John McCain hates freedom

I swear, if it was McCain vs. Hillary I’d either stay home or maybe vote for the Hildebeast.  The man doesn’t understand free speech or freedom in any way.

US SENATOR John McCain is drafting a law that will force ISPs to snoop on what punters do on the Interweb and report illegal images to the cops.

His big idea is to have a national database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to automatically flag and report. If ISPs don’t do this they could be fined $300,000.

According to CNet, the bill is aimed at making it easier to investigate of kiddie pornographers. He will announce details of the bill at a press conference with Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat; John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted; and Lauren Nelson, who holds the title of Miss America 2007.

The Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online Act states ISPs that obtain “actual knowledge” of illegal images must make an exhaustive report including the date, time, offending content, any personal information about the user, and his Internet Protocol address.

This means that not only will ISPs have to snoop on all Internet traffic without a search warrant. Images included will be those of minors, which includes clothed teens in “lascivious” poses, according to the Justice Department. Obscene “cartoons” and “drawings” also qualify.

The way the law is drafted it could also include instant messaging providers and Web-based e-mail systems like Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

Anyone who uses the Internet to break the law in a sex case will get ten years added onto to their sentence.

John McCain has committed a non-stop assault on the First Amendment over the last few years. Now it looks like he’s after the Fourth as well.  So much for needing warrants or even suspicion of wrongdoing.  McCain is actually advocating a world where your ISP must monitor every word you write and every image or video you send or receive.

Not only is it technologically impossible to scan every image and video for some forensic fingerprint that can be altered simply by photoshopping the image a little or transcoding the video - and thereby rendering this entire thing a waste of time - it is philosophically and morally abhorrent.

If you despised Bush’s no-warrant wiretapping, then surely this much make you unbelievably angry.  Do something about it.  This page has contact information for every member of the Senate.  I propose that we write our individual Senators, and then send a polite but sternly worded email/fax to John McCain’s office explaining that George Orwell wrote fiction, and the statistically insignificant amount of people trading child pornography online does not give the government the right to monitor everyone in America, or the right to force a private company to monitor everyone in America who uses the Internet.

As I said the other day, we have to stop letting this country be defined by the extremists, and extremists are generally the only ones who write their Congresspeople.  I think it’s time the silent majority spoke the hell up.  We’re all for protecting children, but you must not corrupt the basis of our entire legal system to do it.

Contact your Senator - Contact John McCain’s office

After the jump, the letter I just sent.

Senator McCain,

While I may not be one of your constituents, your actions directly affect me, and so I hope you would take the time to read this.

Have you no respect for the Constitution, sir?  The Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online Act is abhorrent to those who value the ideals of freedom.  It violates every concept of the Fourth Amendment.  Perhaps you need a refresher:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No warrants shall be issued but upon probable cause.  Safe in their persons, houses, papers and effects.  Do these words mean nothing to you?  Would you smash apart the very foundation of our justice system in the name of catching a handful of pedophiles, most of whom will have moved technologically beyond your reach the moment this proposed bill became a law?  They will always be three steps ahead of you, sir, and abusing my rights is never going to catch this kind of scum, who spend all day thinking of ways to avoid detection.

The bill you propose would force ISPs to monitor every piece of text, every image and every video that goes through their system, all in the hopes of catching what is, and if you are being honest you’ll admit this, a statistically insignificant amount of offenders when compared to the tens of millions that use the Internet!

You have no right to monitor everyone all the time, and you have no right to force private companies to do the monitoring on your behalf.  Shame on you, Senator McCain.  You fought to protect freedom in this country, and lately you have been at the forefront of taking it away.

Posted by JimK at 05:13 PM on February 09, 2007
Permalink | Trackbacks (1) | Email to a friend |

Categories: News,  Politics,  Technobabble (Technology),  The Internet(s)
Tags:
Technorati: John McCain senate bill politics

Post a Comment:

The trackback URL for this entry is: http://www.right-thoughts.us/index.php/trackback/2914/BJMgXDCB/

Trackbacks: