Slashdot Mirror
Canada Supreme Court Broadens Internet "Luring" Offense
An anonymous reader points out this report that a Canadian Supreme Court has broadened its interpretation of an existing law designed to punish adults who attempt to meet children online for criminal purposes; under the court's interpretation, says the article, that would now "include anyone having an inappropriate conversation with a child — even if the chats aren't sexual in nature and the accused never intended to meet the alleged victim." The story quotes Mark Hecht, of the organization Beyond Borders, thus: "If you're an adult and if you're having conversations with a child on the Internet, be warned because even if your conversations aren't sexual and even if your conversations are not for the purpose of meeting a child and committing an offence against a child, what you're doing is potentially a crime."
What counts as innapropriate? Discussing an age-restriced movie with someone below that age rating? Talking about drugs? And who decides what is an isn't appropriate?
Sorry, but talking to someone (anyone) is not illegal in itself.
MABASPLOOM!
If I'm playing an MMO and strike up a text chat with another character, not having any idea that this person is LEGALLY a "child" (IE: Under 18 years of age) and the conversation turns to drinking, then I could be ARRESTED in Canada?
WTF Canadians? I thought you people were nice and sensible!?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Speaking to children online ruled illegal;
A worldwide shift back to the "Seen, but not heard," philosophy ruins childhood for everyone.
I can see it now, people being put on the sex offenders register for saying things like "suck my balls" to their opponents in a Call of Duty multiplayer match only to find out they're underage, even though the kids shouldn't legally be playing the game in the first place.
And just how is someone to know if it's a child one is chatting with?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
ban children from internet altogether!
It seems more and more reasonable to give kids their own version of the internet completely. That way we wont get crazy someone think of the children laws.
I'm sure the actual law has some more rigorous definitions (not necessarily any less ridiculous mind you) of what a conversation consists of.
Now what I'm wondering is, how can I know what age someone I'm talking to is?
Do they have to announce their age before I have to stop talking to them, or am I supposed to find other means?
Bearing in mind that just about any way of finding out someone's age would probably be a bit suspicious: asking for photo, asking for a webcam session, asking for a voice chat, or even just asking them their age in text.
I ask this because I know a lot of kids that sound more mature than a majority of the 'adults' I chat to online, although a few things give them away.
How do we know you're not a child? Or the poster for that matter! Merely answering a slashdot story could be a potential offense.
Methinks we're going to see less Canadians around here for a while...
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I can just see the disaster that is "having an inappropriate conversation" being put to the test.
Defendant "Your honor, all I was doing was talking about which blue cheese tastes best as a pasta sauce."
Judge "Well, that may be the case, but you were on a technical forum. 2 years in Federal Pound You in the Ass Prison."
I'm looking at her bebo profile.
What can you see? Can you see anything?
Nothing...there's nothing. Wait...there are markings.
It's some form of l33t speak...I can't read it.
There are few who can...the language is that of 13 year old girls, which I will not utter here.
A/S/L/Scan of government issued id?
How do you know it's a child? Am I a child?
A society which genuinely wanted to protect children would do things like reduce speed limits in built up areas to 10mph and imprison people who drive while talking on mobile phones - because the proponents of the legislation claim that any level of intrusion is justified if "a single child is saved".
Interestingly, the hysteria is driven by tabloid newspapers who, on other pages, will be moaning about the "Nanny State" - but this Canadian case seems to be about "the evil scum didn't commit an offence! We must create one so that in future similar evil scum can be charged with something!"
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
to Canadas youth: Stop ruining the internet for us adults. Seriously, go fuck yours---------CARRIER LOST
Well, as long as we'll be protected by the discretion of somebody whose job performance is evaluated on the basis of how many charges he brings, there should be no problem...
In the U.S., there is no defense against such crimes. If a girl uses a fake ID, for example, to make you think that she's 18, they will still haul your ass to jail for statutory rape if you meet her in an adults-only club and have sex with her later that night. That's one of the big complaints people have about our laws. You do have to be a mind reader.
Here in Georgia not too long ago, we had a case of a 17-year-old girl and her 18-year-old boyfriend having consensual sex. I think it was her parents that found out about it, reported him to the police, and he had to spend the next three years of his life in jail and register as a sex offender because of it. Yes, he probably knew that she was only 17, but the point is that when it comes to "protecting" children, never underestimate the stupidity of politicians trying to pick up votes for being "tough on crime."
The obvious legislative solution to this problem is to ban kids from using the internet until they are at least 18 years of age.
Much like children aren't allowed in bars, children should not be allowed on the internet.
Back before AOL violated their own TOS by monitoring private chats, back when IM was new, back when IRC was for nerds (It still is, right?), one of the things I, an adult, loved to do was talk to other people online.
Different races, different cultures, different ages, too, provided new perspectives on life. Talking to a Californian and the O.J. case, talked to a German about the fall of the wall, talking to someone in South Africa about relationships, and even talking to kids about music (or anything else for which I found their fresh, sometimes naive perspective eye-opening) were activities I loved because they gave me a different way of looking at things. I consider polite conversation with as many people who are as different from me as possible to be an essential part of the lifelong process of self-education that we should all relish.
Yes, that means I talked to kids online.
I don't do that any more. I don't even try to talk to new people online anymore. So many of the old haunts were slowly invaded by LEOs blundering their way through silly entrapment schemes ("Hi, I'm 14/f/California. I love cheerleading and gymnastics. Do you want to talk to me? I've been having problems with my boyfriend cuz he wants to sex me and I'd like to know what an older guy thinks" was typical, although I didn't misspell nearly enough words.) that all the fun was sucked out of it.
Now, I talk on forums where the whole world can read what I say. That way, no one can accuse me of grooming. When I made the decision to eschew private conversations with strangers, I thought I was being too paranoid but withdrew, anyway, just to be on the safe side.
It seems I wasn't paranoid at all. There really are people out there who think that if an adult says "Hi" to a kid they don't know, said adult must be up to no good.
Sad.
Really, really sad.
other than situations where they answer the phone and you ask to speak to their parents or they are visiting your kids. why would an adult need to communicate with someone else's child over the internet?
For the same reason we talk to other adults? Because we share interests?
The music I enjoy, computer games I play, sports I watch.. plenty of those have an audience that is not exclusively for adults or children. We mix at the physical concerts and stadiums, so why not in on-line discussions? I've talked to plenty of tweens and teenagers who had more intelligent things to discuss than quite a few adults. Since most laws don't distinguish between adolescents and toddlers, should those "children" be off-limits to talk to as well?
That said, I agree there's probably not much adults have in common with pre-teens nor would there often be a reason to communicate with them.
I RTFA.
I didn't realize they didn't have double jeopardy in Canada.
How many times can a person be tried for the same offense in Canada? Is there a limit? Do prosecutors and courts just keep changing the rules and re-filing charges until they get a conviction?
I'm not being intentionally obtuse, here. I'm legitimately curious.
If you'd read the article, "inappropriate" is apparently synonymous with "any," now.
How many people are going to be arrested for asking children about their "personal interests or other innocuous topics" on the grounds that the person asking the questions might perhaps turn out to be a pedophile?
How do you establish the adult's intentions unless the adult has expressed a desire to commit an offense against the child, thus not requiring the broader interpretation of the law? The way the judge's decision is described, it would seem it isn't necessary to establish criminal intent, thus making people liable for conversations that are truly innocent.
There's often been an air of paranoia around many of the laws that are supposed to address the online victimization of children, but this one is about the most ridiculous I've seen. Idiots at the helm is all I can say.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Bullshit. Mistake of Fact is a defense in a criminal case. It has to be reasonable. Meeting a girl in a restricted-access adult club, it is reasonable to assume that she is of-age. It's not iron-clad, it's an imperfect defense; if she acts younger, raises doubt, etc, prosecution can certainly raise those issues. But it becomes a question for the jury, rather than the set-in-stone determination you would have us believe. Mistake of Law, on the other hand, is very very rarely a defense. You pretty much have to have a personal letter from the attorney general telling you what he thinks the law is, you follow his advice, and he be wrong, before mistake of Law is a defense.
Secondly, I question the case you talk about in Georgia, since the age of consent there is 16. Are you referring to the tragic case of the 17 year old boy who had (supposedly consensual) sex with a 14 year old girl at a party and ended up receiving 10 years in jail for a felony statutory rape charge? It's tragic and stupid, but not as cut and dry as you mentioned. It and similar cases also elicited a change in the law, because it was so stupid. It's now a misdemeanor in Georgia.
Yes, I AM an attorney. And posting anonymously because I am reading slashdot at work....
Fake ID's are easy for kids to get, so it would be best to get a scan of credit cards, checks, bank statements, etc. That way when you start talking to them, you know that they're a great identity theft target in addition to not being a child.
I always thought Linux was a euphemism for virginity.
You might as well ban them from libraries, in case they read age-inappropriate books.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Okay, this will probably be taken as a point for the other side, BUT:
In my WoW guid, we have a few members under the age of 18. Mostly, they're the kids of "real" members and their participation is a matter of humoring them. However, we've got at least one kid (14 at present) who is really quite mature for his age. Specifically, he's got three end-game geared characters, and he's capable of being a very effective main tank on what is currently some of the most difficult content in Warcraft.
(translation, this 14 year old kid plays his characters as well as any adult member, and better than some).
We've also got a Ventrillo server (voice chat) to help us communicate during raids and to coordinate other guild activities (as well as being a social space)
So, although you may disagree about the merits of a kid's participation in WoW, I can tell you that I've actually heard our raid leader (A Canadian citizen and ironically, an eighth grade teacher) ask this young raider if he's done his homework before a raid. In some ways, the majority of us adults treat him as a little brother most of the time, and as an equal colleague when raiding.
Where does that leave our raid leader? What about our other Canadian members? How long before the US enacts the "me too" version of this law, potentially exposing us to criminal/civil liability just for letting this kid into our lives?
Anyway, in answer to that question, there are many legitimate and wholly innocent reasons. I know that I interact with this particular kind IN SPITE OF HIS AGE, not because of it.
The Digital Sorceress
This is a country that includes text as potential child pornography. If sexual activity is depicted and includes an under-age character, that can lead to a child pornography charge.
So my guess is "yes".
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
No one sees any definitions at *all* from the article, including whether this law is intended to be used only retroactively; in other words, if this law only comes into play AFTER the defendant is accused of illegal behavior. It would be helpful to this conversation to see a link to the actual law. Otherwise everything here is just based on speculation and personal interpetation - not that something like *that* has ever stopped us /.'ers...
I don't know if he's being sarcastic or not, but I would prefer his suggestion to some poorly written, non-objective law that can be twisted into a Kafkaesque nightmare by some overly ambitious prosecutor.
I, for one, have no wish to live under a giant, child-proof cap.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Clearly, banning children from the internet is unenforceable and preposterous.
The idea here is that instead of understanding the technology and applying the old laws to the new medium, legislators feel the need to write overly broad laws that make every Canadian who's ever participated in a flamewar on youtube a potential sex offender / felon.
At the very least, passing a law like this would make parents responsible for whatever distress/harm came to their unaccompanied children while they surfed the net, something many here would agree with.
So I log into a chat room in the early evening, and tell my daughter to haul her ass home from the neighbour's house for dinner [*]. Presumably that would be considered inappropriate wording (although a common-enough phrasing), and I'm an adult while she's an under-age teenager. The neighbour might even witness this dialog and report it to the cops.
Could I then be arrested as a kiddie predator (or whatever) under Canadian law? If so, then I agree: ban kids from the net, at least in Canada.
[*] Actually, I use IM for communications like that, but no doubt the same laws would be misapplied.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
>The obvious legislative solution to this problem is to ban kids from using the internet until they are at least 18 years of age.
And so the more likely approach they would take would be to ban adults from the internet, forever.
The people who make these laws are unable to think through the issues they're dealing with or the consequences of the laws they make. It's their job, but they repeatedly show themsleves incabable (sorry I have a cold) of it, incompetent at it and unqualified to craft, legislate or oversee well-thought-out laws that are properly balanced and take into account a wide view of the society they're effecting and the implications such 'rules written down in paper and backed up by violent force' have.
The UK's approach to this wave of 'protect the children & finance our own political capital through villifying adults' moral panic, has been to wedge itself between adults and children as a gatekeeper. Where an adult has employment where any regular (read: not that frequent even) contact with children occurs, the adult is deemed a potential threat and must submit him or herself for scrutiny by the state as to his or her fitness to come into contact with said children. Rumours are allowed in the database which a potential pedophile (formerly 'adult') must be checked against and this can bar them from any profession, permanently as far as I'm aware, where such contact occurs or may occur, forever.
What the state is doing int hese cases is labelling all adults as threats to children and portraying itself as the saviour of children against these bad adults. It is devisive in the extreme and a fundemental attack on a healthy and normal society where children and adults get along, pretty much for the most part, in a caring and loving environment. It's a social evil of the most extreme kind, IMO, to drive a wedge between the population of adults and their children for the sake of the state's own glorification and political standing (in the eyes of certain punitive-minded and ignorant voters).
It is a horrific attack on one of the most fundemental aspects of a species: the relationship between the adults and their young, where a third party defines the adults as a threat and seeks to portray itself as the only true protector the offspring could have.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I could see the humour behind your comment, which unfortunately the moderators who marked it insightful couldn't. The internet is more akin to walking down the street - I certainly wouldn't be seen dead talking to children I don't know in the street. The internet differs in that others can't see with whom you're talking, or if you're even using it if you're in the privacy of your own home. For some reason, the apparent anonymity of the internet seems to remove some people's inhibitions to doing things they wouldn't do out on the street,
I work in schools doing computer tech support. I see teachers already laboring under existing rules covering in-person behaviour; no hugs for kindergartners, no "inappropriate" conversations, etc. The message is, kids are bad news, dangerous to everyone. I'd sooner cut my own throat than try to help a lost child in a public place. Is this REALLY what we want?
I suppose he might have been joking -- or he might just be an adult who's seen what today's troubled teenagers do when they're on the internet. (As a foster parent, I've been down that road myself, and trust me: sometimes you just don't want to know!)
Of course, even if he is joking, there is always a kernal of truth in humor... that's why it's funny in the first place.
Much like children aren't allowed in bars, children should not be allowed on the internet.
There are THREE ways to of getting something done: Pay someone to do it, do it yourself or forbid your children from doing it...
Of course, the best solution would still be parents actually doing their job - parenting their kids instead of placing them in front of nanny PC unsupervised and training them in the fine art of bullshit detection. But that's way too much of a hassle...
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Ok Miss Teenager... Dont you dare figure out how to break the speed of light! I'm warning you. Dont do it. It's a law of physics.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
But the law would apply to here, regardless of whether this is the intended target or not.
The difference between humans and other animals is that humans are able to see beyond their biological instincts and consider things as they actually are. Perhaps humans are still too primitive to prevent their rational minds from being co-opted by irrational instinctive impulses, which is something I don't see as a sign of strength. Growth lies in the opposite direction, where factual concerns trump irrational and often harmful thoughts such as "let's assume adults who talk to children are all up to no good".
"Think of the children" belongs in the past. We should strive to outgrow it rather than let it take over our lives -- and our minds.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
If the face of lawmakers feeling like they have to do something, I would prefer the combination of unenforceable and preposterous over enforceable and preposterous.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The problem with the case seems to be that the f*cked up by choosing the wrong charge, had it shot down because of such, and then chose to modify the conditions of the charge in the retrial to make it fit the "crime."
Apparently the perp in question - though he hadn't actually scheduled to meet the underage girl - had discussed with her the things he wanted to do, including oral sex etc. As he hadn't asked to meet her, the initial judge tossed the luring charge.
The second judge greatly expanded the scope of what "luring" is, thus allowing that charge to stick. Now it's *WAY* too broad.
It seems to me that the initial screw-up was charging the guy with luring in the first place. There are appropriate charges for an adult having "dirty talk" (as opposed to just talking about sex, i.e. like a Social Studies or Science class) with a minor. Unfortunately I don't have the exact name of such, but they do exist, and it seems they would have been more appropriate for this scenario than massively broadening the existing law.
Now it seems I'll have to "card" everyone I meet online. And don't forget that this might not just apply to a chatroom. You've got bulletin boards, and even game lobbies/chats etc. So the next time you tell some opponent "I'm going to f*ck you up", and he turns out to be a 14-15 year old, maybe you'll get a visit from the police.
Actually, just banning children from the Supreme Court would have fixed this problem.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I ignore any child that I do not personally already know. The 'sex offender' laws and the shrill cries of helicopter parents have caused this. I'm not getting accused of being sex offender (which will stick with me even if exonerated on court) because someone's un-minded child said hello to me. Likewise, I'm not helping any child I don't know if they appear to be in trouble. I will call 911 and watch, but I'm not getting involved. It's the only safe way to be an adult male in US society.
Blar.
Hm - I remember when CP laws started to go overboard, seeing people like the OP say something like, "You know, as vague as these laws are, someday, some teenage girl is going to take a picture of herself and post it on the internet and get arrested for peddling CP." People like you said, "Teenage girls are not the target of the law and you know it. Don't blow this up into something more than it is." Yet here we are in 2009, and teenagers seem to get in trouble for pictures on their phones every week...
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Since this hysteria has only been around in its current form for a decade or so, I'm finding it difficult to accept that it is all that "natural" a reaction, on the part of individuals or society.
The truth is that the "think of the children" mentality is about as natural as racist and sexist thinking and about as damaging to society overall. It needs to be ridiculed, condemned and stamped out.
May the Maths Be with you!
A society that concerns itself with real threats and doesn't waste time on irrational ones will be much better of than a paranoid society. The idea that humans will become extinct for not freaking out is itself irrational, and false.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I did that when I was a kid (learned how to make explosives on the internet). However, I also learned how to build a computer, program, cook, fix my car, argue, etc. on the Internet. In fact, I would say I am where I am today (full-time developer and grad student) because of the information available on the Internet. You gotta take the bad with the good sometimes and deal with the consequences.
So now if I Tea-Bag some poor kid in Halo or Unreal Tournament I could face jail time! They can have my tea-bag when they pry it from my cold dead crotch.
I recently told my wife that I was going to teach our (future) children to not be afraid of strangers; needless to say she was appalled. I pointed out that if our 3 year old got seperated from us at the mall and went up to the first person they saw and said "I lost my parents, can you help me?" the odds are 99.9999% that the situation would end favorably. If our kid was so terrified that they went and hid from everyone it would be orders of magnitude harder to find them.
Teach your kids how to solve problems because they won't be able to avoid them (or hide behind you) forever. And if you teach your kids how to solve even the simplest of problems (getting lost at the mall) you'll find that they are more capable of solving the big problems later in life.
That applied long before computers came about. Unless you're going to shoot children in the head before they reach five, there is always some chance of a nasty end, or of them doing bad things. It's the nature of the beast. Some people seem to want a level of safety for their offspring that is impossible to deliver, but can lead to unintended consequences which are toxic to a free society. I hate to say it, because it sounds cold and harsh, but our liberties, and just as importantly, a rational and objective legal structure, are indeed more important than the odd child's, or more expansively, odd person's life. Shutting down chunks of the Internet and making laws so broad that a good deal of innocent activity could potentially put one at risk of legal repurcussions will save only a handful of the children lured by predators online or otherwise (and these make up only a small fraction of all the children in the industrialized world to begin with).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Then why has it only had such a detrimental effect on our society and its laws in the last 10 years?
May the Maths Be with you!
We cannot altogether avoid our instincts, but we are certainly capable of doing better than our instincts in most situations. Policies borne out of paranoia aren't harmless, and besides are generally less effective than policies that are well thought out. "Think of the children" policies are usually knee-jerk reactions that are out of proportion to the actual threat. We shall not face the extinction of mankind for abandoning policies that address mostly imagined threats, but we are at risk of suffering serious negative side effects whenever people's irrational fears are allowed to influence the law to such a degree as is happening here.
This is not about standing proud in front of a charging lion (which both instinct and reason agree is a terrible idea), but about accepting and embracing the power of the mind to distinguish between real and imagined threats despite what our primitive instincts might tell us. Humans are capable of that to a significant degree, and it's actually a step forward in terms of evolution.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I tend to disagree. I think this is more of a recent cultural shift. You're right that protecting children is a fundamental human instinct, but we have, in the past, been far more trusting of strangers than we are today. My girlfriends' mom was terrified of the prospect of her being kidnapped as a child, largely because of horror stories to that effect that were prevalent on the news. Such an event, however, is statistically very improbable. And she was far less concerned about her daughter being injured in a car accident, which is fairly likely. My mom, on the other hand, who was raised with a larger extended family and in a more open sort of community was relatively unconcerned with me speaking to adults. Our concern for our children is commonly misplaced, and it isn't our instincts that are to blame. Among other things, it's news media that distorts the danger by overreporting these sorts of crimes.
My girlfriends' mom[...]
Evidently I have multiple girlfriends who share the same mother. That would be pretty awesome if it were true. Well... maybe.
You have the right idea. Kids are not dumb; they're just lacking experience and it's our job to give them that experience.
I have no kids but hang-out with my nieces/nephews a lot, and I treat them as if they were adults (up to a point). For example my niece asked me to get some cake and I responded, "Couldn't you get it yourself?" She frowned, said "no", and then changed her mind and cut the cake herself. She was happy with her accomplishment and I said, "See? I knew you could do it." That made her smile.
Sheltering kids until they're 18, not letting them speak to store employees or use the internet, earns an "F" in my book. All you've done is create an adult with the mental capacity of a 5-year-old. This new Canadian law that forbids kid from interacting with adults (online) is just plain stupid.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Either you do not, in fact, disagree with Adrian Lopez, or you are committing the naturalistic fallacy.
You seem to be arguing why things are the way they are, while Adrian is arguing how things should be in a rational society. These positions are not in conflict, contrary to your tone, unless you intend to argue an "ought" from an "is."