The SAFE Act

Below copied from an article 'House Tries to Make the Internet SAFE' by Frederick Lane, of newsfactor.com  


By an overwhelming margin -- 409 to 2 -- the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation on Thursday aimed at making the Internet safer for children. The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act was sponsored by Texas Democrat Nick Lampson, one of the founding members of the House Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.
......
According to a press release from Rep. Lampson's office, ISPs would be fined $150,000 per incident per day for first offenses, and $300,000 per incident per day for second and succeeding offenses.
.....
the bill's definition of ISP -- anyone offering an open Wi-Fi service -- could apply to municipalities, libraries, coffee shops, or even individuals who fail to password protect their Wi-Fi router. The language of the legislation, which was adopted without congressional hearings or significant debate, may also apply to social-networking sites, e-mail service providers, and Internet search engines
........
As it is currently drafted, the legislation applies not merely to photographs of minors engaged in sexual activity (which is clearly child pornography), but also more subjective material, including photographs of minors in provocative poses and sexually explicit cartoon drawings depicting minors.

__________________________________________________________________________

Well our great elected officials are at it again. Under the guise of  'protecting the children' they are moving again to censor and terrorize the freest form of information dissemination currently available to the populace. Is any one 'in favor ' of child pornography? Well I suppose some are, but I am certainly not among them and if this legislation had any chance of significantly stemming the business or, for that matter was even intended to, I might support it.

However it simply has no chance of working as supposedly intended. It is literally as blatantly stupid as saying that the US Postal Service, United Parcel Service, FedEX, DHL, and any other courier/mail service be fined  500,000 dollars (average shipping is 3 days so with the per day rate.....) anytime they transport a package that turns out to have something that someone might possibly consider to be pornography in it.. Or maybe the telephone company should be fined $150,000 to $300,000 anytime they transport a FAX that someone somewhere might possibly consider to be pornographic. (In fact, why aren't they suggesting that the telephone and cable companies be fined $150,000 to $300,000 for every objectionable image they allow to be transmitted over their service? Couldn't be because that would madden the people spending bribe money so lavishly to get the right to completely control the Internet I suppose.)

I am willing to accept that most of the 409 'yes' voters are just too ignorant to see the uselessness of this bill to cure the actual problem and voted 'yes' because “How could you be against the kids?”. But you certainly don't get that kind of vote without some pushing and shoving by somebody. I mean, when was the last time a bill even got 409 votes in any direction at all (except for pay raises, of course)? So what were the proponents really after?

What they are after is a club! A 'big frippin club' with which to terrorize Internet Service Providers, Network providers and Search Services. Because those 'damn things' keep telling everybody everything!    This law is totally impractical for its stated purpose. There is not, at this point in time and in all likelihood  ever, any software that can tell the difference between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' images. Therefore, the only chance the services have to comply with the law is to hire thousands upon thousands of humans to view each and every image that anyone anywhere in the world attempts to store, however temporarily, on their equipment, and immediately pass accurate judgment as to its 'acceptability'. Not only is the cost totally prohibitive, the privacy intrusion is ridiculous and the likely acceptability of the results negligible because of the vagueness of the definitions. So, of course, no service will even make any serious attempt to comply. But the backers of the legislation are completely aware of this! And it is exactly what they want! If the bill were to become law ALL Internet services could be blackmailed into the censorship that supporters of the bill actually desire at any time. “If we see anything more about  Iran not having nukes, we might go looking for kiddie porn.” and since it is possible to key word search and destroy text, well.... how hard do you think even the best financially set services could resist?

Nothing threatens tyranny as much as an informed populace so nothing is as important to the tyrant as controlling the 'information' available to the populace. This bill, The 'Patriot Act', and most if not all bills pushed through on an agenda of 'saving the people' are simply 'clubs' designed in reality to strip away our freedoms, probably most importantly our 'freedom to know' what the 'powers that be' want hidden.