CDR: Re: Abortion Assasination Politics likely going to Supremes

[Michael Motyka]

Hmmm...

I'll stipulate that the common citizen, when faced with a tirade about
killing those who perform abortions and a list of names and addresses of
offenders, would not immediately put 2 and 2 together to make 3 and
start killing doctors. Now put yourself in the position of an average
citizen who sees his own name in the list following a tirade about
killing those who drive gasoline-guzzling, polluting, Corolla-crushing
SUVs. I'm sure he would feel threatened. So the site in question is not
the same as a site that simply expresses a political opinion or
distributes instructions on how to create dangerous devices. It is more
like a site that distributes this info and then list specific targets
that should be considered as applications. The site owners took a
concrete step towards carrying out a threat : they gathered and
published personal information. I'm sure the appeal to the jury was
along these lines.

OTOH perhaps you're right that speech of all sorts should have the
highest of protections regardless of how it is perceived by a
vanishingly small number of persons in the audience be they potential
agents or targets. In which case the choice of methods for dealing with
threats would be left solely to the individuals who perceive them.

I suppose there's a downside either way. Can't win. Best you can do is
break even. And you can't even do that.

>On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Michael Motyka wrote:
>
>> The violent anti-abortion movement's method for coping with coexistent
>> conflicting thoughts and behaviors is a form of dysfunction not unlike
>> that of a stroke patient who sees himself in a mirror and is unable to
>> perceive his own paralysis or similar paralysis in others. A moribund
>> arm can be perceived as functioning normally. A half-paralyzed face can
>> be perceived as smiling left and right. Amazing. Pathetic.
>>
>> Or criminal. Were I a doctor I would consider the Nuremberg Files site a
>> direct and credible threat. The jury decision was the correct one.
>>
>
>More to the point.  Would a supreme court ruling in this respect be a
>good ruling.  Trying to read someone's mind and trying him on his
>supposed thoughts is a little like convicting a man via ESP.
>
>Despite the fact that the man running the site wrote that killing
>abortion doctors would be justified, he did not explicitly state
>that these people or their families should be harmed.  Shunned
>perhaps, protested against perhaps.  But incitement to murder
>should have an extremely high standard of evidence and equally
>high protection of the supposed speech by the first amendment.
>
>The second point assumes that a common citizen would react
>by killing the people on his web page.  If a cypherpunk copied
>his page and archived it on his website would it also be incitement
>to murder?  The implication is that guilt or innocence is dependent
>upon the visitors to your web site.  
>
>If the supreme upholds this it could set a precedent to go after
>any web site that publishes controversial data.  By the same
>standard of evidence can we convict everyone that supplies
>data regarding drugs, machine gun construction techniques,
>bomb making info of 'knowing that someone would use it
>to nefarious ends?'  The jury in this case says that the 
>publisher of the information is responsible for the potential
>use of the information.
>
>And that is one long slippery slope.  Not that Congress 
>wouldn't be game.
>
>I think a more credible indictment would be charges of aiding
>and abetting the killers.  Of course you need evidence
>for that.  That takes real work from police detectives.
>Gosh, couldn't have any of that.
>
>For the record, I am not anti-abortion.
>
>jim
>