Rep. Barton Demands The FCC Filter ISIS From The Internet

Free Speech

from the act-first-think-later dept

There’s been a universe of responses to the recent tragedy in Paris, and unfortunately the lion’s share of them are incomprehensibly stupid, adding a compounded feeling of inevitable dread to the already heart-breaking ordeal. From punishing all Syrian refugees for the attacks to blaming Edward Snowden and encryption, there’s once again far more knee-jerk inanity being generated than reasoned commentary. Joining the fray this week was Rep. Joe Barton, who simply can’t seem to understand why we can’t start filtering this whole “terrorism” part of the Internet.

Barton was speaking this week at yet another House hearing designed primarily to shame the FCC for standing up to ISPs on net neutrality. These show pony hearings have been going on for much of the year now, and their overarching end goal is to strip the agency’s authority and funding under the auspices of reform. Ironic then, that Barton took some time out to urge the FCC to start regulating Internet speech:

“They are really trying to use the Internet and all the social media to intimidate and beat us psychologically,” Barton said during a House committee hearing Tuesday. “Isn’t there something we can do to shut those Internet sites down?”

Well one, we’re beating ourselves psychologically by responding to tragedy by being aggressively stupid. Two, as we’ve noted time and time and time again, Internet filters just don’t work. They’re easily bypassed by even the most mentally-stunted toddler, and they open the door to atrocious savaging of free speech rights. When they do “work,” they generally result in the filtering of legitimate content. Barton seems to realize this in his statements, but plows forward undeterred:

“Barton conceded that censoring the Web sites might be difficult — “I know they pop up like weeds” — but plowed ahead with his proposal, suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission attempt to shut down the sites. “They’re using the Internet in an extremely offensive and inappropriate way against us,” he continued.

But the real problem isn’t the fact that when you censor content it pops right back up it’s the censoring of content in the first place. You’d think that an elected official would be at least marginally familiar with the First Amendment that says, you know, that the government can’t censor speech. And yet here he is directly advocating outright internet censorship.

Again it’s important to understand that Barton, who creatively dubs net neutrality “net nonsense,” was attending a hearing with the unspoken intent of gutting FCC authority. And, ironically, it was the FCC that had to remind Barton that regulating website and social media is too far outside of its wheelhouse. Still, it’s amusing that Barton believes imposing consumer protections to defend free speech is a horrible, unchecked abuse of the FCC’s authority, but dramatically expanding FCC power to restrict free speech somehow makes perfect sense.

Filed Under: censorship, fcc, isis, joe barton, net neutrality