Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Harvard Law School
MIT 6.805/6.806/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Week 7
Monday Class at Harvard: Harmful Speech -- And Ways to Stop it (Zittrain)
The Web and the Internet significantly shifted two of the boundaries that used to constrain speech: the ability to speak anonymously and the ease of making oneself heard. With the increasing popularity of the web and email, people with something to say could easily get their message out (whether or not others would choose to read it) and without making their identities known (at least to the average computer user). These two changes encouraged a relative proliferation of speech of a sort that used to exist at a more or less stable level of hard-to-find-unless-you-knew-where-to-look.
For some this change was liberating: it allowed those who were marginalized in their local environments to find others like them on the net, or gave them access to information on touchy subjects without forcing them to reveal their identity. It allowed those with unpopular ideas to publish them more aggressively and to increase their strength in spite of their small numbers. For others the change appeared dangerous: it allowed children to gain access to pornography and other material their parents didn't want them to see, and allowed pornographers and perverts to contact them; it allowed people to publish hate speech anonymously without fear of accountability or reprisal. Technical means, such as filters, have been used to try to make the net safe for kids.
How effective are they? Are they a good thing? How should the law handle this? How can U.S. law handle this consistent with the Constitution?
Readings:
Thursday Class at MIT -- Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence (Weitzner)
For an understanding of wiretap laws in the digital age, please browse through the James X. Dempsey paper, Communications Privacy in the Digital Age: Revitalizing the Federal Wiretap Laws to Enhance Privacy
Read the following landmark Supreme Court decisions:
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Olmstead vs. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928). This was an early rejection by the Supreme Court of Fourth Amendment rights in telephone conversations on the grounds that wiretaps do not constiute a physical search, and nothing is actually seized.
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Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). This decision effectively reversed Olmstead and established a reasonable right of privacy in electronic communications, on the grounds that "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places."