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Could you explain how the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) results in "selectively use to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees"? The original submiss

Could you explain how the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) results in "selectively use to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees"? The original submission mentions that the issue was the IRGC was pretending to be a genuine new outlet, which is exactly what the FARA describes. Link from one of the provided domains: https://web.archive.org/web/20200308072511/http://newsstand7.com/about-us/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200308072511/http://newsstand7...

jameslk 6y ago
FARA itself doesn't necessarily result in selective use "to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees." Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. I provided a link in my original comment to demonstrate there's accusations that this exact thing has been done historically in the case of FARA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act#Allegations_of_selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
- albntomat0 6y ago
  > Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. The flip side is that anyone being punished can argue they are being selectively targeted, regardless of the validity of it. None of the examples there show the punishment of speech the US government disagrees with. Furthermore, none of them are analogous to the original post, where a foreign government was pretending to be legitimate news organizations.
  - jameslk 6y ago
    AIPAC is a huge lobbying organization in the US and the examples provided in that linked Wikipedia section show they've had a history of being accused as a foreign mouthpiece of Israel, yet nothing has ever been done about it w.r.t NARA. On the other hand, if the US accuses IRGC of controlling all these websites but does nothing about the multi-billion dollar lobbying organization in the US that's had multiple high ranking officials demanding it register with NARA (and then later mysteriously dropping their demands), does that not strike you as a bit odd?
    - albntomat0 6y ago
      The situation is AIPAC is undoubtably complicated. The IRGC was pretending to be American news organizations, which is entirely different in kind from AIPAC.

jameslk 6y ago

FARA itself doesn't necessarily result in selective use "to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees." Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. I provided a link in my original comment to demonstrate there's accusations that this exact thing has been done historically in the case of FARA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act#Allegations_of_selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...

albntomat0 6y ago
> Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. The flip side is that anyone being punished can argue they are being selectively targeted, regardless of the validity of it. None of the examples there show the punishment of speech the US government disagrees with. Furthermore, none of them are analogous to the original post, where a foreign government was pretending to be legitimate news organizations.
- jameslk 6y ago
  AIPAC is a huge lobbying organization in the US and the examples provided in that linked Wikipedia section show they've had a history of being accused as a foreign mouthpiece of Israel, yet nothing has ever been done about it w.r.t NARA. On the other hand, if the US accuses IRGC of controlling all these websites but does nothing about the multi-billion dollar lobbying organization in the US that's had multiple high ranking officials demanding it register with NARA (and then later mysteriously dropping their demands), does that not strike you as a bit odd?
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    The situation is AIPAC is undoubtably complicated. The IRGC was pretending to be American news organizations, which is entirely different in kind from AIPAC.