Is this censorship? What like this is not censorship?

Sorry don't have time to think up a clear question.

Learned in physcis that technically someone can build something that would alow people to know what they are saying on there cell phone. So you pay for a service that would put it in some kind of code so someone can't. Is that censorship?

Also, the vice president from the Bush administration had this list of visitors and to my knowledge no one knows who was on that list. Assuming this is correct, it might not be, is that censorship?

Is there anything kind of like this that is not censorship?

Thanks, I have to give a talk in a couple weeks and I am trying to get a handle on this topic.

mckenziecalhoun

Free speech does not mean the right to use any medium to speak.
If I write a book, you have no write to insist on writing part of it.
If I have a radio station, I get to pick what is discussed, not you.
If I run a newspaper, I get to decide what get's published, no matter how many letters you run.

NONE of that is censorship.

To do the opposite would infringe on the rights of the owner.

No one has a right to see a list by the President. No one has the right to listen to your phone calls. There is also no such thing as a "Right to Privacy", which is total nonsense.

However, we have laws to protect against some forms of "spying and intrusion".

Censorship is when you shut down someone else's publication and own none of it. Government is the most common cause of this (all over the world). It is possible for someone else to do it, but it would require some threat. If you belonged to a company, and there was no set rule or law preventing you from expressing yourself in a certain way, and you weren't damaging their business in any way, and they stopped you from doing so, it would be censorship.

HOWEVER, you don't get to decide if it hurts their business. The court does. A lot of so called censorship is efforts by business to end disruptive behavior that some employee things is their right.

Some censorship is active efforts of government to stop some political entity due to political differences, in ways that they excuse as "protecting the government" when it isn't, it is protecting their agenda for the government (a very different thing).

You are misusing the term "censorship." Censorship is the State interfering with your communication. In the first example, you are talking about an enabling technology. As long as the State doesn't actually monitor and cut your calls, it isn't censorship.

The second example is probably totally legal on any possible theory and is certainly not censorship. The Government keeps all kinds of lists -- for example every time you cross the border in and out of the USA -- and they are perfectly legal.

dragoncatdpt

in a way it is censorship... but it is more likely considered protection of privacy. Censorship is generally whentect" the general populace. a higher power (like a governing body) removes content to "pro

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