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I agree with you, but this is a weak argument, because the police aren't suppressing any right of expression by monitoring protests. They may be having a chilli
by chatmasta 3y ago
I agree with you, but this is a weak argument, because the police aren't suppressing any right of expression by monitoring protests. They may be having a chilling effect by effectively discouraging protesters to attend, but they are not actively suppressing any identifiable freedoms.
- ccooffee 3y agoSCOTUS has repeatedly considered the "chilling effect" of government policies to be sufficient to strike down government policies. Here's a long article from MTSU about the history of the "chilling effect" on First Amendment jurisprudence: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-effect https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-effect tl;dr: having a "chilling effect" is, according to SCOTUS, often (but not always) the same thing as "actively suppressing" freedom of speech.
- ROTMetro 3y agoThe Supreme Court has held that anonymous speech is a huge part of the First Amendment as non-anonymous speech has a pretty chilling effect. With a surveillance state you are taking away the 'anonymizing' effect people felt of being in a crowd, that they could speak without being singled out.