Newt Gingrich: Merely Visiting An ISIS Or Al Qaeda Website Should Be A Felony
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160715/07492134980/newt-gingrich-merely-visiting-isis-al-qaeda-website-should-be-felony.shtml All of the press -- for good reason -- is focusing on the first part of what he said, about deporting anyone "of Muslim background" (whatever that means) who "believes in Sharia." We'll skip over why this is totally clueless and unconstitutional, because plenty of other news sites are handling that. [ Unconstitutional in about three different ways, including the "test" he proposes. - Lauren ] ... [ Then he goes on to say ... ] Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felon. It should be closed down immediately. Our forces should be used to systematically destroy every internet based source... He then goes on to note that if we can't take them off the internet, we should just kill them all. Which, you know, I'm sure won't anger any more people against us. Either way, this is idiotic. Merely visiting a website should put you in jail? What if you're a journalist? Or a politician? Or a researcher trying to understand ISIS? That should be a felony? That's not how it works. This also assumes, idiotically, that merely reading a website about ISIS will make people side with ISIS. It's also not, at all, how the law works. Same with the second part about it being a felony to host such content. We're already seeing lawsuits against social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for hosting accounts from ISIS, and many are voluntarily taking down lots of those accounts. But making it a felony to keep them up? That's also not how the law works. - - - The kind of crap you expect from a guy who deserted his wife who was dying of cancer, so he could do more of the ol' "in-out" with his young mistress. He really would have been the perfect VP for Trump, one must admit. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
