EFF: "Internet Publication of 3D Printing Files About Guns: Facts and What's at Stake"

[friendly_iconoclast]

Orignally posted at the Civil Liberties group:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/11682359

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/internet-publication-3d-printing-files-about-guns-facts-and-whats-stake

Our government has a history of characterizing information (like encryption technology) and ideas (like socialism or Islam) as dangerous and likely to lead to violence. A free society cannot give the government unbridled discretion to make those choices, because of the systematic oppression that such a government can engage in...

...It’s dangerous for the Executive Branch to have so much control over the public’s right to share information online. Without meaningful restrictions on how and when the State Department can exercise its power, the risk of politically motivated censorship is extremely high.

In absence of laws dictating when the government can and can’t use this power, politically motivated censorship is unavoidable. As EFF argued in our amicus brief, echoing concerns raised by the Supreme Court, “Human nature creates an unacceptably high risk that excessive discretion will be used unconstitutionally, and such violations would be very difficult to prove on a case-by-case basis.” Under the same law, the government could try to bar activists from sharing instructions for treating the effects of tear gas and other chemical weapons, or researchers from spreading information about the government’s use of mass surveillance tools.

Or it could bar technologists from publishing the encryption technologies that we all use to protect ourselves from criminals online. In the 1990s, EFF successfully argued that it was unconstitutional for the government to use these export regulations to ban the online distribution of computer code used for effective encryption. Two decades later, the government has again used this unconstitutional export control regime in a way that gives it broad control over who can share information about a wide range of technologies online, with no safeguards ensuring that it doesn’t ban certain speakers for political reasons...

Or ban 'information on how to obtain abortions', or 'how to make misoprostol without a prescription',
or 'how to protect ones' self and loved ones from ICE'...

Don't get me wrong, Cody Wilson is a sociopathic, vile human being- but as someone once said, "Free speech is for assholes"