Elon Musk put it simply: “#FreePavel.” For many, a hashtag of one billionaire calling for the release of another billionaire is hardly a compelling cause. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, 39, is neither a familiar nor sympathetic figure for most Americans. However, for free speech advocates, Durov’s arrest is a chilling escalation of global censors in using European laws to control speech on the Internet.
The press and pundits heralded the arrest and played up the allegations that Durov is under investigation for fraud and child abuse. Some might think from the headlines that Durov is himself being investigated for committing such crimes.
While we have not seen anything akin to a charging sheet, reports indicate that French authorities took the action because of his refusal to yield to their demands to censor content on his messaging app.
Others have been ecstatic that censors could soon come for Musk. Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified in the Trump impeachment proceedings, declared “There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”
Social media is now the dominant form of communication between people. It surpasses telephones. There is, however, a major difference in how such communications are protected. There would be an outcry if AT&T broke into a telephone call to object to the views of the parties and cut off access to the telephone lines until they moderated their views.
The Europeans have been threatening to hold executives liable for how others use their sites. Imagine if a mobster used a telephone to do business and the FBI arrested the CEO of AT&T.
The implication of this case goes far beyond Durov. Social media sites allow large numbers of people to communicate and to associate. They share values or viewpoints, including some that most of us find offensive or repulsive. However, free speech should protect the right of people to associate so long as they do not commit crimes.
Under free speech principles, those crimes should not include viewpoints or ideology. If individuals are engaging in child pornography or human trafficking, they should be arrested. That is conduct, not just speech.
While the media emphasizes the allegations that there are people engaged in fraud or child porn, officials add that Durov has failed to remove viewpoints that they consider extreme or offensive. French officials have cited the failure to engage in greater “content moderation,” the euphemism of censorship.
We have been discussing how countries like France and the United Kingdom have been ramping up anti-free speech crackdowns. Recently, the European Union threatened Musk that he could be charged if he did not censor political speech in this election, including any information deemed by the EU to be false in his interview with Donald Trump.
European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Services Thierry Breton issued a threatening message to Musk, “We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political — or societal — events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections.”
The law behind these threats is the Digital Services Act. The act bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager celebrated its passage by declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”
In addition to Musk, Robert Kennedy Jr. has denounced the arrest.
This action is not due to the encryption capacity or child porn rationales. European officials have been making the same threats against other sites over the failure to censor views that they deem unacceptable.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski wrote “France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech.”
Telegram has over 900 million users and allows large groups of people to communicate across different channels. The New York Times reported that officials have targeted the company for its failure, among other things, in allowing “far-right extremist groups” to use the app.
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the use of the DSA to regulate speech on a global scale. The effort has been encouraged by some Democratic leaders.
After Elon Musk bought Twitter and dismantled most of the company’s censorship program, many on the left went bonkers. That fury only increased when Musk released the “Twitter files,” confirming the long-denied coordination and support by the government in targeting and suppressing speech.
In response, Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans.
The EU immediately responded by threatening Musk with confiscatory penalties against not just his company but himself. He would have to resume massive censorship or else face ruin.
Notably, Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with Kremlin demands to shut down opposition groups on his VK social network. He later left VK and co-founded Telegram.
European regulators have objected to what they view as misinformation on Telegram about the Ukraine war. Yet, Telegram is also a popular source for Russians to get unfiltered information on the war. It allows them to evade Russian censors due to its encryption capacity.
Americans should not be deceived or distracted by the Durov case. The underlying claim of authority by these officials will impact all users of social media. They are making the long anticipated move to target CEOs to get them to yield as did the executives at sites like Facebook. The fear is that, once these executives are forced into cringing obedience, Europe can regulate speech on a global level.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).
Turley is writing here about the efforts of the left – in this case the EU and France to infringe on free speech.
But What Turley is describing is even more egregious that violating free speech.
What is happening – With Pavel, with the efforts of the left to control what can be said is something bigger, something much worse.
It is actual fascism.
It is the government trying to control our lives – what we can do, what we can say.
As with Mussolini and Hitler what we are seeing here is the fascists using govenrment power to threaten business to do as they demand.
This is not just about government censoring thought it does not like, it is about government FORCING businesses to censor thought that it does not like.
And that is fascism.
Huh, wrong. The EU is cracking down in inciting violence thru social media. Inciting violence is not protected speech in the EU or here. Inciting, encouraging, promoting and directing violence is a crime in the EU and in the U.S. That is what Turley is leaving out and that is what the EU is prosecuting. In the EU and UK violent rhetoric is considered a form of conduct and by their laws it’s a criminal offense.
“It is the government trying to control our lives – what we can do, what we can say.
Huh, weird. That’s what Republican governments here love to do. They tell women wht they can’t do with their bodies, they tell LGBTQ members who they cant’ be or even be recognized. They tell everyone else they need to be living according to their preferred values.
“This is not just about government censoring thought it does not like, it is about government FORCING businesses to censor thought that it does not like.”
No, it’s about government enforcing established law. They deem inciting violence a crime. It’s a crime here and it’s not protected speech.
To George, who says Telegram was allowing the incitement of violence-
What violence was was being incited? AFAIK, the charges against Durov does not specifically cite it.
Help us out.
Democrats like controlling also, li,e forcing people to take immunizations they don’t want or lose their jobs and not be able to feed or care for their families. The bromide “My body, my choice” went out the window with Covid.
Free speech? Let me point out that free speech in the USA is a totaly different animal than free speech in France, or any other european country.
Screaming facisism at anything you dont like is stupid and foolish.
John Say,
Well said and spot on.
Spot on John Say! you don’t have to look far with the current slate of commie fascists, Kamalaunist has already stated getting rid of private insurance for some government run healthcare BS. Democrats already control the MSM, the DOJ. Has anyone seen her proposed tax plan, unrealized gain taxation? That sounds like your401K investment accounts, capital gains increases, don’t sell your home!
What an excellent column!
Thank you, Professor Turley.
Free Pavel! Why are we talking about Europe? We should be concerned here, where an administration has involved itself in all types of speech restriction and forced platforms to do its bidding which is against the law.
“Mark Zuckerberg admits Biden administration ‘pressured’ Facebook to censor Americans”
Zuckerberg explained that the Biden administration pressured his team for months in 2021 to censor “certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our team when we didn’t agree.”
The CEO admitted that the company made the ultimate decision on what to remove and when, stating that he owns up to the censorship, including on matters related to the COVID-19 global health emergency and pandemic.
https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/mark-zuckerberg-admits-biden-administration-pressured-facebook-censor-americans?utm_source=breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
Zuckerberg also committed to not dumping millions into his massive ballot harvesting scheme from 2020.
Except that he has said that before, and he has also said that he is doing that again.
That is a huge deal. Zuckerberg dumped massive money on approximately 20 key democrat counties in 6 swing states.
There werer many things that resulted from that money. Some of them were even good. But the most dangerous one was they provided in real time information to both parties about who had voted. This allowed the parties to target people who had not yet voted. Targetting COULD mean sending a political operative out to persuade them to vote.
It also could mean coercing or inducing the vote.
It could also mean providing forgers with information on who had not voted so that they could forge ballots from those people.
There is a long list of ways this information can be used to commit various different form of election fraud.
This was supposed to be a non-partisan effort – but Zuckerberg ONLY operated in counties with supermajorities of democrat voters.
“But the most dangerous one was they provided in real time information to both parties about who had voted. This allowed the parties to target people who had not yet voted. Targetting COULD mean sending a political operative out to persuade them to vote.
It also could mean coercing or inducing the vote.”
And your evidence for this assumption is? There are lots of could haves, would haves, and may haves, but no real concrete evidence. Assumptions are not evidence. That’s paranoia talking. Not reason.
“Except that he has said that before, and he has also said that he is doing that again. ”
The only thing the Fvckerberg siblings are about even slightly is the dominance of the Metaverse, and they need government favoritism to achieve that.
“care about even slightly”
John, these games can be played because Democrats are creating an environment for cheating based on complexity and unnecessary computer power. Almost all of these issues can be solved with one-day voting, a paper ballot, and a voter ID with clean registers.
That is how it works where I live.
It’s just like Democrats University speeches for exorbitant fees, bribery by another name.
S. Meyer,
To add to your comment,
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
“Imagine if a mobster used a telephone to do business and the FBI arrested the CEO of AT&T.” Jesus, Turley is a luddite. Social networks are by their very nature surveillance based. A two wire phone system is not. Imagine if the CEO of AT&T knew a mobster was using a phone, knew when the mobster was using it, and could cut the mobster’s line… but didn’t.
And? Why is the CEO obligated to interpose himself into someone else’s conversation? That’s absurd. It’s a police matter, it has nothing to do with the CEO.
So, when you’re beating your wife, your landlord should stay out of it and let the police magically show up.
I have never beaten my wife, but you probably have beaten yours since you’re an idiot, comparing the CEO of AT&T to a small-fry landlord. Smh
If your landlord is spying on what is going on in your apartment – the police are going to show up and arrest him.
If you are going to manufacture an analogy – do not come up with garbage.
France is after private encrypted traffic – everything else they can get by public surveillance.
Telegram has no means to know what is in the private encrypted traffic.
Creating the oportunity for a man in the middle exploit of a secure communications channel is a dangerous security flaw.
This is how our credit cards and social security numbers get hacked.
This is an unbeleivably stupid ideaq by arrogant left wing nuts who are incapable of more than first order thinking and can not grasp that they are causing far more damaged than good.
“Telegram has no means to know what is in the private encrypted traffic.”
Are you sure about that? Telegram shut down channels in the UK that were inciting violence against immigrants. They knew and the public knew they were doing so. Even the media knew what the racists and bigots were inciting and encouraging violence. When Telegram shut down the channels those intent on encouraging the violence migrated to X which is why Elon Musk was being warned by the UK and the EU. Elon himself was fanning the incitement by making comments purporting to lend legitimacy to those calling for violence against immigrants who had nothing to do with the crime that set everything off. That’s what Turley conveniently leaves out.
You are correct, it is police matter.
The police were investigating crimes of drug trafficking, child pornography, wire fraud and terrorism. They went to Durov for information about these crimes and he refused to turn over the evidence the police were seeking.
The charges against Durov are failure to cooperate with the investigation plain and simple, nothing to do with censorship.
It is very definitely a “police matter”, and has everything to do with the CEO Durov who refused to cooperate with the investigation.
He does not have the information that the police are after. Plain and Simple.
This is not a censorship case so much as it is a fascism case.
You can get a warrant to access information that exists. You can not get a warrant for what does not exist.
We have been trhough this in the US twice before – in the first instancve James Comey asked Apple to give the FBI a back door and Tim cooke told him to pound sand.
In the second the FBI was able to get a secure email provider to provide them with a master key through the same kind of lawfare. When he had no more options the CEO gave the FBI the key, shutdown the service, open sourced all the software, and later released a new version of the secure email system that was not vulnerable to law enforcement trying to coerce CEO’s
France and the EU are not after information that exists – they are after forcing Telegram to create information that they want at the expsense of the security of their users.
Further the criminal investigations claim is pretextual nonsense – the moment this went public all the terrorists, child pornographers, drug dealers …. left Telegram. Frankly any with a brain are not using a service like Telegram. They are using tools that do not require a service.
“You can get a warrant to access information that exists. You can not get a warrant for what does not exist.”
Telegram has complete control over the channels that are created on their platform. They can shut them down and they certainly can decrypt the data that is being sought. This is in the EU not here and laws are different there. The French legal system maybe even stricter than the EU. I have no idea how or what the French legal system allows or disallows, but they are clearly not based on our system. So comparing it against our own is irrelevant.
“I have no idea how or what the French legal system allows or disallows, but they are clearly not based on our system.”
Spastic contradicts himself in the SAME sentence.
cant make this up!
John Say, Contrary to what a lot of coverage is reporting, the vast majority of Telegram usage is not encrypted.
“ From your perspective as a user, an “encrypted messenger” ensures that each time you start a conversation, your messages will only be readable by the folks you intend to speak with. If the operator of a messaging service tries to view the content of your messages, all they’ll see is useless encrypted junk. That same guarantee holds for anyone who might hack into the provider’s servers, and also, for better or for worse, to law enforcement agencies that serve providers with a subpoena.
Telegram clearly fails to meet this stronger definition for a simple reason: it does not end-to-end encrypt conversations by default. If you want to use end-to-end encryption in Telegram, you must manually activate an optional end-to-end encryption feature called “Secret Chats” for every single private conversation you want to have. The feature is explicitly not turned on for the vast majority of conversations, and is only available for one-on-one conversations, and never for group chats with more than two people in them.
As a kind of a weird bonus, activating end-to-end encryption in Telegram is oddly difficult for non-expert users to actually do.”
https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/
I’m sure a bunch of racists and right wing anti-government “patriots” were too stupid to figure it out.
“ For one thing, the button that activates Telegram’s encryption feature is not visible from the main conversation pane, or from the home screen. To find it in the iOS app, I had to click at least four times — once to access the user’s profile, once to make a hidden menu pop up showing me the options, and a final time to “confirm” that I wanted to use encryption. And even after this I was not able to actually have an encrypted conversation, since Secret Chats only works if your conversation partner happens to be online when you do this.”
That’s how government agencies in the UK and EU found out about the crimes and inciting violence on Telegram. Because users were too stupid or didn’t know that Telegram did not encrypt their conversations by default. LOL!!
AES – what absurd nonsense. No Social media is not “surveilance based”.
Social media is also not “soyolent green” based.
You do not get to string words together and pretend there is sometyhing actually connecting them.
What France and the EU are afdter is a precursor to China’s social credit system.
a bulletin board in your grocery store or a AA meeting is not surveilance based.
Social Media companies are not on the lookout for customers that are going to shoplift goods from them.
Surveillance of Social media is not different from FBI surveillance of a crowd of protesters.
Law enforcement is free to observe what occurs publicly – they are NOT free to demand that the event organizers do it for them and report back their findings.
But even that is not what Frances is after.
France is seeking access to private encrypted communications – that is identical to the Phone company – except even worse.
Encyrpted communications have a CLEAR expectation of privacy.
Regardless, nothing is preventing french law enforcement from monitoring the public activities on Telegram and arresting people for violating Frances abysmally bad and vile speech laws.
Noting is preventing France from capturing encrypted communications over the internet and decrypting them.
Nothing is preventing France from requiiring Telegarm to turn over any data they actually have – WITH A WARRANT.
This fight is over Telegram changing their service such that France can easily obtain non-public encrypted communications.
I would note this is likely technically impossible without radically changing their communications model.
Most encypted communications services encrypt the data at the source and decrypt the data at the destination.
This is true not just for messages over Telegram. It is true of say the credit card data that you send over the web.
The technology is designed to make “man in the middle” access impossible. On rare occasions flaws in that process exist and millions of credit card numbers or social security numbers or other confidential information gets exposed on the web.
France and the EU are not merely looking for the ability to tap a private – not public communications channel, but to change Telegram’s programing to deliberately introduce a “man in the middle” flaw.
They are looking to do this without warrants.
And they are demanding something that with absolute certainty if done will eventually result in a private hack of Telegram and lots of confidential information released. If that is your credit card numbers – you would be pissed.
I would further note that the child porn, terrorism, drugs pretext is nonsense. You can pretty much bet that the moment that this case become public – any halfway smart criminal using Telegram has moved on.
While Telegram provides ordinary people the trivial ability to communicate securely and privately, the ability to communicate securely and privately is as old as communications.
Pretty Good Privacy predates Telegram by decades and has been used by disidents and whistleblowers throughout the world to communicate securtely and privately uinder the noses of despotic regimes. Human rights abuses accross the world have been reported using PGP.
PGP is secure open source and can be easily encorporated into most email programs.
That is NOT the first effort to use computers to fascilitate secure private communications for good purposes – the anon-petit.fi anonymous remailer provided that capability for disidents in the USSR during the cold war.
It is common place for authoritarians – LEFT AND RIGHT to use law enforcement and boogeymen like terrorists and child porn to try to scare us into givinmg up rights and tools that have far more good purposes than bad.
A hammer can be used to build buildings or bash in peoples skulls.
We do not ban hammers because they are sometimes used by criminals.
While Turley has fixated on the censorship – which is real – this is beyond censorship and well into FASCISM.
This is no more about terrorism or child pornography than the partriot act was.
“ AES – what absurd nonsense. No Social media is not “surveilance based”.
It is certainly surveillance based. Have you not been paying attention. Social media gathers information about you all the time. What you look at, what you do, why you buy, where you are or have been and who you have been talking to. The craziest part is everyone who joins social media willingly give up this information for the convenience the platforms provide the moment they agree to their terms and conditions. Government can’t do that, but private companies can. They even sell location data to law enforcement. Why seek a warrant when you can buy the information from a third party vendor.
“Imagine if the CEO of AT&T knew a mobster was using a phone, knew when the mobster was using it, and could cut the mobster’s line… but didn’t.”
You do not need to imagine. Do you think that AT&T did not have the names and phone numbers of mobsters ?
The mail – another form of communications, is handled by the US government. The USPS knows the names and addresses of many criminals. It knows that all kinds of illegal contents and information go through the mail.
The FBI still needs a warrant to search the mail, and postal workers are not allowed to do that for them.
“The FBI still needs a warrant to search the mail, and postal workers are not allowed to do that for them.”
If you think that the agencies of today’s Fedgov have any respect beyond the cosmetic for those legal boundaries, you inhabit a dream world.
Tulsi speech today about the need to defeat the nation-destroying corruption of Harris-Walz-Obama. It is six minutes well spent, you won’t regret it:
https://youtu.be/5G7SPrNIz5A?si=9UBO_ugCgSNFLwXo
I regret it. Total right wing extremist anti-conservative horse sh!t.
Your comment is horse shit. You obviously didn’t listen to it.
* at least she wasn’t screaming, jumping, gesticulating wildly. I appreciated her tone.
Trump is all for violating the 1st amendment.
“ I wanna get a law passed […] You burn an American flag, you go to jail for one year. Gotta do it – you gotta do it,” —Donald J. Trump.
Will Turley chastise Trump for suggesting a clearly unconstitutional law?
“George” follows his pattern of plastering his comments successively much like he did recently with pasting in Latin the Book of Revelations and then in Old English, Beowulf
George is Sammy is Svelaz is Wally is Gigi is…..ad nauseam ad infinitum
Obviously you can’t make distinctions.
‘George’
you obviously have ulterior motives for being here
no matter which screen name you’re using at the time.
As opposed to…yours? What ulterior motives do I have pray tell.
Most of us have no problems making distinctions between selective edits of what one person said and what others have done.
In reality what you say only matters to the extent it tells us what you will do.
We KNOW what Trump says – and we KNOW what Trump has actually done or not done.
We know what those of you on the left have SAID, but more importantly we know what you DO when you have power.
And that is what matters. That is why you are fascists.
John Say, we also KNOW what the those of you on the right say and do. Most of you have no clue how to make distinctions or differentiate between opinion and fact.
Fascism does not mean what you think it means. Those on the right conflate way too many words without knowing fully what they mean such as Marxism, communism, socialism, etc. Those on the right treat them as word of the day applications depending on the mob’s mood. Aaaand, poor reading comprehension seems to play a big part in all of it.
John Say,
“We know what those of you on the left have SAID, but more importantly we know what you DO when you have power.
And that is what matters. That is why you are fascists.”
That right there!
Is that Turley’s job, to “chastise Trump”?
Grow up and get a grip.
He chastises everyone else. Why not Trump? Especially when he’s proposing an unconstitutional law violating free speech.
Because he is not proposing an unconstitutional law violating the first amendment. He is just expressing the frustration that most americans have when they see left wing nuts desecrating things that they value.
People often say – there ought to be a law. As Trump often does.
We do not take everyone who does seriously.
We do however take people who really mean it seriously.
Democrats and the left TALK about violating peoples rights and then they go out and try to do so.
J6ers are in jail for free speech you do not like.
In the 2020 election you supressed the free speech of people you did not like.
You are envious of what the europeans and chines have done to restrict speech.
Turley first and foremost speaks out about the violations of rights that people have actually done.
Trump has not violated anyone’s rights – not as president, and not as a private citizen – even though he has on occasion said things that had he done would have violated rights.
But those of you on the left, promises to violate others rights and then do your damnest to do so.
Pavel is rotting in jail for the crime of not censoring the private conversations of others.
The left DID THAT – and that is why you are authoritarian and fascist.
The problem with what you SAY is that all to often unless thwarted you WILL do as you say and violate the rights of others.
Stop whining and complaining.
Do you expect such a law to pass ? Do you expect it to even get voted on by congress ? In the highly unlikely chance it actually passed – how long do you think it would be before it was struck down ?
That said – I would note that the proHama protestors who took down an american flag and burned it could be prosecuted for theft, destruction of property and arson. You had no problems prosecuting J6rs who moved a podium 10ft for theft and sentencing them to years in prision. Pulling down an amercian flag and burning it should be treated more seriously.
Protestors can burn as many amercian flags as they want – so long as they own the flags and do so safely.
Only left wing nuts are worried about Trump.
While I would oppose a law punishing burning an american flag – something like 76% of americans would support it.
Buring an american flag is a significant political statement – and censoring it is wrong.
But those on the left seek to censor not merely symbolicly meaningful political statements – but ANYTHING they do not like.
With respect top Telegram – I do not give a schiff if it does ZERO content moderation and the result is the use of the site by drug dealers, terrorists, and child porographers.
Government is free to use the same tools they would use on the mail or telephone conversations – i.e. GET A WARRANT.
It is absolutely NOT the responsibility of communications platforms to monitor their own platforms for illicit or unwanted activity – that is what we have government for. Telegrams is obligated to cooperate with a legitimately acquired warrant for information related to clinets that are actually under the jurisdiction of the body issuing the warrant.
France should have no more ability to issue warrants to search the communications of americans, than Californians should have to search the communications of pennsylvanians.
These tech companies should be saying ABSOLUTELY NO to all governemtn regests to censor, and they should be saying “get a warrant” to all requests for information.
Government can not circumvent the rights of citizens by coercing third parties to violate them.
“Burning an american flag is a significant political statement”
Really? Because I find it highly insignificant.
What exactly is that statement? I’d love to know.
It looks a lot more like a ritual when spastic teenagers are dancing around looking like idiots.
Your own remarks make it clear how significant it is.
If it was not significant you would not be describing those who did it as spastic children dancing arround like idiots.
If it was insignificant – you would not even know about it.
I know the score of the Braves game from yesterday, douchebag. And it is insignificant.
Do better.
And I notice you acted like Svelaz and didnt answer the question, even though, like him, you otherwise seem to have all the answers.
“ Do you expect such a law to pass ? Do you expect it to even get voted on by congress ? ”
Irrelevant. Turley criticizes those who even suggest or propose legislation that he considers anti-free speech. Trump’s suggestion should be no different in Turley’s eyes.
“ I would note that the proHama protestors who took down an american flag and burned it could be prosecuted for theft, destruction of property and arson. You had no problems prosecuting J6rs who moved a podium 10ft for theft and sentencing them to years in prision.”
Absolutely correct, pro-Palestinian protesters should be prosecuted for those crimes.
The J6 protesters should be prosecuted for their crimes too. Trespassing and vandalism are crimes. Theft of laptops and government equipment is also a crime. Moving a lectern? I don’t know about that. There were plenty of crimes being committed on J6.
“ With respect top Telegram – I do not give a schiff if it does ZERO content moderation and the result is the use of the site by drug dealers, terrorists, and child porographers.
Government is free to use the same tools they would use on the mail or telephone conversations – i.e. GET A WARRANT.”
They probably did. Plus in the EU inciting violence and encouraging it is not protected speech just as it is here. The reason why Telegram and X were targets of investigation is because in the EU it’s a crime to incite or encourage violence. It’s their law. Not ours.
“ These tech companies should be saying ABSOLUTELY NO to all governemtn regests to censor, and they should be saying “get a warrant” to all requests for information.”
Well, if tech companies wish to operate in the EU or in any other country. They must abide by their rules.
““ Do you expect such a law to pass ? Do you expect it to even get voted on by congress ? ”
Irrelevant.”
Not at all irrelevant.
The distinction should be trivial to understand for someone with a small amount of critical thinking skills.
The only importance of the words people say is the extent to which they tell us how they will act.
If you say “I am going to kill you” but never act, you have not committed a crime.
If you say nothing and kill someone – that is a crime.
That is the simple version.
With more complexity and specificity to Trump and the left.
I would repeat the very astute observation of Salena Zito
“The press takes Trump literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
Trump said LOTS of things in the 2016 cycle, as president, and since 2020 in the current campaign.
Trump did or tried to do pretty much everything he promised his supporters.
But he did not LITERALLY do ANYTHING he promised.
Trump’s supporters are fine with that. They see him as the only honest politician they have ever seen.
Conversely Biden promised to be a unifying president, to return to moderation.
Instead he has been the farthest left president in my lifetime – and the most disastrous.
Harris/Walz are trying the same game – with one exception. While Senator Biden was a moron. As democrat Senators good he was very centrist. It was easy for voters to beleive that while they would not get competence from Biden, they would get someone who would do little, who would return to normalcy.
Harris and Walz do NOT have prior records as Moderates. Walz is a progressive spendthrift and authoritarian.
He is the guy who burned through an $18B surplus that he promised to return to voters, and instead has left minesota with a plethora of new programs that will require significant tax increases in the future. He revels in taking credit for the programs, but ignores the fact that they were paid for out of “savings” during his tenure, but will rapidly because a large cost in the future. He seems to think Socialism is “Just being neighborly” – nice slogan, but as with everything that those on the left say nice oratory masks a reality that is entirely different. Neighbors leave neighbors alone – Walz himself cites that – when it serves his purpose, but is perfectly happy to fortecibly meddle in the lives of others for his own preferences.
Harris is more complex. As a Senator and a presidential candidate she was to the left of Bernie Sanders. Her father is an actual communist, and she seems to default to that. As a Vice President she is complicit in the left wing nonsense that Biden performed. We rally still do not know for sure who pulled the puppet strings during the Biden administration – except that Joe was certainly not making the decisions. Regardless Harris owns the policies of the administration she was apart of – expecially if she is not prepared as a candidate for President to come out and actually disown them – HERSELF not through surogates who can be thrown under the bus at any time.
As a DA and AG Harris was weird – mostly authoritarian. She sent mothers to jail for the trunacy of their children.
She jailed people for unpopoular but legal speech.
She fought tooth and nail to keep innocent people in jail.
While at the same time releasing violent criminals, waiving bail, and other left wing policies.
It is not clear who Harris is deep down in her soul. It is not even clear that he has a soul – any core values that she adheres to.
Harris is a great unknown and appears committed to keeping it that way.
As Presidernt Harris could be anything – time after time she directly or through surogates has adopted Trump’s policies – if we are to beleive her, she will secure the border. reach across the aisle, drill baby drill, lock up actual criminals. eliminate taxes on tips, end the endless wars, …. in essence be Trump with a few minor exceptions.
As with Biden those on the far left are betting heavily that is a lie.
While moderates and independents arer trying to figure out who the real Harris is – or even if there is one.
The Musk retweet meme with Harris as Obama’s puppet is very effective because many people beleive it is true – not that those AI generated conversations are real, but that what the AI meme has harris saying is who Harris really is.
I would further note the credibility problem of you and those on the left – and one of the reasons you hear very little criticism of Trump by Turley is because most of the claims that Trump said some egregious thing have Proven FALSE.
Not only does the left take Trump literally – but they expect everyone else to take him literally when taken out of context and selectively edited.
Most every time some left wing nut idiot here such as yourself here says
Trump said offensive thing X – when anyone bothers to check on it – that is NOT what Trump said.
So that is your first problem – you are not going to get anywhere with attacks on Trump, because you have already persuaded every person you could possibly persuade with your lies. so the only people who even listen to your new examples or rehashes old ones are those who already beleived a long list of debunked nonsense from the left.
If you said Trump raped a 13yr old in times square and there is video – outside the lunatic left – no one would believe you.
Nothing you can come up with is going to hurt Trump. People have already decided who he is – and even more importantly who YOU are – which is a serial liar.
You are the boy who cried wolf.
John Say, “ If you say “I am going to kill you” but never act, you have not committed a crime.”
In the EU that is still a crime. Because they consider speech conduct. Here in the U.S. it can be a crime if they can prove intent or show motive.
“ Trump did or tried to do pretty much everything he promised his supporters.
But he did not LITERALLY do ANYTHING he promised.”
Again, irrelevant. Words matter and Trump saying things he does not intent to act on can still have an effect. Just as Turley uses words democrats say and implies they may act on it but never do to imply they are going to. Even you use that argument.
“ I would further note the credibility problem of you and those on the left – and one of the reasons you hear very little criticism of Trump by Turley is because most of the claims that Trump said some egregious thing have Proven FALSE.”
Yet, you offer no evidence. Trump lies more often than not. And he has been proven to have lied more times that can be counted. Turley doesn’t criticize Trump much because he can’t. Not when he’s on Fox News payroll.
“ Nothing you can come up with is going to hurt Trump. People have already decided who he is – and even more importantly who YOU are – which is a serial liar.”
Trump is hurting himself more and more every day. His lying gets more chaotic and unhinged the longer he can’t mount an effective counter to Harris. Trump is the only serial liar. Everyone else is just a blip in comparison.
“Absolutely correct, pro-Palestinian protesters should be prosecuted for those crimes.”
Anmd yet that is not happening.
Can you say politically selective prosecution ?
“The J6 protesters should be prosecuted for their crimes too. ”
Those who committed actual crimes – yes. That is probably one or two dozen at most.
DOJ has prosecuted 1400 people and is trying to prosecuted atleast another 1000.
Further DOJ must not engage in selective prosecution. They arrested people for the violence in front of the WH in May 2020. That severely damaged the WH fence costing millions to repair.
That resulted in Arson to St. Johns church That resulted in about twice as many police being injured as on J6.
I beleive less than 100 were arrested. Ultimately all charges were dropped and some even received money from the government.
In NYC two lawyers tossed a molotov cocktail into an occupied police car.
They received an 18month suspended sentence.
Nothing even close to that happened on J6.
When law enforcement becomes political it is corrupt.
“Trespassing and vandalism are crimes.”
Vandalism is. You can not tresspass on a public forum for free speech. Please read the first amendment – you have the right – not just to free speech, free assembly but also to petition the government.
Congress was in session they were conducting the publics business they can not do that in private.
The capitol has public galleries and public spaces for a reason. If congress is unable to allow the public access to its votes – especially for the purpose of protest, then it can not be in session and it can not vote.
There was no tresspass at J6. To say there was means congress was acting lawlessly in trying to stop public protest and petitioning govenrment.
Except this is more egregious – because the law making process is explicitly public, they is no different from the proptestors in front of the WH – presidents have tried all kinds of Ruses to get rid of them – none are constitutional. The same is true of the capital – except more so.
“Theft of laptops and government equipment is also a crime.”
That might cover 3 people.
“Moving a lectern? I don’t know about that.”
The case law on theft is such that taking something that is not yours and moving it as little as 10ft is theft.
Thus the man who “took” the lecturn was prosecuted for theft.
“There were plenty of crimes being committed on J6.”
A couple of dozen or so – not anything close to 1400.
There were more and far more serious crimes committed every single night of rioting in portland for over 100 days.
“They probably did.”
Because you say so ?
“Plus in the EU inciting violence and encouraging it is not protected speech just as it is here.”
And as we see the EU is improperly truying to extend its jurisdiction to the planet.
Regardless, if you are following the reporting – even france has admitted that – Pavel is not being arrested for refusing to provide the French information he has in response to a valid criminal warrant. it is for refusing to modify Telgram to be able to provide the French with information they WANT – and without warrants. And more than that – it is for refusing to censor as they demand.
I do not know what will happen to Pavel – but you already lost this fight.
” The reason why Telegram and X were targets of investigation is because in the EU it’s a crime to incite or encourage violence. It’s their law. Not ours.”
And this country revolted from Europe over attempts at this kind of nonsense.
If we had a real president he would tell France that “they can do this the easy way, or they can do this the hard way”
They problem is that those of you on the left do not even understand the principles that made this country great.
I have on occasion argued that some US laws were unconstitutional – especially things that are purely procedural.
While I think many of the procedural constitutional decisions – make sense. They reflect the best way to do something.
It does not matter. We must procedurally do what the constitution says – or we must change the constitution.
That is not about right or wrong. They are no principles – beyond the rule of law involved.
But quite often my arguments are supra constitutional – they are founded on fundimental principles.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind…”
John Stuart Mill.
I know this is hard for you left wing nuts – but all law is not inherently legitimate.
The social contract provides the government with specific powers in return for specific duties.
It does not empower government to do whatever it pleases.
Crime has a meaning – and that meaning is not determined by what legislators put in the criminal code.
A crime is an act of force or fraud with the intent of causing actual harm to another.
Murder is a crime, rape is a crime, theft is a crime. Offending someones feelings is not.
Many of the antifederalists opposed the bill of rights as unnecescary – all rights obviously belonged to the people
Government only had the power explicitly given to it in the constitution – and infringing on free speech was not among those.
Washington Adams, Jefferson … our founders were violating english law. Had they lost the revolution they would likely have been hung for treason,
The entire purpose of the declaration of independence was to assert there is a higher law. That there are legitimate circumstances when the law is wrong. that would be when the law violates the social contract – which is the govenrments obligation to secure our rights not destroy them.
France and the EU are wrong – history proved this long ago. Nothing has changed.
There is no right to silence people.
“Well, if tech companies wish to operate in the EU or in any other country. They must abide by their rules.”
Then turn off the internet to the EU and let them develop their own.
Though honestly – that is the job of the EU – not the US or tech companies.
If the EU is unhappy with the way that X censors content – then the EU is responsible to block X from its people – not the other way around.
Otherwise every company on the global internet must conduct its actions everywhere conforming to the “rules” of each and every country – which is literally impossible.
Regardless, you should be careful what you wish for. Rumble as an example has completely cut off countries that try to censor it. Though you can get Rumble in those countries with a VPN.
I doubt Telegram would have the least problems ceasing to do business in Europe – except for with europeans who used VPN’s to access Telegram outside the country.
Regardless all you are doing is pushing things further towards a per to pear model that can not be blocked or censored.
Progress on that front has been slow – but it is steady.
First Bitcoin was a joke – now JP Morgan is investing. Again P2P progress is slow – One of the propblems is that P2P is a quantum jump. The driving force for free markets is profits – but what most people do not understand is that the drive for profits also drives cost reductions. P2P delivers tiny profits at miniscule cost and enormous value. Businesses are slow to adopt P2P because it is hard to profit.
At the same time we are inevitablby headed there – because rising standard of living is driven by increased efficiency and lower cost – and P2P is the lowest cost and highest efficiency.
And you can not control or regulate P2P.
“ You can not tresspass on a public forum for free speech. Please read the first amendment – you have the right – not just to free speech, free assembly but also to petition the government.”
Oh yes you can trespass on government property, even congress. It’s a crime when you are not authorized to be in a public building. The first amendment does not give you an absolute right to force your way into a public building because you feel like it. This is where time, place and manner restrictions apply. The government cannot silence you, they can determine where you can exercise speech, what time, and how according to SCOTUS.
Free assembly does not mean an unfettered right to assemble wherever you please. Free assembly means people gathering to protest or discuss issues among themselves without interference from government.
Petitioning government does not mean forcing your way into a federal building and assaulting law enforcement. Petitioning government through proper channels is. Through your elected representatives. That’s why they are elected to petition the government on your behalf. If an individual wants to petition their government they can do so by established processes, legal processes. Not violence and assaulting law enforcement.
“ Well, if tech companies wish to operate in the EU or in any other country. They must abide by their rules.”
Then turn off the internet to the EU and let them develop their own.‘
They have their own. You didn’t know that? That’s why they can fine and punish those who violate THEIR rules. Each country has their own system that is seamlessly interconnected with ours.
Telegram is not encrypted by default either. Bet you didn’t know that either. Users must enable encryption on their own and most seem to think it’s automatic.
“ Telegram clearly fails to meet this stronger definition for a simple reason: it does not end-to-end encrypt conversations by default. If you want to use end-to-end encryption in Telegram, you must manually activate an optional end-to-end encryption feature called “Secret Chats” for every single private conversation you want to have. The feature is explicitly not turned on for the vast majority of conversations, and is only available for one-on-one conversations, and never for group chats with more than two people in them.
As a kind of a weird bonus, activating end-to-end encryption in Telegram is oddly difficult for non-expert users to actually do.
For one thing, the button that activates Telegram’s encryption feature is not visible from the main conversation pane, or from the home screen. To find it in the iOS app, I had to click at least four times — once to access the user’s profile, once to make a hidden menu pop up showing me the options, and a final time to “confirm” that I wanted to use encryption. And even after this I was not able to actually have an encrypted conversation, since Secret Chats only works if your conversation partner happens to be online when you do this.”
https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/
China has its own internet, so does the EU. You thought it was controlled by no one? Hilarious. We control the internet within our own borders. Each country has control of their own networks and they are all interconnected. VPNs allow users to circumvent most networks, but they are not completely free from restrictions imposed by sovereign states. Some countries block VPNs others don’t bother. As VPNs become more common technology used to detect it becomes more available.
“Absolutely correct, pro-Palestinian protesters should be prosecuted for those crimes.”
Not what you were saying 4 months ago. Then you claimed protestors had a “right” to do what they were doing and that it was a “proud tradition”.
Again, reading comprehension. Protesters have a right to protest. Vandalism while protesting IS a well known component of protests. That is not saying they cannot be prosecuted or it. Most acts of vandalism are small potatoes misdemeanors. Or arrests end up with charges being dismissed for lack of evidence or a technical error on the part of law enforcement.
Not what you were saying 4 months ago. Then you claimed protestors had a “right” to do what they were doing and that it was a “proud tradition”.
If by some miracly Trump actually asked for, got and the supreme court upheld a flag burning law, that Would be TINY compared to what the EU is trying to do.
This is not merely about censorship, it is about confiscating the property of communications companies to weaponize it to violate peoples rights without the slightest due process.
Pavel should get himself out on bail. Skip bail and give France a giant middle finger.
Telegram and All communications companies should refuse to provide any assistance to any law enforcement anywhere – withotu a legitimate warrant for private communications whose origin or destination are not within the jurisdiction fo the requesting party.
They should 100% refuse to coorpertate with respect to public communications. If a nation wishes to go after people for what they say publicly online – That nations should have to take on the task of searching for whatever they wish to prosecute.
The last thing we want is for governmetn to be able to weaponize the machinery of private companies to perform law enforcements idea of what those companies should do.
“ If a nation wishes to go after people for what they say publicly online – That nations should have to take on the task of searching for whatever they wish to prosecute.”
They don’t need to. They just need to follow those accounts or channels inciting violence. That’s all the evidence they need in some countries.
Logic is not your forte. Evidence is found by searching for it. That is a task of government .
And that is ignoring your idiocy about inciting violence – the US has very narrow rules for what constitutes incitement to violence – for excellent reasons – it requires very little broadening of the definition for all speech to become incitement to violence.
You have little problems asserting that laws are wrong – when it suits your ideology.
Slavery was legal in the US and all the world in the past.
Homosexuality was illegal in the US and still is in most of the world.
The rule of law does NOT mean just any old law.
As the US declaration of independence points out – the social contract requires governments to secure rights – not infringe on them. The latter is wrong.
It is weird that those of you on the left have this elaborate and immoral system of “right and wrong” where it ideologically suits you. Which magically disappears when that is useful to you.
I recently save video of prohamas protestors carrying a banner that expressed the support of feminists and LGBTQ+ communities. I nearly chocked laughing.
The rule of law does not legitimize all law.
The left things Trump who merely wants to thwart them imposing their will on others by force is an existential threat,
but people who murder homosexuals and who think of women as barely more than dogs – those you choose to not just befriend but support ?
“ And that is ignoring your idiocy about inciting violence – the US has very narrow rules for what constitutes incitement to violence – for excellent reasons – it requires very little broadening of the definition for all speech to become incitement to violence.”
They are not as narrow as you think.
Incitement to riot
According to 18 U.S. Code Section 2101, inciting a riot is defined as urging others to riot, or organizing, promoting, or participating in a riot. This includes advocating for violence, the rightness of violence, or the right to commit violent acts. It does not include simply expressing beliefs or advocating ideas in speech or writing. A conviction for riot crimes can result in up to five years in prison.
Incitement to rebellion or insurrection
Section 2383 of the law prohibits inciting, participating in, or assisting in a rebellion or insurrection against the laws or authority of the United States. Punishment for this crime can include a fine, up to 10 years in federal prison, and ineligibility for federal public office.
Solicitation to commit a crime of violence
18 U.S. Code Section 373 covers solicitation to commit a crime of violence. This includes attempting to persuade someone to engage in conduct that constitutes a felony, with the intent that the person will use, threaten to use, or attempt to use physical force against someone or property. A conviction for this crime can result in up to half the maximum term of imprisonment and a fine of up to half the maximum fine for the crime.
Incitement is considered an inchoate crime, meaning that the action advocated through incitement speech does not have to be committed for the speech to be considered a crime.
It’s pretty broad apparently.
In the EU speech is considered conduct.
I would note that the EU*’s actions are incredibly stupid.
Lets presume they succeed and get what they want.
This has all blown up in public – the “criminals” they claim they are after will leave Telegram.
The service that France appears to be targetting is Telgrams feature allowing people or groups to send encrypted messages
These usuaully use public/private key encrytion – which is virtually unbreakable if done well. We saw a version of this earlier where I beleive it was the FBI demanded a Key to aide in deyrpting emails in a private secure email platform. The FBI got a court to order that.
The owner of the company responded by giving the FBI the key on paper – it was 30 fule pages of text that is esentially random.
Then they shutdown their entire business, and open sourced their encrypted email system.
Now absolutely anyone can setup a secure encrypted email system
Though I would note that even before this – with some effort, people have been able to do that for atleast 2 decades.
I doubt many here remember anon.petit.fi.
That was an anonymous remailer operated in finland during the cold war that allowed Soviet disidents to email outside the USSR using encryption and other techniques that allowed only the sender and the specified recipient to view the contents and prevented anyone from tracing the email from its source or destination.
That was 40 years ago. anon-petit.fi shutdown after the cold war when various western government stated to demand that it allow them to read and trace secured emails.
Further Phil Zimmermans PGP – Pretty Good Privacy has been used by whistle blowers activists and disidents all of over the world to report on misconduct by govenrments and others in power.
I beleive Snowden’s first email to Glenn Greenwald was a request to setup PGP so that he could discuss his activities at CIA.
This is how we found out that the govenrment was reading millions of emails without a warrant.
There is nothing that Telegram does that can not be relatively easily accomplished without Telegram.
The only service that Telegram provides that is “special” is the abilityu to setup communications that are unbreakably encryted WITHOUT going to the trouble to learn about readily available tools to allow you to do the same yourself.
Should the french succeed here – they will have exactly the same success that Schumer and the FBI had going after the Silk Road.
There are myriads of successors to silk road on the dark web today. The difference is they are now implimented using P2P technology that absolutely precludes any hop[e of government shutting them down.
There is no reason that Telegram can not be re-impliumented as a P2P service – using an open source project that would completely preclude any govenrment anywhere from censoring anything.
the reason that we do not see FB or X or Truth replaced by P2P services is no one makes money by providing P2P services.
They work somewhat lit bitcoin – except even more distributed.
All that you left wing nuts are doing is pushing the world faster towards encryption that govenrment can not break and serverless massively distributed system where every user is also a server.
If you are familiar with it that is how bittorrent works.
The technology for this has existed for over 30 years. It is catching on slowly – mostly in response to egregiously stupid actions by government.
The censors are in a war they can not win.
* true. This and that when right in front of all noses Harris and Walz were installed without a vote. Anyone need more evidence? It’s stupid.
There really are mega-brains working on this.
Fivethirtyeight polling averages shows 47.1% of voters favoring Vice President Harris over 43.7% for former president Trump. Ninety-five percent of polling averages fall within this range, pollsters said.
Among recent polling, Harris enjoys the largest lead – 6 percentage points – in polling among likely voters by OutwardIntelligence.com. The poll shows Harris at 50% compared to Trump’s 44% with Robert F. Kennedy polling at 5%. The poll was taken before Kennedy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.
Uh oh.
“The poll was taken before Kennedy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.”
Spastic idiot
RCP average of polls has Trump ahead in 5 of 7 swing states. Exactly what you would expect with Harris up 1.5 nationwide. You wanna swallow some other bag of dicks, Svelaz, good on ya. Dont expect any company.
Politico reports that the Harris campaign internal polling demonstrates that most polls are oversampling democrats (because lefties lie about their affiliation) and is very concerned that she is still well behind.
Uh oh.
Wow, you sound triggered.
No George pretty much exactly the opposite.
As you should note few here not on the left are the slightest concerned.
I bring up polls frequently – but only as proof of the lies of left wing nuts.
I do not need to post every polls that has Trump leading to bolster my insecurities.
Anonymus and I have provided you with reasons to disbeleive your polls – you not obligated to do so.
We could be wrong. But that is not probable.
As James Carville noted yesterday – Democrats should be concerned. Trump beat Hillary 4pts behind in the polls.
He nearly beat Biden 4pts behind in the polls. A 1.5pt lead in national polls means Harris will lose.
Anonymous said Democrats are being oversampled. But it is also well known that Republicans and especially Trump supporters are under sampled.
A sufficient number of Trump supporters do not take calls from pollsters they do not trust – which is nearly all of them.
But I am explaining all this to you – because YOU brought this up.
I am not the one “triggered” or anxious – by the way there is massive data on that.
The levels of self reported anxiety and depression in conservatives are about 15% overall they are about 40% in democrats.
Leftist young white single women have rates of anxiety and depression over 75%.
You ranted about “incitement to violence” earlier – you are so anxious you see everything as incitement.
You see ghosts and boogey men where there are none.
“ As James Carville noted yesterday – Democrats should be concerned. Trump beat Hillary 4pts behind in the polls.”
But that didn’t account for Comey’s investigation revelation at the last minute. Remember that?
She was poised to win by a slight majority…until Comey.
“ Anonymous said Democrats are being oversampled. But it is also well known that Republicans and especially Trump supporters are under sampled.
A sufficient number of Trump supporters do not take calls from pollsters they do not trust – which is nearly all of them.”
It could also be the other way John. You have said many times with “absolute near certainty” that Trump will win according to the polls and I have said, correctly, that things can change quickly when it’s early and they have. Now Trump is not “near absolute certain” he will win based on the changed political landscape. There’s still a lot of time, debates, and the expected or unexpected October surprise.
Mentioning polls now as Trump peddled profusely when he was running against Biden was the barometer used by the right often. Now? Not so much and that’s what I point out when I post poll numbers. I know they are not certainties. But they are indicators of current status just like scores on a football game. It’s not over until it’s over.
Now its Comey’s fault. You and Gigenius should get together with Hillary and come up with one story.
“But they are indicators of current status just like scores on a football game. “
spastic who last week said they are useful only for trends
Bwahahahahahaha
Wow George, you sound triggered.
Even Nate Silkver who created 538 and used to own it says that NYT has turned it into biased garbage – and Nate is a left wing nut.
No sane person trusts 538.
RCP has been virtually unchanged for over a week – with Trump 287EV, Harris 251 – and that is not counting the fact that in both 2016 and 2020 Trump was behind by 7+ points at this time, and that there was a 2-4pt democratic bias in the polls as compared to election day results.
I know that democrats are trying to pretend that Harris is winning or even this is a horse race – but it is not.
While it is not – at this moment to 100pt EC blowout that Biden was facing that might have given Republicans near 60 votes in the Senate, this is still a loss for Harris.
It is probably a loss outside the margin of Democratic fraud/ballot harvesting.
John, 538 has been aggregating polls for a long time. It’s been consistently right the majority of the time.
ROFL
538 predicted a 98% chance of a Clinton victory through to 10pm on election night in 2016.
BTW 538 is not strictly an agregator they have always used weighting – which there is nothing wrong with – except that 538 has always ended up with weighting that skews left. But it has gotten worse since Nate Silver – the leftist that created 538 left. Even he says they are skewing the polls too far left.
Under Sliver 538 had a left bias. Today it is just useless.
Again, you forget Comey’s announcement. That significantly impacted the results. Everyone knew it.
Lame-o
What did Comey announce in 2020 that changed a Biden 8 point lead into a 3 point lead??
Get a grip.
You have no evidence that Comeys announcement changed one Hillary supporting spastics mind, after everything else they’d been shown.
Looks like Texas is starting its voter intimidation early. It seems the EU is not the only ones engaging in tyranny.
“ SAN ANTONIO — Raids on the homes of several Democrats in South Texas, in what the state attorney general said is an ongoing election integrity investigation, has set off a showdown with the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group.”
..” A copy of a wide-ranging search warrant left with one of the people targeted, LULAC volunteer Lidia Martinez, 87, of San Antonio, offered a window into the investigation’s interests. The warrant ordered the seizure of all electronic devices at her home, allowed for the opening of documents that were business-, organization- or election-related, and authorized swabbing for DNA. According to the warrant, the purpose of the search was to look for evidence of violations of the Texas election laws regarding vote harvesting and identity fraud.”
Paxton is looking for violations without evidence of violations? Texas AG has already been reprimanded by a judge for these kinds of baseless investigations. They are clearly meant to harass and intimidate. Silly Texas.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/raids-of-latino-political-civil-rights-leaders-homes-set-up-voting-rights-battle-in-texas/ar-AA1pt7wW?ocid=BingNewsBrowse
YAWN
Paxton is looking for violations without evidence of violations?
No, he isn’t. In order to get a warrant he would need to already have probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime is likely to be found.
His source was a debunked claim based on hearsay. Paxton didn’t have probable cause. It’s Texas, where the law is not exactly….applied objectively.
Officers seized 65 cellphones and 41 computers and storage devices,
In one home?! What kind of ordinary family has so many devices in their home, just for their own use?!
Anyone who had no problem with the “John Doe” raids and investigation in Wisconsin from 2010 to 2014 has no right to complain about this at all.
George TX is the one state that has most aggressively prosecuted election fraud.
No they do not issue warrants without evidence.
Ballot harvesting is illegal in most of the country and particularly in Texas.
Regardless the only people Texas wants to intimidate is frauds.
Hispanics as an example are nearly evenly split nationwide between Trump and Harris and Trump LEADS among hispanics in border states.
I know this is hard for you to believe – but Texas WANTS Hispanics to vote – they just want to stop cheats some of whom happen to be Hispanic.
Overall TX is not important – Democrats are not capable of sufficient fraud to win texas.
The real problems are elsewhere.
We had massive ballot illegal harvesting in 2020. Republicans now KNOW that. They KNOW how it was done.
They KNOW how to document it and to stop it.
Now, according to George, going after frauds is voter intimidation.
Strangely, i dont feel intimidated at all
Maybe george is just triggered.
It takes some time to see the difference between Freedom and Servitude.
The State wishes to keep your day-to-day cognizance in the belief that this is Freedom, not Servitude.
The manipulation of the Media via: Censorship, Disinformation, Propaganda, Manipulative Intelligence, … to not only control the narrative but to also instill the cognizance of Freedom and the importance of that Freedom at all Cost of: War, Betrayal, Incarceration, etc. etc… So you keep on Serving, the things they make you do for Them.
The Harris’ campaign packages that Freedom up in a Liberal guise, as one you should have “Joy” performing.
It won’t work, when the reality is hard to bare and the ‘Work’ settles in.
There will be no more ‘Joy’ in Harrisville.
The French security agencies are well known for their rather open and vigorous industrial espionage.
Years ago when I was working, I had a project that collaborated with several American and European companies including a French company. Since we had to exchange proprietary information (all under an NDA) we wanted that electronic communication to be encrypted. It turns out that France required, by law, all the keys to any encrypted communications or shared date. We found a way to work around that with out providing the French security agencies with the easy access to our proprietary information.
It is my understanding that Telegram supports encrypted electronic communications. If so, the French will want the keys. This case may have more dimensions to it than simply freedom of speech.
In another illustrative case, a technology savvy friend of mine was visiting France for a technical meeting. He was suspicious of the French industrial espionage interest and capabilities because his company was competing with a French company. So he set up a trap with a scrubbed company lap top left in his hotel room as bait while he attended his meeting away from the hotel. If anyone attempted to power up the laptop, it would immediately shut down in a way that my friend could detect. Sure enough, the lap top was disturbed. (This was prior to the day of miniaturized web cameras so he could not visually monitor.) The cleaning staff would not power up a laptop but clearly this was an attempt at industrial espionage.
The French claim to be our allies but they are quite serious about industrial espionage. If you visit France on business, beware.
“REALITY CHECK: Democrats don’t need Kamala to be popular, or intelligent, or to even have a single policy in order to “win” this election. All they need to do is: 1) Rig the polls (done). 2) Rig the voter rolls (done). 3) Count up all the illegitimate ballots and votes as if they were real (coming Nov 5). 4) Gaslight the nation with the claim that Kamala has won and threaten to arrest anyone who questions the outcome. (DOJ already made this threat.) #Trump quite literally has as much as 90% of the popular vote right now (source: Martin Armstrong). But sophisticated cheating by the Dems makes real votes almost irrelevant. This is not a contest of voting, it’s a contest of WHO COUNTS THE VOTES. And Dems will cheat, cheat, cheat, doing whatever it takes, without any legal limits, to try to stop Trump and remain in power. How is the GOP and MAGA / MAHA going to counter that?”
Oh, sure, cheating. So where’s the evidence?
Trump is not helping himself. He’s got that incoherent ranting and whining about looks and toilets, and slurring his speech. Plus he’s old and forgetful too.
Where’s the evidence? Is that a joke?
As Democrats tell us, it’s not about popularity or votes, it’s about ballots.
That’s why illegals/non-citizens are being registered to vote. To harvest their ballots.
That’s why Democrats refuse to cleanup their states’ voter rolls.
What is the purpose of voting machines? To cheat.
What is the purpose of voting for months, then counting votes for days and weeks after Election Day? To cheat.
Do you actually believe the “mail-in ballot” process is *not* rigged?
Nowhere else in the world are elections conducted with mass mail-in balloting.
Who controls the vote-counting process in key states? Democrats.
Democrats have ‘legalized’ cheating in many states by unconstitutionally changing election laws.
See the handiwork of Marc Elias.
The evidence of cheating is everywhere.
“That’s why illegals/non-citizens are being registered to vote. To harvest their ballots.”
So….where’s the evidence? Hearsay is not admissible evidence.
Red states are examining voter rolls in coordination with secretaries of state and state AG’s who are finding thousands of instances of non-citizens being registered along with evidence of illegal voting history. Blue states are facilitating non-citizen registration and ballot-chasing operations as fast as they can.
Are we in a court douche bag?
2000 Mules
Empirical data doesn’t lie
I guess when Trump wins the full spectrum of evidence can be displayed and let people see for themselves.
More whining and complaining from Svelaz
George – Biden has demensia – the left has been hiding that for 8 years.
Pretending he is merely old is self delusion.
As to Forgetfulness – Kamala is far more forgetful than Trump.
And she slurrs her speech more causing the questions about whether she has a drinking problem.
I do not see compelling evidence of that – but she is forgetful, slurrs words, can not focus, and cannot handle difficult question,
Can not handle anything that requires her to go off script
Harris is desparately trying to renegotiate the debate terms after Demanding that Trump agree to exactly the same Debate and terms as he had done with Biden. She now does not want muted mikes, Wants opening and closing statements, wants notes, and wants to sit down for the debate. Some of these are things Trtump wanted with Biden – but he agreed to ANY terms Biden wanted.
Trump has no reason to agree to Harris’s terms – Harris needs this debate more than Trump. And she needs it to go well.
Only left wing moron doubt Trump’s ability to master a debate. I was very impressed with Trump in the June Biden debate.
He significantly changed his style, his approach to suit the circumstances. That is a skill that is beyond most of us.
Harris has done badly in what little debates she has had in the past.
She does badly in any unscripted exchange. She is not able to think on her feet.
These are skills that are required for a president.
Harris must have this debate, and she must not flub it. While her failure mode is different than Biden’s
She must manage something she has rarely done – remain composed, do not kackle, do not spray out any word salad’s do not talk in ciicles, provide actually coherent and not obviously false answers to questions, and appear to know what she is talking about.
These are all things Trump does every day.
Trump was criticized for his RNC acceptance speech – because he wrote an excellent speech and mid way through extemporized.
The criticism is correct – the speech he wrote was better than the one he delivered. But Trump can extemporize on most any subject coherently for hours. Harris can not answer an unscripted question for 60 seconds without botching it.
Faux Joy will only take you so far.
I think Trump asking Gabard to coach him was brilliant.
Trump does not need Gabbard as a coach. But Gabbard terrifies Harris. Gabbard ended Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign before it began. Those of you on the left keep forgeting that Gabbard took Harris out so effectively it ended her campaign before the first primary.
Harris knows how important this debate is. She knows this is way outside her wheelhouse, and she is justifiably terrified.
While I think Trump can eat her alive as he did with Hillary. I strongly suspect he won’t – he will allow her to self destruct – as Joe Biden did.
Picking Gabbard for Debate prep was not about debate prep. It was about amplifying Kamala’s fears.
And it has worked. Harris is trying to worm out of the debate and blame Trump.
Trump scheduled 3 debates. He should show up for the Fox debate on Sept 5th and debate an empty chair.
Harris chokes. She blew the debate with Gabbard. She missed the Call from RFK jr.
She was MIA as VP and as Border Czar.
For all his mental incompetence, Biden has atleast showed up.
Trump is old. He is also healthy and fully mentally capable.
I highly doubt you could keep up with him – physically or mentally.
When you engage in this crazy lying it just makes you look foolish.
OT
The Fed does its political duty.
The irrefutably unconstitutional Federal Reserve Board will lower rates in September just in time to aid and abet the “Swamp,” Deep Deep State, Regime, communist candidate.
The Federal Reserve Act illicitly and unconstitutionally subsumed the banking industry.
That Act denied the rights and freedoms of individuals and free enterprises of the private sector and free market banking industry.
One of you brilliant constitutional scholars please cite the Constitution for a legal basis for the Fed and the Federal Reserve Act in Article 1, Section 8.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
One of you brilliant constitutional scholars please cite the Constitution for a legal basis for the Fed and the Federal Reserve Act in Article 1, Section 8.
The interstate commerce clause (even pre-New-Deal) is enough to justify it. Also the coining money clause.
I was for taxing the tips of waiters and waitresses before I was against taxing the tips of waiter’s and waitresses.
What does that have to do with big yellow school buses?
We’ll need a Venn diagram to show that.
Venn will Harris come up with one?
Just ask Kamala, “What do you mean by that?”
And let ‘er blow!
And now the new improved version of Kamalla Harris. Brighter brights and whiter whites. This new version should do the trick
Boop-Oop-A-Doop
Freedom of speech is a natural and God-given right and freedom that may not be denied by despots, tyrants, and dictators.
Freedom of the press is a natural and God-given right and freedom that may not be denied by despots, tyrants, and dictators.
People, in sane societies, are not required to ask government for natural and God-given rights and freedoms.
In the Constitution, which must be enjoyed by all people universally, the freedom of speech is revealed, acknowledged, and guaranteed.
Defamation as slander is an actionable product of the freedom of speech.
If an individual commits a crime on social media, a record exists to facilitate prosecution.
Self-incrimination through the exercise of the freedom of speech is licit and constitutional.
Government that rules comprehensively constitutes egregious totalitarianism and is in violation of intuitive, natural, and God-given human rights.
Private property is a natural and God-given right and freedom that may not be denied by despots, tyrants, and dictators.
Private property IS NOT public property, and the public and government may exercise no dominion.
In America, the 5th Amendment right to private property is self-qualified (i.e. may be taken with just compensation), allows no further qualification, and is, therefore, absolute.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
Why else does the alphabet soup of non-elected bureaucrat agencies invest so heavily in places like FB and Google?
Information. Control information and you have half the equation. Control, money and information and you have virtually full control.
“He who controls the spice, controls the universe.” Paul Maud’Dip Atreides
E.M.
I would add, “He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.”
Ya, I dislike the narrative. Musk can take care of himself and personally I mind my own business.
*KEELEY
Jesus Christ spoke of the net. Yes, he spoke of the internet. Cast your net on the other side. I shall make you fishers of men.
Christians might take that to heart. Cast your nets abundantly.
Nice job of mixing bible stories.
RFK contributes quite a few. Way it is…
E lawn’s masonic/satanic branded X, is no hero of free speech.
Why are their so many ignorant muskrats?
His shit site limits reach and message frequently.
Why do E lawn’s sheep ignore these facts?
@troll
You are either a troll or an irretrievable ignoramus, and we don’t care. In this case, not even a nice try. Go blow.
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
Which site do you recommend, PubicFlavius
*KEELEY
Adolph at it again with his pal Goebbels.
Political speech not in agreement with the Reich shall be punished. Meanwhile, The Last Supper Skit at the Olympics watched by children but I don’t really understand porn at all.
What does the Reich want this time? Anyone have a list?
Oh geeez, Turley is at it again. Being disingenuous with the facts. Telegram is being investigated because of the language and calls for violence on its channels. This isn’t about viewpoint discrimination or mere censorship because they don’t like the views of others. Turley didn’t bother to mention that it was thru channels on Telegram calls to violence and coordination of rioters was occurring. Incitement of violence or rhetoric encouraging conduct is NOT protected speech in Europe or here. Telegram shut down channels that were inciting others to riot and burn down buildings with immigrants in the UL. Those still bent on inciting violence migrated to X and continued to push for violence against immigrants over a crime committed by a U.S. citizen.
Turley is complaining that in Europe laws are different and don’t adhere to our peer speech principles. But even here, inciting violence is not protected speech.
Rumble is where far right groups communicate and discuss ideas pertaining to immigration and express racist or anti-government gripes. All perfectly legal here. Not in Europe. Turley is ignoring the source of the problem in Europe. Inciting violence on platforms line Telegram and X. Those are more than just different points of view. They are calls to harm others. That’s not protected speech.
Obviously the government needs to place cameras in public restrooms to bring justice to those inciting hatred and violence in writing unapproved thoughts on the backside of the stall door.
For a good time call Brenda Sue at….
For a good time see Svelaz George at the Pleasure Chest Glory Hole.
False equivalence.
Anonymous 2:00PM-nothing like the bathroom stall internet for up to date and forever statements until a new coat of paint was applied. I had never thought of the censoring value of paint.
“rhetoric encouraging conduct is NOT protected speech”
Oh Jeez, just makin’ shit up. Again.
That was meant to say rhetoric encouraging violent conduct is not protected speech.
Inciting others to engage in violence is not protected speech here or there.
Wrong again. The words here are not “inciting” and requires intent.
Words matter. Get a grip.
You’re not making sense.
Incitement is a crime here under federal law. And no, it does not only require intent. It also can be encouragement, assisting, solicitation.
“ 18 U.S. Code Section 2101, inciting a riot is defined as urging others to riot, or organizing, promoting, or participating in a riot. This includes speech that advocates violence, the rightness of violence, or the right to commit violent acts. It does not include simply expressing beliefs or advocating ideas through speech or writing. A conviction for inciting a riot can result in up to five years in prison.
“ Section 2383 of the law prohibits inciting, assisting, or participating in a rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States and its laws. A conviction for this crime can result in up to 10 years in federal prison, a fine, and ineligibility for federal public office.”
“ 18 U.S. Code Section 373 covers solicitation to commit a crime of violence. This includes trying to persuade someone to engage in conduct that constitutes a felony, with the intent that the other person will use physical force against someone or property. A conviction for this crime can result in up to half the maximum term of imprisonment and a fine of up to half the maximum fine for the crime.”
The Supreme Court has ruled that a statement can only be punished if it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action”.
The EU is a bit stricter since they consider inciting violence, and violent rhetoric as conduct.
can you culpably “encourage, assist, or solicit” without intent to do so? idiot.
Possibly, but that is highly dependent on the circumstances.
There is intent when you encourage someone. There is intent when you assist someone. There is intent when you solicit someone. All those three are intents. Intent generally refers to the mental objective behind an action.
Intent is very hard to establish
Svelaz the spastic George
Ot requires intent. What else it requires is immaterial.
Reading comprehension.
Keep up
“This includes speech that advocates violence, the rightness of violence, or the right to commit violent acts.”
Svelaz, you advocated the rightness of violence right here on this blog.
Perhaps your comments should be forwarded to the FBI
Intent matters, jack ass.
I didn’t say intent didn’t matter. You’re. Not paying attention.
George says, “Incitement is a crime here under federal law. And no, it does not only require intent. It also can be encouragement, assisting, solicitation.”
What idiot George means, “intent, encouragement, assisting, or solicitation.”
Then he goes back and tries to clean it up.
Svelaz, Telegram is an app beyond the control of the state…period. It doesn’t do anything illegal. Those that use it may, but it’s their illegal actions, not the portal through which they are communicated that should be investigated and prosecuted if necessary.
Olly, telegram is responsible under EU law. That’s why they shut down channels under their control where individuals where sharing how to set fire to buildings with immigrants still in them and how to make Molotov cocktails.
Telegram voluntarily shut down channels that were deliberately calling for violence. When they did that the same folks flocked to X and continued to flout the rules and push for violence on immigrants. That’s why the EU was warning Elon. He was fanning the violence by allowing the kind of rhetoric that telegram chose to shut down.
telegram is responsible under EU law.
That’s the same idiotic logic used for gun control laws.
Olly, it’s EU law. As long a Telegram wants to operate within the EU they have to abide by THEIR laws. It’s the same with X, apple, google, and many other platforms wishing to operate within the EU. If they made it a crime it’s their right to do so. We wanted to ban tik tok because they were not abiding by OUR laws. Remember?
it’s EU law.
Does that law secure or infringe a right that existed before the establishment of the EU, or any government for that matter?
If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups…
But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
Golly, George! By your logic German law in 1937 should be honored. Or perhaps the laws of the USSR under Stalin. Maybe even the laws of Maoist China. Pol Pot, anyone? Don’t be so simplistically open minded that your brain falls out.
Exactly! And this little gem of wisdom from Svelaz: If they made it a crime it’s their right to do so.
Olly, you do understand what sovereignty is, right?
If other countries choose to define speech as being conduct also it’s their right. We chose to define it differently. Thats just a simple truth.
If other countries choose to define speech as being conduct also it’s their right. We chose to define it differently.
Do you understand why we chose to do it differently? Because we were founded on the principle that the purpose of any government is to secure the natural right to life, liberty and property of the people. Sovereignty is an excuse made by tyrants and is not a justification for laws that violate the those rights. That is the simple, historical truth.
Clarke, it’s not 1937. The EU is not being tyrannical or going back to those days. Turley is being disingenuous with the facts and you seem too gullible to understand what the issue is. Why not research sources FROM the EU and decide for yourself if he is being straight with you?
Lmao
Clearly, there is no such thing as a natural right. Svelaz George
I never said there is no such thing as natural rights. Svelaz George the very next day
The EU is not being tyrannical or going back to those days.
What evidence would convince you that the EU is passing laws that are consistent with that of a tyrant.
You would need to be able to answer that question to then prove their laws aren’t leading to a further erosion of rights.
“it’s not 1937.”
Yea it really is, though it is more like the fictitious 1984.
Is the EU being tryanical ? Of course they are. They are demanding that Telegram provide them with something they have no right to and that Telegram likely can not do without both violating the rights of others, and without undermining the trust and credibility of their company and without altering the way they do business.
Person to person communications on telegram are private, They are encrypted, and it is unlikely that even Telegram can decrypt them. France is looking to force Telegram to turn over the unencrypted private communications of others, and it is requiing them to do so en masse and without a warrant.
This is much like the fight between Comey and IOS over putting a back door into IOS so that they FBI could access any iphone they got their hands on – Apple told Comey to shove it. The FBI did not arrest Tim Cooke.
But this is worse. While the FBI wanted a backdoor, they were only looking for one they could use for phones in their possession – ones they had likely already legally obtained via a warrant.
The EU is looking for mass access to encrypted messages without a warrant that are not in their posession.
I would note that the FBI had at the time – and still does today have the ability to crack any iphone they want.
It is just difficult and expensive – which means they can not do so willy nilly.
And if you think that is not true (it has actually been reported), I can assure you that a company that I was a founder to sold them the equipment that would allow them to do so – though again not easily.
And if they do not want to use that – I will be happy to decrypt any iphone they want for $1m/phone – and I really hope they have LOTS of phones they want to decrypt.
I would note that the EU has EXACTLY the same capability with respect to Telegram.
Governments can intercept communications over the internet – and they do not need Telegrams assistance to do so. Decrypting messages interecepted that way is incredibly difficult but possible – though not in anything approaching real time. That process becomes much easier if they can secure access tot he phone/computer that sent or received the message.
As you MIGHT be aware – Hunter biden’s icloud account was connected tyo the Huinter Biden laptop.
With a great deal of difficulty it was possible to hack into Hunters iphone and retreive voicemails that he had left or that joe biden had left for him.
This stuff is all hard enough that governments can not do it willy nilly.
But it will NEVER be impossible.
The first rule of computer security is that if someone hostile gains phycical access and has the resources necescary there is no security that can not be overcome. You can put speedbumps in the way of those with physical access, but not insurmountable barriers.
There is nothing that France or the EU want from Telegram that they can not already get – if they can get a warrant to obtain the physcial device.
It is Self evident that France wants access to information it is not able to get a warrant for.
“The EU is not being tyrannical or going back to those days.”
No they are going forward to tyranny and fascism.
“Turley is being disingenuous with the facts”
How so ? What fact has Turley cited that is wrong ?
“you seem too gullible to understand what the issue is.”
Guillable is beleiving those who have lied over and over.
Guilable is beleiving those who are obviously lying.
Guillible is beleiving those short sighted enough to believe that coopting Telegram will not ultimately make their problems worse.
“Why not research sources FROM the EU and decide for yourself if he is being straight with you?”
First why would I beleive you ?
Next – they EU has made no secret about the power they want and beleive thy have and it is exactly THAT that turley is railing about.
Finally – this is typical of the lefts stupidity.
A common truism of the right is “if guns are outlawed, only criminals will have guns”
That is an obvious truth that the left entirely misses. There is no nation on earth were guns are not available to criminals.
But this is true of many other things.
If encryption is outlawed only criminals will have encryption.
There is absolutely nothing that the French want with regard to Telegram that will have anything more than a brief impact on terrorists, human trafficers, drug dealers and other criminals.
And unless the EU is unbeleivably stupid they already know that.
It is a huge falsehood to claim that this is about child pornography or terrorism.
Merely making this public ensures that all but the stupidest criminals will be using something other than Telegram quickly.
The purpose of this is NOT to go after child pornographers, or terrorists.,
It is to go after people who say things the government wishes to silence.
This is exactly like the Chinese social credit system
and it is fascim. Hitler and Goebels would have been ecstatic to have the power the EU has grabbed.
No, it is NOT their right to do so, any more than it was the right of the Soviet Union or the Third Reich to have the laws they had. No government has the right to have such laws, and it is always right to flout such laws, and to do everything one can to overthrow them, including by force.
@George
You could literally post with nothing but emojis, an @mention for Turley, and a link to the most egregious of the MSM, every single time. The pay must be really good, or your free time that pathetically empty, for you to continue this everyday, all day long. Literally the only other explanation is that you have an untreated mental disorder or are alternately high/drunk, perhaps a combination. Certainly you are welcome to share your nonsense, but do you honestly think it’s for anything but vanity or $$? The rest of us sure don’t. 🙄 For likely the millionth time, spare us. Nobody is buying it. I’d return it for a refund if I could. 🙄 But by all means, carry on, sweet idiot.
James,
That is why it is just best to scroll past. Nothing he has to say amounts to anything.
@Upstate
I don’t disagree, but as the readership of this blog increases, I guess I feel now and again it’s wise to call them out so that people can see. The majority of the time, I do scroll past. That particular troll, in all of their personas (I highly doubt George is just one of the aliases), is persistent. I would not be at all surprised if the habitual trolls here were just a couple of people. ‘Oliver the British Affectation’ only pops up if the UK is in question, for example. So transparent, so pathetic. Beyond pathetic. And it convinces no one. Nobody that is already devoted to getting the dems out of power is going to change their mind, and that is a fact. Glad they are wasting their energy on it, frankly, because it is a losing game. Keep flushing those dollars down the toilet, DNC.
Well said UpstateFarmer, that sentiment pretty much sums up the entire content vault of social media.
I understand – but an awful lot of incredibly well educated people are fooled by this 3rd grade shallow reasoning.
It is periodically necescaryt to shred George’s idiotic reasoning, in the hope that a few people might not drink the coolaid.
Continue what you are doing, John. Anyone thinking that what George says has any validity can look at your response. It is repetitious, but so what? It provides answers to those who are confused. It will do nothing for George. Other than his ability to cut and paste the ideas of others, he is unable to reason.
James, it’s still hilarious you think I get paid or that I’m some sort of professional. Nope.
Perhaps you should research and go off the beaten path and find out for yourself if what I have said has merit. It’s the whole point of expressing a different view.
Almost nothing you say has merit.
“Trespassing is free speech”
“Golf trips toll the SOL”
“Students determine what is taught at universities”
“There is no such thing as human rights”
Just a few of your gems.
It’s still a different view. Whether you deem them wrong or not is irrelevant. The point is I still express my views just like you do yours.
Deem them wrong???
I reject reality and substitute my own. Svelaz
No George it is more than a different view.
It is a view that both logically and historically has FAILED.
We do not deem them wrong – your views ARE Wrong – it is logically p0redictable that they will fail.
And it is historically true that when tried the HAVE failed.
I would further note that my or anyone else deeming them wrong is NOT irrelevant.
It is demand for proof.
You are not free to impose your views on others by force aka government.
At the bare minimum to turn your view into action through government YOU MUST PROVE that it will work.
It is NOT enough that it is YOUR VIEW.
Almost no one cares if you decide that despite your chromosomes you wish to call yourself a woman.
So long as your free choices are confined to your own life – the rest of us have absolutely no ability to force you to live differently than even your most idiotic views.
But the moment that your choices turn into demands of others – or worse still demands imposed by FORCE.
You are REQUIRED to prove not just that there are some positive outcomes of your views, but that your views will with certainty ALWAYS produce positive outcomes.
You do not seem to understand that.
The reason that the slavery that you constantly rant about was wrong, is because it was a person – with the impramatur and often assistance of government using FORCE to bend one person to another person’s will.
You can not claim Slavery was wrong and rant and rave about all its harms and how all of us owe massive debts over something that happened almost two centuries ago that no one alive or even in the previous generation experienced,
and at the same time claim that you are free to impose you views on others by force – because their just views, and whether others deem them wrong is irrelevant.
The oppinion of others regarding your views ceases to be irrelvant the moment you seek to impose them on others – especially by FORCE.
*SENATOR KEELEY
Human rights? You mean human freedoms? They’re the same freedoms bears, gophers, birds, fish etc have. Feed. You have the right to hunger and the right to fill your belly. Breed. You have the right to reproduce. —->
UNLESS you have some rational human principles. The unprincipled humans don’t have those freedoms.
This world is 💯 bull. Radios, tv, media are noise boxes. The music sounds like cats yowling and Dr. Suess spewing rhymed profanity. What a place Barry Soetero. What a guy.
And he has no shame, either. Constantly proven wrong, he just comes back for more, like the idiot in Monty Python.
You don’t post anything of substance. All you do is attack others with ad hominems and insults. You don’t provide anything of value.
–and neither do you, despite being allowed to “express my views just like you do yours.”
Lmao lacking self awareness, Svelaz insinuates his particular brand of horse shit has value.
Bwahahahahaha
George to the tiny extent that you provide anything allegedly of substance – what you provide is illogical nonsense that is trivially dispatched. That anyone with a middle school ability to think critically should be able to grasp as obvious fallacy.
You are ranting that your saying Trump said something there is absolutely no evidence he is ever going to do, MUST be treated the same as the EU not only actually censoring but FORCING others to censor.
That is fascism.
There is a gulf as wide as the pacific between – “burning the flag ought to be illegal” a sentiment that supremajorities of americans express while never doing anything about it because they KNOW that people must be allowed to burn flags and say incredibly offensive things. And the EU demanding not merely warrantless access to the private encrypted communications of others. But actually demanding that
A private corporation do all the work. In Nazi Germany private companies were made to use the Jewish people from concentration camps to make weapons like the V2.
That is REAL fascism.
Right now the most fascist country in the world is Xi’s china – this is a radical change in China since 2013.
China denies people through businesses access to goods and services based on their conformity to the wishes of the govenrment.
That is Fasicm.
And that is where the EU is headed, and that is where you and the left are trying to take the US.
Finding various exceptions in order to limit speech and then finding further broad interpretations of those exceptions is exactly how censorship eventually becomes the rule which replaces the rule of free speech. In a rational world, there would be no laws against inciting or slandering because advocating violence or hatred does not cause violence or hatred. This is because every individual has free will and is not “caused” to act by someone else’s stupid idea. But in our world censors begin with the stupid notion that one person’s bad ideas can cause other people to act badly. These stupid notions are enthusiastically promoted so censors can censor.
funny how they NEVER investigate the ACTUAL PEOPLE committing violence? Africans and middle eastern criminals?