[governance] Pakistan Facebook Detailed Order

[Karl Auerbach]

On 06/03/2010 03:38 PM, Fouad Bajwa wrote:
> Facebook ban was lifted in Pakistan on the 1st of June 2010. The
> following court orders and proceedings are being shared for information
> purposes only....

Thanks for posting the order.

One has to recognize that Facebook is a private corporation created 
under the laws of California.  Under the Constitution of the United 
States the Federal government and the State of California have very 
limited authority to tell Facebook what it may or may not say, and even 
that power, to the extent it exists at all, is reduced if the United 
States Federal government or the State of California were to try to 
coerce Facebook's actions on the basis of a religious feeling one way or 
the other.

Let's turn the situation around with a hypothetical - Suppose someone 
here in California were to take offense at some action by someone in 
Pakistan (which I would hope would never be the case - my own 
experiences with people from Pakistan have always been most positive and 
enlightening.)  Let's suppose further that a California court were to 
issue an order that demands the national government of Pakistan take 
coercive action to stop that activity.  One can imagine that the result 
at the receiving end would be a feeling of resentment and foreign intrusion.

Here in the United States the belief that people (including corporations 
like Facebook) are allowed to engage in open, and even offensive, speech 
is a kind of national axiom.  And here we have perhaps even stronger 
feelings that governmental power and authority must never be allowed to 
be exercised on the basis of any religious ground.  So to a certain 
extent the order of the court in Pakistan is an order for us here in the 
US to violate what are, to us, precepts of our most fundamental national 
belief, that of free and open expression and of no governmental 
intrusion into or on behalf of matters of religion.

It is perhaps somewhat illuminating that one of our most revered writers 
- Mark Twain - will be publishing his autobiography in a few months. 
Twain deeply lashed Christian beliefs with disdain wrapped in humor. 
The only person who ever was able to formally edit, much less suppress, 
Twain was Twain himself - which is why his autobiography was held back 
for 100 years according to his own wishes.  The US government simply 
does not have the authority to step into verbal and written battles 
among religions (and non-religion).

There is a detail that is often lost when discussing free and open 
expression as practiced here in the United States: That detail is that 
it is governmental bodies, such as the US Federal government or the 
State of California, that are prohibited from limiting expression. 
Private actors - such as Facebook or any person - are not so 
constrained.  Thus Facebook may, if it so chooses, may deny use of its 
private services.  Facebook can chose to not allow web pages supporting 
some practice that Facebook does not favor - such as, to pick a fanciful 
example, the practice of singing operatic arias to goats.

(In actual practice we *do* have some limitations - such as laws that 
prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis or race or religion - 
and as a result we here in the US have an continuous re-balancing of the 
boundaries and limits of governmental power.)

The point of all of my text is that these situations are going to cause 
discomfort.  But it may be discomfort that we ought to absorb rather 
than exacerbate.

		--karl--
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