EFF Sues to Block New Internet Sex-Offender Law 305
Bobfrankly1 writes "The EFF sued to block portions of the approved Prop 35 today. Prop 35 requires sex offenders (including indecent exposure and non-internet offenses) to provide all of their online aliases to law enforcement. This would include e-mail addresses, screen and user names, and other identifiers used on the internet. The heart of the matter as the EFF sees it, would be not only the chilling effect it would have on free speech, but also the propensity of these kind of laws to be applied to other (non-sex offending) people as well."
ACLU press release (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.aclunc.org/cases/active_cases/doe_v._harris.shtml [aclunc.org]
It's really not a good law - it won't accomplish its goal and it has lots of bad possible side effects.
Re:Sorry.. can't agree. (Score:5, Informative)
I would encourage you to view one of the many sites out there that let you search public registries of sex offenders. (for example, http://familywatchdog.us/ [familywatchdog.us] For fun, enter your address. You'll find:
1) the number of sex offenders isn't a "few" (if you live in a metro area, there will be dozens in a 2 mile radius)
2) if you view each one's offense, you'll find most (75%+) had "victims" 14 years old +. Some of those might have been "rapes", but were probably hooking up with someone they should have known better, but it was as consensual as any liaison (ignoring fact that a minor can't consent, but survey any high school and see how chaste your average teen is)
Such sex offender laws apply to all of these (plus those who get caught urinating in public, having a romp with their spouse in public, etc); not a "few depraved and/or dangerous/psychotic people". But "think of the children!" How about a single DWI resulting in a lifetime ban on owning a motor vehicle, or a single drug conviction resulting in a lifetime 9pm curfew?
If someone is truly so sick and perverted that they need a lifetime of monitoring, then give them an adequate prison sentence.
Re:Californian Here (Score:5, Informative)
Same deal with the human trafficking sex offender registry.
You're trying to tell me a human trafficker who gets caught and was involved in sex offenses can't be tried for that seperately?
Seriously I'll accept a sex offender registry for persons who prey on children (I will put the cap at 16, although if we were being honest about this, 13 is the better standard for paedophilia. And if you look at the historic reason for raising the age of consent from 13 to 18 (ignoring the original AoC) you'd note that it was TO STOP 'UNDERAGE' PROSTITUTION, not for any actual sensible reason regarding a persons age of maturity or sexual development.) But honestly, applying it indefinitely to 'streakers' 'teenagers sexting their likewise underage partners' and 'public urinators' makes me embarassed to be an american.
If we can't try people based on the specific and necessary laws, then why don't be just repeal all laws and go back to 'at the judge's discretion'? I mean given the plethora of modern laws and the almost impossibility of not breaking one of them (nevermind in the case of sex offenses many people breaking ones that used to at most get you a night in jail or a few weeks community service: see fooling around in a park, car, your gf or bf's house, etc.) Hell, even just taking a picture of your kids running around in the buff (and how many of us didn't toss our diapers aside and streak naked across the house when guests were over? Y'know the sort of pictures your family take so they can embarass you when you bring your significant other over to meet the fams.)
The number of travesties being committed by our 'elected' officials on a daily basis makes me wonder what the point of elected officials even is anymore. At the current level of insanity nearly any form of government would not be any worse from a legal standpoint. And when looking at miscarriages of justice, we're right in the middle of the pack with dictators, monarchs, and oligarchies.
Any system can be corrupt or just given time and the right set of officials. But the problem with democracies (and republics!) is that it can take a much longer time to effect a shift, and perhaps even longer to find out if that shift is real or imagined.
Re:Yeah right... (Score:5, Informative)
It has about the same odds as getting the /. editor to include the state for which this law actually applies in the summary. (It's California in this case.)
Blocked by judge (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A little context (Score:2, Informative)
Actually the issue is way more complex than you suggest.
for a little more context.
"Californians will vote in November on Proposition 35 — a bill that would increase fines and prison sentences for convicted human traffickers. While the desire to fight human trafficking seems uncontroversial, the bill itself is rife with problems and penned in poorly defined terms.
Writing in the Guardian Wednesday, writer and sex worker advocate Melissa Gira Grant points out the dangerous but all too common conflation of the terms “trafficking” and “sex work” present in Proposition 35 and anti-trafficking efforts in general. Gira Grant explains that, at the expense of many victims of coerced labor, the bill only defines “trafficking” as involving the sexual exploitation of women and children."
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/does_calif_s_anti_human_trafficking_bill_get_it_wrong/
With plenty of more infp on their links
It is far worse than most people realize (Score:2, Informative)
In some states a man (and laws ecxlude women) can be put on the Sex Offenders list for simply taking a leak in public.
Imagine this, you are driving along a highway miles from anywhere and nature calls. You stop beside the road and answer the call of nature. When you return to your vehicle there is a police car parked behind yours.
"Yes officer I was answering the call of nature"
Boom, you are in the back of the police car and there goes your life. Chaged with being a sex offender simple for answering the call of nature. Oh, and that means you are branded as being a Sex Offender for Life.
In some countries this is not a crime. Guess which are more civilized societies in my mind?