When I began following free speech controversies, I was a First Amendment absolutist. Now I’m something less comfortable. I still think free speech is a good idea, certainly better than alternatives I’ve come across, but I’ve learned that everyone has a line that can’t be crossed, a word that sticks in the craw, an image that feels like a kick to the gut. The First Amendment, bless its little heart, always eventually lets us down (self-protection is innate, tolerance an acquired taste), so how can I not be bothered by its limitations?

This is a running log of arguments over free speech – some silly, some funny, some hard -- because free speech is all about argument. Being able to speak our mind makes us feel good and it's essential to real democracy and fairness. Yet, in the end, one of the best reasons to keep our speech rights intact is that we miss them when they’re gone.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

hacking the First Amendment

       Is it possible that hacking could be protected political speech? 
       I read this article about Homeland Security issuing cyber-threat warnings against the apparently political hacker group, Anonymous, and its ilk, and about online organizing of protests in San Francisco, and I wonder.  There's a specific reference to "a call to physically occupy Manhattan's Wall Street," which I've received -- not from Anon, but from AdBusters, a very-much-above-ground magazine, published in Canada.  I'm on some list; who isn't? 
       (Shrug)
       Organizers of protests have been using the internet and email for years.  They'd be dumb not to.  And last time I checked, the First Amendment protects protests on city streets.  Wall Street may be paved with stock options, but it's still a city-owned thoroughfare.  But then, new technologies always engender new anxieties.  Except that the tech and the anxious have been around for a while.  Maybe it's time to move on?

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