Posted by Eugene Volokh: Another <a href="http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~volokh/facilitating.pdf";>Crime-Facilitating Speech</a> controversy,
this time over IndyMedia's posting of delegates' "names, home addresses, e-mail addresses and the New York-area hotels where many are staying." The Secret Service [1]is investigating. I'm not sure whether such postings break any existing laws, or whether a law could indeed ban them consistently with the First Amendment. While such speech may indeed facilitate crime, it is also useful for legal and perhaps even constitutionally protected purposes, such as remonstrating with the delegates or demonstrating outside their hotels (or even their homes). See generally NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982), which held that publishing the names of people who weren't complying with the boycott was constitutionally protected. (The speech in Claiborne didn't involve publishing addresses, but in a small county of about 10,000 people, knowing someone's name could pretty quickly get you his address.) On the other hand, the Secret Service may be legitimately investigating to see whether any illegal conduct against the delegates is planned. Constitutionally protected speech may often trigger an investigation: This is most obvious after a crime is committed -- if Joe Schmoe is killed, and it turns out that I had earlier expressed the constitutionally protected opinion that he needed killing, the police could certainly investigate me more closely because of what I had said -- but I think it's equally true when the police are trying to prevent a crime. So it's hard to evaluate the investigation based on just the brief snippet that I saw reported. References 1. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,130629,00.html _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
