Do you actually believe in freedom of speech and expression?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (a prominent digital civil liberties organization) likes to refer to what they call "The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse". Which are Child Pornography, "Piracy", Organized Crime, and Terrorism. In practice, you can enact a law no matter how much it stomps on Freedom of Speech by simply picking one of the horsemen subjects and speaking in an urgent voice.

Look no further than the PATRIOT ACT (Terrorism), ACTA ("Piracy"), NSA Warrantless Wiretaps (Organized crime and Terrorism), DHS Domain Seizures ("Child Pornography"), etc... None of these even come close to constitutional, but judges and lawmakers look the other way.

You will count me amongst the group of "Crypto-anarchists". We believe in an absolute freedom of speech in the digital world, no compromises. And we have the technical expertise to accomplish it. We use cryptography to ensure privacy and anonymity (which are a requirement for freedom of speech) in the digital world. Even if you disagree with us, you are powerless to do anything about it.

I don't just support this cause "in theory", I actually do work in this field. My master's thesis was a cryptographic protocol for open and secure Internet access. I'm collaborating with the EFF Open Wireless project, I briefly helped with the Tor project, am working on an implementation of a DC-net (a special kind of anonymity network), and a traffic analysis evading tool for encrypted protocol identification.

These projects help freedom of speech in the real world. Tor is used widely by activists in the Arab Spring movement to organize protesters and subsequently bring down authoritarian regimes. So these things have actual consequences, and I sleep well at night knowing that I played a part.


That said, I am in full support (of course) for prosecuting to the full extent of the law child pornographers and organized criminals. But I am not in favor of sacrificing freedom to better find them.

The reason I'm asking this question because recently in the Pool Room a little exchange came up in which one member believes that paedo/ephebophiles talking about whatever it is they enjoy doing or would enjoy doing was sick and wrong and thus the site was somehow obligated to halt the discussion. Thing is though, in my opinion, there was nothing illegal, so ultimately Reddit did nothing wrong.

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This is an important distinction to make. Free speech typically only refers to the legal/illegal distinction and not the moral/immoral distinction. This makes the Reddit example particularly poor since, as far as I know, there was no government involvement. Being pro-free speech in no way implies that people can't boycott or harshly criticize the actions or speech of others.

My professor once told me that when they isolated smallpox, WHO and other affiliated entities hosted the plasmid of the virus online for fellow scientists to look at and examine. Eventually with the isolation of enzymes such as reverse transcriptase, scientists eventually developed the means to recreate and isolate gene sequences and such images were subsequently removed from public access.

Even though the information was hosted by governmental entities, there are limitations to how far freedom expression should go assuming we are starting off with a very idealistic interpretation of freedom and are working our way down closer to realism with regards to this thread. With the spread of information one does not need to be as intelligent as Ted Kaczynski to possess his lethality as a terrorist. Even though preserving life strikes one as being a basic human right that should be protected, I believe it highlights the basic pros as to why there is a system of censorship in many countries despite many democracies highlighting freedom and other idealistic principles. You can't partake in ancillary freedoms if you're dead.

AltF4 said:

You will count me amongst the group of "Crypto-anarchists". We believe in an absolute freedom of speech in the digital world, no compromises. And we have the technical expertise to accomplish it. We use cryptography to ensure privacy and anonymity (which are a requirement for freedom of speech) in the digital world. Even if you disagree with us, you are powerless to do anything about it.

I don't just support this cause "in theory", I actually do work in this field. My master's thesis was a cryptographic protocol for open and secure Internet access. I'm collaborating with the EFF Open Wireless project, I briefly helped with the Tor project, am working on an implementation of a DC-net (a special kind of anonymity network), and a traffic analysis evading tool for encrypted protocol identification.

These projects help freedom of speech in the real world. Tor is used widely by activists in the Arab Spring movement to organize protesters and subsequently bring down authoritarian regimes. So these things have actual consequences, and I sleep well at night knowing that I played a part.

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You think quite a bit of yourself, don't you?

Personally, I don't see any constitutional guarantees of privacy or legal needs for warrants or whatever as transcendent or inalienable rights. Once you ratchet up the stakes high enough, I side with 99% of Americans in saying that there are certain, isolated circumstances where getting the bad guys is more important than respecting their rights. That said, I've yet to see more than one or two cases where this is justified.

NAMBLA and stuff are allowed to exist, so yeah, we do actually let freedom of speech run its course in America.

pedophilia is wrong, not simply because it feels icky or whatever, but because kids are incapable of consent.

Battlecow said:

You think quite a bit of yourself, don't you?

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An unnecessary and childish retort...

Battlecow said:

Personally, I don't see any constitutional guarantees of privacy or legal needs for warrants or whatever as transcendent or inalienable rights.

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Prove it. Otherwise you're only stating an opinion.

Battlecow said:

Once you ratchet up the stakes high enough, I side with 99% of Americans in saying that there are certain, isolated circumstances where getting the bad guys is more important than respecting their rights. That said, I've yet to see more than one or two cases where this is justified.

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You're grouping quite a lot more here than just freedom of speech. You're basically trying to argue that in some circumstances respecting ANYTHING we would consider "rights" is not as important as... insert necessity here.

Battlecow said:

NAMBLA and stuff are allowed to exist, so yeah, we do actually let freedom of speech run its course in America.

pedophilia is wrong, not simply because it feels icky or whatever, but because kids are incapable of consent.

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I'm unsure if you're making the point here that freedom of speech should not be respected in this case?

Anyway, I believe that anytime human rights are ignored in favor of some higher cause some percentage of those people whose rights are abused do not deserve it. Some would use the term "collateral damage" in this situation. As in, who cares if a few innocent people are locked up for life with the key thrown out, as long as we lock up 2 real bad guys for every one good guy, it's worth it...

We can argue about irrelevant silly notions of morality on this subject forever and the real-life consequences will still be the same. And those consequences are simply not worth it. There's a famous poem I love to quote when people ask me why I am so passionate about protecting others. When people don't understand why I passionately argue for gay rights or against racial discrimination that wouldn't directly apply to me:

They came first for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time, no one was left to speak up.

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-blazed

Who's left to be the "they" in that quote, Blazed?

underdogs22 said:

Who's left to be the "they" in that quote, Blazed?

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Well it's a pronoun, it can refer to anyone. The point of the message is for you, the one who could be perfectly fine if you said nothing to stand up and say or do something.

It wasn't directed at anyone in the thread, but pertains to any situation in which a minority group of innocent people is being oppressed for the sake of "the greater good".

-blazed