The group claims the cyberattack tactic – which
effectively freezes targeted Web pages for a time – should be protected as a
new-age form of assembly and protest.
“Instead of a group of people standing outside a
building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to
slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time,” says a
line in the posted petition on the White House site, “We the People.”
Even so, the tactic more closely resembles the
common definition of the “heckler’s veto” than any application of the First
Amendment’s five freedoms. Shouting down a speaker in person, causing a sponsor
to cancel a speech for fear of violence, or silencing a point of view
electronically from a remote computer all achieve the same thing: preventing
the free flow of information, and in particular the views someone opposes.
Any way you cut it, such a veto is the antithesis of
the marketplace of ideas that is at the heart of freedom of expression.
“Distributed Denial of Service” attacks occur when
multiple visitors repeatedly refresh a Web page, with the effect of temporarily
preventing normal operations.
Supporters of the tactic and the petition note that
it’s transitory, eventually leaving the targeted site intact and operational.
But speakers who are shouted down in person presumably live to speak again
another day in another place. And in each case, you and I and an audience are
denied information by a self-appointed entity that thinks – supposedly on our
behalf – that we ought not to receive it. The First Amendment is in place to
keep government from just becoming such a censor.
The petition was placed Jan. 7 on “We the People,” a
White House project that now contains more than 246 petitions on various
subjects. It must receive 25,000 “signatures” by Feb. 6 just to gain an
official review and response. As of Jan. 15, the petition had 4,600 signatures.
Admittedly, freezing a website for short a time is
far less invasive than other kinds of cyberattacks that are becoming more
common. A recent target of criticism by Anonymous was the Westboro Baptist
Church, a family group from Topeka, Kan., over its threat to appear at funerals
of those killed in the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.
Anonymous helped publicize another Web petition to
have the church legally recognized as a hate group. But some Westboro opponents
have gone further. News reports say the main website for the church and
individual Twitter sites associated with the Fred Phelps family – the bulk of
the church membership – were damaged or temporarily taken over by critics.
Widely publicized information about the
Westboro-Phelps family and its hateful screeds against gays and various
religious groups does not appear to have swelled the church’s ranks or brought
converts to their message in any great numbers. Instead, more news about the
group has produced counter-demonstrators and measurable national revulsion
against both Westboro’s message and its methods.
Censorship – however fleeting and however it’s done
– is not proper response to the folks from Westboro.
About the author: Gene Policinski, senior vice
president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, is a veteran
journalist whose career has included work in newspapers, radio, television and
online.
This article was published by the First Amendment
Center.
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