Protecting the children is the new homeland security
McCain introduced a bill that would require sex offenders to register all their email addresses and screen names with the Federal government (or face 10 years in prison). Any social networking site will be forced to scan it userbase for these screen names and emails, and remove any posts by a sex offender. So if you are found guilty of urinating in public (that’s a sex offense in most states), you would basically be banned from the modern internet. Furthermore, McCain wants to force every “Internet social networking site, chat room, message board, or any other similar service using the Internet”, as well as every search engine, email provider, or IM server, to report any user-submitted content that may be classified as “obscene” under Federal guidelines. And if, for instance, your email provider does not censor your mail, it will faces a fine of up to $50 000 - $300 000 per incident (depending on whether the failure to censor is accidental or deliberate). I am sure this legislation sounds familiar. This is because China, the shining beacon of online freedom and democracy, also requires people to register their online identities and employs college students to report any “obscene” forum posts. Of course, the Chinese laws were widely condemned by pretty much every Western government. But that was before US politicians discovered that it’s election season…
Some other parts of the bill are also amusingly idiotic. For instance, using the Internet is now an aggravating factor when committing a sex offense, and will add 10 years to your sentence. That’s right, McCain thinks that molesting someone in real life is better than chatting then up online.
You can read the full text of the bill. It really is as bad as I am making it sound.
So it seems we have the choice between Hillary (who is campaigning for censorship to protect the children) and McCain (who seeks to destroy internet privacy to protect the children). This is rather like choosing which of your legs you want the government to chop off.