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."
Hrm (Score:2, Interesting)
This law seems open to abuse. What rate limiting system does it use? I use a ton of different nicks in my line of work and I tend to change them multiple times per day.
Re:EFF has it right. (Score:5, Interesting)
A childhood friend of my wife with mental disabilities (I don't know exactly what it was, I'm going off memory from what my wife told me a few years ago) who cant distinguish right from wrong, exposed himself to girls in his group home when he was a teenager is a registered sex offender.
This is a person who was virtually forced out of his home by his parents because they didn't want to deal with his illness anymore, and stuffed into a group home when he was prepubescent... a few years later mix in hormones, possibly interfering medications and a brain that doesn't quite process things right and all of a sudden he's a registered sex offender. He now can't be within a certain distance from schools and has to walk on eggshells while dealing with a mental disorder.
The whole sex offender system is useless without proper investigation or classification.
Re:Yeah right... (Score:5, Interesting)
Every charge sticks unless you can afford to go to trial. Unless you've been wronged by the police before it's pretty hard to have a grip on just how fucked the system is.
Nowadays they can arrest you, make up some false charges... then your in the system and you have to defend yourself with whatever limited resources you have. It's total bullshit and they don't have to ever deal with it again unless you go to trial. Which most people can't and will not. Plea bargains look pretty tasty when your life is in unknown hands and your only form of communication is a telephone that is very restricted.
Here's how to crash their database... (Score:4, Interesting)
...or at least create an unmanageable amount of work for the data-entry bureaucrats: Create a "catch-all" email address, i.e., [anything]@example.com goes to you. This is trivial to do with Postfix. Then make up a list of thousands---or millions---of email addresses @example.com and submit that to them. Making the list is of course trivial with a simple Perl script. Also ensure there are a few specific addresses at the example.com domain that go to someone else, such that the bureaucrats can't simply add "[anything]@example.com" to the registry. (If they do do that, they'd be adding the email address of an innocent third party, which could result in another interesting lawsuit all by itself.)
If any RSOs in California are interested in doing this, contact me (jraxis -@- jraxis.com). I'll set you up a catch-all at one of my domains and generate you a list of a few million random addresses at that domain.
Re:the ironic part is... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the point and that is the long-game being played, here.
Ultimately, "for the children", they will enforce use of real identities for all individuals on the internet. At the very least, there will have to be a registered real identity that is easily referenced for anyone in "authority" without need for a warrant. Ideally (in their mind), your real identity will simply be all you have to act under while online, presented to everyone.
If "bullies durp durp durp" doesn't do it, then "sex offenders durp durp durp!".
Not to mention, if we're so afraid of these people that we have to put scarlet A's on their doors and mailboxes, have then register every activity and location and method of contact on earth, etc, etc... then why the fuck are we even letting them out of prison, in the first place? Either someone has served the time for their crime and has been determined safe to re-enter society or they aren't. (Probation, yadda yadda).
Re:Problem is with sex offense laws, not registry (Score:5, Interesting)
The Judaic Law (I am Catholic) tolerated teen fornication provided the couple got married afterward, yet in the U.S. an 18-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old is considered rape.
Unless both is famous... Justin Bieber was 16 and Selena Gomez 18 when they were papped making out (just tongue kissing but still). Both are California residents and it happened in California, whose statutory rape law clearly make this illegal (misdemeanor fine), yet no charges were ever filed as far as I know.
Re:This will fail.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just look at the 80s and associating pedophilia with homosexuality. I have met heterosexual pedophiles that were truly convinced that they were not child molesters because they were strait, and often their churches supported them in this assertion. I saw churches overlook fathers molesting their daughters because the strength of the idea that it was purely a gay thing, thus whatever they WERE doing couldn't possibility be raping their kid. Pointing this out could often get you ostracized....