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Senators Call for Universal Internet Filtering
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jul 25, 2007 08:23 PM
from the welcome-to-your-new-child-friendly-web dept.
from the welcome-to-your-new-child-friendly-web dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes "US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children. Their statement came at the end of a Senate hearing in which civil liberties groups were not invited."
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Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Funny)
Where are the parents at? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of the push for this sort of thing is money. The allocations of taxpayer money to devote to these pet filtering and monitoring projects will be huge. One particular military subcontractor, Battelle, was already building an _ENORMOUS_ datacenter in Aberdeen, MD, when I left in '07. Why were they building? Most people working at the (existing) tiny site new that it would be mostly devoted to computer science technology but few people knew exactly what. The inside word was that there were going to be enormous contracts coming down the line for processing, indexing, storing, retrieving, and minin gargantuan amounts of data.
Politicians and top-level businessmen work together for years to figure out how to grant themselves a huge chunk of the taxpayer pie. When the news releases start making it to the headlines it's not a matter for debate anymore--it's after the fact justification. The insider trading knowledge that these folks have, by being able to both write the laws and determine the size of the checks and decide to whom the checks are written, is a golden gift from God for the gravy train.
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of the children!
Yeah--go ahead, install a huge monitoring and filtering system. I'm sure no one will abuse it by monitoring and/or filtering other content.
Zark off senator asshat. I am a responsible parent. I can watch out for my own children.
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Informative)
Well you don't have to look far, when voting against a measure like this will guarantee that next election cycle your opponent will run a black and white ad with ominous music saying, "Sen. Jim Bob wants to protect the rights of sexual predators to contact your children on the internet!"
House races especially are dirty like this. This crap happens all the time, I've even seen it in live debates.
And you want to know the really sad part? A lot of voters eat this stuff up. If you're average Soccer Mom Susie, all of a sudden you're not sure you can trust the candidate anymore, and if you already hated the candidate, well now he or she is the devil himself.
kids are seeing boobies!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:kids are seeing boobies!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:kids are seeing boobies!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that the world you want to live in!
Not just yes, but Hell Yes! The human body is nothing to be ashamed of, though specific people should be ashamed of thier own body.
FalconRe:kids are seeing boobies!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:kids are seeing boobies!! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like when parents get divorced. I, and most of those I know with divorced parents lived happily with parents in separate places, but the _drama_ surrounding the actual divorce hurt some. Those where the parents split up as friends had no problems, since they had a relaxed attitude towards it.
When we treat something natural as sacrilege, we get messed up! Just look at all those priests abusing kids...
On a semi-related note, I also remember seeing a great play called "Blackbird" once, that talk about a sexual abuse case. The question raised by the play is whether the court case, the police interrogation, the parents crying, the need for discretion and forcing the kid to lie to his/her friends did far more damage than the act itself could ever have. Worth having a look at when you feel like screaming "Somebody think of the children!" (thank you, South Park, for this amazing quote).
Note to those who wish to derail the argument: the last example is not to condone abuse of kids, but rather to poke at the way we go about handling such things once they happen.
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Informative)
* Referring, of course, to Inouye's absolutely dismal record at actually getting anything passed, or for that matter, even supporting anything that gets passed. Of 289 bills he sponsored since Jan 21, 1997, only FOUR have become law. And for that, I think we can all be grateful. (source [govtrack.us])
Re:Ok, the end of the Internet is here... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I still think it's a conceptually flawed idea, it's at least better than trying to either censor or round up all of the 'smut' and put it into some sort of a blacklist. Fundamentally, if you're trying to make a 'clean internet,' whitelists are the way to go; not blacklists.
Putting the 'kids' domain under the CC TLDs is even better, because it avoids having to create some sort of international consensus on what's appropriate for children, which isn't feasible. Whatever the Congresscritters decide is OK for kids (violence = okay!, sex = bad!) in the U.S. can get into
The problem with this is is that it's a solution looking for a problem that most people really don't seem to care about.
What should be legislated... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What should be legislated... (Score:5, Insightful)
"They" (Senators/Congress/most parents) didn't.
Parents used to know the locals in their neighborhood and that was enough to adequately monitor their children. Now the neighborhood is everyone on the internet.
Some of their fears are legitimate, so don't dismiss them out of hand.
"We" just need to make sure they don't do anything rash.
Re:What should be legislated... (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing I remeber most about the book is that it was an excellent and entertaining introduction to basic physics and geometry, apparently the thing that the "censors" disliked the most was the fact that witches were involved.
Seems to me that this kind of censorship can only end in tears. I could see an exception being make is for explicit (pre-pubecent) kiddy-porn, snuff-films and the like, since the material itself is evidence of a vile crime. OTOH: Leaving that material up has proven to be an excellent way to track down highly organised child abuse (re: Denmark in the 90's).
As a parent who kids are now adults, I agree that parents do/did have ligitimate concerns but somewhere in the back of my head is a voice that says Murdoch has more to do with this than your average parent. ("29,000 perverts deleted from MySpace" - today's coincidental headline).
As for growing up in a "dangerous world", I can assure you that what was "normal" behaviour in the 60's towards kids would now land you in jail.
Re:What should be legislated... (Score:5, Insightful)
To Die from Over Eating (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good hearty laugh. You are safer today than you ever were. Your generation will live longer then any of the humans that came before you, you most likely you are going to die of a very mundane and boring age related disease. Want to talk about scary? Imagine a world where stepping on a nail is potentially lethal, a scrap can lead to an amputated arm, you can die of a sore throat, or you are a few minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.
What do you have to worry about today? Over eating or smoking. Yeah, that is right... the thing to most likely kill you is stuffing too much food down your gullet or a voluntary behavior. Oh god, the horror... the horror. Your pool is dramatically more likely to kill you than a terrorist. You stand a far better chance of being killed in a car accident than being murdered, and the rate of murder and rape in respect to the overall population has been on a nose dive since the 80s*.
The only thing that has changed in this world is that you are far safer and far more likely to live to be a crotchety old bastard than ever before. We don't need politicians "protecting the children" and more than we ever have.
*http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html
Say what now? (Score:5, Interesting)
"While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child's online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material," Sen. Inouye said. "In that context, we must evaluate our current efforts to combat child pornography and consider what further measures may be needed to stop the spread of such illegal material over high-speed broadband connections."
How does he jump from kids seeing pr0n to pr0n of kids? Is this a special type of logic you learn when you get into politics?
Re:Say what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. It's called juxtaposition. See "Al Qaeda in Iraq"
Re:Say what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
He doesn't understand that the computer's not watching him. So then if "kids are being exploited online"
In other words the senator has no friggin idea what being online is actually like. The worst that happens is some 13 year olds find a few videos of adults at orgies. I've overheard the neighbor kids talking about that as they walk down the street. It's a curiousity, but obviously doesn't mean a lot to them. It wouldn't bother me if that stuff was blocked from such kids, but it doesn't bother me that it's not. It was just in the news that porn site revenues have taken a steep drop in the last year. It seems that our culture's been so saturated with the stuff that people just aren't motivated to buy it like they used to. Maybe the senators figure if they can create a more restrictive environment again, it'll revive the porn industry.
After all, that's worked well with recreational drugs.
Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully fossils like him will just die off or (even better) get thrown out of office and replaced by people who aren't utterly clueless. Our only hope in this situation is for him to kick off, unfortunately, because he'll never stop winning in Alaska as long as he keeps up with the "Bridge to Nowhere" pork projects.
1984 much? (Score:5, Insightful)
My Announcement: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My Announcement: (Score:5, Funny)
Ironic Tubes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ironic Tubes (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully nobody. But Ted has to keep talking. He's got some interesting things going on right now [adn.com] and it's best for him to keep the topic on children.
It would be so much nicer if corrupt oil companies were to do a better job of wiring up unethical politicians' houses for Internet when doing them construction favors. We could have been spared all that tube talk. At least put in a kiddie filter for the guy, he's old.
COPA Part Deux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let parents deal with kids. If the parents can't do it, there are local resources that can help. Legislating to the family unit won't work. There are more important national things begging for attention, like getting a bridge built to a barely inhabited island in AK.
Yes, we MUST catch up with China!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Won't somebody think of the parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
"There are ways for parents to keep their kids from the stuff we want to censor out, but we don't trust them to do it. Also, those darn kids are to sneaky for their parents to stop."
Whatever happened to letting the parents do their job and parent?
Re:Won't somebody think of the parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a lingering feeling that I've been trolled one of the subtlest trolls I've ever seen. Hello, "Velvet Flamebait".
I find that to be somewhat encouraging, actually. Children as young as ten already know more about the Internet than Ted Stevens ever will! So maybe, in another 10 years or so, he'll lose his job and the world will be a better place.
Mine is, actually, but that's not a solution. What that does is it means your kids will go to their friends' house, where you can't monitor them yourself. Or they'll get a DS or a PSP ("Playstation Pornable" was the sensationalist headline), even a laptop (for the schools that give them laptops), and hop on the neighbor's open wireless access point.
Really, as a parent, you have three choices when it comes to "bad" influences:
There's a lot more to parenting than that, of course. But you do need all three of those things.
It's a lot harder to raise a kid in the inner city than it is in the suburbs, so you do want to at least do some geographical isolation. That way, even if they know about hookers from GTA, there aren't any around, unless you're really looking.
More importantly: If they're really looking, they will find gangs, drugs, and sex. (Sex, drugs, and rock & roll.) Same with the Internet. If you are trying to fight a battle to keep them isolated, you will lose. The only sure way to prevent them from being corrupted by all the evil out there (or whatever you think will happen) is to make them incorruptible, and that is what I mean by "inoculate".
And even more importantly: Give it up. I don't care how diehard of a Christian you are, I don't believe in a God who will send them to Hell just for looking at a naked body, or the act of love. (Well, sex, really, most porn isn't about love...) You also have to figure there is a fair chance that they will not become Christian -- or Muslim, or whatever your faith is, but that's really the point. And the list goes on...
It's up to you where to draw the line, but I think if your child grows up to be happy, considerate, honest, productive, and successful -- maybe I forgot a few, but it's pretty simple -- in other words, if your child grows up to be a good person, you've done your job. For example: they may play violent videogames that you don't approve of -- but never even come close to hurting someone in reality. I call that a win.
Who filters the filterers? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have Republicans in Congress propositioning their same-sex underage pages, others sleeping with prostitutes, and a Democrat president a few years back getting frisky with his intern and a box of (contraband) Cuban cigars -- and all this makes it onto the news.
Who's going to protect the children from being exposed to the examples from these pinnacles of morality?
The first thing they'll filter... mp3 downloads. (Score:5, Insightful)
VOTE 3rd party immediately.
Re:The first thing they'll filter... mp3 downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
And people think the second amendment is outdated? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's becoming increasingly apparent that the second might need to be taken out and exercised in the near future.
Re:And people think the second amendment is outdat (Score:5, Insightful)
The really sad part is that your probably right.
The same can be said of the postal system (Score:5, Insightful)
And the same can be said of the fucking postal system.
While it's true that parents can screen the letters that arrive at and are sent from their home post office box to somewhat guard against their children using the postal system to solicit, receive, and exchange adult material, the practice of screening by parents is farm from universal and even when applied may not be fool-proof.
We had better start filtering and monitoring all domestic mail as well. And, my God, what about international mail? We'll have to screen that for sure, maybe even just stop it all.
And, and,
Might This Be.. (Score:5, Interesting)
For those unfamiliar, here's a link to an EFF page on Trusted Computing.
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computi
Here's another link to an excellent piece by Ross Anderson.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html [cam.ac.uk]
Not trying to be all tinfoil-hat-like, but it seems these days that it's trumped-up issues like this that precede an attempt to limit freedoms and increase control of the population. Awareness of these possibilities is the first and most important step to preventing a world none of us wants to live in.
Cheers!
Strat
You people aren't cynical enough! (Score:5, Interesting)
Vote Quimby!
Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parents.
Do
Your
F'in
Jobs
or better yet, don't breed 'em if you don't want the responsibility.
Protecting Children Is Just An Excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should just go ahead and call this what it really is - just another step towards a totalitarian police state.
There's less happening here than it appears (Score:5, Informative)
Sens. Stevens and Inyoue had a similar hearing last year. [senate.gov] Not much happened.
This year, they heard fewer witnesses. [senate.gov] A summary:
The witnesses heard are reasonable ones. We used to see a big presence from the religious right at these things, but that's not happening this time. Nobody was asking for much on the legislative front.
Re:this is why (Score:5, Interesting)
Help us, Obi Ron (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't mind, assuming we returned corporations to a public charter system, in which a corporation may have its charter revoked if it is found to behave illegally. And, I'd like to see some vengeance against the to executives, and make it so if Kenneth Lay dies, we get to see his body so all the ex-Enron employees who were fleeced out of their retirement funds can piss in his cold dead mouth.
'Cause I don't think he's dead.
If the libertarians can promise me that, I'm a convert. 'Cause except for the whole trust-in-the-free-market thing, I'm mostly there.
Actually, I'm a liberal anarcho-constitutionalist. But that's pretty damned close.
Re:I'm not a father (Score:5, Insightful)
It is definitely up to you to prefer one way or another for your children, but in my unqualified opinion there is nothing wrong with satisfying the temporary chemically induced desire with mere patterns of pixels. Even the most burning need can not withstand viewing of 10,000 pr0n photos that are easily available on Usenet or elsewhere. After the pressure dissipates the kid would be able to actually think before making a commitment. Hormones are a poor substitute for a well considered decision.
It is, of course, possible to argue that one-sided attraction to computers (or their screens) is unhealthy. It may be so. But anything one-sided is unhealthy, and a parent should ensure that dangerous activities are done in VR and reasonably safe activities are done in real life, and not the other way around.
Re:That's a terrible point (Score:5, Insightful)
Absurd?
OK, we agree.
A 15 year old?
Abusrd?
A 14 year old?
Absurd? Questionable?
a 12 year old? EXECUTE THE FUCKER!
wait... what about a really big 12 year old.
What about a really stupid 17 year old?
Execute the fucker.
Wait, I have an idea, lets take an extreme case (a 2 year old) and then use it to justify an entire argument.
But wait... how many sex crimes are actually perpetrated against 2 year olds? 75% of "child sex crimes" are perpetrated against teenagers.
Execute them?
I'm confused.
Mark Foley? Surely he's a schmuck. But.... execute the fucker?
OK fine, but what about my best friend. He was 12 when he banged his friend's mom. He still talks about it like it's the freaking icing on the cake of his life and he's almost 30. Should she be executed?
Where do you get off thinking there is some icon of "evil" and some glowing halo of "not evil" and you can automatically decide one gets death and the other gets a medal?
Oh wait... your reaction was based on irrational, emotive impulse, not logic. I forgot.
Stewed