{"id":3733,"date":"2003-04-04T20:06:15","date_gmt":"2003-04-05T01:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=3733"},"modified":"2003-04-04T20:06:15","modified_gmt":"2003-04-05T01:06:15","slug":"trust_us_were_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/04\/trust_us_were_t.html","title":{"rendered":"Trust us — we’re the government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Child porn is an awful, horrible, icky, and revolting thing. Let’s just get that out of the way to begin with. <\/p>\n

The Internet, of course, has served as a new avenue for child porn distribution among the sick sorts that get off on it. Various governments have taken various steps to try and stop it. Though ostensibly well-intended, some of them are pretty crappy laws.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania, for example, has a state law that allows the attorney general to force ISPs to block certain sites it deems to be child porn. That includes Internet providers such as AOL and Earthlink. <\/p>\n

While I appreciate the efforts of the attorney general of Pennsylvania to safeguard his residents from the viewing of child porn (and note that the law itself doesn’t do anything about the trash itself — a lot of these sites are offshore — only the mechanism by which people can access it), since I didn’t help elect him, I’m not particularly sanguine about his making those decisions for me.<\/p>\n

Because, after all, if Earthlink blocks site X, it can’t narrow that to just its Pennsylvania subscribers. All of its users are blocked.<\/p>\n

Which might still be okay, except that sometimes servers that host child porn sites also host innocent non-porn sites. Which then get blocked by the ISPs.<\/p>\n

What innocent sites might be being blocked? Wouldn’t you like to know? Well … you can’t<\/a>. The Pennsylvania state attorney general’s office won’t tell anyone the 423 sites it has asked ISPs to block. <\/p>\n

Why? <\/p>\n

Fisher’s office said disclosing the list of blocked Web sites would itself be disseminating such pornography, which is illegal.
\n“The documents that you seek contain the Web addresses of Internet sites that contain such depictions,” wrote L. Kinch Bowman, director of management services for the attorney general’s office.<\/p>\n

But, you may ask, how then can we ever have oversight over the implementation of such a law? How do we know that sites that somebody in the AG’s office simply dislikes — political opponents, minority religions, alternative lifestyles — aren’t being targeted for harrassment.<\/p>\n

Well, we can’t. <\/p>\n

Well, then, if someone wanted to challenge the law, contend that it was adversely affecting innocent people, beyond the value of what it was designed to do, wouldn’t they need to be able to compile a list of affected sites?<\/p>\n

Yup, they sure would. But they can’t.<\/p>\n

We’re from the government. Trust us — we’re here to help you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Child porn is an awful, horrible, icky, and revolting thing. Let’s just get that out of the way to begin with. The Internet, of course, has served as a new…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9224,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/01\/19\/all_your_search.html","url_meta":{"origin":3733,"position":0},"title":"All your searches are belong to us","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 19-Jan-06 6:50am","format":false,"excerpt":"The Department of Justice wants to know what you're searching for on Google. Yes, you -- if you're lucky enough to be in the records that they're asking for. Now,...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2052,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/03\/20\/shifting_the_re.html","url_meta":{"origin":3733,"position":1},"title":"Shifting the responsibility","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 20-Mar-02 9:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the ongoing debates in the Internet realm is who is responsible for content -- the person who creates it and stores it and serves it up, or the...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":914,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/02\/warez_porn_and.html","url_meta":{"origin":3733,"position":2},"title":"Warez, porn, and Harry Potter","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 2-Nov-01 12:03pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Pirated software is more popular on search sites than porn or Harry Potter, according to this story. I'm sure that says something about the Internet community, but I'd just as...","rel":"","context":"In "Harry Potter"","block_context":{"text":"Harry Potter","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/harry-potter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":458,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/10\/filter_tips.html","url_meta":{"origin":3733,"position":3},"title":"Filter tips","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 10-Apr-03 3:14pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Google is under fire for its opt-in porn filter. A new study says that it blocks a lot of non-porn sites. Some of the URLs listed in the listings below...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37939,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/29\/bad-choices-but-really-bad-law.html","url_meta":{"origin":3733,"position":4},"title":"Bad choices but really bad law","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 29-Jun-13 12:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"I find child pornography repugnant both on the face of it and as exploitation of non-consenting minors. I would gleefully see the stereotypical child pornographer locked away in prison for an exceedingly long time.This is not a case of that. While I'm not endorsing the fellow in question's judgment on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7952,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/07\/13\/who_for_hufu.html","url_meta":{"origin":3733,"position":5},"title":"Who for HuFu?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 13-Jul-05 1:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the more odd (and disturbing) aspects of the computer age relates to child pornography. There's a lot of legal debate over child porn images that are not actual...","rel":"","context":"In "Disney\/Pixar"","block_context":{"text":"Disney\/Pixar","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/disney"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}