US Senators call for universal Internet filtering

Found on Press Sec on Wednesday, 25 July 2007
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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.

The measures they are calling for include directing the Federal Communications Commission to identify industry practices "that can limit the transmission of child pornography" and requiring the Federal Trade Commission to form a working group to identify blocking and filtering technologies in use and "identify, what, if anything could be done to improve the process and better enable parents to proactively protect their children online."

I can't hear it anymore. Just because parents fail to look after their kids, everybody needs to be monitored? This "sweet" filtering solution will fail as soon as proxies and encryption comes into play. However, by using the old "protect children" approach, politicians can introduce monitoring more easily, because everybody who is against it "automatically" is a child molester. After such a surveillance has been established, it's easy to add new thngs to monitor, until everybody is made of glass.