Speaking out of Line

The First Amendment is under attack, and it's serious. For those that don't know, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act recently, which was signed into law by Bush on November 27, 2006. The bill seeks to punish people who act "for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise". The bill is meant to target animal rights activists, or "eco-terrorists". An earlier version of the bill, from November 4, 2005, can be seen here. The House passed the bill under a suspension of the rules; only six Representatives were present to vote on it. The only opposition was from Dennis Kucinich, who said that the bill was "written in such a way as to have a chilling effect on the exercise of peoples' first amendment rights." His words have proven chillingly prophetic. On March 2, 2006, the "SHAC 7" were convicted of operating a website that reported on and expressed ideological support for protest activity against Huntingdon Life Sciences. They are guilty of "terrorism" under the AETA and will serve multiple years each in federal prison. The conviction was based on the assertion that the website showed videos of animal cruelty and reported on illegal protest activity. The HLS corporation lost profits and was dropped from the NYSE. The government, unable to find the activists that had participated in the illegal protests, instead targeted the operators who reported the protests. All of the formal charges against the 7 were for "conspiracy" - they didn't actually DO anything. So, web site operators go to jail for reporting on illegal activity. That makes just about every news website on earth guilty of the same infraction, doesn't it? Not really, because the "victim" must be associated with an animal enterprise. If the SHAC 7 were running the exact same website and information targeting an abortion clinic, for example, they would not be prosecuted. This seems to violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution, giving biomedical corporations and the meat industry a special law against protest. I would think that there are many other organizations in this country that deserve at least the same level of protection as the meat and biomedical industry recieves. Abortion clinics and gay businesses spring to mind immediately. 7 abortion doctors have been murdered, and thousands of violent incidents at abortion clinics have occurred since Roe v. Wade. A myriad of websites around the country both report and praise these actions, like the ones highlighted in the documentary Soldiers in the Army of God. There is not an AETA to prosecute the operators of these sites. I am unaware of any animal rights activist ever murdering anyone in connection with animal cruelty protests, and yet the people who report on them are "terrorists" and receive jail sentences. Anti-gay crime is rampant in the United States, yet the purveyors of these crimes are only felons, and the reporters and supporters are not criminals at all. Animal rights protesters and reporters, meanwhile, are "terrorists". What makes the biomedical industry more deserving than other groups? There was no charge of libel against the website - something that might actually make sense. Indeed, the information presented on the site was not challenged at all, as far as I can tell. The fact that the company lost money (possibly not even due to this particular website...) created a situation where the AETA could be used to get someone - someone who the biomedical industry does not like. Since the illegal protesters were not handy, I guess web site designers will have to do. The message is clear: be careful what you post on your site - your speech is not as free as you think.