US Intensifies Fight Against Child Pornography 663
TechnoGuyRob writes "BBC News is reporting that the Bush administration has recently stepped up its measures against child pornography. From the article 'Sadly, the internet age has created a vicious cycle in which child pornography continually becomes more widespread, more graphic, more sadistic, using younger and younger children. [...] Mr. Gonzales also said that he is investigating ways to ensure that ISPs retain records of a user's web activities to track down offenders.'"
Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
but come on.
When will the think of the children bullshit stop?
It's obvious why they want all this data retention, and it AINT child porn.
dataveilance...
oh, and btw
FIRST POST!
OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm COMPLETELY sure that these records will only be used to fight child porn... this is frightning.
What would you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't think so.
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who believes this crap? (Score:2, Insightful)
This isn't about child porn. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is yet another attempt by the Bush administration to increase domestic surveilance, and to create a de-facto state of permanent constant survelliance on all Americans.
They're just trying to sell it as "anti child porn" in order to get the gullible people to go along with giving up the remaining shreds of personal privacy.... and to keep the gutless wonders (of both parties)in Congress from trying to oppose it.
Will someone please think of the children? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I'm surprized is that the RIAA/MPAA haven't tried to shut down the P2P programs with the goverment saying that they harbor child pornography. It is simply amazing what bullshit laws you can get passed if you play it off that it is in the best interest of the "children". But, dear god forbid some of the parents actually pay attention to what their kids are doing....
Just an excuse (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:1, Insightful)
Cause i highly doubt they will use this just for child porn they can use it to help the mpaa and riaa which they are good buddies with. I mean when has the goverment not abused it's power?
Re:Great.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who believes this crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets protect the children (Score:5, Insightful)
In my humble opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Another Boogeyman (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, I wonder if they cound instances of flirtation where the adult ceases communication with the child if/when they become away that the person with whom they are talking is a child. Once again, this isn't a case of an adult actively conspiring to lure a child to them in order to commit sexual acts- but both instances could be used to support the 1-in-5 statistic.
One thing that gets me too is, they are talking about cracking down on child porn, but in my experience this isn't really the case. Last year someone on a newsgroup I was on (this wasn't a pornographic newsgroup, but the person who posted it was someone I had seen post before, I can only assume that they must have posted to the wrong newsgroup or something) posted bunch of child porn photos. When I saw it I got all of the relevant information I could gather and called the local FBI office, and the local police department. Neither group even seemed interested in my call. The FBI told me to contact my ISP, my ISP told me to contact the local police, local police told me to contact the FBI- and after a day on the phone getting the runaround I ended up just posting the information I had to a child abuse pervention website and hoping that they could find the right people to talk to catch the guy.
No, instead of taking information that someone was trying to give them to catch a child pornographer, they want to log everyone's online activity. The thing is, logging all of that activity will do nothing to help catch child pornography. The amount of data would be such that it would still require someone to find and report the activity- and if someone can find it and report it, then there should be enough information already to catch the person.
This leads me to believe that the interest in logging all of this is in no way related to catching child pornographers. Instead it seems like the neo-cons are doing what they do best- brewing up an invisible boogeyman and using the threat of this boogeyman in order abridge the rights and privacy of the citizens. After all, if anyone tries to stand up against it, then they "are just a prevert who doesn't care about exploited children being used for sex and porography"- the same as with the patriot act and anyone who opposed it being "a commie american hating terrorist".
Of course, most people on slashdot probably already realize this, and other people aren't going to bother signing onto slashdot to read this post- let alone rethink their position based on it.
Re:ATTENTION (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Being openly communist in the US will probably become fairly prevalent once communism is no longer considered a dirty word.
Re:I am scared of Big Brother too . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you log only child pornography? Sure, you could filter out keywords but if that is what they are trying to accomplish, then Google already provides this so why do we need to log anything in the first place?
I hate to say it, but the comment you made is the exact reason why we are losing our privacy.
Re:First Amendment Nullified (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment Nullified (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, it's a new one, and they haven't tested it in the Supreme Court yet.
I assume this one will do the same, I certainly don't feel I'd have anything to lose that point... 20 years for downloading anime, perhaps resembling real but still... in my country you wouldn't get that if you abducted and violently raped a real girl.Actually, if I remember correctly, Mr. Whorely also possessed *actual* child pornography. However, the non-photographic artwork that he possessed weighed heavily upon his sentence.
Think about it: This artwork harmed no one in the making. Mr. Whorely didn't harm anyone by possessing it. One can't even make the argument that he was harming himself by looking at it, unless you want to really stretch it and say that it was causing him psychological trauma or somesuch drivel.
Actual child porn aside, this was a nonviolent thought crime, pure and simple.
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Not the internet's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government was actually interested in curbing child pornography, they'd attack it at the source: Fucked up society. It may sound a little hard to reach a proactive solution, but really, the solutions aren't that hard seeing how easy it is to veil larger, equally scary ulterior motives under getting rid of something that everyone accepts as evil without the majority of the general public batting an eyelid.
So, even if these measures that they're planning don't mean to harm people's personal freedoms all 1984 style, they're just giving a reactive and therefore non-effective solution to just a small part of a much, much broader problem.
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:5, Insightful)
If Gonzales et al. agree, then we have a deal. If they don't, they've tipped their hand.
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Person 1: You! You're against the exploitation of children in child pornography, right?
Person 2: You bet I am!
Person 1: Then you'll sign a petition in support of this bill that turns the United States into a police state?
Person 2: Heck no! I'm against police states, too.
Person 1: Then you support child porn?
Person 2: Didn't I just say that I don't?
Person 1: But you won't sign my petition! Look, you're either with me or you're with the kiddie-porn photographers.
Person 2: But there's probably more sane ways to go about-
Person 1: Bah! It's bleeding-heart liberals like you that make this country full of kiddie porn makers, potheads, and atheists! Go back to Soviet Russia, you commie pinko!
Person 2: But-
Person 1: EVERYONE! This man supports kiddie porn! Let's think of the children and BURN HIM!!
(Hordes of angry people tie Person 2 to a stake and light him on fire. Person 2 burns to death.)
Person 1: (Turns to another passerby) You, sir! You're against the exploitation etc. etc.
And so on.
(Footnote: The above may not be entirely accurate. Please do not lynch, behead, or negative-moderate the Author due to thoughtless ad-hominems. I swear, I never meant to insult anyone. Well, except maybe furries. I hate furries.)
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the word you're looking for is 'patriot'.
Re:The two aren't mutually exclusive (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people are online? How many of those are surfing for child porn? A depressingly larger number than we'd want, yes, but compared to how mnay people aren't? So they're going to keep records of everyone's activities online and sift through all of that to find the people surfing kiddie porn? Wouldn't it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that.... no wait, theye're too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
This is pure BS. If they really wanted to do something about child pornography, they have the power to do so without spying on every citizen in the US. Like you say, they want to satisfy their socially conservative base, but they're just outrightedly lying about what they want to do this for. They want more power to abuse.
Why hasn't anyone been arrested for The Godfather? (Score:5, Insightful)
oppression (Score:5, Insightful)
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
One wonders (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it would be easier to protect civil liberties from false choice fallacies if we could say something like "I am opposed to the Bush Administration child pornography plan, because I support this other, superior strategy for fighting child pornography instead".
Re:Just an excuse (Score:1, Insightful)
When all peaceful avenues are blocked or removed, then only the non peaceful ones remain. Unless your willing to fight for what you believe, and stand up to those who oppress you, then you really have no right to complain. Life is rarely if ever simple, and nether are our decision. Perhaps it hasn't gotten so bad as to leave us no other choice but it's getting there. Stand up and fight or sit down and shut up, but in the end both decisions are far from easy.
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, and I know this is cynical as all hell, I really think the child porn thing is just an excuse to aggrandize their power. I mean, the child porn people are smart. They'll just encrypt their traffic. Thus the power will never be used for its intent, but they certainly will not *ever* relinquish it. Once the government has its hands around something it holds it like a crack head holds his pipe.
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong Title (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't let the bastards frame the terms of debate. If the history of Bush's presidency has taught us anything, it's that they constantly lie about their motives. Look at the results, not the ever-shifting rationales.
Re:Remember - Child pornography is illegal, after (Score:5, Insightful)
And a Jamaican would tell you that homosexuality is illegal - and vile.
I think that laws making child pornography possession illegal are, at best, in line with laws making drug possession illegal to try to reduce the demand to squeeze out drug sellers. We want to step on sexual abuse of children, so we stomp on child pornography production. To stomp on that, we try stomping on child pornography consumers to reduce demand. You're talking about a pretty darn indirect benefit at a potentially steep privacy and civil rights cost.
Frankly, politicians are playing off the fears parents have for their kids when they invoke child pornography to squeeze something through. They're grabbing whatever generates the strongest emotional response. Right after 9/11, it was terrorism:
"Well...I don't know...that law seems to violate my civil rights."
"In this day and age of terror striking from the skies and from among us, we need to prevent a unified front. All Americans must work together. Vote in my law."
Terrorism may not be scaring enough people any more -- we may be back to "what about the children" in the form of child pornography.
Point is, if someone brings up child pornography while pushing a law, they're trying to make an emotional appeal as to why the law needs to pass. If they're stuck trying to make an emotional appeal, one has to ask why they just didn't make a good, reasoned argument. Is it because such an argument cannot stand on its own merits?
Pushing for increased government surveillance and control online particularly pisses me off, because in the past, government surveillance has been used [wikipedia.org] to damage the mechanisms that are used to correct and limit the government -- free speech and the ability to promote political challenges to the government. There has to be an absolutely overwhelming benefit to granting a power that allows the administration to make life difficult for its detractors before I want to see it accepted.
Re:Who believes this crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Bush Administration had to go through something like four different excuses for invading Iraq, all of which fell through, and *still* the primary reason for Bush losing popularity over Iraq is not that we invaded an innocent country, but that people feel that he's not doing a good job of handling the occupation.
Re:One wonders (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure the ones that survive are the ones that got the better deal.
Virtually all children who are molested are molested by their parents and step-parents, not by strangers on the internet.
Okay. If you're right, let's concentrate on that then.
If the real problem in protecting children from predators or child pornographers is family or acquaintences and not random scary internet people, how can we take steps to combat that problem without resorting to passing globally-invasive internet legislation just to make it look like we're doing something?
Re:Not the internet's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
While this might be hyperbolic (for now!) it is not by any means a troll, and is actually an excellent way of summing up the situation. Never have my points when I need them, someone correct this?
Re:War against Pedophilia? (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking of the children (Score:3, Insightful)
Today, I'm beginning to feel the same way. I enjoy certain liberties here right now. However, unless the next administration makes major changes in the interest of freedom, I do not feel that America will be the place I want my children to be raised.
Re:Great.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well what ARE you more concerned about? Your privacy, or the safety of America's children? I won't judge your answer, but for many people, one IS more important then the other, and for the other people, the other option is more important.
What needs to be done is a REAL investigation on how effective these measures would truly be. Then if it's enacted, a study after a trial period to determine how effective the new laws really have been, and how much they've been used against other cases.
But America's political system doesn't encourage this. Instead it encourages people to pick a side and stick with it no matter what. Democrats will yell "civil liberties" while the Republicans will yell "think of the children" with one side winning, the other losing. The American people being the biggest losers with inadequate representation.
Re:OMG Think of the Children!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Hitler used very similar tactics to rise to power and advance his own power once he had risen. Fear and the 'Patriot' factor were his strongest tools in the manipulation of the German society. Freedoms were lost as well as untold lives, all for the 'homeland.' The rest of the world sat back and let it happen too, just like now. The current administration must have some sort of Nazi handbook....
I wonder how many more are going to die this time.
This might not be the best measure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, this seems like a very dictatorial response. There is a new decriminalization philosophy dubbed restorative justice [wikipedia.org]. In this model, the offender is encouraged to become acquainted with the victim (or their family). By learning about the damage that one has caused, and seeing it through one's own eyes, remorse is stimulated much more effectively. Sometimes, prison can be a reforming experiences. However, there are also the hard-ass idiots that want revenge, and continue, if not increase, their crime life after prison. Honestly, I don't know if this is the best approach. Not only does it violate the public's privacy, it isn't guaranteed to be very--or even at all--successful. It has been proven, starting back with Ivan Pavlov's research, that negative reinforcement is not as effective as positive reinforcement. Why should this be any different?
Once again, I don't mean to criticize my government (of course, many do), but who's with me?
Re:Great.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all about perspective. Will this law have enough of an effect protecting children (or insert whatever issue you want to discuss) to warrant the risks it poses to my privacy. That is where the widest disagreement arises, IMO. I think you understand this, because that's what studies on efficacy would actually let people evaluate.
Frankly, from the numbers I've seen, I would say that the rate of crimes against children is quite low. It's tragic that it's nonzero, but it's low enough that a measure would have to be EXTREMELY effective to affect a substantial number of cases. That's why, in general, I am very suspicious of laws that are put forth purporting to "save the children."
As someone suggested above, if that's really the reason for the need for a broad search power, then limit the use of evidence discovered through that power to the prosecution of child pornography/molestation crimes. That will make it very hard for the law to be misused. Sure, some crimes will go unpunished, but one of the founding principles of our justice system is that we must accept guilty going free to protect the innocent from wrongful prosecution.
Re:Great.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow I doubt they'll encrypt all their traffic. They're quite likely to leave the source and destination IP addresses of pretty much all the packets unencrypted. Doing otherwise tends to have a negative effect on the ability of packets to reach their destination and replies to return on the way back. If the authorities can figure out the IP addresses of web sites they hit and at what time, then they can figure out whether they are visiting child porn web sites, provided they know the IP addresses of child porn web sites.
Yes, there are ways around that too, surely, but now you're getting into the realm of setting up special servers and/or writing special network protocols to do fancy stuff, and even if child pornographers aren't dumb, that may be beyond the level of skill that most of them have.
For what it's worth, I think it's quite possible that the Internet has made child porn more common and is increasingly doing so. The Internet lets people with similar interests get together and get in touch with each other in a way that is difficult otherwise. That applies to child molesters just as much as it applies to car collectors, computer nerds, and so on. Actually, it might apply to child molesters even more, because certain avenues of communication aren't available to them. They can't exactly place an ad in the newspaper or in the back of a magazine to get in touch with each other.
Re:OMG Think of teh Children!!!!1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice idea, and if it were any other president, I'd agree. But after witnessing George Bush attaching a bogus "signing statement" to John McCain's anti-torture law basically saying he won't torture anyone unless he wants to, claiming he has the right to conduct warrantless surveillance on international calls despite a law to the contrary, and refusing to acknowledge that he doesn't have the right to do so for purely domestic calls...do you really think that such a provision would make the slightest difference to the fascist criminals currently running this country?
I'd like to see such monitoring restricted to Republicans only, given that they seem to have issues [dkosopedia.com] with this sort of thing. [armchairsubversive.com]
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If America sacrifices its ideals and stops being America, there won't be any "American" children to protect. Your proposal is not a solution to the problem.
Re:Great.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainty of being caught is a good deterent.
Prevention works even better.
But punishment satisfies man's need for revenge and so will continue to be the first response.
Re:Why hasn't anyone been arrested for The Godfath (Score:5, Insightful)
On an unrelated note, Eastern Orthodox Easter today, so happy Easter! Here's a picture of a cute bunny to offset any negative feelings I might have caused with the above paragraph [demon.co.uk].
So you hate furries eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Person 1: You! You're against furries and their furry pornography, right?
You: Yeah, lets create a police state to hunt them down.
All you got to know is what buttons to press. For some it is child porn. For others it is furry porn. Whatever works to get you to sign up for a police state.
Please note that I understand the author is making a sorta joke with his furries comment BUT the old fact remains. Either you defend everyones freedom or you give up on freedom. Better people then me said it better. Read books to learn what freedom really means. (Cause you sure as hell aren't going to experience it anytime soon in this world.)
Re:Remember - Child pornography is illegal, after (Score:2, Insightful)
So what is your point, that homosexuality and child pornography are really both OK? Even though homosexuality is consensual and child porn is often not?
Also, can the posession of anything, by your logic, be illegal? What about knowingly possessing human organs, which have been illegally harvested? Gee, why stomp on that? We all know it's only the harvesting of a liver from someone who does not want to give it up that is actually harmful. We will give the distributors a slide.
Look, unless you think that the creation of child pornography is ok, (which maybe you do, since you equate it with homosexuality), you have to concede that attacking child-porn's chain of distribution is a reasonable move. If you cannot make posession illegal, how do you stop the website operators from selling their wares?
We need a "Godwin's Law"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever looked on Freenet lately? There is definitely (what appears to be -- I've never visited, but based on descriptions on the indices) underage porn on there, and that's a network that's designed by some very intelligent people to be anonymous. Sure, it wasn't designed for porn, but the porn people aren't stupid. They take advantage of those things when it exists. If HTTP gets too dangerous, they move to Freenet; if Freenet gets too dangerous, they'll move to total trust-based Darknets. At the end of the day, even if you shut down all the open WWW underage-porn websites, in all the countries of the world (managing somehow to harmonize laws concerning the age of consent) you'd really just drive that particular subculture back to the pre-internet days, when I can only assume people traded stuff on physical media via darknets, or private BBSes.
And of course, you have the ever-present threat that, with decreased availability of prerecorded porn on the Internet, that pedophiles will decide to make their own; featuring your neighborhood kids at gunpoint as the co-stars. I've never once seen this aspect of the problem seriously considered. What if we're actually stopping would-be child molesters through the availability of Internet porn? So what happens to these people if that supply is shut off?
The whole "child porn argument" is poorly thought out. It's a knee-jerk line brought out by politicians when they don't have any other way of garnering support for an unpopular and invasive policy, which is so polarizing that it automatically casts a shadow on anyone who opposes it.
As a society, we should invent something like "Godwin's Law" for child pornography. It's something so near-universally offensive, that when you drag it out as an argument for a particular widespread action, it's almost certain that you're using it as a weak justification for an otherwise unacceptable course of action. If you have to bring child porn in as reasons for doing something, it's a good sign your policies aren't well planned. If they were, they'd probably have any number of totally valid, separate reasons for doing them, and wouldn't need the spectre of child porn to back them up.
Re:Lets protect the children (Score:5, Insightful)
Sincerely,
The Government
Re:Great.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a shame about Rumsfeld screwing up in Iraq. That's been really hurting the President. Still, you don't always have the luxury of going to war with the Secretary of Defense that you want, sometimes you have to go to war with the Secretary of Defense that you have.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, this is the same old bullshit that has happened at election time from time immemorial. If you're the incumbent and you're facing trouble, bust some whorehouses and some drug users, make some headlines to remind people that you're "tough on crime".
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite possible that increasing government surveillance will result in an increase in neither.
Re:Great.... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's likely to be rather ineffective. For starters it is impossible to castrate women. Women pedophiles most certainly exist however politically correct it might be to deny that. Let alone those who try and excuse sickos like Mary Kay Letourneau.
Re:Great.... (Score:3, Insightful)
"I am neither with you nor against you"
And if the person continue to insist state again that you are neither with nor against him. It is the only reason against such simple minded people.
Re:One wonders (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume, please correct me if I'm wrong, that you think that PJ.com is the greatest thing since sliced bread and that they perform a necessary and good service? Whether the problem is as bad as they like to claim or not, their methods have always bothered me. They are in reality nothing more than vigilantes using tactics that the police would likely not be able to use themselves.
Furthermore, I've never liked the idea of arresting/prosecuting a person for a crime that didn't occur. These people are prosecuted for "soliciting" a "minor" that doesn't exist. Do we really want to live in a world where people are sent to jail for, in effect, thinking about a crime? The next time you think these "perverts" should be (insert nasty and horrible thing here) should we send you to jail for (insert nasty and horrible thing here)?
Please, explain to me the difference between sending you to jail for not doing (insert nasty and horrible thing here) and some guy not soliciting a "minor"? In my mind sending someone to jail for soliciting a person pretending to be a minor because when they did the soliciting they thought it was a minor is no different then sending someone to jail for merely thinking about any other crime. They have a word for that kind of thing.
Thoughtcrime
Re:First Amendment Nullified (Score:4, Insightful)
When they came for the bestiality fans, I didn't speak out; the only porn site I go to is Aunt Judies.
When they came for the hentai fans, I didn't speak out; the only porn site I go to is Aunt Judies.
When they came for the bukkake fans, I didn't speak out; the only porn site I go to is Aunt Judies.
When they came for viewers of porn involving mature women there was noone left to speak out for me...
(My stated favorite porn site is purely fictitious and serves only as an example, I am not actually a subscriber to Aunt Judies. Honest.)
Re:Perv-levels (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One wonders (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, bring up the idea of telling 2nd-graders about sex organs (even if you aren't talking about sex in any way), and some parents are going to freak the hell out.
It's been hard enough this century to get decent education about safe sex into high schools.
Some of the reason we have so many problems in this country is that it's "socially inapproriate" to talk about some sexual topics, in fact, most of them. If it wasn't such a big deal if kids said things like "my penis itches" in public, then maybe kids wouldn't be afraid to say things like "daddy touched my penis funny" to their teacher, even if daddy threatens them.
Education should almost always be the first step in trying to fix any social problem. You can't just turn the country into a police state or throw everybody in jail in order to "fix" a social problem. Social problems are things that are wrong with society; they're things wrong with people's minds. Supervision and lock-up aren't the most effective tools for repairing damaged psychologies.
And don't doubt children's abilities to protect themselves (but don't DEPEND on those abilities.. it's still the adults' job to fulfill some sort of guardian role, even if we teach kids how to take better care of themselves, too).
Isn't it already the norm? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does your ISP retain the contents of the e-mails you've sent and received? Lists of each URL you've visited? IM traffic? Roughly how long do they retain such data? Two days, two months, two years? Who has access? 99% of people wouldn't have a clue as to the answer to any of these questions, and most don't show much concern, which is scary. I'm with an ISP that is relatively open and conversant with its users, and even though I received long-winded and seemingly earnest replies when I raised the matter some time ago, none contained a direct answer to any of the aforementioned questions. Good luck to anyone else who tries.
Re:Great.... (Score:1, Insightful)
You'd have no problem if that 1% of the non-guilty included you? Sure you wouldn't.
Martin Niemoller for a new age: (Score:1, Insightful)
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Terrorist.
Then they came for the Pedophiles,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Pedophile.
Then they came for the Immigrants,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a citizen.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
Re:Great.... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity", Bush said. [cnn.com] "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
Re:Who believes this crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment Nullified (Score:3, Insightful)
You really have to work better on that one. Exposing children to regular pornography is also illegal, but I never heard of anyone being sued for walking home from the video store with their XXX rated DVD concealed in a bag. Do you think the images in question would jump off the CD, print themselves and hand themselves to bypassers?
How does the fact that he worked for the government and not a private entity factor into this? Not at all, as far as I can see. The people that could have been exposed are co-workers and network admins, same as in a regular workplace. Yes, he did it in a misunderstood conception of "privacy" at the workplace.
However, in the verdict most of the arguments focus around "interstate commerce", that is Internet. I think this one pretty well sums it up: "The latter class of materials, involving simulated images of children engaged in a sexually explicit conduct, can only be prohibited if they meet the definition of obscenity set forth in Miller." and "For this Court to adopt the defendant's position and expand the contours of the zone of privacy articulated in Stanley to include the transportation of material in interstate commerce would be a clear break with long-established precedent. Even in the context of recent technological advances, this Court declines to do so."
So basicly what the court said was that in your own home, you enjoy the protection of the Stanley case. But when passing it around on the Internet, it is not protected from obscenity laws, covered by the Miller test and states may ban its exchange. I believe this is already the case with some kinds of porn, that suppliers will not ship to certain states. What they've done though, is to place a massive penalty on the private aquisition of such material. Personally I think this is a huge abuse of the Miller test because you're using a public standard to regulate private actions.
Almost as immoral as the child pornographers. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that the child-pornography problem is being blown entirely out of proportion today, for the usual selfish reasons. I think that the existing laws and penalties are adequate and that it is the job of the police (and not the government) to find the people creating and using this stuff. So far they seem reasonable successful. And to say it quite clear: A free society is worth a lot more than a society free of child pornography. Even is some people seem unable to see that.
Money ill-spent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only answer to these poeple is to be against them. They have it exaclty right. These people are intolerant and power-greedy and want to dominate everybody. Civilisation as a whole benefits if such people are neutralised and put in a place where they cannot cause damage. A cell on that certain island sounds like a good solution.
Re:One wonders (Score:2, Insightful)
If you have two seventeen-year-olds flirting in a chat roon, you've just had two "children solicited".
Re:Not the internet's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
You're forgetting that democratic governments tend to reflect the society in question. The only way things are going to change is if people decied to change themselves.
Re:We need a "Godwin's Law"... (Score:3, Insightful)
It has been proven by research users of child porn need increasingly more graphic and younger children to become 'satisfied'. I therefor believe that the internet is not holding back those users of child pornography but it stimulates them. Also, for most child pornography exhanges you need something to change. This also stimulates the creation of there own material.
I'm all for internet rights but child porn is something terrible and the internet definitely made things LOT worse.
Re:An abomination unto man, from man. (Score:2, Insightful)
Liberals are more of the 'do whatever you want as long as there are no children involved and everyone consents' whereas conservatives tend to be more of the 'do it our way or it's wrong and you need to be punished, because our morals > yours anytime the two aren't aligned'.
Re:So you hate furries eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. And it's worse than that really; The only freedoms that really need protection is the freedom to do and say unpopular things.
It'll always everywhere be allowed to do and say popular things. There's no point in spending much energy in the US defending the freedom to publish a normal, nonprovocative novel.
Now, on the other hand, the freedom to do *unpopular* things is under constant attack, and it's a sliding-scale, once the *most* unpopular things are outlawed, the same laws that where erected to say "stop terrorists" or "rapists" are used against people guilty of much lesser crimes, or in some cases of no crime at all.
Congratulations (Score:2, Insightful)
"Police state?" Oh, please. I put as much stock into that phrase when liberals use it as when they use "fascist dictator" and "regime." Such people have neither lived in an actual regime nor under a fascist dictator in a police state. Ask a Holocaust survivor sometime what a fascist dictator really is.
Re:Great.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I appreciate the attempt to provide numbers with a reference, but I think you know the response that a citation like that would get from a supporter of these new regulations. 1994 was not exactly a banner year for the internet, and people could easily argue that those numbers changed drastically in the last 12 years (or more, since I assume the study was done well in advance of the publishing date) as more and more people came online. If you could show that those numbers haven't changed over the period where the internet gained widespread appeal, then you'd have something we could really use against the 'child-molesters are everywhere' crowd.
Re:Great.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who don't want to speak up against manipulation are afraid their names will be linked to child pornography so they won't speak up either. This is ALSO a form of appeasement towards the illogical thinking of voters. Which is also wrong.
However, I do think both parties are just reacting to reality. Irrational voting because of child pornography is just something which is real and something that you have to deal with as if it is real. The fear of being stigmatized because you voted against the law is real.
And let's not forget that child pornography is also real.
However, all the advantages are in the hands of the Bush Administration at the moment, and I like a fair fight so I'll see if I can balance the power equation a little.
A counter-tactic you can use is this:
The fear of the democrats is that they'll be linked to child pornography if they speak up against laws which don't prevent it, but mention it in their rationale.
What you CAN do is to applaud the efforts of the BUSH administration for their efforts against CHILD PORNOGRAPHY as often as possible in as many publications as possible. You could say, for example, that you really hope that the law that is being drafted by PRESIDENT BUSH will be successful against CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.
That the CHILD PORNOGRAPHY laws that PRESIDENT BUSH is drafting have their hearts in the right place but need some adjustments.
That the CHILD PORNOGRAPHY laws of PRESIDENT BUSH should be replaced by laws that REALLY PREVENT CHILD PORNOGRAPHY and that PRESIDENT BUSH should think them over but that you agree with them in principle.
And the trick here is quantity, not quality.
Re:Great.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:One wonders (Score:5, Insightful)
I dated a girl shortly after high school who had been molested by a family member. She was a really sweet girl, and I adored her, but she was just too emotionally broken for me to heal, so in the end, I had to walk away. That experience broke my heart in ways I never imagined possible. I've seen first-hand what child molestation can do, and I do think that it should be addressed. However, even after that experience, I am STILL against you, and I'm quite certain she would be, too. Don't you DARE try to twist that sort of horror into an excuse to force people to give up their freedoms.
I simply cannot agree that I, someone who would never even consider doing something like that, should have to lose some of my freedoms because some total nut case somewhere might use the internet to prey on kids. I don't agree that everyone in the United States should have to subject themselves to constant surveillance in the name of so-called "safety". That is a line that simply cannot be crossed, or else we have no right to call ourselves a free nation.
Somebody mentioned that on average, 50 kids were molested by a typical child molester prior to being caught. If that is true, then we have a real problem, and it isn't that the child molester should have been watched more carefully. It is that A. parents should have watched their kids more carefully, and B. those kids should have been taught how to handle that sort of situation at a younger age. There is really nothing practical that you can do to save that first short of considering everyone a suspect and devolving into a police state, which is unacceptable. However, if you catch them after the first one, at least that's 49 other kids that won't eventually be abused by the same sicko.
Indeed, this isn't about a police state. It's about a nanny state. It's about the government trying to save parents from actually having to take responsibility for their kids. If we're worried about kids being molested by strangers, the way to solve that is to spend money on education campaigns to inform parents about the problem, to spend money on protective technologies so that parents can protect their kids, and education campaigns to teach kids what inappropriate touching is. They taught us that back in nursery school (pre-K). If that isn't still happening, then you've found the real problem.
According to child protective services, only one tenth of one percent of children in the U.S. population are actually molested each year with any degree of plausibility. If only 1% of those are non-familial, then this law would only have the potential to help 730 kids a year or so. Why should 300 million people have to give up essential civil liberties to MAYBE help 730 kdis? Also, the number of verifiable child molestation cases has been plummeting since the advent of the internet, not increasing. The way I look at it, what we're doing already is doing a great job at solving this problem already. What's the point of doing something fascist like what is proposed?
Finally, I'll close with this: the best thing parents can do to protect their kids is to give them a cellular phone. Teach them how to call 911 in an emergency. If the kid gets kidnapped, the police immediately know where to find him/her. Of course, if the predator is a parent or family member, education is the only method that will be in any way helpful at combatting it, and no amount of internet surveillance will help.