More sober voices than Trump’s are calling for activities than that to fight terrorism even more frightening prosecuting citizens for just seeing sites the government considers dangerous. Welcome to the chilling modern politics of antiterrorism, where the Web is now the favorite whipping boy, as well as your rights as well as the Constitution could become the greatest casualties.

Heading the charge against the Constitution as well as the Net of fighting terrorism in the name is professor of law in the University of Chicago, Eric Posner. His remedy: “New thinking about limitations on freedom of speech.”

What would those limitations be? Mostly, in his perspective, a law that will allow it to be illegal for folks to see websites that support or glorify ISIS, or to spread links to all those sites or any videos, text or pictures taken from those sites. He’d also prohibit individuals from getting “ISIS-associated recruiting social networking posts.”

After that, however, they’d face fines or prison sentences.

The law, Posner says, is directed merely at “innocent individuals … who are initially driven by interest to study ISIS on the Web.” So no longer would protect the rights of all citizens. He’d like its protection to be based on your blogging history, your work or your academic standing.

His proposition, if passed, would be among the worst assaults in history on our rights, in addition to on the Internet. Civil libertarians and many law professors have warned about the risks of following his path that was recommended. The Federalists in power utilized that law to persecute Thomas Jefferson’s assistants.

Posner’s law would go past the Sedition Act by making it illegal to go to a web site the government considers dangerous. And it can result in a huge surveillance infrastructure following what we do on the Web. Applying it’d require tracking the IP address of every individual who sees with websites that are particular, then prosecuting them, investigating them and matching those IP address to particular people.

The law would simply target sites related to ISIS now. But laws have a method once they are passed of metastasizing. Tomorrow who’ll be targeted? During the past several decades, there’s been a significant amount of violence that may be considered domestic terrorism against physicians and organizations that support a woman’s right to abortion, for instance, recent mass shooting in Colorado. Using Posner’s reasoning, could the authorities prohibit anti-abortion websites and prosecute those who see with them?

Posner’s thoughts may be dismissed by you as those of someone on the peripheries of respectability that is legal. He’s a professor at one of the most prestigious law schools in the nation. Between 2009 and 2013, he was the fourth most-mentioned legal scholar in America.

Now, Posner acknowledges, his proposed law would likely be held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It’s possible for you to envision a scenario in which things get so awful that you just begin watering down the protections.”