December 6th, 2007
Bill makes home WiFi users track child porn
Wednesday, House Democrats rushed an absurd piece of legislation to the floor where it passed almost unanimously. Congress critters are suddenly up in arms about Wi-Fi connections being used to transmit child pornography. The new bill requires anyone providing a Wi-Fi network (that includes individuals) to report illegal (kiddy porn) images or face a $300,000 fine.
According to Cnet’s Declan McCullagh:
This is what the SAFE Act requires: Anyone providing an “electronic communication service” or “remote computing service” to the public who learns about the transmission or storage of information about certain illegal activities or an illegal image must (a) register their name, mailing address, phone number, and fax number with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s “CyberTipline” and (b) “make a report” to the CyberTipline that (c) must include any information about the person or Internet address behind the suspect activity and (d) the illegal images themselves. (By the way, “electronic communications service” and “remote computing service” providers already have some reporting requirements under existing law too.)
Declan points out that the bill was pushed to the floor in hurried fashion, without going through the committee process. Since there’s already an existing law that requires ISPs to report child porn, “there’s hardly an emergency.”
This bill would pretty clearly subject everyone running an access point, from home users to coffee shops to ISPs to onerous reporting, retention and financial penalties. Declan had an email exchange with a staff member of Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX) regarding how the bill impacts home users.
It is NOT the intent of the SAFE Act to target Wi-Fi providers but rather the entities that provide the internet to those conduits.
With that said–child pornography is illegal, grotesque, and has become a global epidemic. The Internet serves as virtual hunting preserve for pedophiles and predators to prey upon innocent children. So, while this bill is not intended to impact the groups you reference, those groups, all of us, have a civic and moral obligation to report these criminal acts that exploit and traumatize children.
