New York Legislators Want to Ban Anonymous Online Speech

Proposed legislation from New York’s legislature would require all New York-based websites to “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.”

No votes on the measures have been taken yet, but the bill cannot be seen as anything other than yet another attack on First Amendment rights in this country.

Republican Assemblyman Jim Conte said the legislation would cut down on “mean-spirited and baseless political attacks” and “turns the spotlight on cyberbullies by forcing them to reveal their identity.”

“This statute would essentially destroy the ability to speak anonymously online on sites in New York,” said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology. He added that the legislation provides a “heckler’s veto to anybody who disagrees with or doesn’t like what an anonymous poster said.”

Republican Sen. Thomas O’Mara who is also sponsoring the measure, said it would “help lend some accountability to the internet age.”

The Senate and Assembly measures cover messages on social networks, blogs, message boards or “any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.”

The bills forces sites to have a contact number or e-mail address posted for “such removal requests, clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.”

Ironically the bill has no identification requirement for those who request the removal of anonymous content.

Obama Administration’s Information Czar Wants to Cognitively Infiltrate Dissenter/Conspiracy Groups

In 2008, while at Harvard Law School,  now head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein wrote a paper calling for some very anti-first amendment measures to be taken by the federal government.

According to Sustein the government should employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups, websites and other activist groups, who espouse views deemed to be “false conspiracy theories” about the government.  These efforts on the part of the government would increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  The abstract and the full paper downloaded, here.

To accomplish these goals Sustein proposes sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.”  He also wants the Government to secretly pay “independent” credible voices to bolster the government’s messaging to those who don’t believe official sources. Anyone advocating false “conspiracy theories,” would be targeted.

Sustein defines false conspiracy theories as being “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role”.

Another one of Sustein’s brilliant ideas is to impose some sort of tax on those who disseminate such theories.

These ideas are nothing to worry about though because Sustein writes that they would only be put into practice under “imaginable conditions”. Whatever those could possibly be.

Luckily the Obama administration would never do things like secretly employ pseudo-”independent” advocates to sway public opinion, would it?

Vets Angered Over Obama’s Face on U.S. Flag

An American flag, bearing the image of President Obama,  flying at a local Democratic party headquarters in central Florida angered several military veterans who demanded it be taken down.

Obama’s face was featured prominently in place of the stars section of the flag.

“It’s a cult of personality to show his face, like Stalin or Mao,” John Masterjohn, a former Marine and retired schoolteacher from Leesburg, told the Orlando Sentinel. “It’s despicable. They don’t realize how sick they are.”

The flag had been flying for two months before it was spotted by Leesburg veteran Jim Bradford, who took pictures of it and sent them to friends and veterans groups.

“When I saw the picture on the flag, I thought this is wrong,” Bradford said. “I really hate seeing the flag not being respected, and to me this was not respectful.”

He added that the issue wasn’t about politics: “I really don’t care what party it is. If it had been a picture of Romney on the flag, I would have done the same thing.”

A group of veterans went to the office on Tuesday and demanded it be removed or they would take it upon themselves to take it down. They alleged it was in violation of the federal flag code, though altering an American flag isn’t actually a crime.

“For good reason, these folks want to encourage respect for the flag, and while such an alteration may be considered disrespectful, the federal government doesn’t allow penalties against those who disrespect the flag,” said Jim Lake, an adjunct professor at the Stetson University College of Law in Tampa.

The federal flag code is “just standards on how civilians might use the flag,” he added, noting that the Supreme Court has ruled that those who burn or intentionally desecrate the flag are protected by the First Amendment.

Nancy Hurlbert, chairwoman of the local Democratic party, told the group that they could not remove the flag, that it was given as a gift: “We are proud of our president, we’re proud of the United States, and we felt it was time to display that.”

She eventually took the flag down after Don Van Beck, executive director of the Veterans Memorial and a Korean War veteran, read a portion of the federal flag code that the flag “should never have placed upon it or any part of it, any marks, insignia, letters, words, figures, designs, picture or drawings of any nature.”

“If somebody had just called ahead of time, we could have avoided all of this,” Hurlbert said.

Van Beck said he was “sorry it had to come to this. You don’t desecrate the flag, especially for the veterans who fought the wars and died for it. In dictatorships, they have a picture of their dictator on some of the flags, but we haven’t arrived at having a dictator, yet.”

Yet.