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from the be-careful-of-any-law-named-after-someone dept.
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, @11:55PM (1 child)
That's not the only way to get guns. It literally is as easy as getting candy in some cases. For candy to go candy jar. For firearm go to unlocked gun cabinet in family room.
Gun sale isn't the same as gun access & distribution. What you think the kid that sprayed his/her school with bullets filled out a form?
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 22, @12:21AM
In many cases, yes, the shooter did indeed fill out the forms to legally purchase their weapons. Do you read the news, or do you just scan the headlines? Some kids just steal their parent's weapons, as in Sandy Hook. Other kids get their parents to sign for them - I think that was in Michigan? In Uvalde, and at Marjory Stoneman, the shooters did legally purchase their weapons. In other cases, the moron may have broken into some other person's home, to steal the weapons.
I suppose that I should point out that every crime is different. If not, the cops would have a 100% rate for solving crimes, amirite?
The real killer is, when the cops and the FBI have been notified that some jackass is dangerous, and maybe they come by to have a chat, maybe not, then just slough it off. Quite a number of school shooters have been reported to the authorities, who invested maybe one man-hour to "investigating" the perpetrator.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.