Sex Offenders in Georgia Stripped of Privacy, Must Hand Over Passwords [Telecom]
Monty Solomon
Sex Offenders in Georgia Stripped of Privacy, Must Hand
Over Passwords
Jason Mick
January 1, 2009
Privacy advocates concerned about a strict new law in Georgia which
removes sex offender's online privacy
The latest scuffle over online privacy is brewing up in Georgia. An
aggressive new law is set to take effect today which will force sex
offenders to hand over their internet passwords, screen names, and
e-mail addresses to the government for monitoring purposes. Several
other states also have efforts that track sex offender's email and
screen names. However, Georgia, which has 16,000 registered
offenders, will be the first state to demand the sex offenders'
passwords as well.
A similar law in Utah was already struck down by a federal judge, who
ruled that it violated the privacy rights of an offender who
challenged it. However, that ruling was rather narrow as it applied
to an offender tried on a military conviction who had never been in
Utah's court or prison system.
...
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13832
***** Moderator's Note *****
Hold on to your hats: this is the start of a wild ride up and down the
roller coaster of public-opinion. It is a classic case of a Camel's
nose under the edge of the shelter that covers our all-important civil
right to keep our papers and effects free from unreasonable search and
seizure.
Sex offenders? No problem: most voters will say "f*&^ 'em, who cares?".
Convicted fellons of all stripes? Rerun previous tape.
Persons charged with crimes but not yet convicted? Hmmm.
Once the apparatus needed to monitor someone who <insert your least
palatable, most loathsome, and repulsive action here>, IT WILL BE USED
FOR OTHER PURPOSES. Be careful what you wish for: security and freedom
both have a price.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never
see your post! Thanks!
We have a new address for email submissions: telecomdigestmoderator
atsign telecom-digest.org. This is only for those who submit posts via
email: if you use a newsreader or a web interface to contribute to the
digest, you don't need to change anything.
AES
Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote:
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Hold on to your hats: this is the start of a wild ride up and down the
> roller coaster of public-opinion. It is a classic case of a Camel's
> nose under the edge of the shelter that covers our all-important civil
> right to keep our papers and effects free from unreasonable search and
> seizure.
>
> Sex offenders? No problem: most voters will say "f*&^ 'em, who cares?".
> Convicted fellons of all stripes? Rerun previous tape.
> Persons charged with crimes but not yet convicted? Hmmm.
>
> Once the apparatus needed to monitor someone who <insert your least
> palatable, most loathsome, and repulsive action here>, IT WILL BE USED
> FOR OTHER PURPOSES. Be careful what you wish for: security and freedom
> both have a price.
Thank you for this; it's _very_ well put.
Gordon Burditt
>removes sex offender's online privacy
>
>The latest scuffle over online privacy is brewing up in Georgia. An
>aggressive new law is set to take effect today which will force sex
>offenders to hand over their internet passwords, screen names, and
>e-mail addresses to the government for monitoring purposes. Several
Online providers need to strictly enforce their terms of service on
this matter: you're not allowed to give out your password to someone
else, and if you do, [they are supposed to] turn off the account.
MC
news:r-ydnYFIYaES3fzU...@posted.internetamerica...
>>The latest scuffle over online privacy is brewing up in Georgia. An
>>aggressive new law is set to take effect today which will force sex
>>offenders to hand over their internet passwords, screen names, and
>>e-mail addresses to the government for monitoring purposes. Several
>
> Online providers need to strictly enforce their terms of service on
> this matter: you're not allowed to give out your password to someone
> else, and if you do, [they are supposed to] turn off the account.
Worse than that. Georgia has a law against computer password disclosure.
So we have a genuine conflict of laws.
David Clayton
And of course it is ultimately self-defeating. Expecting anyone who is
supposed to be (potentially) breaking one serious law to somehow obey
another law like this is ludicrous.
Does anybody seriously expect this to do anything but give the public
(yet another) undeserved sense of security?
Why don't they just pass another law to outlaw all crime in general,
that'll send a message to the crims and make us safe........
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
John Mayson
On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 11:51 PM, Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote:
>
> Privacy advocates concerned about a strict new law in Georgia which
> removes sex offender's online privacy
Another law that's "for the children" and will make people feel safer, but
does absolutely nothing.
> The latest scuffle over online privacy is brewing up in Georgia. An
> aggressive new law is set to take effect today which will force sex
> offenders to hand over their internet passwords, screen names, and
> e-mail addresses to the government for monitoring purposes. Several
And this won't work at all since it'd mindlessly simple to create new
email addresses, screen names, etc. Let's face it. Sex offenders who
play by the rules will comply with this law. Those who are still a
menace to society won't and there's not a whole lot the state can do
about it. I really wonder if state legislators even understand the
laws they pass.
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Hold on to your hats: this is the start of a wild ride up and down the
> roller coaster of public-opinion. It is a classic case of a Camel's
> nose under the edge of the shelter that covers our all-important civil
> right to keep our papers and effects free from unreasonable search and
> seizure.
>
> Sex offenders? No problem: most voters will say "f*&^ 'em, who cares?".
> Convicted fellons of all stripes? Rerun previous tape.
> Persons charged with crimes but not yet convicted? Hmmm.
Normally I try to stay on topic, but since you started it. :-)
There are two terms that are guaranteed to generate a knee-jerk
reaction: "sex offender" and "child pornography". The masses think we
should just burn these people at the stake without any further
investigation or even proof of guilt. And no one is interested in
what these people did in the first place.
> Once the apparatus needed to monitor someone who <insert your least
> palatable, most loathsome, and repulsive action here>, IT WILL BE USED
> FOR OTHER PURPOSES. Be careful what you wish for: security and freedom
> both have a price.
I'm reminded of the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller "First They
Came..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came... Granted, a
sex offender is hardly on par with a trade unionist. But we have
broadly applied labels to people and demonized them.
In some jurisdictions public urination can lead to sex offender
status. http://www.eagletribune.com/punewsnh/local_story_031093859
This is absolutely wrong and draconian. But few are willing to speak
up.
We have a friend who is a sex offender. What happened was he was young.
And drunk. She was barely underage and didn't disclose this. He ended up
spending seven years in prison and his life today is a living hell. The
girl is considered a "victim" even though had she just been a few months
older it would've been completely legal. How was society protected by
locking this guy up? His neighbors avoid him. He can't attend functions
at his child's school. He can't even pick her up from school when she's
sick.
I can't say this happens a lot. But too many times I see plastered
across the front page of the newspaper about an Internet kiddie porn
ring being broken up or someone arrested for molesting a child and
then months later on page B17 there's a blurb that all the charges
were dropped. Does this happen 10% of the time? 90%? I don't know.
But in either case the accused is ruined. Were the charges dropped on
a technicality? Or was it your average person sitting at his computer
and next thing he knows he's in jail?
I get really worried when the state starts to demonize groups of people.
John
--
John Mayson <jo...@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> I really wonder if state legislators even understand the
> laws they pass.
Often, they don't, especially when dealing with complex or technical
issues. I doubt most legislators understand telecom laws they pass.
Sometimes laws, such as on this topic, are so knee-jerk emotional that
it's virtual political suicide to vote against them, even if it is
clear it's bad law.
Sometimes a battery of laws are passed at end of session, without
sufficient time to study them.
Often times the final version of a law is a mishmash of compromises.
> There are two terms that are guaranteed to generate a knee-jerk
> reaction: "sex offender" and "child pornography". The masses think we
> should just burn these people at the stake without any further
> investigation or even proof of guilt. And no one is interested in
> what these people did in the first place.
Very true. And the knee-jerk reaction makes things _more_ dangerous,
not less, because laws and their consequences are not fully thought
out. For instance, many communities simply outlaw sex offenders from
living in them which leaves the ex-offender (who has completed his
prison time) with no place to go. So the ex-offender goes
underground. When an ex-offender is underground, he is not under any
kind of supervision or counseling, and more at risk to re-offend.
When one is above ground, at least they're checking in with their
parole officer or counselor to prevent a relapse or risky situation.
> We have a friend who is a sex offender. What happened was he was young.
> And drunk. She was barely underage and didn't disclose this. He ended up
> spending seven years in prison and his life today is a living hell. . . .
This, sadly is a common problem, such people (e.g. a teenager who
hooked up with another teen) lumped together with the truly dangerous
perverts. They are supposedly classified separately, but once out in
the community, no distinction is made and the problems you describe
come up. One community tried very hard to ban a man from moving in,
he made such a mistake when he was 15, years before. Communities are
not interested in such differences.
Returning to telecom, a new problem is kids "sexting", that is,
sending risque pictures of themselves, such as a teen girl posing in
her underwear (or less) and sending a cellphone picture to her
boyfriend. Boys being boys, they send the photo to their friends. In
our area, when this first happened the cops went nuts and were ready
to charge the kids with distributing or possesing porn. The school
wanted to check every kid's cellphone to see if the pictures were on
it and they were tracing down all the cellphones involved.
Now, sexting is not a desirable practice, but the best cure is
prevention so it doesn't happen in the first place, like educating
kids that taking and sending such pictures is a really stupid and
distasteful thing to do.
Likewise with other offenders. Society seems to focus on after-the-
fact draconian punishments rather than determining why people do such
things in the first place and working to prevent it.
>I get really worried when the state starts to demonize groups of people.
Indeed.
MC
My experience (based, inter alia, on church work) is that demonization
is done most avidly by people who do not feel themselves entirely
innocent and who want somebody else to look down on.
Also, prudishness arises more readily from licentiousness than from
morality. I think there's a good bit of this going on here. You're a
sex offender if she's 17 3/4, you're a cool dude if she's 18 1/4... No
principle of morality is operating there. It's purely a fetish about
crossing a particular age limit.