“[T]he ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas....That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.”
— Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissent in Abrams v. United States, 1919
— Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissent in Abrams v. United States, 1919
EFF has witnessed a growing number of calls in recent weeks for Twitter to ban certain accounts of alleged terrorists. In a December 14th article in the New York Times, anonymous U.S. officials claimed they “may have the legal authority to demand that Twitter close” a Twitter account associated with the militant Somali group Al-Shabaab. A week later, the Telegraph reported that Sen. Joe Lieberman contacted Twitter to remove two “propaganda” accounts allegedly run by the Taliban. More recently, an Israeli law firm threatened to sue Twitter if they did not remove accounts run by Hezbollah.
Twitter is right to resist.
If the U.S. were to pressure Twitter to censor tweets by organizations it opposes, even those on the terrorist lists, it would join the ranks of countries like India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Syria, Uzbekistan, all of which have censored online speech in the name of “national security.”
And it would be even worse if Twitter were to undertake its own censorship regime, which would have to be based upon its own investigations or relying on the investigations of others that certain account holders were, in fact, terrorists.
Let's review the various calls for Twitter to censor their site and the possible causes of action:...read more
Twitter is right to resist.
If the U.S. were to pressure Twitter to censor tweets by organizations it opposes, even those on the terrorist lists, it would join the ranks of countries like India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Syria, Uzbekistan, all of which have censored online speech in the name of “national security.”
And it would be even worse if Twitter were to undertake its own censorship regime, which would have to be based upon its own investigations or relying on the investigations of others that certain account holders were, in fact, terrorists.
Let's review the various calls for Twitter to censor their site and the possible causes of action:...read more
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/us-government-calls-censor-twitter-threaten-free-speech
