TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Tag: legislation

  • Written Permission

    Cross seeks new Internet safety laws to shield kids:

    State legislators in Illinois are trying to pass a law that would require sites like MySpace and Facebook to get written parental permission before kids would be allowed on the site.

    This may be the stupidest proposed legislation yet.

    Is the state going to verify each and every written permission that they receive to make sure the signatures are authentic? Because you know no kid would ever just have someone sign as their parents.

    Let’s throw some reactionary quotes from politicians in order to enrage the unenlightened.

    Cross and Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow acknowledged the proposed laws are aggressive and that lawmakers could face some obstacles in getting them passed. Some judges might feel some of the proposals could violate freedom of speech, Glasgow said.

    But they also said it would be worth the fight.

    “This is an area that is constantly evolving,” said Glasgow, calling the Internet a “portal to hell” where children are concerned. “We have to very aggressively push the legislative envelope.”

    This isn’t pushing the legislative envelope, it’s legislatively crashing and burning.

    The government wasn’t designed to be parents to everyone.

  • Indiana doesn’t get it either

    Indiana doesn’t get it either

    Law could ban sex offenders from Myspace:

    Just like his cohorts from other states, Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter just doesn’t get it. Like his other counterparts, he is proposing legislation that is supposed to keep registered sex offenders off of MySpace and other social networking sites.

    Carter says convicted sex offenders will be required to give police their usernames and emails at the same time they register with their basic information like where they live.

    As usual, Attorney General Carter doesn’t address the issues of registered sex offenders using different e-mails and usernames that they gave police or sex offenders who haven’t been caught yet. Not to mention clueless parents who let their children roam the internet unchecked. Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Those clueless parents are also voters.

  • AG Cooper strikes again

    AG Cooper strikes again

    Cooper cracks down on predators:

    The North Carolina Attorney General is up to his old tricks again. Putting unreal expectations on MySpace and allowing parents to continue to shirk their responsibility.

    The rules on how children use social networking sites like MySpace.com could soon be changing.

    State lawmakers are working on a bill that would require parents to give permission before their children use those type of Web sites. North Carolina attorney general Roy Cooper will testify before a House committee Tuesday about the need for tougher laws.

    Cooper says online sites are a playground for predators, citing that as of this July, more than 29,000 registered sex offenders have been found using MySpace.com and that’s jut those who are using their real names.

    I think he got that number from the Department of Pulling Things out of Your Ass. That’s the first I’ve heard the 29K figure. According to this article, 29,000 is what Cooper is claiming that MySpace has told him. MySpace has yet to confirm.

    MySpace.com is currently open only to users age 14 or older, but the company doesn’t perform any kind of verification. Cooper wants social networking sites to require parents’ permission before children can join, including procedures to verify the parents’ identity and age.

    Again, he doesn’t tell us how he expects MySpace to do that.

    “It wont’ be a perfect system. Just like any other kind of age verification system, you’ve got kids who fake driver’s licenses, you’ve got kids who fake their age to get into an R-rated movie,” Cooper said. “Those kinds of things are going to happen on the Internet as well, but the key is to put a barrier up to better protect kids on the Internet and we think this will be important.”

    Except it’s not against the law to sneak into an R rated movie. And isn’t that up to the parents to make sure their underage kids don’t see R rated movies?

    If passed, Senate Bill 132 would also ban North Carolina sex offenders from social networking sites, enhance the criminal penalty for soliciting minors for sex over the Internet and expand the law regarding child pornography to include indecent exposure.

    I’d like to see how they’re going to keep SOs off sites like MySpace. Enhancing the penalty for child solicitation isn’t going to stop predators from approaching kids. It may even put kids more at danger.

    On the next election day, Attorney General Cooper’s slogan should be “Long on ideas. Short on solutions.”

  • More ineffective legislation

    More ineffective legislation

    MySpace and Kentucky Sex Offenders:

    Put Kentucky down as another state that is deluded into thinking that sex offenders are going to comply with registering their online identities.

    Tuesday afternoon at the capital rotunda, the state met with a MySpace official to put an end to this ongoing problem with the help of a new measure called Senate Bill 65.

    The new law, requires sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses on-line.

    However if a sex offenders gives authorities a fraudulent e-mail address they will be sent back to jail.

    The new law will also help sites like MySpace cross-reference Kentucky’s sex offender registry with their own data base.

    I hate to sound like a broken record or a skipping CD for that matter, but this law is all bark and no bite. This will not stop sex offenders from using fraudulent e-mails. The threat of jail rarely stops sex offenders as it is. And again, this does nothing about the sex offenders who have never been caught.

    Instead of making laws about MySpace, how about making laws that keep sex offenders in jail longer?

    Thanks to Jessica for the link.