Redstate

Nancy Pelosi wants to ban all free wireless Internet access in America.

HTML Help for Red Staters

anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.

That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

If I own a popular, independent coffee shop, all that a nationally franchised coffee chain has to do to shut me down is hire a saboteur to pass some risque photos of 16 year olds on my wireless network, and then turn me in for not catching it?

Considering that about a dozen big movie/music companies were recently caught hiring saboteurs that use DoS attacks and deliberately put malware, viruses, and other crap on ThePirateBay.org, I wouldn't say this is a stretch of the imagination.

Evil prevails only when good men do nothing.

But it also includes photographs of fully clothed minors in overly "lascivious" poses, and certain obscene visual depictions including a "drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting." (Yes, that covers the subset of anime called hentai).

Considering that the left has a virtual monopoly on deciding just what is "obscene" they, along with CAIR, could use it as a club against anyone who is against radical Islam.

Evil prevails only when good men do nothing.

Pelosi didn't look at SF street fair for her inspiration on porn and sex in the streets, instead of coffee shops and wireless Internet. Probably too obvious for a Liberal to notice anything out of the ordinary.

-------------
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.

I can't believe all our Republicans save two voted against this. This is...absurd. I mean, like the article says, we're painting with such a broad brush we're actually banning hentai! It's a sad day when the entire Congress decides that fear of technology supersedes the Constitution.

Thank you Rep. Broun. Thank you Rep. Paul. To the latter, I just remembered why I will support you over nearly any Democrat and Tom Tancredo.

www.mikehuckabee.com

*step on soap box*

This is why we need to ensure Paul Broun is re-elected. He faces serious primary challenge from the establishment in Georgia.

Don't get me wrong--I like many of the Republicans in Georgia. But Paul Broun tightly sticks to his principles and does not float along with the party when it errs.

The sad part is that Broun's primary challenger is a good guy--in almost any other race, I would support him. But Broun has proven himself to stick tightly to our conservative values, and we need more Reps like him. It kills me that our state party is supporting Broun's potential ouster.

He could use your support: www.paulbroun.com

*step of soap box*

**********************************
And statesmen at her council met
Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet
- Tennyson, _To the Queen_

The same people who claim that we're now living in a facist ditatorship because the goverment can get access to library records and terrorists are wiretapped without warrants, now threatens every WiFi provider with fines and/or jail time if they don't monitor traffic and report "feelthy pikchures" to Big Brother?

What am I missing here?

BTW, shame on *any* legislator for voting "yes" on a piece of legislation introduced in secrecy and rushed through the process. I've always thought that the whole purpose of the system was to _prevent_ just such things from happening.
_______________________________________-
"You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice" - Scott Adams (speaking through Dogbert)

So they voted for the legislation as well? Very disappointing. I'm glad Broun & Paul registered their dissent.

---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

Pardon me for being a cynic, but in a democratic republic people get the government that they deserve. Tens of millions of people want this kind of feel-good crap that does nothing useful and causes boatloads of trouble. So long as the bill is titled something like "The Noodles for Children Act," they are all for it. They don't really care what it does, and once the news cycle is over announcing that the politicians have acted to solve the problem, they'll never think about it again.

Listen to the media. How often do you hear statements based on the assumption that there are "problems," and that the role of the government is to "address problems," and that politicians who aren't "taking action" to "solve problems" are worthless?

So this is what we get. And we deserve it, because the politicians know full well that they will be rewarded for passing this. They have saved TheChildren™ from porn on the Internet. Or something. Anyway, it's about children and the Internet, and that has been a problem lately. So good on the politicians. When they return home to their districts, they will brag about how they voted for Noodles for Children, and everyone will clap and cheer. Even the Republicans will brag about it, even though they only did it because they knew that the newspapers would run cartoons of them taking noodles from the mouths of children if they didn't. Plus Mike Huckabee would call them greedy, and say that we Republicans have simply got to address the problem of getting noodles to the children.

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

Terrorism is the root password to the Consitution. Child Pornography is the backdoor exploit. If I lived in Rep. Braun's District, I'd vote for him now. (same For Voldemort, but that goes without saying)

The biggest problem is finding someone to actually have standing to challenge the law...

Slashdot article for further commentary if anyone is interested:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/06/1354232

---
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble, I like my coffee black, just like my Metal." - MSI

It would appears that the bill does not call for actually policing what users are viewing, but that they must report material as covered by the bill if they are aware of it.

In other words, if the coffee house owner doesn't KNOW that the guy sipping latte in the corner with his laptop is viewing kiddie porn, everything is OK.

More "feel good" nonsense with no teeth.

SEC. 2258A. REPORTING REQUIREMENTS OF ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS AND REMOTE COMPUTING SERVICE PROVIDERS.

`(a) Duty To Report-

`(1) IN GENERAL- Whoever, while engaged in providing an electronic communication service or a remote computing service to the public through a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, obtains actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2) shall, as soon as reasonably possible--

(snip)

"(f) Protection of Privacy- Nothing in this section shall be construed to require an electronic communication service provider or a remote computing service provider to--
(1) monitor any user, subscriber, or customer of that provider;
(2) monitor the content of any communication of any person described in paragraph (1); or
(3) affirmatively seek facts or circumstances described in subsection (a)(2)."

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:2:./temp/~c110T248bF::

Passing useless bills that will do little about kiddie porn at the expense of free internet access doesn't give me "warm fuzzies".

Expecting an owner of a coffee house to somehow police the activity of every wireless user in the vicinity is absurd ( and the bill doesn't do that, anyway)

But I imagine many of the free wireless locations will shut down out of fear. It would appear that the Democrats are picking up where Larry Craig got off the bus.