Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ~ First Amendment
The proposed California Political Cyberfraud Abatement Act, makes it illegal to spread so-called “false or deceptive” information. For now, it appears to have been back-benched.
We already have libel and slander laws in place, and we have laws against fraud, but this law goes much further with an amendment into the nebulous world of “fake news” which Barack Obama and his fellow leftists have condemned but best describes them.
The bill takes the definitions “political cyberfraud” and “political Web site” out of the realm of specificity and makes them vague and overly general to include websites that “appear to urge the support or opposition of candidates for public office”. It makes it unlawful to even “cause to be made, published or circulate” any website posting that is deemed a lie and could influence elections.
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It could target any company or person(s) that do anything with the alleged fake news and it will be done after the fact if some unknown person(s) decides it influenced the election.
Currently, the fact checkers for social media are corrupt leftists to include Snopes and The Washington Post.
The section they want to add to cyberfraud law is this:
18320.5. It is unlawful for a person to knowingly and willingly make, publish or circulate on an Internet Web site, or cause to be made, published, or circulated in any writing posted on an Internet Web site, a false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote on either of the following:
(a) Any issue submitted to voters at an election.
(b) Any candidate for election to public office.
It’s obviously and blatantly unconstitutional and we’d be tempted to violate it just to get it to the Supreme Court.
Fake news, like the term hate speech, is impossible to define and by virtue of its ambiguity allows the very people it should target to shut down the free speech of the less powerful. It’s a fascist’s dream law.
The fact that it was introduced by Assembly Member Ed Chau is no surprise as he couldn’t be much further left in his ideology. He’s a lawyer no less.
You can’t fight fake news with bad law.
It appears that Assemblymen Chau might have second thoughts or he’s gearing up his rebuttals against those pushing back because he cancelled the first hearing on the bill. It’s at least temporarily derailed but the fact that it got this far is very concerning.
California is now a Socialist state and they could pass bad laws that affect every one of us. In fact, they already have.
CNN fake news would likely become the new “truth” under this law.
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