If the slightest curtailment of your freedoms is going to count as terrorists winning, I don't see how they can lose. In fact, under that criteria, they've already won. They won as soon as I was directed by TSA to abandon my fingernail clippers before getting on the plane.
-
Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more
Feinstein and the Anarchist's Cookbook.
- Thread starter Ranb
- Start date
If the slightest curtailment of your freedoms is going to count as terrorists winning, I don't see how they can lose. In fact, under that criteria, they've already won. They won as soon as I was directed by TSA to abandon my fingernail clippers before getting on the plane.
Sorry, banning books is not the slightest curtailment. Freedom of information is just to important. And banning books is just so completely ineffective. Especially a book that was one of the first files traded on the internet. As others have joked, the barn doors will only keep in your fears.
This isn't the much feared, general, "banning of books." It would be specific restrictions on specific material in a very circumscribed area. You may very well hold that freedom of information is sacrosanct, but then we'd be left wondering why a "top secret" category is allowed to exist.
Information isn't sterile. It has a purpose and a use. Just as not all photographs are of the same subject matter. These differences allow us to discriminate one type from another, one purpose from another. If someone has a list of credit card numbers that doesn't belong to them, despite a call for freedom of information, I can make the case that they are up to no good and probably a criminal - the probable crime is connected to the characteristics of the information they have obtained.
In truth, we already accept restrictions on freedom of information - when the reasoning justifies the action. To categorically dismiss banning as an option is disingenuous, in the same world where privacy is such a living issue.
It also seems strange to introduce the barn door analogy, as if delete keys weren't on every keyboard everywhere. And frankly, the idea of a ban isn't just to eliminate the information - just as we recognize that not all child porn can be found and scrubbed - it's to help identify and prosecute those who are seeking to use the banned information for nefarious purposes. Putting a ban in place identifies the information as a "no go" area, giving someone the chance to decide if they want to follow a certain path, knowing there is a risk of prosecution for the behavior.
That it how it starts. That is why this idea is generally not considered viable. Banning books is the work of despots, not democracies.
Yeah, so is worshiping books.
General principles are fine. I support the principle you espouse. But blind adherence to it, when there is a good reason to make an exception? I can't go that far.
Noztradamus
Illuminator
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2010
- Messages
- 4,680
I wish to frown on your underage drinking activity
The underage drinking was far safer than the things that required a beer to be held. Far safer. But certainly worth of a frown, nonetheless.
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2006
- Messages
- 54,796
So are we focusing on technical information or is ideological information also subject to government censorship to? How can we properly ban the ideas that radicalize these individuals?
That is the $100,000 question: how does someone become a monster? Without knowing that, it's awful hard to interdict or rationally justify any action at all. When I make the case for banning what I am labeling dangerous information, I have no real world data to back up my assertion that the information contributes to the behavior we all want to quash.
At this juncture, I want to put the question to the psychologists and sociologists. I want to request they earn their keep and explain the mysterious "radicalization process," with an eye toward treatment of the disease.
I have little hope that there will even be a quick, easy fix. It may be they will tell us there is no fix possible at all. Which would leave me where I am now - trying to see what proto-terrorists and terrorists want to do and making it harder for them to do it. Not the best situation. It's reactive instead of proactive, addressing symptoms as they arise without attacking the causes. Depressing.
I don't even know the relationship between the Anarchist's Cookbook (and similar tomes) and the troublemakers who want a copy. Does the book cause the bad behaviors, only contribute some immeasurably small amount, or does the drive toward anarchy come first, and the book merely an expression of the existing ill?
Did Feinstein ever justify her position in any analytical way? Or is the "in my view" just an anemic shout out to those she thinks will agree with her - no details required?
Which is probably why getting rid of people is sometimes the solution we adopt.
The Norseman
Meandering fecklessly
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2008
- Messages
- 8,493
Yes, the Supreme Court has laid out precisely what this is, in relation to books such as The Anarchist's Cookbook.
I did a quick search, but couldn't find what you are referencing here. Can you point me in the right direction?
ETA: I did find this through Wiki:
Weapons
Pub.L. 106–54 of 1999, a bill focused on phosphate prospecting and compensation owed to the Menominee tribe, added 18 U.S.C. § 842(p) making it an offence "to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction" either intending or knowing that the learner/viewer intends "that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence".[38][39] This is in addition to other federal laws preventing the use and dissemination of bombmaking information for criminal purposes.[40] The law was first successfully used against an 18-year old anarchist in 2003, for distribution of information which has since been republished freely.
The 1999 bill in question can be found here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-106publ54/html/PLAW-106publ54.htm
So it looks like the material we have been talking about is already bannable under that.
Last edited:
casebro
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2005
- Messages
- 19,788
And you example also shows how it is a waste of energy to try.
There are lots of areas of law enforcement like that. The objective doesn't seem to be a complete cure, but a treatment, along with selective enforcement to gain some parallel objective. So, I might accept that I can't get rid of all prostitution, or drug use, or copyright violations, or any of a hundred bad behaviors, and still find reasons to prosecute this particular offender.
For example, you got some high schooler who you think is a threat, but don't want to wait until they start shooting up the school. Finding the material we've been discussing on his facebook page gives you a place to intrude, harass, and investigate - an opportunity you might not otherwise have.
It would also serve as an additional charge to bulk up an otherwise weak case against someone. Even the sort of charge that gets bargained away in plea deal.
Last edited: