It's for the children, don't you know.

US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited.

Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children.

“While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child’s online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material," Sen. Inouye said. “In that context, we must evaluate our current efforts to combat child pornography and consider what further measures may be needed to stop the spread of such illegal material over high-speed broadband connections."

"Given the increasingly important role of the Internet in education and commerce, it differs from other media like TV and cable because parents cannot prevent their children from using the Internet altogether," Sen. Stevens said. "The headlines continue to tell us of children who are victimized online. While the issues are difficult, I believe Congress has an important role to play to ensure that the protections available in other parts of our society find their way to the Internet."

Nobody I know is for kiddie porn or sexual solicitation of children over the internet. However, I've got a bit of a problem here, in that this proposal would make the government the censor of the internet, imposing a prior restraint upon the publication of any material until it has been signed-of on by a government employee of some sort. The First Amendment bans such prior restraint in the case of printed material and broadcast material. I fail to see how it could not do so for the internet.

And, of course, once we set the precedent for kiddie porn, the next step is to impose restraints on other material deemed harmful to children -- perhaps government limits on so-called "hate speech" -- in an attempt to make the internet safe for kids. The result, would be, limiting the freedom of adults to access legal, adult-appropriate material on the internet. because when the government decides that only that which is appropriate for children can be published, then adults are only permitted to read or watch that which is deemed to be appropriate for children.

H/T Captain's Quarters

Posted by: Greg at 01:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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