January, 26 2021, 11:00pm EDT
70+ Civil Rights and Progressive Organizations Warn Against Repealing or Making Overbroad Changes to Section 230 in Wake of Capitol Attack
Groups call on Congress to investigate the harm done by SESTA/FOSTA and hold hearings on the human rights impacts of altering Section 230.
WASHINGTON
A group of more than 70 organizations have sent a letter to Congress and the Biden/Harris administration warning against responding to the violence in the U.S. Capitol by renewing injudicious attacks on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The groups, including racial justice, LGBTQ+, Muslim, prison justice, sex worker, free expression, immigration, HIV advocacy, child protection, gender justice, digital rights, consumer, and global human rights organizations urge lawmakers to consider impacts on marginalized communities before making changes to Section 230, and call on lawmakers to take meaningful action to hold Big Tech companies accountable, including enforcement of existing anti-trust and civil rights law, and passing Federal data privacy legislation.
See the letter here: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2021-01-27-letter-from-70-human-rights-and-social-justice/
"Gutting Section 230 would make it more difficult for web platforms to combat the type of dangerous rhetoric that led to the attack on the Capitol. And certain carve outs to the law could threaten human rights and silence movements for social and racial justice that are needed now more than ever," the letter's signers write, "Section 230 is a foundational law for free expression and human rights when it comes to digital speech. It makes it possible for websites and online forums to host the opinions, photos, videos, memes, and creativity of ordinary people, rather than just content that is backed by corporations."
The letter urges lawmakers to pass the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act to investigate the harm done by SESTA/FOSTA, the last major change to Section 230, and to hold hearings on the human rights, freedom of expression, and civil liberties concerns associated with changing the law, before legislating further.
Signers of the letter include: 18 Million Rising, Access Now. Adult Industry Laborers & Artists Association, Advocating Opportunity, Assembly Four, Black and Pink, Black and Pink Massachusetts, CARES - Community AIDS Resource and Educations Services, Carolina Are - Researcher, Activist, Blogger at Blogger On Pole, Common Cause, Community United for Safety and Protection , Convocation Design and Research, COYOTE RI- Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics, Dangerous Speech Project, Data for Black Lives, Defending Rights and Dissent, Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project, Equality North Carolina, Fight for the Future, Freedom Network USA, Free Press Action, Global Forum for Media Development, Global Voices, Hacking//Hustling, Hollaback!, House of Tulip, Ishtar Collective, Indigenous Friends Organization. Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, Institute of Information Cyprus (101.cy), International League of Advocates, Joy Buolamwini - Founder Algorithmic Justice League, Kairos Action, Lucy Parsons Labs, Media Justice, Michael Karanicolas - Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information, Montgomery County (MD) Civil Rights Coalition, Movement Alliance Project, Mpower Change, Muslim Justice League, National Black Justice Coalition, National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Lawyers Guild, Other 98, OpenMedia, Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative), PDX Privacy, PEN America, Popular Resistance, Positive Women's Network - Ohio, Public Knowledge, Prostasia Foundation, Presente.org, Ranking Digital Rights, Reframe Health and Justice, Renata Avila - Race & Technology Fellow, HAI, Stanford University, Sasha Costanza-Chock - Senior Research Fellow, Algorithmic Justice League, Sero Project, Sex Workers' Action Program of Hamilton, S.T.O.P. - The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, SWOP - Sex Workers Outreach Project, SWOP Behind Bars, SWOP Brooklyn, The 6:52 Project Foundation, Inc., The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, UltraViolet, URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, US People living with HIV Caucus, Wikimedia Foundation, Win Without War, WITNESS, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, X-Lab
Tawana Petty, National Organizing Director, Data for Black Lives, said, "Big Tech companies' surveillance minded business practices automate and exacerbate white supremacy and injustice. We need lawmakers to take meaningful action to address this, rather than continuing their misguided attacks on Section 230. Gutting this foundational law could lead to widespread silencing of marginalized voices and social movements, and make it harder for platforms to address harmful content. If Congress is serious about addressing systemic injustice in the wake of the racist attack on the U.S. Capitol, they should listen to the communities most impacted, rather than doubling down on their empty talking points."
"This is not a game. Section 230 is one of the most important laws protecting freedom of expression and human rights in the digital age," said Evan Greer (she/her), director of Fight for the Future, "Lawmakers need to listen to the communities who are most impacted by systemic injustice before they enact legislation that could do enormous harm to vulnerable communities, silence activists, and put lives in danger. Any lawmaker who pushes for changes to Section 230 without first supporting the study bill to investigate the harm done by SESTA/FOSTA is being reckless. Big Tech companies' business model is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and social justice. But we don't need headline-grabbing bills that do more harm than good. We need thoughtful policy, informed by lived experience, now more than ever."
"Unregulated tech companies have been allowed to make up their own rules for decades and as a result they've weakened democracy, enabled violent white supremacists and facilitated the spread of disinformation" said Erin Shields National Organizer with MediaJustice, "The role of platforms should rightfully be scrutinized as we assign blame for the violent attack on the Capitol. But repealing Section 230 would only further entrench tech companies as judge and jury over content on the Internet, a role they've proven ill equipped to perform without harming the speech and safety of people of color and other marginalized voices. Solutions need to be focused on breaking up tech's concentration of power, wealth, and control. Anything short of that is insufficient".
Alex Andrews of SWOP Behind Bars said, "FOSTA fallout has harmed sex workers and thier families and done nothing to reduce trafficking or improve the lives of sex trafficking victims. The shuttering of online platforms forced online sex workers into more dangerous modalities and made it impossible to survive. Because our organization advocates for the decriminalization of sex work, we could easily face prosecution for "promoting" prostitution and we can't advocate for our clients under these conditions. We beg our lawmakers to listen to our stories and understand the desperate need to provide more resources for economically disadvantaged people who have little access to services and support."
"Free Press Action is deeply concerned about white supremacist organizing, recruiting and fundraising on the internet, and has led corporate accountability campaigns launched by Change the Terms and Stop Hate for Profit to stop the spread of hate, racism and disinformation online," said Free Press Action senior policy counsel Gaurav Laroia, "We also are critical of the failure of Big Tech companies to adequately invest in content moderation to keep people often targeted with hate and disinformation - women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants - safe online. And while we remain open to surgical modifications to Section 230, we are concerned that repeal of Section 230 or over-broad modifications could decrease the incentives and ability for social media companies to responsibly moderate third party content on their sites. We call on Congress to enact structural legislative reforms that uproot business models that feed on hate and disinformation, such as comprehensive data privacy and digital civil rights legislation."
Ricci Levy, President and CEO of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation said, "If Congress wants to ensure online censorship on a massive scale, repealing Section 230 is an option. If instead, lawmakers hold fast to their constitutional duty to promote the right to free expression, the First Amendment of the Internet should remain as is."
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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US Led 'Unprecedented' Surge in Global Military Spending in 2024
"As governments increasingly prioritize military security, often at the expense of other budget areas, the economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come," said one expert.
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Military spending worldwide soared to $2.718 trillion last year, meaning it "has increased every year for a full decade, going up by 37% between 2015 and 2024," according to an annual report released Monday.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has tracked conflict, disarmament, and weapons for nearly six decades. Its 2024 spending report states that "for the second year in a row, military expenditure increased in all five of the world's geographical regions, reflecting heightened geopolitical tensions across the globe."
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Liang warned that "as governments increasingly prioritize military security, often at the expense of other budget areas, the economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come."
The United States—whose Republican lawmakers are currently cooking up a plan to give even more money to a Pentagon that's never passed an audit—led all countries, with $997 billion in military spending. The report points out that the U.S. not only allocated "3.2 times more than the second-largest spender," but also "accounted for 37% of global military expenditure in 2024 and 66% of spending by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members."
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced an upcoming three-day truce to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for an immediate monthlong cease-fire.
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Another SIPRI researcher, Lorenzo Scarazzato, highlighted that "for the first time since reunification Germany became the biggest military spender in Western Europe, which was due to the €100 billion special defense fund announced in 2022."
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As for the Middle East, SIPRI researcher Zubaida Kari said that "despite widespread expectations that many Middle Eastern countries would increase their military spending in 2024, major rises were limited to Israel and Lebanon."
In addition to slaughtering at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past nearly 19 months, Israel has killed thousands of people in Lebanon while allegedly targeting the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Kari said that elsewhere in the region, "countries either did not significantly increase spending in response to the war in Gaza or were prevented from doing so by economic constraints."
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In a report published Monday, a leading human rights group calls for international political action to prohibit and regulate so-called "killer robots"—autonomous weapons systems that select targets based on inputs from sensors rather than from humans—and examines them in the context of six core principles in international human rights law.
In some cases, the report argues, an autonomous weapons system may simply be incompatible with a given human rights principle or obligation.
The report, co-published by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, comes just ahead of the first United Nations General Assembly meeting on autonomous weapons systems next month. Back in 2017, dozens of artificial intelligence and robotics experts published a letter urging the U.N. to ban the development and use of killer robots. As drone warfare has grown, those calls have continued.
"To avoid a future of automated killing, governments should seize every opportunity to work toward the goal of adopting a global treaty on autonomous weapons systems," said the author behind the report, Bonnie Docherty, a senior arms adviser at Human Rights Watch and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, in a statement on Monday.
According to the report, which includes recommendations on a potential international treaty, the call for negotiations to adopt "a legally binding instrument to prohibit and regulate autonomous weapons systems" is supported by at least 129 countries.
Drones relying on an autonomous targeting system have been used by Ukraine to hit Russian targets during the war between the two countries, The New York Timesreported last year.
In 2023, the Pentagon announced a program, known as the Replicator initiative, which involves a push to build thousands of autonomous drones. The program is part of the U.S. Defense Department's plan to counter China. In November, the watchdog group Public Citizen alleged that Pentagon officials have not been clear about whether the drones in the Replicator project would be used to kill.
A senior Navy admiral recently toldBloomberg that the program is "alive and well" under the Department of Defense's new leadership following U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Docherty warned that the impact of killer robots will stretch beyond the traditional battlefield. "The use of autonomous weapons systems will not be limited to war, but will extend to law enforcement operations, border control, and other circumstances, raising serious concerns under international human rights law," she said in the statement
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Killer robots pose a threat to peaceful assembly because they "would lack human judgment and could not be pre-programmed or trained to address every situation," meaning they "would find it challenging to draw the line between peaceful and violent protesters."
Also, "the use or threat of use of autonomous weapons systems, especially in the hands of abusive governments, could strike fear among protesters and thus cause a chilling effect on free expression and peaceful assembly," per the report.
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With the Trump administration making space in the press briefing room for right-wing podcasters and other conservative "new media" content creators, viewers of briefings since President Donald Trump took office have seen his press secretary field questions about the Ukrainian president's clothing during an Oval Office meeting, compliments about Trump's "fitness plan," and attacks on reporters who have long reported from the White House.
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"You have got to be kidding me," wrote Sara McGee, a Democrat running for the Texas House of Representatives.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, noted that O'Handley and press secretary Karoline Leavitt also repeatedly cited at least one statistic that was "completely made up"—that the Biden administration allowed 15 million undocumented immigrants into the United States—as they suggested Trump should take legal steps to force all of them out of the country without the input of the judicial system.
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"They've been pushing this on the right for about a week now," said Reichlin-Melnick of the push to suspend habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants. "Anyone advocating for suspending the writ of habeas corpus because they don't like due process is spitting on the legacy of those who fought and died for this country and our Constitution."
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Several cases of undocumented immigrants who have been sent to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center have made national headlines in recent weeks, including that of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia; Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old who federal agents acknowledged was not who they were looking for during a raid; and Andry Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist who was accused of being a gang member solely because he had tattoos.
O'Handley's suggestion that the bedrock legal principle be suspended for undocumented immigrants—hundreds of whom have already been forced out of the country without due process—came ahead of Trump's scheduled signing of two new immigration-related executive orders.
One would direct the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to publish a list of sanctuary cities and states—those where local law enforcement are directed not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to arrest undocumented immigrants.
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