User:Wnt/Op-ed

Feinstein proposal threatens Wikipedia

As described by its sponsor,^[1] a recent bill^[2] by Senator Dianne Feinstein would require "an electronic communication service or a remote computing service" to report any "terrorist activity" it knows about.^[3] Feinstein previously attempted to attach the measure to the Senate Intelligence Authorization Bill, but the measure was stripped after Senator Ron Wyden placed the bill on hold following its passage by the Senate Intelligence Committee.^[4]

The first thing to note is that "terrorist activity" is not actually terrorism. The bill does not define the phrase, but requires it to include a controversial sort of speech crime, 18 U.S. Code § 842^[5] that Feinstein appended to a defense spending bill in 1997.^[6] That bill was first used^[7] to prosecute an anarchist webmaster,^[8] Sherman Austin, whose site hosted the "Reclaim Guide", which described crude explosives.^[9][10] To be sure, the advice in the above document to "Make sure that you will not injure anyone that you do not intend to injure" in reference to a fuel-fertilizer explosion was not wisely worded, but no specific conspiracy ever existed and the effect of the prosecution was the destruction of an entire news site over the failure to censor a single item. This is not a welcome precedent for anyone in the business of hosting collaborative content.

The larger issue is that though the definition of "terrorist activity" is required to include sharing any information about explosives or weapons of mass destruction under various circumstances, it is not limited to that. The bill permits the United States Attorney General, an appointed executive official, to define the phrase as he sees fit. As such, the bill needs to be viewed as an enabling act granting the executive branch an open-ended authority to place reporting requirements on virtually any sort of information. As pioneered in the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, the creative use of reporting requirements can permit back-door attacks against material that, in theory, is protected by the First Amendment. To give an example of how the effect of this bill might spread, consider that in 1999 Feinstein proposed to "prohibit the distribution of drug-making information" concerning methamphetamine.^[11] Maybe meth-making instructions are a little like terrorism, since the drug kills people and the labs sometimes explode. Under this bill, that decision will be entirely up to one appointed official. Roskomnadzor, which recently pressed for censorship of Wikipedia on this basis, would surely approve.

Beyond this, there is no penalty for incorrect reports.

As I'm sure most here are aware, several aspect of the Stop Online Piracy Act, against which Wikipedia mobilized in 2012, are reflected^[2] in the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act that was passed as part of the omnibus spending bill.

3. One issue with which I am particularly concerned is the definition of "knowing that such person intends to use the teaching, demonstration, or information for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence" and the related provision from the previous part. Past enforcement of this has followed a terroristic pattern, going after rare soft targets like Sherman Austin. Nonetheless, Jimmy Wales has a famous slogan, "...every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." Well, is that already illegal under U.S. law? And if so, is Wales criminally culpable if he edits, or hosts, an article about a nuclear bomb, knowing and indeed intending that the Caliph or one of his men, who doubtless would love to own one, might choose to read it?

I wouldn't be worried about Wikipedia's article on nuclear bomb. It's the articles on acetone peroxide, ANFO, nitroglycerine, nitrogen triiodide, etc. that would be problematic. --Carnildo (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Carnildo: I chose that article for two reasons. The first is that if there is a terrorist in ISIS working on a nuclear bomb, wherever he came from, whether he trained in Islamabad or in Berkeley, it is a near certainty that he will actually have looked up nuclear weapon and its sub-articles at some point in his life, and made that a part of his education. The issue is whether we go by the standard of looking only at whether terrorists might access the data, or instead consider that an educated populace has many effects, some positive, some negative, and have faith that the positives of a free society outweigh the negatives.

The second reason is that these articles, like nuclear weapon design and Pit (nuclear weapon), are useful in understanding, for example, the role of breeder reactors and nuclear reprocessing in generating plutonium to make the bombs. So if our society were not committed, fully, to preserving the availability of such information that has become known to the world, we would be giving up the ability of the public to make informed decisions about some of the more controversial facilities required for nuclear weapons production. It follows, logically, that in a Feinstein America, it would be a threat to national security to allow this public to have any say in such decisions - so any pretense of democracy must be put aside to ensure that military specialists would have total control over them. I think this is the case for the lesser explosives you mention - for example, plants like this have been exploding periodically for more than a hundred years. But the public policy implications are most obvious with the nuclear example. Wnt (talk) 03:28, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

1. The WMF must either sign or issue a concurring opinion with the industry coalition against the bill.

2. The WMF must have its legal staff provide editors with specific advice pertaining to 18 U.S. Code para 842, the specific existing law, potential violations of which must be reported if Feinstein's proposed law is heeded.

5. The WMF needs to understand exactly how much information about a user it is going to be required to turn over if Feinstein's bill passes. It is hard to picture it will be required to make a report, yet be allowed to insist on a warrant if asked for details. It is time for Wikipedia to start sanitizing any non-public records now, while it is legal to do so, and to advise users on what actions they may be able to take to protect themselves.

4. Any report of "terrorist activity" may land editors on the no-fly list, which is part of a Terrorist Screening Database used by some countries as a reason for denial of travel, and by others for indefinite detention and torture.^[3] Obama recently proposed to use this list - in which no due process is ever used - to deny gun purchases (but why stop there? Can't a car be used for multiple murder?). Wikipedia will need to canvass contributors to see if they are subjected to such measures regardless of their country of residence or "citizenship", whether there is formal reporting mandated or data is harvested from public article history records.

6. If expert legal opinion occurs that this bill is an existential threat to its educational mission, the WMF should campaign against this bill with more vigor than it opposed SOPA. It is worth making this fight, in the hope that injustice delayed is injustice denied. Wnt (talk) 15:42, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

The views expressed in these op-eds are those of the authors only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. Editors wishing to submit their own op-ed should email the Signpost's editor.

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