House OKs Wiretapping and New .kids.us domain

proj_2501 writes: "Yahoo! has a story about how the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved two new bills: one for the creation of a federally overseen TLD called .kids.us (participation is voluntary), and the other for more ease of wiretapping to supposedly prevent dangerous meetings between kids and 'child predators'." Remember, an equivalent bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate.

Comments

Jefferson is spinning in his grave

[eyegor]

Why do they persist in eroding my rights in order to keep me "safe"?

Every time they decide we need protecting, they strip away yet another preciously gained right. Once they're gone, good luck getting them back.

I propose a new form of energy. We can harness the power of the founding fathers spinning in their graves. Given what's going on these days, we should be able to replace Three Mile Island. The only problem is that we need Sen. Hollings around to craft more legislation.

Prevention?

[TheNecromancer]

I don't get it: how is this legislation going to prevent children from chatting online with child molestors?

Seems to me that this new .kids.us will just be another dead area on the Internet, and that kids will find it boring (aka - no chatting) and return to the same areas they were surfing before.

Can't find the catch

[Rogerborg]

• [ Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill] said parents need to be aware of what Web sites their children are surfing

To which we all heartily agree, but the article claims:

• Parents could set computer software to limit a child's access to only addresses ending in .kids.us.

Say what? That looks like the existing "put a token filtering system in place, then abrogate your responsibility" method so beloved of AOL and the NetNanny brigade. But did our elected representatives just mandate that and slip through mandatory domain locking in browsers while nobody was looking? Let's check the actual bill, H.R. 3833

• `(11) Written agreements with registrars, which shall require registrars to enter into written agreements with registrants, to prohibit hyperlinks in the new domain that take new domain users outside of the new domain.

Hmm, OK, not too bad. Once you're in, you can't just click out by accident (although of course this will happen, but at least they've thought about it). Is that all?

• (12) Any other action that the NTIA considers necessary to establish, operate, or maintain the new domain in accordance with the purposes of this section.

OK, much as I hate catch-all clauses, this is still limited to "the new domain", not to enforcing functionality in browsers (or telnet, for that matter) to lock off the domain. It looks like any browser locking functionality will be voluntary and third party. I can see AOL and Microsoft scrambling to implement this ASAP, but nobody will have to.

I'm always ready to believe the worst of our legislators when it comes to dealing with technology (their track record isn't great), but I think they've got this one right (even if they are a little vague on how it will actually be administrated). I pronounce this bill sane and measured

Regarding H.R. 1877, it's largely moot. It's a minor modification to existing wiretap law, and law enforcement (or anyone with a suit and a badge and some lawyers) can get a wiretap on you right now for pretty much any reason they like. Personally I think that soliciting children for sex should justify a wiretap, and I'm all in favour of honesty in law enforcement, rather than making them scam a warrant for un-American activities (aka domestic terrorism) or whatever.

Constant vigilance is a good thing, but I don't see anything scary or particularly bad in either of these bills. OK, I find the thought of a .kids.us full of Disney and Barney a little scary, but that's not really the fault of Congress. ;-)