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Justice Dept. Rejects Google's Privacy Concerns
Philip K Dickhead writes "The Associated Press is reporting that the Justice Department rejected Google's concerns over a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests on privacy grounds. The department claims this will help revive an online child protection law that the Supreme Court has blocked, by proving that Internet filters are not strong enough to prevent children from viewing pornography online. A federal court hearing is scheduled in San Jose, California, March 13th."
Can the government really go after Google for aiding Chinese censorship and for NOT aiding US censorship AT THE SAME TIME?
I saw plenty of nudie pics and porn as a child and I'm pretty well-adjusted as an adult. Yes, seriously. I'm getting pretty sick of government types thinking they can run our lives better than we can.
Once more, a nice display of reverse logics! If I, as a parent, fail to keep track of what my child is doing and/or looking at, I find someone to blame. And the federal government is backing me up on this one.
If you have a small child, you, as a parent, should be aware of what kind of content your child has access to. Preview television shows, whitelist certain webpages. If you leave smutty magazines lying around the house, do you blame the editor if a child finds them and looks through it?
Besides, sex is a natural thing, use education to enable your child to discern right from wrong, instead of keeping the whole subject hidden from him/her until marriage.
Google has nothing to do with this battle the right-wing christians wage against the porn industry. I'm not saying that pornsites should advertise all over the net, or judge porn altogether, but the federal government is taking a very one-sided approach in this matter. The net has always been free, and it should remain that way. I agree with Googles view on this matter.
You're close but not quite on the money. This has wedge issue written all over it. Much like gay marriage in 2004 (and soon to be gay adoption in 2006), this is an issue to draw out the single-issue conservative voters to the polls. The point isn't necessarily to win this battle, though that'd be feather in the cap of the Republican Party, as it is to have the fight in the first place.
The majority of American's wouldn't support a conservative agenda on the environment, healthcare, and corporate welfare, but they will support an agenda about terrorism and "protection of values." This is known as a "wedge issue." It's designed to drive a wedge between the conflicting loyalties of swing voters to force them to choose between two different positives and to draw out partisans from the woodwork who couldn't care enough to vote about economic policy issues.
Bringing back up net filtering and monitoring gives the Republicans another chance to decry "liberal judicial activism" in a bid to install more pro-executive power, pro-business judges. As a bonus, they get to legislate morality and provide an in for more monitoring of citizens. In case you don't recall, sexual scandals are just about the only scandals that have any traction in the media any more, so the opportunity to catch a current or future politician looking at porn is a great tool for whoever's in power, and it's even better if your opposition consider using that power against your people to be wrong.
This is just a win-win fight for the Republican Party no matter how it plays out.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Children need protection from porn, because it would be too bad if they would discover their sexuality on a normal speed which coupled with a good sexual education program can significantly reduce the number of underage pregnancies, on the other hand the administration encourages and is fine with the military recruiting from schools, sharing schoolchildren's data in a huge opt-out database and sending these kids to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Clearly, porn is the danger here. Think of the kids!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Stopping porn movies altogether is the only way to keep his daughters from eventually starring in one.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.