Restriction of freedom of expression in the case of sympathy for terrorist organisations There is a number of organisations which are listed by the US government as terrorist organisations - Wikipedia What are the legal implications of this in relation to the 1st Amendment? If, for example, there is somebody who is non-violently expressing sympathy for the goals of an organisation declared as terrorist by the US government, is that illegal in the US?
The U.S. Department of State maintains the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and along with other government departments are charged with the process of making said designations. Under U.S. Law, it is illegal to provide material support to any FTO with Material support being defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b) as: currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel, transportation, and other physical assets except medicine or religious materials. Note that the list exempts religious materials, such as holy books or documents speaking of ideology that may motivate the group. This would serve to make clear that the law is not against expression of sympathy for the ideology, but is targeting the means by which the FTO can use violence in support of their belief. It should also be noted that the law bars entry to the United States by aliens who are known members or representatives of an FTO, but this is a higher level of Material Support as it implies that such people are actively engaged in an FTO's activities. Finally, the law states that financial institutions that operate in the U.S. that become aware of accounts belonging to FTOs should take control of the accounts and value within it and immediately report to the treasury. An FTO is by definition any organization that participates in activities that meet the legal definition of terrorism, which is neutral towards the beliefs motivating such activities and instead focuses on illegal actions.
What you describe is essentially a Warrant Canary, which is legally murky. From a functional point of view, it is breaking the non-disclosure requirements of the NSL by omission. Proponents of warrant canaries would point to case law such as West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and Wooley v. Maynard to suggest that the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment restricts the government from compelling speech. New York Times Co. v. United States could also be read to prevent the prior restraint unless the existence of the NSL was successfully argued to be &quot;crucial military information&quot;.
The law does not say. It is up to the judgment of the judge to determine what constitutes "Le fait de provoquer directement à des actes de terrorisme ou de faire publiquement l'apologie de ces actes". I would not have predicted that the act constituted "faire publiquement l'apologie", but if that expression can reasonably construed as meaning "indicating approval of", then I understand the conclusion. The law does not mention SSIDs, that simply falls under the penumbra of "publicly approving of terrorism", and there isn't a specific list of forbidden acts. Analogously, Holocaust denial is against the law in France, and there is not a specific list of things that you can't say, there is a general rule from which specifics can be inferred. Publicly saying "Free Kurdistan!" could be construed as supporting PKK and thus approving of terrorism, but that would be quite a stretch. Using the SSID Pkk21, on the other hand, could be a problem.
The First Amendment is absolutely relevant to the question (in a public school which is subject to the First Amendment, because it is a governmental entity), although it isn't the end of the story. Generally speaking, a school can establish reasonable rules and regulations for its students and punish those violations with punishments such as detentions, suspensions, expulsions, changes in grades on assignments or in classes, denial of eligibility to participate in extra-curricular activities or to receive school honors, and similar sanctions. Generally speaking, violations of school rules cannot result in criminal punishments or civil liability not authorized by other laws, and profanity is something that cannot be prohibited – at least in cases involving adults. Minors have First Amendment rights to express opinions, although they are diminished in a school setting, and while literally speaking profanity is part of the content of speech, it is often analyzed as a permissible &quot;time, place or manner&quot; restriction instead, especially when minors are present. Profanity also covers a range of conduct. Schools have the greatest authority to regulate speech when it is disruptive to the orderly operations of the school, or threatening. Profanity used to provoke or threaten someone, such as the use of a racial slur or an offensive statement about someone's family, could potentially be punished severely based not simply on what was said but because it is part of a larger context of aggression. In contrast, schools might potentially exceed their legal authority to prohibit profanity defined in such a way as to prevent students from a particularly ethnicity from speaking in ordinary non-provocative terms to each other. The N-word directed at an African-American student in a predominantly Hispanic school by someone reputed to be a gang leader with an intent to provoke or threaten the African-American students would be well within the school's right to prohibit and punish severely. But punishing two African-American students who are friends for using the same word in a friendly context like &quot;Hey, N- how you doing?&quot; &quot;I'm doing better than fine, N-&quot; might even be construed as discriminatory if punished, and deemed to be beyond the authority of the school to prohibit at all, or with anything more than the most minimal sanction. Limitations on profanity are also more suspect from a First Amendment perspective when used in connection with conduct that is intended to be expressive, such as an art project, or a monologue chosen for a drama class from published stage plays, novels and poems, or when used in connection with protests and political activity. Often the standard by which school officials are judged in court when a school punishment for some conduct or another is challenged, is whether the school officials abused their discretion and part of that analysis is proportionality. A school official can be comfortable that issuing a detention to a student, or assigning the student to some undesirable task like picking up litter from a school yard during recess for saying something like &quot;shit&quot; or &quot;fuck&quot; will not be judged to be an abuse of discretion. But, a court might very well overturn a school's exercise of its discretion to punish a student if a student were expelled for saying something like that in a manner that was not part of a more pervasive pattern of disregard for authority and disruptive behavior. Another factor that influences whether a rule like a ban on profanity is an abuse of discretion to punish in a particular manner is the extent to which there was advanced notice that this was prohibited. If the school has a clear rule that is familiar to everyone in the student body stating in advance what is prohibited and what punishments are authorized under particular circumstances, that rule is more likely to be held not to constitute an abuse of discretion, than a severe punishment of a student who has no real advanced warning that the conduct is not allowed. Similarly, the intent of the student is relevant. If a student uses profanity or an offensive term (e.g. &quot;fag&quot;) not knowing that it is considered profane or offensive, either out of ignorance perhaps because other students misled him or her about what a word meant, anything more than a minimal punishment would be an abuse of discretion, while even relatively minor use of profanity, calculated and intended to have great negative effects in the context in which it was used, resulting in a severe punishment, might not be an abuse of discretion. In between, and perhaps justifying only an intermediate punishment, at most, without constituting an abuse of discretion, would be a use of profanity that isn't naive or innocent, but isn't calculated for maximum negative effect either, and just &quot;pops out&quot; based upon what is normal in a student's home life or previous experience even though it is contrary to the norms of this particular school and the student would have realized that upon further reflection. Is there detailed case law or a statute that spells this out, in great detail? No. Some of this is embedded in custom and social norms that are familiar to judges (usually in the context of what was historically known as a &quot;certiorari petition&quot; arising from a local government quasi-judicial decision). But, I do think that this answer relatively accurately captures how a seemingly vague &quot;abuse of discretion&quot; review standard for school disciplinary actions for students would be likely to play out in real life, and those expectations absolutely do influence how school administrators and teachers impose discipline, in practice.
Mockery is allowed; hate speech isn’t While freedom of speech is guaranteed under French law it does have limits. Since 2004, these limits have applied to gender and sexuality. Mockery is contemptuous or insulting speech; hate speech or vilification incites hatred, serious contempt or ridicule. The boundary between them must be established on a case-by-case basis including both content and context (“I’m going to get you” can be a serious threat but it can also be what a father says to his child when chasing them in the park) but in France, as in other liberal democracies, the benefit of the doubt goes to speech being considered lawful.
That is not a valid assumption. Many states have laws that let you presume someone is a threat to your life if they forcibly enter your house. Simple trespass on your land does not let you reasonably presume someone is a murderer. An autonomous killer drone is not a comparison you want to make: those may be illegal entirely, and are likely to seriously hurt any claim of justifiable force. “You forfeit your right to live when you set foot on my property” is not justifiable. If the dogs are trained to be a hazard to the community, that’s an argument in favor of having them confiscated and destroyed. Dogs are not people. Under normal circumstances, they cannot be protected under self-defense or the defense of others. Those doctrines only apply when a person is in danger. Deadly force is sometimes allowed to protect property, but this tends to be strictly limited. To start with, you can only ever use force to prevent illegal damage to property. If your concern is “this animal control officer will destroy my dogs within the scope of their duty,” that’s not protecting against an illegal use of force. Deadly force in defense of property is also normally limited to particular crimes that are inherently dangerous, like arson, robbery, or burglary. Even in Texas, simple theft only justifies deadly force during the nighttime. Deadly force is also not justifiable if there were reasonable other options. Shooting an animal control officer is unlikely to be the only way to temporarily stop them from destroying a dog. Threatening violence in order to influence a judge’s decision is terrorism. This hypothetical man is a terrorist. He may well find himself on death row for murder, but he’s also going to face separate charges for terrorism.
...the public is susceptible to misinformation by bad actors in the financial system and therefore are protected by the SEC... The SEC governs fixed laws about financial transfers, disclosures, etc., and investigates illegal acts regarding those laws where there are quantitative facts, i.e. who moved how much money to where, who engaged in information for insider trading, and other situations based on hard evidence. Bad actors are deterred by the fact that can be prosecuted for their crimes by the SEC and other authorities. Shouldn't... political campaigns be audited for truthfulness? There is no government authority that audits or regulates political ads and/or claims; such authority or laws would clearly violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia as to the government regulating or attempting to control or manipulate free speech. In a non-partisan fashion, government authorities can and do routinely supply publicly available documents that can be used by the public, fact checkers and the press. False political claims are investigated by the press and various non-profits, also under the same 1st Amendment protections so that the press can operate free of government intrusion. See https://www.google.com/search?q=political+fact+checking for different political NGOs and media outlets which do fact checking. Such resources themselves can be fact challenged and partisan themselves, of course; news outlets can be under the editorial control of a political agenda, and a "fact checking" website or NGO can be funded by partisans. ...why shouldn't the same be done in the political system? Within a political system such as the US, people are responsible for their own thoughts and actions; and they are responsible for assessments of what may or may not be factual, and for what they believe (which, of course, can be removed from a factual basis). The idea that a government should be involved in auditing or otherwise having control over political speech is a political question, not a legal question.
Generally speaking the &quot;blessings of liberty&quot; phrase from the preamble to the US Constitution is not relied on for anything. It does not grant additional power to Congress or the Federal government as a whole, neither does it restrict the Federal government beyond the restrictions already included in the body of the Constitution. Congress often accepts hearsay when it takes testimony before a committee. Such testimony need not comply with the rules of evidence that apply in court. I am not clear what you mean by &quot;to pretext privacy and the right to try&quot;, please clarify this. I am not aware of any &quot;right to try&quot; under the Federal or State governments. The word &quot;pretext&quot; is not usually used as a verb in this way. Edit The link on &quot;right to try&quot; goes to a Quora question about laws passed by Congress later being held to be unconstitutional. That does happen. but I have never herd it called &quot;the right to try&quot;. The link on &quot;pretext&quot; goes to a security.se question about a &quot;convict internet&quot;. I don't see what that has to to with the preamble to the Constitution. 2nd Edit The &quot;blessings of liberty&quot; phrase from the preamble has nothing to do with laws against discrimination, neither authorizing nor restricting such laws.