Illinois Says Sex Offenders Can't Use Social Networks

from the ok,-but... dept

Mark alerts us to the news that Illinois has approved a new law that bans registered sex offenders from social networking sites. Now, I have no sympathy for anyone who uses a social networking site to approach kids for such nefarious purposes, but this seems like a rather broad brush for a variety of reasons. First, considering how many sites have added "social networking" features lately, this could block out a rather large portion of the internet. Hell, just recently Google announced new social features for its iGoogle homepage. Second, the vast majority of registered sex offenders weren't convicted of trying to entice a kid via a social network. Completely blocking all of those people from social networks seems rather pointless. Finally, the whole idea that social networks are some sort of breeding ground for predators is a moral panic made up by the press. Studies have shown that the common story of a predator getting online, pretending to be a kid, and befriending "targets" and "grooming" them is mostly a myth. That's not to say it hasn't happened, but it's quite rare, and the best way to deal with it is simply to educate kids on how to deal with strangers. Most are smart enough to deal with the issue on their own. But, of course, that doesn't make for good headlines for politicians who want to make sure everyone knows they're "protecting the children."

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Egypt Bans Porn Websites: Good Luck With That

from the yeah,-that'll-work... dept

It appears that Egypt is the latest country to think that it can ban certain websites by court mandate. In this case, it's all pornographic websites, which have been deemed "venomous and vile" by the court. The lawyer who was arguing against those sites responded happily: "Thank God we won, now the government should stop these electronic dens of vice immediately." Of course, what's been left unstated is exactly how the government can stop pornographic websites? My guess is they'll demand ISPs do it for them. However, in the meantime, we're left wondering how these "venomous and vile" sites are forcing themselves on poor Egyptians. I do plenty of web surfing and have found that simply not surfing porn websites is a rather effective way to not have to deal with such "electronic dens of vice."

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Senators Want To Ban SMS Spam

from the thx-4-the-gd-idea dept

While there have been lots of attempts to ban spam email (some less effective than others), text-message spam sent to mobile phones has largely escaped legislative scrutiny. The CAN SPAM Act bans sending spam emails to phones, but it doesn't specifically address SMS. An Arizona court ruled earlier legislation covering autodialed telemarking calls also banned SMS spam, but that decision didn't seem particularly solid. Other countries, like India, have extended their Do Not Call lists to cover SMS spam, and now a couple of US senators have introduced legislation that would do the same here. SMS spam hasn't become a huge problem in the US for a number of reasons, mainly because it costs spammers more than email spam, while it's also generally easier to track down those who sent it than with email. Still, it's nice to see a law seeking to get out ahead of something so annoying, rather than waiting until the cat's out of the bag and it's an uncontrollable situation.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Facebook Boots Off Almost 5600 Sex Offenders; Don't You Feel Safer Now?

from the now-that-that's-out-of-the-way dept

Facebook says it's cleared about 5600 sex offenders from its userbase, following the big push from a bunch of state attorneys general. The figure's being compared to the 90,000 people that MySpace said it kicked off, leading to some speculation that Facebook isn't trying hard enough; its chief privacy offer says its requirement that people use their real names could deter sex offenders from registering in the first place. If these people Facebook has identified are using the site in violation of their parole or other restrictions, it's good they're being exposed. But the real problem here is that finding sex offenders on social networks and kicking them off is being misconstrued as the ultimate protection for kids. The actual threat posed by sex offenders on web sites is often exaggerated by politicians, and this sort of find-'em-and-ban-'em response causes some actual ways to keep kids safer online to be overlooked, in favor of non-existent magic bullets.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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California Video Game Law, Once Again, Found Unconstitutional

from the try-try-again dept

Some California politicians keep running into a pesky obstacle: The US Constitution. Despite court after court across the country finding bans on sales of violent video games to minors to be unconstitutional, "think of the children" politicians continue to try and implement them. In California, legislators passed such a ban and, predictably, it got tossed out by a court. Led by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state appealed the ban to an appeals court, which -- you guessed it -- has ruled that it's unconstitutional. But the bill's author is undeterred. He wants the state to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court and waste more of the cash-strapped state's resources to find out what we already know, but apparently bears repeating: these video game bans are unconstitutional.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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MBTA Will Work With MIT Students, Rather Than Suing Them, To Improve Security

from the a-good-move,-a-little-late dept

You may recall, back in August, that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority convinced a judge to ban the Defcon presentation by three MIT students, showing how weak the security was on the Boston transit system, and how easy it was to get past it. Of course, in trying to ban the talk, the MBTA only succeeded in getting a lot more attention for its own security vulnerabilities -- and, in the end, the judge lifted the gag order anyway, allowing the students to present their research.

The good news is that the MBTA has now dropped the lawsuit and done what it should have done in the first place: agreed to work with the students to come up with ways to improve security. It's good that they eventually came to this conclusion -- though still mind-boggling that they went down the legal route first.

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Montenegro Gives Odd Reason For Banning Facebook On Gov't Computers

from the take-down-the-network? dept

Banning Facebook at the office still doesn't make much sense to us, but even if we granted the (incorrect) premise that Facebook should be banned for being non-work related, it's still odd to see the country of Montenegro's reasoning for banning Facebook in all government offices. They're claiming that it's to avoid taking down their own network. Usually, you take down your network from traffic heading in not out. And, it's not like visiting Facebook takes up that much traffic. In the meantime, at least some other governments have realized that Facebook can be a useful way to talk to citizens. Hell, even terrorists now like Facebook. Perhaps governments should think twice about banning it.

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Pennsylvania Actually Realizes That Video Game Legislation Is A Bad Idea

from the well,-that's-a-first dept

We've seen so many states with grandstanding politicians trying to ban the sale of certain video games to kids -- despite the fact that every single law that's been passed along those lines in the US has been thrown out as unconstitutional. In the end, politicians know this -- yet they still keep pushing for such laws, so that, come election time, they can make a false claim in their campaign ads about how they "protected the children." The truth is, all they really did, was waste taxpayer money on a lawsuit that was a clear loss from the beginning. That's why it's great to finally see one state at least investigate the issue a bit, with a Pennsylvania task force quite clearly telling state legislators that such a video game sales law is a bad idea. Instead, the task force suggests that, if the legislature really wants to do something, it could fund more research into the impact of video games on kids, or more reasonably, it could fund more educational programs, to discuss the impact of video games. So, now the question is whether or not politicians in Pennsylvania will heed this advice... or if they'll still push forward on a plan to waste taxpayer money?

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BT Bans Talking About Phorm, Erases Earlier Discussions

from the we-were-always-at-war-with-Eurasia dept

You may recall that BT was one of the bigger supporters of Phorm, the controversial clickstream tracking system that would allow ISPs like BT to insert their own behaviorally targeted ads into your web surfing. The company held extensive trials with the system, without letting users know that their clickstream data was being sold to advertisers in order to do more targeted advertising. Now that UK officials have decided that Phorm is legal, if clearly explained to consumers, BT has chosen a funny way to make sure there's clarity around the system. Slashdot points out that BT has apparently banned discussion of Phorm on its forums and erased earlier forum discussions about the technology. How's that for openness?

Is it really so hard to allow open discussion on such a topic? If BT believes that it's reasonable to use the technology, then why not explain why clearly, responding to the critics? The only reason to erase these discussions is if BT knows that what's it's doing is highly questionable, and BT would rather not have to explain itself.

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Former Malaysian Prime Minister Now Blogging His Opposition To Press Restrictions He Set Up

from the what's-good-for-the-goose? dept

We've written an awful lot about the rise of political blogging in Malaysia. The government there has had something of a love-hate affair with blogs for quite some time, starting with a plan to force blogs to register, to later telling various candidates for government they were requiring them to blog, to having a special agency set up to respond to bloggers. More recently, though, things have taken a very negative turn, as various opposition party bloggers were able to use their blog popularity to catapult themselves into office, the ruling party began cracking down, even sentencing leading bloggers to jail.

The good news on that front, however, is that a court has decided that the arrest was illegal and the blogger is to be freed. Though, you get the feeling that the government will continue to try to punish him.

In the meantime, one of the most interesting political bloggers in Malaysia may be the former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who apparently championed many of the free speech restrictions that allow the crackdowns. We had mentioned his embrace of blogging about a year and a half ago, and now the NY Times has written up a more detailed article, claiming that now that he's no longer in power, he's had quite a change of heart concerning restrictions on freedom of the press. Of course, much of it seems to come off as whining that people won't listen to him any more:

"Where is the press freedom? Broadcast what I have to say! What I say is not even accurately published in the press!"

While it is a good thing that he's realized how problematic free speech restrictions are, there is a bit of karmic justice in having him find himself stymied by rules that he championed and used to his own advantage when in power.

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Perhaps Turkey Should Just Ban The Entire Internet

from the adding-another-one dept

It would appear that the Turkish government and courts are a bit trigger happy when it comes to flat-out banning websites for almost no reason at all. In the past, we've reported on Turkish bans on YouTube, Slide, Wordpress.com and Google Groups. Now, via Slashdot, we see that a Turkish court has banned all of Google's Blogger service including all of the blogs hosted at blogspot.com. Unlike the bans of the other sites, which happened after people who were offended by content found on each complained, it appears that the Blogger ban was due to a Turkish TV service, Digiturk, which was upset that some Blogger users were posting links to unauthorized streams of Turkish football matches.

Yes, you read that correctly. Because a few bloggers had linked to (not even hosted) some unauthorized streams of a sporting event, Digiturk was able to ban all of Blogger. At this point, you have to wonder why Turkey allows the internet at all.

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Governator Wasting More CA Taxpayer Money On Unconstitutional Violent Video Game Ban

from the terminate-this-wasteful-spending dept

At last count, at least 10 states had passed laws banning the sale or rental of violent video games to children, and every single one of them has been thrown out as unconstitutional. At this point, any state that passes such a law is knowingly throwing away taxpayer money to defend the law in court -- and, for the most part they're doing it to pander to the electorate, so they can talk about how they "protected the children" despite more and more evidence that violent video games aren't a threat to kids.

Perhaps the most bizarre of all of these state laws is the one in California, where our governor starred in numerous violent films. Yet, Schwarzenegger has been at the forefront of supporting this law. After a lower court followed all those other states in throwing out the law as unconstitutional, the Schwarzenegger administration quickly appealed, and the new case is set to begin this week, with most noting that it's unlikely that California will somehow buck the trend and get the law approved. Instead, we get a waste of taxpayer money (in a state that's going bankrupt) so that an action hero of a ton of violent films can claim he's "protecting the children" from viewing a little show violence.

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Malaysia Jails Blogger For Two Years Without Trial

from the public-outcry-didn't-work dept

We've been trying to follow the situation with the government crackdown on opposition bloggers in Malaysia, and with different stories coming out every day, it got a little confusing. So when we wrote about a blogger being released following a public outcry, it was actually a different blogger than the original one we had reported as arrested. It now turns out that the original blogger has actually been immediately sentenced to two years in jail without any trial -- and those two years can be extended indefinitely at will by the government. As for the other blogger who was released, apparently that's just a temporary thing, as he's still facing charges as well. Apparently, the ruling party seems to think that by jailing opposition bloggers it will shut them up. This wouldn't be the first time that the government underestimated the response to trying to silence critical bloggers.

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Arrested Malaysian Blogger Freed Following Public Outcry

from the how-could-the-gov't-not-expect-that? dept

It's hard to figure out what the government of Malaysia is thinking in its ongoing trouble in dealing with critical bloggers (some of whom were so powerful that they got elected). Last week, we noted that one of the more popular bloggers, whose blog had been ordered blocked by ISPs was arrested, just as the block on his blog was removed. Not surprisingly, the arrest led to a public outcry, and the government has now relented and freed the blogger, who quickly posted an anti-government rant on his blog, promising not to back down. The whole thing makes you wonder how tone deaf the leading party politicians in Malaysia are that they didn't expect this to happen. Arresting an opposition blogger was bound to create further outcry, and this move only helped legitimize the points he's been making. You would think that at least someone in the ruling party would have been savvy enough to recognize that this was inevitable.

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Will YouTube Ban Videos Of Putting Your Head In The Sand Next?

from the how-does-this-help? dept

It appears that Google's YouTube subsidiary is caving to various government pressure concerning whatever videos the government doesn't like. This started a while back when Google gave in to pressure from Thailand's government to ban videos that made fun of the country's king. But, now the pace is ramping up. Last week, Google gave in to Senator Lieberman, agreeing to ban videos from terrorists, and the latest is giving in to pressure from the UK government to ban videos that show weapons used to intimidate people. Now, YouTube has always banned hate speech or threatening videos, so this new ban seems to go above and beyond that -- including videos that show weapons being used to intimidate that aren't threatening videos themselves. That seems pretty pointless again. The same videos will quickly appear on other sites, and rather than using YouTube as a way to track down anyone who might be breaking the law, Google is helping the UK government put their head in the sand and pretend no one ever is filmed doing anything bad with weapons.

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University Bans Access To Facebook; Claims It's A Security Issue

from the really? dept

We've seen plenty of stories of silly politicians trying to ban access to social networks in high schools, but in colleges especially things like Facebook are basically the way students communicate with each other. So it's rather surprising to find out (via Michael Geist) that Concordia University has banned access to Facebook on any computer connected to the university network via a wired connection. If you're using WiFi, the university allows it. First of all, that seems like a really strange split. Why should it matter whether the connection is wired or wireless? Even odder is the explanation for this:

The university has decided to implement these restrictions because of concerns that the continuing reliability of the Concordia network could be compromised because of spam, viruses and leaks of confidential information related to Facebook use.

There are spam, viruses and leaks of confidential info all over the internet. So why ban Facebook? And those same issues face wireless users as well as wired users. The whole thing sounds like someone who was very confused overreacted to something in the wrong way.

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Disney Joins NBC And Viacom In Demanding UK ISPs Kick File Sharers Off The Internet

from the sorry,-bob dept

While Disney is quite often painted as the leader of the pack when it comes to ridiculous and draconian copyright-related proposals, much of that can be attributed to former CEO Michael Eisner, who helped push for the Bono Copyright Extension Act to "protect" Mickey Mouse. Eisner, famously, loves to talk about the history of intellectual property law -- though, he's almost entirely wrong, attributing much of copyright law to Abraham Lincoln, who had nothing to do with it. After Eisner left, Robert Iger took over, and for a while, it seemed as if he might actually understand that he needed to learn how to embrace new technologies and not treat users as criminals.

Apparently Iger doesn't fully believe that, though. Joining with previous statements made by the folks in charge of NBC Universal and Viacom, Iger was recently in London saying that ISPs should ban users who are caught downloading unauthorized material. While UK ISPs have agreed to send out industry warning letters, so far they've resisted banning users from the internet. Iger, however, thinks that's not enough:

"We are simply asking for people who are downloading illegal files to get a warning initially then to get their service cut off."

He then falsely suggests that ISPs are effectively relying on their content to be effective. This is the lie that Big Content likes to tell itself. That it's really Hollywood content that gets people online, rather than communication tools or other content. But to Iger, the internet's main purpose is apparently to distribute Disney's content:

"Most distribution businesses succeed because they have a distribution process in place. They also have product. We contribute to that mightily. It is a joint partnership."

No, actually, it's not a partnership. Disney's using the internet as a platform because that's what customers demand. If Disney doesn't like it, it's free not to bother -- but everyone knows that wouldn't make much sense. And, then, of course, Iger (the same guy who said the entertainment industry should recognize that file sharing was just customers showing content companies what they wanted) falsely equates copyright infringement to "stealing." So much for Disney taking the high road.

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Why Does Facebook Block Any Mention Of BugMeNot?

from the waste-of-time dept

Remember back about four years ago when all sorts of online publishers relied on bogus registrations and freaked out about services like BugMeNot that required registration? Over the past few years, BugMeNot has become a lot less essential, because a lot of publications have been getting rid of registration walls or at least providing real value for registering, rather than just forcing you to input bogus info. However, apparently the folks over at Facebook are so against the concept of BugMeNot they won't even let you mention it (via Slashdot. Apparently, if you mention BugMeNot.com in your status message, Facebook warns you that the "message contains blocked content." I guess that's what you get for relying on a messaging system controlled by someone else, but it still seems like a bizarre thing for Facebook to block.

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As Bloggers Take Office In Malaysia, Gov't Orders ISPs To Block Certain Blogs

from the crack-down dept

Over the last couple of years, we've had a series of interesting stories about how the Malaysian gov't is dealing with "blogs." First, a gov't official slammed blogs and tried to pass a law requiring bloggers to register with the government. Outrage over such a plan resulted in it being scrapped, but the majority ruling party still struggled with blogs -- though tried to figure out ways to respond to them more feasibly than attacking them. It set up a gov't agency to respond to bloggers, and later required certain candidates for offices to set up their own blogs. Of course, it also tried to crack down on some bloggers it didn't like, including having a state owned paper file a libel suit over a blog.

So, with that background, it was interesting to spot two separate stories having to do with blogs in Malaysia. The first, talks about how one of the political bloggers who had been so critical of the gov't turned that attention into getting himself elected as an opposition candidate. He's now taking office. However, the other article shows that the ruling party hasn't quite come to grips with these opposition blogs. Perhaps because of the victories of blogging members of the opposition party, the government has now ordered Malaysian ISPs to start blocking certain political blogs.

From the sound of it, the ruling party is still pretty confused about how this all works. While it gave lip service to blogging, when blogging appeared to help the opposition a lot more than it helped the ruling party, it decided to start blocking and censoring certain blogs critical of the government. This seems pretty likely to backfire, as it should only upset gov't critics even more -- including those who are now in the Parliament itself.

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Boston Subway System Stops Defcon Talk; But Paints Security Target On Its Back

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

You would think after years and years of it backfiring every time some scared organization tries to shut down a talk concerning their security vulnerabilities, that people wouldn't even bother any more. But never underestimate the short-sightedness of some execs. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority uses a magnetic strip card system to access the subway system in Boston. That system is not particularly secure, and some enterprising MIT students planned to demonstrate just how weak the security was on the system this weekend at the Defcon conference... until the MBTA convinced a judge to ban the presentation and demand that all copies of the presentation not be released -- which is problematic since all attendees at the conference already obtained CDs with a copy of the presentation. Also, somewhat ironically, a copy of the presentation was entered in as evidence in the case, and that copy is now publicly available as part of the court records system. Oops.

Of course, even if the court had actually been able to stop the distribution of the presentation, it's silly to think that this would have stopped the dissemination of the methods for hacking the system. The truth is that the MBTA's system uses woefully weak security, and rather than doing anything to strengthen it, it has to threaten some bright MIT students and get a court order to pretend the such security vulnerabilities don't exist. And, of course, in doing this, all the MBTA has really done is painted a huge target on its back. Perhaps it should have just focused on making its system a bit more secure instead.

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