Sex Offenders Must Hand Over Online Passwords

mytrip writes "Privacy advocates are questioning an aggressive Georgia law set to take effect Thursday that would require sex offenders to hand over Internet passwords, screen names and e-mail addresses. Georgia joins a small band of states complying with guidelines in a 2006 federal law requiring authorities to track Internet addresses of sex offenders, but it is among the first to take the extra step of forcing its 16,000 offenders to turn in their passwords as well."

Comments

i am on not on Sex Offenders side

[arbiter1]

i think this violates the 5th amendment in my view, cause you are givin' up information stored in your head up to be used against you.

Unconstitutional?

[diewlasing]

Didn't a federal court in Vermont recently rule that even child pornographers didn't have to turn over their passwords on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves?

Re:Constitutionality

[Aranykai]

I believe the point of the whole idea is that the monitoring/tracking is part of their sentence.

You are kidding right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just getting arrested doesn't mean he has to be on the sex offender list - he had to also get charged by the wrong DA and sentenced by the wrong judge. And all this time he hasn't written to the governor for a pardon?

Sex offenders don't generally get pardons, no matter how silly the offense is. The reason is that no politician wants to be the one who has attack ads about them pardoning sex offenders.

Re:Constitutionality

[0100010001010011]

IN some states, the age of consent and child porn statutes have the same age limits.

For instance, a quick read of NV law shows the AOC to be 16. Child porn is defined as sexually explicit blah blah blah involving a person under 16. Federal law makes it a crime with a person under 18, but there may be some state line/interstate commerce nexus that needs to be fulfilled.

I didn't feel like looking at too many states, but found this same AOC/CP thing with NH-16/16.

Many states forbid distributing/exhibiting obscenity to people under 18, regardless of their AOC/CP statutes.

SO, excluding the feds, it's not a crime to have sex with a 16 year old or film it. But, she can't watch the tape afterwards. It's a crime to allow her 16 year old friend to watch the act as it occurs, but not a crime to have her join. Neither of them can smoke a cigarette or have a beer afterwards. If either one were to rob,beat,kill one of their fellow particpants, they would be tried as an adult in every state in the country.

-- Stolen from a Fark Thread.

Re:Constitutionality

[stonecypher]

The founding fathers of the US, when they declared their independence, would disagree that England wasn't a tyranny. The Declaration of Independence says, "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world." Yes, absolute tyranny, which for the colonies in America was the way the King's rule was seen.

I would remind you of John Adams' strenuous disagreement with this terminology, which he felt was chosen by Franklin and Jefferson to incite feelings of rage, rather than to reflect accuracy - indeed the very grounds on which I objected to the use of the term. Please remember that the soverignity that America was seeking was against the laws of Parliament, not of the King; particularly the Stamp Act and the Townshend Act. The phrase "no taxation without representation" doesn't make sense in an actual tyranny, and of course, that was the rebelling pretext: that America should be represented in Parliament if Parliamentary law was to apply to them. Indeed, the very concept of representation cannot, by definition, exist under a tyranny.

It is critical in understanding the works of our founding fathers to remember who Benjamin Franklin was: in every sense a pulpit liar, and a damned good one. He made not one but several careers from spinning things with a sort of careful carelessness, allowing his flair for writing to spill over his accuracy in speech. It is a minefield to attempt to take Franklin's writing literally. This propensity for flair over substance was the crux of Franklin's division with Adams (and indeed also between Adams and his cousin Sam, who with Jefferson and James Wilson ran slipshod over using the King as a focus for their rebellion against the acts of Parliament).

I appreciate that you're working from source material; that's new and refreshing in this discussion. I entreat you to resolve one riddle: how can someone be represented in a tyranny? Alternately, how am I misunderstanding the Parliamentary debacle regarding juxtaposed representation by proxy through Crown citizens?

I mean, really, it's important to remember that America's founding fathers tried to be a voting part of the British empire, when you discuss their views of the British governmental system. If it was a tyranny, there would be no Parliament to be a part of.

People have, for thousands of years, misappropriated the word "tyranny" to create an emotional reaction in their audience. I hope you'll resist the urge; simply citing Ben Franklin doing the same thing that grandparent poster did doesn't actually show the founding fathers believing in a fantastically inaccurate view of the British government. The British king was not an absolute monarch, and had not been for several hundred years. The founding fathers were perfectly aware of the Magna Carta. Please be serious.

I won't touch the origins of sex offender laws

That's unfortunate, since it's the immediate context of the things I said, and distancing yourself from that does damage to the legitimacy of your arguments.

Hitler's political leanings are immaterial to the tactics he used.

You're quoting two disconnected issues and treating them as related. That's problematic.

The tactics which the GP is referring to is the gradual taking away of rights of people that aren't popular.

Yeah, that's exactly my point. Sex offenders aren't being punished because they're unpopular. You might as well suggest that murders are being persecuted for being unpopular. I immediately and candidly disagree with this viewpoint. This isn't a popularity contest. It never has been. This is a question of people who go out and hurt other people being kept in check.

The equivalent argument in a mo