Law professors argue that communist-style censorship of the internet is inevitable and necessary

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/law_professors_argue_that_communiststyle_censorship_of_the_internet_is_inevitable_and_necessary.html


In a startling admission, The Atlantic magazine has just run an article by two law school professors that openly advocates for the kind of censorship and speech control usually seen only in Communist dictatorships.

The two professors, Jack Goldsmith of Harvard and Andrew Woods of the University of Arizona, argue that in “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the [Internet], China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

The coronavirus pandemic has given the tech monopolies both the excuse and the rationale for imposing a degree of digital surveillance and censorship that, only months ago, would have been regarded as unthinkable.

However, while mainstream legal experts have called these extreme measures necessary but temporary, Goldsmith and Woods argue that they are, in fact, essential:

“Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values,” the law professors write.



In their chilling but detailed overview of the rise of digital surveillance, Goldsmith and Woods point out that censorship and digital surveillance practices seen in the coronavirus crisis are “not a break from prior developments, but an acceleration of them.”

They frankly admit that digital surveillance and speech control found on private social media platforms in the U.S. are very similar “to what one finds in authoritarian states such as China.”

The only difference, they say, is that “constitutional and cultural differences” mean that, in the U.S., the private sector takes the lead rather than federal and state governments. Nevertheless, in both communist China and the U.S., “the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.”

Many other observers have pointed this out, of course – from conservative groups to the more left-leaning Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). What makes Goldsmith and Woods and The Atlantic unusual is that they openly endorse Communist-style “speech control” not just as inevitable but almost certainly necessary.

“Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flouring internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values,” they write.

The two cite two events for why this is true, both of which they merely assume and don’t prove. The first was the revelations in 2013 by former CIA tech analyst Edward Snowden of massive U.S. government surveillance of private citizens. The second was “Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.”

The two law professors provide no proof for their claim that Russian interference had a significant effect in the actual outcome of the 2016 election. They even concede that it was a “relatively limited social-media strategy” and, as Barack Obama termed it, “not particularly sophisticated.”

Yet Russians sending mean tweets and buying $100,000 worth of Facebook ads apparently justifies jettisoning the First Amendment and 200 years of Constitutional jurisprudence.

Indeed, the law professors point out that the First Amendment and America’s guarantees of civil liberties are actually a hindrance for adequate policing of the Internet.

The Russian social media mischief “highlighted how legal limitations grounded in the First Amendment (freedom of speech and press) and the Fourth Amendment (privacy) make it hard for the U.S. government to identify, prevent, and respond to malicious cyber operations from abroad.”

The law professors’ conclusion is inevitable: In the contest between the Internet and the Bill of Rights, the Bill of Rights will likely have to go.

“[S]ince the Russian electoral interference, digital platforms have taken the lead in combatting all manner of unwanted speech on their networks – and, if anything, have increased their surveillance of our lives,” they say.

As usually happens with advocates for censorship, the two professors conflate actual criminal conduct – such as child pornography and planning for terrorist attacks – with speech deemed not “compatible with a society’s norms and values.”

The digital platforms now use armies of human censors and Artificial Intelligence algorithms to suppress any information or political outlooks deemed “hate speech” or “misinformation.”

Both Twitter and YouTube for a time outsourced their policing of “hate speech” to left-leaning organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), despite criticism that both organizations display significant bias.

Conservative critics, such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, criticized the censorship that resulted for targeting Christian and conservative viewpoints, such as when statements by Mother Teresa of Calcutta about abortion were removed from digital platforms as “hate speech.”

Now, the authors write, digital platforms increasingly turn to “authoritative” organizations and corporate news organizations, such as CNN, to determine whether specific content needs to be suppressed.

Recently, both Facebook and YouTube announced that they would remove any content from their platforms they deemed not in harmony with what the World Health Organization asserts, despite substantial evidence that the WHO has engaged in covering up the role China has played in the coronavirus pandemic.

Of course, the Internet has exploded with outrage over what appears to be an unprecedented call for digital totalitarianism. Many point out that the law professors ignore completely the issue of who decides what is “compatible with a society’s norms and values” – corporate CEOs, government bureaucrats or both.



Donald Trump, Jr., tweeted, “You have to be 100% out of touch or 100% bought & paid for to publish an oped calling on America to follow the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S model on free speech, privacy & Big Tech.”



“If all of this sounds familiar, that is because it is,” the Washington Examiner agreed. “American academics, politicos, and the like have been praising the Chinese Communist Party for years.”

While Goldsmith and Woods’ article is largely a descriptive overview of the current state of digital surveillance and speech control, it is also a manifesto for a complete progressive takeover of the Internet. Emboldened by the coronavirus crisis, progressives no longer fear showing their true intentions.

Those who value the civil liberties that make such a takeover difficult – such as the First and Fourth Amendments – should be very concerned.

Robert J. Hutchinson is the author of many works of popular history, including, most recently, What Really Happened: The Lincoln Assassination (2020).




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