Go To Jail For Visiting a Web Site? Top Law Prof Talks Up the Idea

[jason]

David Rothman writes:

Eric Posner, the fourth most-cited law professor in the U.S., says the government may need to jail you if you even visit an ISIS site after enough warnings. He says, “Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective way—and by this I mean ideas that lead directly to terrorist attacks that kill people. The novelty of this threat calls for new thinking about limits on freedom of speech.

The law would provide graduated penalties. After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government; subsequent violations would result in fines or prison sentences. The idea would be to get out the word that looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden” There would be exemptions for Washington-blessed journalists and others. Whew! Alas, this man isn’t Donald Trump — he is a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member writing in Slate.

Source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/12/16/130218/go-to-jail-for-visiting-a-web-site-top-law-prof-talks-up-the-idea

 

My Response:

Imagine how horrible this would be. Lets say you go to a legitimate webpage that uses an ad service to display adds on the side of the page or in embedded links in the the text. As your mouse hovers over an area, a popup appears.

What if this popup is for a site that was recently considered illegal. Not knowing that your ip address was just flagged for activating the popup, you visit the legitimate site several times a week. Your mouse moves over some ads on the page and know the police knock on your door to arrest you.

You may think this is very unlikely. However I work in network security and see incidents for infected sites from my clients. When investigated, it is usually from a user visiting a news site. The news sites sell ad space to ad services like google that dynamically generate the ads that pop up on your screen based on your browsing history or recent search terms. You may never click on the ads, but your ip will be flagged for visiting an infected site.