It’s only midweek and we’ve seen four news stories that signal fresh attacks on free speech and other personal freedoms. A banner week, and one that has implications for tech PR. Let’s look at the headlines first, then the PR angle.

Example A: Philadelphia (can’t you just feel the brotherly love?) has decided to charge bloggers an annual $300 fee for the right to blog. Of course they are calling it a ‘business privilege’ tax, but you just have to love the free-speech aspects of this move. If you’ve ever lived in Philly you already know there’s a tax on everything – head taxes, work taxes, township taxes and more. But taxing the right to exercise freedom of speech – in the city where the Constitution was penned and adopted by the Constitutional Convention – boggles the mind. Someone ring the Liberty Bell, quick.

Example B: California (uber alles – we’ll have that Jello Biafra test later) has passed a bill to make it illegal to impersonate someone on the Web. So much for Fake Steve and other parodies. All that’s needed now is the Governator’s signature and we’ll all be safe in the ether again. While we can see why it’s good to discourage mean girls and other pranksters who see the Internet as a great place to stage attacks on others, we agree with the Electronic Frontier Foundation – there’s way too much opportunity in this bill to squelch freedom of speech.

Example C: Two airports – Logan and Las Vegas – have approved full-palm patdowns of air passengers going through the already slow and invasive security checkpoints. It’s not enough to take off your shoes and get a full-body scan that’s as strong as a CAT scan. Now you get to be up close and really personal with a TSA agent, probably that guy or gal you refused to go out with in high school. So much for personal space. Assault, anyone?

Example D: A Connecticut high school – in swish New Canaan, no less – is considering adding RFID tags to student IDs. No more sneaking out of study hall for a quick trip to McDonalds, kids.

So what does all of this have to do with tech PR? The RFID tags are a tech story, and a pretty convoluted one – a Connecticut RFID company is pushing the plan after applying for a National Science Foundation grant to ‘conduct scientific research.’ Line the kiddies up, we’re all friends here, and while you’re at it, how about a quick cheek swab? The pat-downs are a study in how proven and legitimate technologies such as explosives sniffers and scanner technologies are being ignored. The blog tax is something that affects anyone who blogs – and there’s the fact that taxing speech really pushes the limits of a government’s right to collect revenue from its citizens. And the e-impersonations? Again, free speech is at issue.

Any attack on free speech, constitutionally-protected personal freedoms and human dignity is an issue for all of us. For PR people, it means we need to do a better job explaining the technologies our clients create – those airport scanners, for example. We need to give our clients better advice – that Westport, CT company needed to be talked off the cliff by a smart PR strategist.

And we need to be better citizens. We need to have, and give, some respect.

What do you think?

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