McCain Bill Is Lethal Injection For Internet Freedom

McCain Bill Is Lethal Injection For Internet Freedom

McCain Bill Is Lethal Injection For Internet Freedom
Exploits fear of sexual predators and basic misunderstanding of Internet to attack blogs critical of the warmongering agenda he fronts for

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, December 15, 2006

Republican Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards, effectively nixing the open exchange of ideas on the Internet, providing a lethal injection for unrestrained opinion, and acting as the latest attack tool to chill freedom of speech on the world wide web.

McCain's proposal, called the "Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act," encourages informants to shop website owners to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who then pass the information on to the relevant police authorities.

Comment boards for specific articles are extremely popular and also notoriously hard to moderate. Popular articles often receive comments that run into the thousands over the course of time. In many cases, individuals hostile to the writer's argument deliberately leave obscene comments and images simply to sully the reputation of the website owners. Therefore under the terms of this bill, right-wing extremists from a website like Free Republic could effectively terminate a liberal leaning website like Raw Story by the act of posting a single photograph of a naked child. This precedent could be the kiss of death for blogs as we know them and its reverberations would negatively impact the entire Internet.

Under the banner of saving the children from sexual predators, McCain is obviously on a mission to stamp out the influence of the burgeoning blogosphere and its increasing hostility to the warmongering agenda that he fronts for.

"This constitutionally dubious proposal is being made apparently mostly based on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts," warns Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

McCain has publicly expressed his distaste for blogs in the past and this is why any protestation that he is simply aiming to "protect the children" with this legislation falls on deaf ears.

In a May 2006 speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, McCain attacked the blogosphere as a refuge of those only infatuated with self-expression. He was trying to minimize the importance of the last true outpost of freedom of speech, the Internet, and portray it as nothing more than a swap shop for egos and hyperbole.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get 5 months free at Prison Planet.tv when you sign up for our Christmas Special! TV shows, conference footage, field reports, protest clips, in studio camera and audio interviews, books, every Alex Jones film, dozens of other documentaries! Click here to subscribe!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So if the blogosphere is nothing more than a bulletin board for self-important know it alls, what possible threat could that be to young children? Where is the evidence that kids are being victimized by people who post comments on blogs?

There is no evidence but that doesn't really matter when you consider that a sizable portion of Congress critters who will be voting on this legislation if it comes to pass, don't even know what the Internet itself is (it's not a big truck), never mind how it's used. And then a sizable majority of the remaining House members probably hate the blogosphere as much as McCain, because it has replaced the lapdog mainstream media in acting as the 4th estate in muckraker reporting, anti-war protest, and holding public officials to task.

In reality, sexual predators have always confined their grooming to live chat rooms, or in the case of Republican pervert Mark Foley, instant messaging and PDA's. Pedophiles are never going to leave a record of their sordid advances on message boards because in most cases, their IP address and location can be obtained immediately from the server log. And as reported by C Net, "Studies by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children show the online sexual solicitation of minors has dropped in the past five years, despite the growth of social-networking services."

McCain's proposed bill is just another step in greasing the skids for Internet 2, a tightly controlled, regulated and privileged world wide web where government approval will be required just to run a blog.

In recent months, a chorus of propaganda intended to demonize the Internet and lead it down this path has spewed forth from numerous establishment organs.

- The White House's own recently de-classified strategy for "winning the war on terror" targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to "diminish" their influence.

- The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.

- In a speech last month, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a "terror training camp," through which "disaffected people living in the United States" are developing "radical ideologies and potentially violent skills." Chertoff pledged to dispatch Homeland Security agents to local police departments in order to aid in the apprehension of domestic terrorists who use the Internet as a political tool.

- In an interview with Fox News last month, Bush senior slammed Internet bloggers for creating an "adversarial and ugly climate."

- A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web - and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.

- The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to shut down "terrorists" who use the Internet to spread propaganda.

Guess who won't be getting my vote in 08. Honestly, don't these asshats have anything better to do than try and control every little thing people say and do. And of course it's "for the chyyyyyyyylllldrrrruuuuuuunnnnnnn!!!!!11111!!!".

Sorry, but when it comes down to it, if I have to choose between protecting my rights and protecting children, I'll choose my own rights every time.

GovTrack: H.R. 5295: Text of Legislation

GovTrack: H.R. 5295: Text of Legislation

AN ACT
To protect students and teachers.
1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
1 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 2
2 This Act may be cited as the ``Student and Teacher
3 Safety Act of 2006''.
4 SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
5 Congress finds the following:
6 (1) The United States Department of Edu-
7 cation's National Center for Education Statistics re-
8 ported in the 2005 Indicators of School Crime and
9 Safety that in 2003 seventeen percent of students in
10 grades 9-12 reported they carried a weapon. Six per-
11 cent reported having carried a weapon on school
12 grounds.
13 (2) The same survey reported that 29 percent
14 of all students in grades 9-12 reported that someone
15 offered, sold, or gave them an illegal drug on school
16 property within the last 12 months.
17 (3) The United States Constitution's Fourth
18 Amendment guarantees ``the right of the people to
19 be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and ef-
20 fects, against unreasonable searches and seizures''.
21 (4) That while the Supreme Court affirmed the
22 Fourth Amendment's application to students in pub-
23 lic schools in New Jersey vs. TLO (1985), the Court
24 held that searches of students by school officials do
25 not require warrants issued by judges showing prob-


HR 5295 EH 3
1 able cause. The Court will ordinarily hold that such
2 a search is permissible if--
3 (A) there are reasonable grounds for sus-
4 pecting the search will reveal evidence that the
5 student violated the law or school rules; and
6 (B) the measures used to conduct the
7 search are reasonably related to the search's ob-
8 jectives, without being excessively intrusive in
9 light of the student's age, sex, and nature of
10 the offense.
11 (5) The Supreme Court held in Board of Edu-
12 cation of Independent Sch. Dist. 92 of Pottawatomie
13 County vs. Earls (2002) that random drug testing
14 of students who were participating in extracurricular
15 activities was reasonable and did not violate the
16 Fourth Amendment. The Court stated that such
17 search policies effectively serve the School Districts
18 interest in protecting its students' health and safety.
19 SEC. 3. SEARCHES BASED ON REASONABLE SUSPICION.

20 (a) IN GENERAL.--Each local educational agency
21 shall have in effect throughout the jurisdiction of the
22 agency policies that ensure that a search described in sub-
23 section (b) is deemed reasonable and permissible.
24 (b) SEARCHES COVERED.--A search referred to in
25 subsection (a) is a search by a full-time teacher or school


HR 5295 EH 4
1 official, acting on any reasonable suspicion based on pro-
2 fessional experience and judgment, of any minor student
3 on the grounds of any public school, if the search is con-
4 ducted to ensure that classrooms, school buildings, school
5 property and students remain free from the threat of all
6 weapons, dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics. The
7 measures used to conduct any search must be reasonably
8 related to the search's objectives, without being excessively
9 intrusive in light of the student's age, sex, and the nature
10 of the offense.
11 SEC. 4. ENCOURAGEMENT TO PROTECT STUDENTS AND
12 TEACHERS.
13 (a) IN GENERAL.--A local educational agency that
14 fails to comply with section 3 shall not, during the period
15 of noncompliance, receive any Safe and Drug Free School
16 funds after fiscal year 2008.
17 (b) DEFINITION.--In this section, the term ``Safe and
18 Drug Free School funds'' includes any funds under Part
19 A of Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education
20 Act of 1965.
Passed the House of Representatives September 19,
2006.
Attest:




Clerk.
HR 5295 EH
109TH CONGRESS H. R. 5295
2D SESSION AN ACT
To protect students and teachers.

Beware of legislation designed to protect! That word is used to justify so many tyrannical rules. It "protects" children, it "protects" safety, etc. This has nothing to do with protecting students and teachers and everything to do with stripping high school students of their few remaining rights and liberties.

Parents, if you love or respect your children at all, get in contact with your representatives and express your outrage at this bill. If that fails, take your kids out of school.