11th attacks, The Dissenter presents aretrospective on this transformation in law enforcement and government. Each entry in the series, “Twenty Years In A Security State,” will connect with whistleblower stories where possible.]

Since 9/11, FBI Has Destroyed People Based On Their Race, Religion, Or Country Of Origin

[2012] It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Posted more for my own reference, as I still see people quoting “fire in a crowded theater” while advocating for censorship.

It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote

In 1969, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech–and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan–is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis mine).

Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as thefinal word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”