The U.S. presidential candidates who were once supporters of the freedom of speech seem to have completely changed their ideas.
Looking at the recent speeches from the leading voices in the U.S it seems they want to curb the freedom of speech, especially on the internet due to a terrorist group making use of it.
Evidence of this is a recent speech from Hilary Clinton, here is part of it which is a proof of his ideas:
“You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera. But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating. It’s more complicated with some of what they do on encrypted apps, and I’m well aware of that, and that requires, even more, thinking about how to do it”.
“Shut off their means of communicating?” What does this mean? The internet is not just for terrorists all the tools there, are used by good people as well.
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton as a secretary once worked for promoting tools that are used for privacy by internet users but now it seems she has different ideas.
But, Hilary Clinton is not the only who has such thoughts, Donald trump also has similar thoughts here is a part of his recent speech:
“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet. We have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people”.
#DonaldTrump advocates closing up the Internet 2 stop the process of thought/free speech. So Communist China-like. pic.twitter.com/hRab3xpVcK
— NotBuffytheVMPslayer (@NotBUFFY_VS) December 8, 2015
Most worrying fact for the people in the U.S is that these people are the leading candidates for next year’s election and if they are chosen, worse can be expected as U.S. constitution has laws protecting freedom of speech and their upcoming leadership has ideas that compete against their constitutional amendments.
What their speeches reflect is that they don’t want to curb terrorism rather play into the hands of terrorists as the internet is not only made for terrorists there are good people too who try to eliminate terrorism on the same platform.
So, the need is for a way which do not hurt basic human rights and also restrict the terrorism. For this to happen, it is not the leaders in U.S. rather all the world leaders who have to work together!
Earlier this year, FBI Director James Comey also expressed his concern about Apple and Google encrypting their devices. Comey claimed such encryption helps criminals and terrorists.
