You spin me round round babby round round
In retrospect I should have seen it comming.
I had written before about the ‘PROTECT Our Children Act’. It had all sorts of dangerous stuff in the bill, from spying on internet trafic to re-criminilizing ‘fake’ porn even after a 2002 supreme court ruling said soing such a thing was unconstitutional. All sexual-rights orgnizations I knew of were suspiciously sielent on the issue.
I had hinted that the reason for the silence was because of partisan politics. After all, the bill was sponsered by the democratic vice presidental canadate Joe Biden, cosponcered by presidental canadite Obama and almost canidate Hillary Clinton. It was promoted and publisised on the Oprah winfrey show. I found it doubtful that any sexual-rights group would ever dare to point out how a democrat was trampling on sexual freedom.
But the real sticking point for me was the process. Pass a law that you know ahead of time is going to get ruled unconstitutional. That way you can claim in your campain adds that you voted to ‘proted the children’ and yet still never change the status quo. Advocacy groups wouldent block it while its going through congress, only object to it as unconstitutional as soon as it passes into law. Well, the bill was signed into law on monday so now I suspected advocacy geroups would start in with their atacks.
Unfortunatly the law is STILL being ignored because another law passed at the same time, the ‘Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008′, is getting all the press and is pusing the ‘PROTECT Our Children Act’ out of the headlines. This other one is just as stupid. Creats the same issue with government spying on internet trafdic. Creats a national database of emails that sexual predators have to regester all theri emails with.
Of corse this assumes that people on the sexual predators list will coroperate and not just go create some new free email address once the one they are using gets flaged. Also there is nothing from stoping a malicious predator for turning in someone elses email other than his own. If you wind up on the bad side of some child rapist, they can turn your address in claiming they are regestering their address. And once your name is on the list good luck ever corecting the false accuzation.
The bill was sponsered by democrat Sen. Charles Schumer and its co-sponsers included John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Voting on the bill resulted in 228 democrats voting in favor and zero voting againt (4 democrats withheld voting). But to be fair, republicans voted 198-0 in favor of it also. Schumer even gave a press statement and a speach barging about his work.
So why is it that two bills, both writen by democrats, both creating spying on internet trafic, both with other unconstititunal parts, and both claiming they are doing it to ‘proterct the children’ wind up with one being ignored and yet the other being (finaly) questioned by advocacy groups.
Isnt it obvious?
From Wired >>>>> “…..authored by Senator John McCain and signed by President Bush…..”
So a big ‘Yippie’ for the Center for Democracy and Technologyfor finaly voicing concerns over this law. But a big ‘fuck you’ for everyone else trying to spin it into a donkey v. elephant thing. Both presidental canadates were cosponsers alongside Shumer. Both political parties voted unanimously in favor. Both sponsered their own companion bill that was just as stupid. But blame does not go toward both.