4 ms·
> The United States government has no obligation to care about the collateral silencing of non-citizen speech in a foreign country subject to economic sanctions
by jMyles 7y ago
> The United States government has no obligation to care about the collateral silencing of non-citizen speech in a foreign country subject to economic sanctions.
Although it may not have a legal obligation under the current menu of precedents, I disagree that it has no obligation tout court.
The real facts on the ground here are that a person's website was censored at the behest of the US Government. This is chilled speech. That the target happens not to be a US National, and also a national of a nation under sanction by the US government does not put it outside the realm of speech.
- smsm42 7y agoNot every issue where speech is limited is an issue of free speech. If you're told that you can not write on my house's wall, it's about speech, but not issue of free speech because it's my house and I decide who writes on it. If a mafia boss is imprisoned for ordering a contract murder, it's not issue of free speech, because even though the order was spoken, the murder is the crime that is punished, not speech. If you are not allowed to talk in the movie theater while movie is screening, it is not an issue of free speech - it's the issue of it being not the right place to speak. If there's a trade embargo that prohibits providing services to nationals of Elbonia and an Elbonian can't publish her speech - it's not the issue of free speech because the issue here is the embargo, not the speech. Having "speech" somewhere in the picture does not automatically makes it an issue of free speech. The same speech would be easily published if produced by anybody else. There's no issue with the content of the speech.