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I think you are 100% backwards in your thinking here. If the US taxpayer funds research then public funders actually have a very high bar in their ability to re

I think you are 100% backwards in your thinking here. If the US taxpayer funds research then public funders actually have a very high bar in their ability to restrict the publication of that research. For the simple reason that the taxpayer funds it and government restrictions on speech face a very high Constitutional bar. By contrast if I take funding from Amazon or Apple it’s much easier for them to demand NDAs and speech restrictions. (Which I have been asked for and wouldn’t agree to.)

dnautics 5y ago
you are right in practice, but my argument is not about what is de facto the case, but what should be the case. > government restrictions on speech Well this obviously should not generally be the case. If you are, say a high ranking general at the pentagon -- which is a position directly paid by the government, so arguably way more "protected" by the constitution than a subcontractor awardee of a grant, which could be considered to "create a legal veil", then can you claim "first amendment" if you pass military secrets on to an adversarial government? Of course not.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  There is a huge amount of constitutional jurisprudence around the notion of national security clearance and all of it rests on the idea that it is a strictly limited exception to the First Amendment, generally one that is used sparingly and only when needed. This is why private citizens must volunteer to obtain security clearances. The General you speak of is presumably a volunteer who also agreed to be bound by stricter rules around classified data. The NSF does not (generally) fund classified research. They fund unclassified research at open academic Universities. If the researcher in TFA had joined a military lab and submitted to a clearance, this would be an open and shut case. He did not do anything of the sort, and so the prosecutors were forced to hunt down some workaround to achieve their desired result, then ultimately drop a groundless case.

dnautics 5y ago

you are right in practice, but my argument is not about what is de facto the case, but what should be the case. > government restrictions on speech Well this obviously should not generally be the case. If you are, say a high ranking general at the pentagon -- which is a position directly paid by the government, so arguably way more "protected" by the constitution than a subcontractor awardee of a grant, which could be considered to "create a legal veil", then can you claim "first amendment" if you pass military secrets on to an adversarial government? Of course not.

matthewdgreen 5y ago
There is a huge amount of constitutional jurisprudence around the notion of national security clearance and all of it rests on the idea that it is a strictly limited exception to the First Amendment, generally one that is used sparingly and only when needed. This is why private citizens must volunteer to obtain security clearances. The General you speak of is presumably a volunteer who also agreed to be bound by stricter rules around classified data. The NSF does not (generally) fund classified research. They fund unclassified research at open academic Universities. If the researcher in TFA had joined a military lab and submitted to a clearance, this would be an open and shut case. He did not do anything of the sort, and so the prosecutors were forced to hunt down some workaround to achieve their desired result, then ultimately drop a groundless case.