More Bad Anti-Porn Legislation Proposed

In IT Professionals Would Be Required to Report Child Porn Under Proposal at Capitol by Susan Haigh, WTIC reports yet another example of sugar-coated, feel-good, bad legislation being considered by a legislature than is clueless.

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. (AP) _ Computer technicians would be obligated to report child abuse just like doctors, teachers and others who work closely with children, under measures being considered by lawmakers in two states.

At least five states _ Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota _ require computer technicians to report child pornography. Connecticut and California are considering legislation that would go a step farther, adding technicians to the list of ``mandated reporters'' who notify authorities about any type of child abuse and neglect.

``Computer usage is a very real part of our culture and daily activities,'' said New Britain Police Sgt. James P. Wardell. ``Laws must change and evolve to reflect this ever-changing technological advancement.''

Officer Wardell is correct, the laws must change but not in this way.

Laws that assume that content found on any computer is the direct result of activity by the owner are out of touch with the "ever-changing technological advancement" officer Wardell cites.

As we've seen in the Julie Amero case, computers now perform life-cycle activity that may be completely unknown and uncontrollable to the user. The fact that an image, link, or even program exists on a computer may be wholly co-incidental to the owner's experience, intent, and lifestyle. To apply the legal concept that possession is 9/10th's of the law would be a miscarriage of justice in every case. In fact the activity of the technician could very well contaminate the customer's drive.

Add to the confusion of how one would acquire the expertise to know without a shadow of a doubt that any image is a real person under the age of sixteen and you have an Orwellian recipe for disaster.

No law is better than a blind, dumb one. Certainly images that suggest existing criminal activity should be reported as a matter of professional and civic duty.On the other hand, requiring the Computer community to suddenly report every instance of pornographic material found on private computers exposes parents of teens and the teens themselves to odious social harm.

The fact of the matter is that young boys will seek out pornographic materials unknown to teachers, parents, and others. This is a natural curiosity that accompanies becoming a man. In a 2005 article called, The secret life of boys, Pornography is a mouse click away, and kids are being exposed to it in ever-increasing numbers by Bella English, the Boston Globe tells us the facts about pornography and teens.

Those who work with adolescents agree that parents who discover their child is downloading porn regularly should be firm without shaming him. Kendrick likens it to obscene rap lyrics or suggestive videos that parents forbid. ''You can say, I understand how you can be very curious about these images, but we don't support people who think of women in these ways. . . . We don't welcome them into our house, not through the boombox or your iPod, not through the radio, or the television, and not through the Internet."

Kendrick might want to add cellphones to that list. Companies such as Playboy and X-rated film producers have announced plans to bring ''adult material" to cellphone carriers, which they ultimately expect to be even more lucrative than Internet porn.

Today, one-third of children between ages 11 and 17 have their own cellphones. The number is expected to increase to nearly 50 percent in two years.

Kids and porn

According to a poll released in March by the Kaiser Family Foundation:

70 percent of teens ages 15-17 say they have accidentally come across porn while using the Internet.

25 percent of the boys admit they have lied about their age to access a website.

76 percent of the teens say their schools have Internet filters on the computers.

33 percent say their home computer has a filter.

Family Safe Media, an outfit that sells Internet filters and other blocking devices, has also compiled research on the topic. It has found:

The average age at which a child is first exposed to Internet porn is 11.

The largest consumer of Internet porn is kids between ages 12 and 17.

12 percent of all websites are porn sites.

25 percent of all search engine requests are for porn.

The article is worth reading. And once you read it, you have to ask yourself if you want every Skippy computer technician turning a mom, dad, or teen to police for felony investigation. And you also have to ask yourself if you want to arm the Skippy's of the world with the power to destroy a family or individual by planting such material on a drive. Political and corporate reputations could be washed away by the simple accusation. And once again, the material may be co-incidental, automatically generated, or planted with few clues as to the truth.

This suggestion for a law is a bad idea and it should be rejected.

Perjury in the Amero Case Revisited in Finer Detail

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Porn Royalties at the Norwich Bulletin

No publication has pounded the proverbial table as hard as the Norwich Bulletin in insisting that Julie Amero was an agent of immoral and illegal behavior in the classroom. In news item after news item, she is treated like a social leper.

And because I've defended Julie, I try to keep abreast of what the Norwich Bulletin is saying about the case these days. I use two search words, "amero" and "porn". Last night nothing new appeared but what did appear surprised me.

The search for "porn" produced the Norwich Bulletin's own recommended product sponsors.

Under Local Web Info is an entry for a Bee Control Co. that offers "teen porn" and "school girl porn". To the right of that a Shop Local set of listings for United Porn products.

If you look further into the listings you'll find this interesting entry:

That's right. Ledyardchurch.com features "...porn pay-site reviews. Largest porn star buyer's guide.", and so on.

What this all means is the the hairstyling site Julie Amero stumbled into could very well have been one of the Norwich Bulletin's recommended vendors for all we know. And furthermore the Norwich Bulletin or a like merchant might have made money on the clicks.

Now, not for a moment do I believe Julie, The Bulletin, or a Ledyard Church are pushing porn knowingly. So why is Julie the only one convicted here.

This country has been ill-served by legislation that felonizes the possession of drugs or pornography near school buildings. In urban areas the results are disastrous. In the case of the Norwich Bulletin, a child that accesses porn while doing research on local issues in their newspaper and clicks on a church site that spews porn might automatically hold the newspaper liable on a morals charge.

And I'm guessing the newspaper would sing a very different tune if the shoe were on their foot.

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Julie Amero, Porn, and the Danger of Disney

"I ask this rhetorical question: Where does objectionable material come from - a site like Disney.com or the pornographic dot coms? Where do abusive JavaScript and Web Attacker kits reside?" - Detective Lounsbury, as reported at Network Performance Daily

It is predictably sad that Detective Lounsbury, the prosecutor, the defending attorney, the jury, the superintendent, and just about everyone involved in this case has no idea what they don't know. That's right. Unless they've been reading our content, they still don't know what they don't know.

Let's talk about it.

In a research project called Strider, Microsoft discovered this;

The Microsoft researchers found that Web sites aimed at kids were a regular target. Several variations of Disney Channel's "kimpossible.com" have been registered and all redirect to a parked anchor for the misspelled "disnryland.com." On that site, Google AdSense ads for adult content and pornography are being served.

The data from the Strider Typo-Patrol System also highlighted the use of typo-squatting in phishing attacks. Web sites belonging to Bank of America Corp., Barclays Bank PLC., Citigroup Inc. have all been targeted, with misspelled variations of domains pointing to fake banking sites with Google ads tailored to financial services.

Not only was Lounsbury wrong, he was LOUD wrong. But that's just the tip of a prosecution morals racket that puts every American at risk. That's right, when any jury in this country is shown the graphic content found on the accused's computer they are sickened. And rightly so. But what they don't realize is that their home computer may contain the same stuff. In fact the judge, jury, lawyers, reporters, and townsfolk may have that and worse.

Let's talk about "Bring Your Kids to Work Day". Lots of companies encourage this. They let little Dick and Jane sit at the company computers and surf. And the kids do. They spell and misspell all kinds of sites they love including Disney.

So what?

Read this testimonial from a private investigator endorsing ComputerCop Pro;

"My most recent case two weeks ago involved a publicly held corporation and $100 million. I was given search criteria by the client and uncovered hundreds of erased files including emails. As a result of the investigation, the CEO/president of the company was fired."

Wow!

Let's think about this. You or me, a teacher, priest, CEO, anybody can have their computer scanned and be prosecuted or fired or humiliated because their child visited Disney but typed it wrong!

You see, Julie Amero is no more responsible for what happened on an unprotected school computer than you or I are on our protected ones. Now that we all know this, there is no need for Det. Lounsbury to insist beyond credibility that Julie was porn surfing, or that the attorneys had a clue what the state of the computer was, or that the judge could smell the stench of the prosecutor's claims.

This is a mistrial and a tragic miscarriage of Justice. Everyone needs to admit it sooner than later.

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Why Julie Amero Matters - Computers in Society

"Freedom begins when you tell Mrs Grundy to fly a kite" -- Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

This is a follow-up to my previous post on the Julie Amero case.

A few months ago my son, an EO Smith student, was studying Arthur Miller's "The Crucible". He wandered around the house for weeks wrestling with the play. "What does burning witches have to do with today?" I'm sure he wasn't the only student who couldn't quite resolve the issue... yet.

The Julie Amero case is yet another Crucible being played out in small town America. It represents the eternal tension between those who live in a world they cannot understand and those whose very existence adds complexity, risk, and the temptations of the unknown chance.

Her case is a threat to computers in any classroom. Computer manufacturers such as Gateway, Dell, and others should look hard at what's going on here. You see, what teacher will ever turn on a computer in class if the risk is that they can be prosecuted and jailed for life because of malware? The answer is no one.

And her case is a threat because any international terrorist who is sophisticated enough to hijack an online PC (and they are) can blackmail, smear, or humiliate any priest, police officer, teacher, lawyer, whoever by letting the American public lynch them. Without firing a shot, innocent Americans on any stripe can be targeted and quite easily disengaged without a trace of manipulation being left behind to incriminate the real culprits.

Our obligation to the new generations of American children must be to teach them that objectionable stuff exists in cyberspace and they'll need to confront it. In Ashford, from an early age, our kids pass a poster that asserts "Character is what you do when no one is looking". At the high school level, one can only hope that message is reinforced by trusting students to exercise good internet habits.

But prosecutions such as Julie Amero's affect all private citizens who own computers. Who can explain all of the garbage that accumulates on their home computers? I'll venture to guess very few.

The key, of course, is that we engage them in the internet, and computers, and the risks that represents. We cannot, anywhere in America, assume guilt when a human is associated with automated behaviors on a computer or browser.

I hope Joe Courtney is made aware of this case and works for legislation that addresses the need for protections for Americans who are being prosecuted on morality charges as though the actions of an infected computer are willful actions of an individual who happens to be there at the time. We have long passed the threshold of being able to attribute - without a shadow of a doubt - whether a computer user is wholly aware of what may be happening under the covers of their own machine.

It is time, once again, to end the witch-hunts.