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Re:Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in B... by barry-cotter on Saturday October 10, 2020 @05:32AM (#24737734)
You may not know this but the fire in a crowded theater case was about criminalizing opposition to the draft during WWI. Criminalizing speech always ends with the powers that be using it to stop people saying things inconvenient to them. One year it’s Obama prosecuting whistleblowers, the next it’s Trump. Any power the government has will be used and “abused” almost immediately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

> Holmes, writing for a unanimous Court, ruled that it was a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 (amended by the Sedition Act of 1918), to distribute flyers opposing the draft during World War I. Holmes argued this abridgment of free speech was permissible because it presented a "clear and present danger" to the government's recruitment efforts for the war. Holmes wrote:

>> The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Re:Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in B... by DaiPlusPlus on Saturday October 10, 2020 @09:17AM (#24738792)
> One year it’s Obama prosecuting whistleblowers, the next it’s Trump

I agree with you, but I hope you're not making a false-equivalence between Trump and Obama, or that the Obama administration's actions against free-speech had the same motivations - and lack of conscience - as the Trump administration's.

It would be much fairer to compare Bush Jr to Trump - it was under Bush Jr we got "free speech zones", for example.

Re:Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in B... by barry-cotter on Saturday October 10, 2020 @12:41PM (#24740110)
I don’t care about their motivations. I care about what they do. Trump is a vulgarian, a clown, a walking affront to civility while Obama was born and raised to the haute bourgeoisie but one fanned the flames of war in Libya and Syria and the other has burned no nations. Obama dedicated his adult life to the quest for power and he’s a liberal at heart. Trump has no principles, just a lust for adulation. They were still both the executive. Seek power, accrue power, use power. Stamp on any inconvenient speech.

> Obama's war on whistleblowers leaves administration insiders unscathed

> Since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, his government has waged a war against whistleblowers and official leakers. On his watch, there have been eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than double those under all previous presidents combined.

> And yet other apparent leaks have gone entirely unpunished or have been treated, as in the case of General David Petraeus, as misdemeanors. As Abbe Lowell, lawyer for one of the Espionage Act eight, Stephen Kim, has argued in a letter to the Department of Justice, low-level officials who lack the political connections to fight back have had the book thrown at them, while high-level figures have been allowed to leak with “virtual impunity”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowe...