Why is the Department of Homeland Security demanding personal information of people who have criticized the government online?

Are threats to free speech growing globally?

Welcome to the Reason Roundtable.

This is your Libertarian Review of News and Culture from the editors of Reason Magazine and Friends.

I am your host, Peter Souterman.

And today I am joined by my colleague, Catherine Mangy Ward, as well as very special guests,

Robbie Suave and Ream Ibrahim Ream.

This is your first episode as a staffer at Reason Magazine, full time.

Yay, it is.

I'm very happy to be here.

We are so happy to have you here.

Okay, so I want to start here by talking about this DHS story because they're demanding the personal information of people who have criticized the government, who have posted things, saying, you know, where ICE is located, right?

And they're asking for names, email addresses, telephone numbers, other data behind anonymous

social media accounts, right?

Basically, if you criticize ICE, if you criticize DHS, they want to know who you are.

This seems very worrying to me, Catherine, because anonymous speech is a pillar of free speech.

How worried should we be?

We should be super worried.

This is, this is public. This is like original, original free speech is meant to defend specifically this thing. Criticizing the government from the safety of anonymity.

Admittedly, this is, you know, also often quite garbage invective, right? Like, I do not mean to say that this is also often quite garbage invective.

I do not mean to say that this is the highest and most excellent form of political speech,

but I do mean to say that it is very, very clearly protected by the First Amendment, and

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