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."
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.
Unless the law is changed to say that it is.
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.
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!
It is in Canada evidently....
Although it also is in the US, UK, AUS, and a fair few other places thanks to insanely broad anti-terrorism laws. If you talk to a "terrorist" even if you don't know they're a terrorist and have no intention of conducting terrorism you can be breaking the law.
But then again owning a standard middle school science book is also technically illegal depending on how you read the anti-terrorism act(s). So really it is just a thought crime. If they associate you with it they will nab you for it with or without evidence.
It is the same in this case... They want to make paedophilia a thought crime and thus if you are associated with it by anyone then you are breaking a law...
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?
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.
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.
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 an example of the phenomenon I like to describe as "doing the wrong thing for the right reason". Trotting out "it's for the good of the children" is a great way to make bad legislation sound good to the average joe, but it doesn't change the fact that it is still bad legislation.
Going after people who push drugs on children? That is great, nobody would be against that. A law that would make it potentially illegal to talk to children in general? That is a terrible law and any freedom respecting individual should be against that.
The US already has laws concerning "the corruption of minors" and I'm sure Canada does as well. We don't need poorly worded laws specific to the internet for acts that are already prosecutable.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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.
Discussion of the inconsistencies of the bible, the nature of evolution, the age and origin of the universe, why its wrong to kill all infidels, anything rational. All of these things are deemed "not appropriate" by someone.
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
How is this a step forward? And who decides what innapropiate? and How do you even find the people committing the crimes in the first place? Does this conversation involve replying to comments left by minors? Honestly this law is as much of a trap as setting the a low speed limit and not posting the speed.
Every bit of this law smacks of more totalitarian molestation of justice. If you TRULY feel that this vague law is protecting anything but some politicians unwarranted self importance then you are sadly mistaken.
if the internet is so dangerous then children shouldn't be on it in the first place. or maybe THE PARENTS need to step up to the challenge and pusome fucking initiative in to monitoring their kids. Blanket laws like this arent used for anything but demonizing people suspected of crimes.
Just thinking about how this law will be abused makes me sick.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
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...
This whole thing is getting out of control. First of all, only a tiny percentage of child abuse happens through the Internet. Even kids are smart enough to recognize that it's not a good idea to meet up with some random person they met in a chat room -- most (somewhere in the neighborhood of 95%) child abuse happens at the hands of family members and close family friends. Of the remaining 5%, very little is facilitated by the Internet. This stuff is certainly bad, but it seems horrifyingly misguided to be writing specific legislation aimed at stomping out this tiny bastion of crime -- particularly when the inevitable collateral damage is considered.
While we are on the terrorism thing -- I would like to point out that we would be better off passing anti-bee legislation, as significantly more people are killed by bees than terrorists. Again, the whole thing seems completely absurd.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
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.
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."
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.
> ANY conversation which could be used to build trust or friendship with a minor.
So being nice to a minor would be an offense.
But being hostile is OK?
Sounds dumb to me, but what do I know.
The people with the shrillest voices, of course.
May the Maths Be with you!
No more WoW for Canadians, then.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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.
And therein lies the problem. If you're going on the Mickey Mouse Chat Group and talking up little kids, then yeah, I think the accusation of luring might make some sense. But Ch-rist, I mean, how do I know that by responding to you that I'm not talking to a thirteen year old? I've contributed to various forums and newsgroups over the years where people we know are kids have come on. I remember about ten years ago when I was posting on talk.origins, that we had someone who claimed to be fifteen or sixteen asking questions about biology. If that were to happen now would I, as a Canadian citizen, be potentially put in a legally compromised position because I replied to 16 year old's query about the evolution of cellular organelles.
What pisses me off is just how much people have freaked themselves out, and how willfully certain groups like the police and now the courts have contributed to that paranoia. They would have us all believe that every chatroom and forum is bubbling with child molesters, and I'm sorry, I just don't believe it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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!
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.
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."