Civil Liberties and Terrorism

¶ … Limiting the Spread of Radical and

Online hate speech or rhetoric that calls for violence against another organization or the government itself.

Sources of information about operational techniques, such as how to create bombs, develop poisons or to carry out effective violent attacks.

Whenever the subject of terrorism comes up, the question of how to balance law-abiding Americans' rights to individual freedom with the need for public safety inevitably must be addressed. In 2010, in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the U.S. Supreme Court found that even "peaceful speech in the U.S. can be criminalized if it is 'coordinated' to support a foreign terrorist organization named by Congress" (Feldman 2010). The material in question did not meet the standard of Brandenburg v. Ohio, "which held that advocacy of violence can be made criminal only if it is directed to incite imminent lawless action and is also likely to produce such action imminently" but was pro-jihadi and supported the aims of terrorist organizations (Feldman 2010). According to one legal scholar "Speech that might well be protected under the First Amendment can now be included in criminal charges and submitted to the jury alongside other evidence of material support" (Feldman 2010).

As abhorrent as such speech may be, the question arises about where should the government draw the line? White supremacists' political rhetoric has been protected under the First Amendment, although this speech has obvious potential to spill out into violent action against others. But then again so could the words of radical anti-abortion activists and anti-immigration activists. In the case of speech which actually instructs others how to build a bomb or develop poison, the line between speech and action seems more firmly drawn. But it remains less certain how to protect all Americans' right to associate freely and engage in free political speech while still limiting the utility of venues such as the Internet for terrorists to communicate with one another and recruit more individuals into their organizations. Of course, we do not want to live in fear of terrorism but we also do not want to live in fear that a post on Facebook that we make disagreeing with an action by the American government might potentially be interpreted as 'support for terrorism' either.