He started it!
There is an expression that I cant quite remember giving advice to lawyers. If you think you might win, argue the merits of the case. If you think you might loose, argue againt the constitutionality of the law.
A couple days ago a court issued a ruling on the case against Kenneth Sodomsky. The guy was caught red handed with child porn but it has now morphed into a federal right to privacy issue. See, he took his computer in to Circuit City and the computer techs there found his stash of porn. At first you might think just as I did and dismiss this with a simple “wow, what a dipshit that guy was” Darwin award. But any time computers, porn, and the law all combine together you just know things are not goign to be that simple.
At the core of the debate is the question on if your privacy can be upheld by a computer technician. After all, if you tell your doctor something privately you would expect them not to break your confidentiality. Same if you confide in your lawyer. Same as if you told your priest in the sacrament of confession. And in a way, the same as a confidential source would talk to a media reporter.
But on the other hand, there are some professions that you wouldn’t expect to keep your secrets private. People just accept that their Tivo is going to send data back to the home office that you were up late at night watching that womens prison film on Cinemax. Your mailman knows you subscribe to Juggs and there ain’t nothing you can do if he decides to tell the world. Your garbageman is laughing with all the guys back at the station about that elbow length rubber glove smeared with lube he found in your trash.
So where do computer techs fall? Can you or can you not expect to maintain your privacy if the people handling your computer find your porn collection?
Well in case you don’t remember the issue already came up last year. Panic set in as a bill was introduced to congress that would require ISPs to keep a log of all trafic basicly forever, and that the government would have access to that log at any time. As you can see from the link, everyone was quick with accusations that the evil right wing neocons were practically running a police state. Never mind that the bill was introduced by a democrat and that W was on record as being against the idea.
Whats critical is who started it. And in the case of the ‘mandatory ISP snooping’ bill it was started by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Or as the article calls him, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Republican!
On second thought, maybe its not about ‘who started it’.
See, back on Febuary 7th the same panic started over the ‘Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predator‘ act. This bill would go a step further than ISPs just keeping records. It would force ISPs to report any suspected illegal activities. In effect, forcing ISPs to become snitches. There goes your privacy.
As you can easily tell, just by reading the article, that right wing neocon John McCain is wanting to push his fundamentalist Christian agenda off onto everyone else and is using ‘think of the children’ as an excuse. Oh sure, the co-sponsor is Chuck Schumer. But he is Jewish so cant really count him as pushing a fundamentalist christian agenda.
There is one problem however. McCain didn’t draft the bill. The bill in question is HR 719 and was drafted by Earl Pomeroy. ‘Who the hell is Earl Pomeroy?’ I hear you ask. Democratic Representative from North Dakota.
Protecting the privacy of your computer, both at Circut City and on the internet, is an important issue. But I dont feel that it is ever goign to be properly addressed as long as the provaling atatude is that everythign will be just peachy if we coudl just get rid of Party_X and having nothing but Party_Y. Government itself IS the problem. And that wont go away if you could just get the ‘correct’ guys into place.