Thread: California Threatens First Amendment Protections With 'Fake News Ban'

California Threatens First Amendment Protections With 'Fake News Ban'

Elliott Hamilton

The California State Assembly introduced a bill on February 17 that attempts to ban "fake news" in The Golden State. On Wednesday, the bill, introduced by Assemblymember Ed Chau (D – Monterey Park), was filed to the Assembly's Committee on Privacy and Consumer Affairs. The bill intends to amend the California Political Cyberfraud Abatement Act to make it unlawful to spread "false or deceptive" information according to the California Elections Code. Here is the text of the proposed amendment:

It is unlawful for a person to knowingly and willingly make, publish or circulate on an Internet Web site, or cause to be made, published, or circulated in any writing posted on an Internet Web site, a false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote on either of the following:
(a) Any issue submitted to voters at an election.
(b) Any candidate for election to public office.

The text of the amended statute is vague. It does not explicitly define what constitutes a "false or deceptive statement," allowing subjective interpretations of misinformation, or "fake news," a label that individuals use to describe stories or narratives that they do not agree with. It also poses a problem for individuals on social media who share opinions or stories that come from a particular political angle or arrive at conclusions that an official might deem to be false, even if the story is grounded in fact. The amendment also does not address stories covering disputed facts or facts that are believed to be true at the time they are published, but later disproved.
California's amended bill challenges the First Amendment, since it would hold someone criminally liable for "knowingly" or "willingly" exercising their freedoms of speech and of the press in a manner that another might consider problematic. The Supreme Court has long defended an individual's right to articulate expressive content, including political speech.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation slammed Assemblymember Chau for the proposed bill, saying that he cannot fight "fake news with a bad law."


"This bill will fuel a chaotic free-for-all of mudslinging with candidates and others being accused of crimes at the slightest hint of hyperbole, exaggeration, poetic license, or common error. While those accusations may not ultimately hold up, politically motivated prosecutions—or the threat of such—may harm democracy more than if the issue had just been left alone," the organization said in a memo.
With the Left's concerted efforts to silence conservative news sites through the "fake news" label, as they have with the Daily Wire and many others, we will be watching this free speech-endangering bill closely.

Article: http://www.dailywire.com/news/14982/...liott-hamilton

Another type of First Amendment free speech outcry from our "friends" the UN. They seem to be sticking their noses in a lot of places it doesn't belong. They are attempting to take on the role of global masters. They decide that muslim refugees must be spread all @ the globe and decide just how many you have to take. Here they are declaring that some of OUR states introduced bills were incompatible with international human rights law. With all the atrocities happening @ the world this is what they are concered @?

Thu Mar 30, 2017 | 2:38pm EDT
U.N. experts see 'alarming' U.S. trend against free speech, protest
FILE PHOTO: A designated area for protesters is seen outside an event for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Savannah Center in Cincinnati, Ohio March 13, 2016.

By Tom Miles | GENEVA

Nineteen U.S. states have introduced bills that would curb freedom of expression and the right to protest since Donald Trump's election as president, an "alarming and undemocratic" trend, U.N. human rights investigators said on Thursday.

Concerns for free speech in the United States have risen in part because of the Republican Trump's antagonistic relations with prominent U.S. media, which he has branded "the enemy of the American people" as it has reported on policy missteps and dysfunction in his administration.

The push for stricter laws on expression has come as Trump's liberal foes have pursued public protest against his policies on issues ranging from immigration to abortion and climate change.

Maina Kiai and David Kaye, independent U.N. experts on freedom of peaceful assembly and expression respectively, said in a statement that the state bills were incompatible with international human rights law.

"The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States’ constitutional pillars: free speech," they said in a statement, calling for action to reverse such legislation.

“From the Black Lives Matter movement, to the environmental and Native American movements in opposition to the Dakota Access oil pipeline, and the Women’s Marches, individuals and organizations across (American) society have mobilized in peaceful protests,” Kiai and Kaye said.

They said it was their fundamental right to do so, but that bills in Republican-governed states like Indiana, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Missouri sought to stop them exercising that right.

The civil rights movement known as Black Lives Matter has been fueled by a series of shootings of unarmed black men by white U.S. police officers that triggered national protests.

The U.N. experts' statement came a day after they criticized Russia's treatment of peaceful protesters who took to the streets following allegations of corruption against Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The U.S. State Department had also criticized Russia's handling of those protests, calling them an affront to democratic values.

Supporters of the U.S. state legislative action say it sums up the frustration some people feel about protests that get in the way of daily lives, and reflects a wish to maintain public safety. Free speech advocates say the bills are worrying, seeing them as opening the way to criminalizing peaceful protests.

The U.N. experts said several bills proposed in Colorado, North Dakota and Oklahoma targeted opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota and would have "a chilling effect on environmental protesters".

Last month dozens of armed U.S. law enforcement officers swept through a protest camp near the site of the pipeline, clearing the gathering that for months served as a base of opposition to the multi-billion-dollar project.

In Missouri a bill proposed a seven-year prison term for "unlawful obstruction of traffic", while the Minnesota bill would criminalize peaceful protesters for participating in demonstrations that subsequently turned violent.

The U.N. experts said there was no such thing as a violent protest, only violent protesters. "One person’s decision to resort to violence does not strip other protesters of their right to freedom of peaceful assembly," Kaye and Kiai said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN1712SG

Hey, UN, "bite me". Go take care of your own countries. Americans are fully capable of taking care of our country and citizens, and by God THAT is exactly what we're going to do. So bug off and stop meddling in our democracy.