House Votes for Big Brother Public Wi-Fi Law

Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet
Thursday, December 6, 2007

Nowadays, since “everything changed,” it is normal for Congress to rush legislation through without hearings or committee votes.

Congress did this with the “Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act,” a government nanny law supposedly designed to protect children from illegal images, including “obscene” cartoons and drawings, available over open Wi-Fi connections.

The “broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user’s account be retained for subsequent police inspection,” Declan McCullagh writes for CNet News.

SAFE passed 409 to 2.

“Not one Democrat opposed the SAFE Act. Two Republicans did: Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning presidential candidate from Texas, and Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia.”

Paul and Broun are the only two members of the House who understand the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

McCullagh continues:

This is what the SAFE Act requires: Anyone providing an “electronic communication service” or “remote computing service” to the public who learns about the transmission or storage of information about certain illegal activities or an illegal image must (a) register their name, mailing address, phone number, and fax number with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s “CyberTipline” and (b) “make a report” to the CyberTipline that (c) must include any information about the person or Internet address behind the suspect activity and (d) the illegal images themselves. (By the way, “electronic communications service” and “remote computing service” providers already have some reporting requirements under existing law too.)

In other words, the local bookstore or coffee shop with an open WiFi connection will now be forced by the government to snoop on its patrons, lest these business owners be held liable for what their patrons view. No doubt, instead of dealing with this Big Brother role imposed on them by the government, in addition to paying business taxes, many will likely stop offering WiFi connectivity.

There are two more points worth noting. First, the vote on the SAFE Act seems unusually rushed. It’s not entirely clear that the House Democratic leadership really meant this legislation to slap new restrictions on hundreds of thousands of Americans and small businesses who offer public wireless connections. But they’ll nevertheless have to abide by the new rules if senators go along with this idea (and it’s been a popular one in the Senate).

The second point is that Internet providers already are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency. So there’s hardly an emergency, which makes the Democrats’ rush for a vote more inexplicable than usual.

It makes even more sense if you consider the recent passage of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, co-authored by the former chair of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, a California Democrat. Naturally, few people will be looking at child pornography at the local coffee shop, but they might be looking at a website that is deemed terrorist by one of the Ministry of Homeland Security’s “centers of excellence.” It should be remembered that the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act focuses on the internet as the medium responsible for transmitting terrorist rhetoric and ideas.

Our “representatives” want you to believe they are protecting children from molesters and perverts. In fact, what they are doing is constructing piece by piece a police state. Government is far more interested in rubbing out all opposition and protecting citizens from sexual predators ranks low on the list of priorities.

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