Security quotes of the week [LWN.net]

Security quotes of the week

Posted Oct 19, 2016 20:28 UTC (Wed) by Garak (guest, #99377)
In reply to: Security quotes of the week by farnz
Parent article: Security quotes of the week

OK, and then what legal guidance does a judge have such that they aren't just making decisions from the seat of their pants? Is it "not-speech" if it offends a thin-skinned person to the point of tears?

I hate having to try to explain things as if to a small child in their first government/civics class, but... The obvious general answer is that most societies have fairly well laid out sets of guidance that judges must demonstrate a sufficient knowledge of before they are allowed to become judges. Law schools and so forth.

Each country and society has its own. In some societies, you'll get crucified for saying certain things. In other societies, you'll get beheaded for not saying certain things. In many societies, you will be punished for burning the local flag, but not a foreign flag. In some societies, you will be punished for burning certain books, but not punished for burning other books.

RFC-Garak1 was about forcing the automation to happen, with local official judicial settings being the ultimate bottom line of that automation. Because there just is no better way to go about it that I see. I will continue to spend as much effort as I can muster, to convince those around me, focusing on the local, extending to the global, galactic, and universal, that nobody should be punished for burning any book or flag that they own. And I won't accomplish that mission tomorrow, or next year, or in my own lifetime. That's just how I see it. $0.02...

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Security quotes of the week

Posted Oct 19, 2016 20:34 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

It's clear that you didn't pay attention in civics. The point of law school and the like is to make it easier for the judge to correctly apply law to the cases in front of them, such that (in general) it doesn't matter which judge you end up in front of, they'll all make the same decisions given the same set of facts. Then, for the cases where a mistake is made by a judge, you have an appeals process, which (ultimately) compares the law to the decision, and either confirms that the judge was right in their application of law to the case, or that they made a human mistake.

If you're saying "free speech, but only speech, not speech-like things", you need a legal definition of "speech" that judges around the country can apply. Otherwise, there's a simple way to define it for RFC-Garak1 - "speech" is spoken words transmitted by sound waves, while anything electronic is not speech; et voilà! we have today's situation unchanged.