Posted on 07/12/2011 1:31:16 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
Have you heard about The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011? It's the latest in a l-o-n-g line of just terrible bills proposed to calm (though never quite eliminate) the fears of middle-aged people about what that scary Internet might potentially do to Our Children. There's a hearing on the legislation taking place as we speak. Here's Cato's Jim Harper:
It's got everything: porn, children, the Internet. And it's got everything: financial services providers dragooned into law enforcement, data retention requirements heaped on Internet service providers, expanded "administrative subpoena" authority. (Administrative subpoenas are an improvisation to accommodate the massive power of the bureaucracy, and they've become another end-run around the Fourth Amendment. If it's "administrative" it must be reasonable, goes the non-thinking...)
This isn't a bill about child predation. It's a bald-faced attack on privacy and limited government.
Meanwhile, former Reasoner Julian Sanchez (also of Cato) muses that "I guess the 'You Are All Criminals Act' didn't have the same ring," and provides some context:
Thanks to an unwise Supreme Court decision dating from the 70s, information about your private activites loses its Fourth Amendment protection when its held by a "third party" corporation, like a phone company or Internet provider. As many legal scholars have noted, however, this allows constitutional privacy safeguards to be circumvented via a clever two-step process. Step one: The government forces private businesses (ideally the kind a citizen in the modern world can't easily avoid dealing with) to collect and store certain kinds of information about everyone—anyone might turn out to be a criminal, after all. No Fourth Amendment issue there, because it's not the government gathering it! Step two: The government gets a subpoena or court order to obtain that information, quite possibly without your knowledge. No Fourth Amendment problem here either, according to the Supreme Court, because now they're just getting a corporation's business records, not your private records. It makes no difference that they're only keeping those records because the government said they had to.
Current law already allows law enforcement to require retention of data about specific suspects—including e-mails and other information as well as IP addresses—to ensure that evidence isn't erased while they build up enough evidence for a court order. But why spearfish when you can lower a dragnet? Blanket data requirements ensure easy access to a year-and-a-half snapshot of the online activities of millions of Americans—every one a *potential criminal.
Re-read Jacob Sullum's phenomenal piece about "Perverted Justice" from our July special issue on criminal justice. That Time cover above comes from our great Radley Balko/Jeff Winkler collection of "The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years."
I keep this on my homepage, unfortunately it come in hand all too often.
comes in handy....oy
Someone is going to accuse you of a dirty minded Freudian slip, I just know it.
>> Taken literally that’s hyperbole, <<
What you mean is “don’t take it literally, it’s only hyperbole” Or, in other words, “I figured people wouldn’t be as sympathetic to the rights of child pornographers, so I deceitfully tricked them into reading an article, knowing full well that my headline was a complete, absurd, bald-faced, ridiculous lie.”
Better, more truthful headline: “Unconstitutional proposal would coerce internet readers to help government track child pornographers.”
“We’re all government snoops, now”?
I did not say they represented the whole movement
Who said the following?
Interestingly nude photographs of kids online is not illegal, do a search.
And this...
______________________________________
Doing research?
It would attract mindless accusations exactly in line with the headline. That’s the point.
Or trolling in freepland? (How do I ping the Viking Kitties, who are never indecent because they have suits of fur?)
That’s the meat of the slightly longer quote which I was looking for. Thank you.
I'd say it was my pleasure but considering what I mistyped after the quote, I think I'll just shut up.....grrrr and lol!
“Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally...When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.”
- Libertarian Presidential Front-Runner Defends Child Porn (2008)
http://www.thepolitic.com/archives/2008/04/25/libertarian-presidential-front-runner-defends-child-porn/
“We call for the repeal of all laws that restrict anyone, including children, from engaging in voluntary exchanges of goods, services or information regarding human sexuality, reproduction, birth control or related medical or biological technologies.”
- 2004 Libertarian Party Platform:
http://theirownwords.net/platforms/2004/Children.html
Can you tell me why a person can’t get an ISP and an IP address from a company in a country that doesn’t give a crap about what our ruling class says they have to do?
It would seem to me that there should be a way to bypass all U.S. ISP companies and get an onramp offshore without being offshore.
Now, first of all, I don't really want a president who vows to eliminate behaviors she disapproves of and, second, she knows she couldn't do it on First Amendment grounds so is just pandering.
Someone I perceived as an intelligent woman turned out to be a big disappointment. May her time at the top of the polls be short.
I wish they were illegal. It would certainly make things easier.
-PJ
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