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upstart writes:

Bad News In The NDAA: Unconstitutional 'Judge Safety' Bill, With Submarine Attack On Section 230, Is Included:

Yesterday we wrote about how all of the terrible anti-internet bills we were worried about being slipped into the "must pass" National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill were, thankfully, left on the cutting room floor. However, within the 4,400 pages, there was still plenty of other nonsense added, including a variation on a bill that we had worried about almost exactly a year ago: the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act.

[...] The bill came about after a mentally unwell lawyer, who had practiced in front of US District Judge Esther Salas, showed up at her home dressed as a FedEx delivery person, and proceeded to shoot and kill the Judge's son, Daniel Aderl, and shoot and injure her husband. The shooter then took his own life as well.

Obviously, that story is horrific. And it's certainly reasonable to then be concerned about the safety of other judges. Though, when you're carving out special protections for certain groups of people, it might also raise questions about "why aren't we just doing a better job protecting everyone?" But, here, the form of "protecting judges" raises serious 1st Amendment issues. Because the bill allows judges to demand that certain information about them or their families be removed from the internet.

[...] But, the new version of the law also changed in a sneaky way to more or less slip in an attack on Section 230. First, the law will apply to an "interactive computer service" as defined in Section 230, effectively making it clear that they're using this to cut a slice off of 230:

It then allows the protected individuals (judges and their families) or someone they designate as an agent to issue takedown demands:

[...] So while it technically does not modify Section 230... it really kinda does. Because Section 230 currently says that websites can't be held liable for third party content, which this bill clearly covers. As Section 230 biographer Professor Jeff Kosseff notes, while this "does not provide an explicit exception to 230... it does create a rule of construction that at least implies an exception for platforms that do not fulfill requests to remove covered info."

That means, if this goes through, you can fully expect other similar "exceptions" to be written into other laws as well. And, once again, we're left with the same sort of moderator's dilemma questions that come up whenever you chip away at Section 230. This bill, like any law that allows for the removal of content (see: DMCA), will be abused to hide perfectly reasonable, legitimate, and potentially newsworthy information.

Keeping judges safe is obviously important. But we shouldn't throw out the 1st Amendment (and Section 230) because one deeply unwell individual killed someone. We can invest in better mental health treatment. We can institute background checks for gun purchases. Those are the kinds of things that protect everyone.

Tossing out the 1st Amendment so that judges and their families can hide information about themselves online seems like a real problem.

Original Submission