
Lawmakers Want to Block Pornography at the Expense of Free Speech and Privacy - pdcerb
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/state-lawmakers-want-block-pornography-expense-your-free-speech-privacy-and-hard
======
userbinator
_Device manufacturers would be forced to install "obscenity filters" on cell
phones, tablets, computers, and any other Internet-connected devices._

I vaguely remember reading about a similar effort in China many years ago ---
that failed silently.

Trying to tie this into "human trafficking" is a cruel diversion, just like
pornography, terrorism, and drugs.

"Let's make the world safer" seems to be the common thread in all of these
anti-freedom bills, with the implicit intent of branding those who are against
them as supporters of human traffickers, pedophilia, terrorism, or whatever
else.

There are two memorable quotes which will become _very_ relevant in the near
future:

"If you outlaw freedom, only outlaws will have freedom."

"Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."

~~~
Santosh83
> "If you outlaw freedom, only outlaws will have freedom."

Couldn't help but think of Malcolm Reynolds and his group from the Firefly
series, given that I was re-watching it last night.

------
0xcde4c3db
It bears repeating (perhaps incessantly, given that this kind of proposal
keeps popping up) that "obscenity filters" have a long and ugly track record
of blocking material about reproductive health, gender studies, and LGBT
rights/culture. There used to be a handful of websites that cataloged these
incidents back in the '90s, but I don't know if anyone's still doing it. Just
punch something like 'Websense LGBT' into your favorite search engine if you
have any doubt.

------
saagarjha
> Those filters could only be removed if consumers pay a $20 fee.

Wait, what? Why should a fee to opt out exist?

~~~
rgbrenner
Read their faq... this question and the one after it:
[http://humantraffickingpreventionact.com/#q2](http://humantraffickingpreventionact.com/#q2)

They encourage retailers and manufacturers to charge more than the $20 and
pocket the difference. They are marketing the bill as pro-business.

~~~
deathanatos
The writing and grammar on that site is terrible, but the double-entendre on
that question takes the cake:

> _the retailers can set the amount to be what it feels the market can bare._

I'm _hoping_ that wasn't intentional.

~~~
DavidSJ
_The writing and grammar on that site is terrible,_

I’m sorry to do this, but I think you mean that the writing and grammar _are_
terrible, not that they _is_ terrible.

~~~
heartbreak
Things aren't always what they seem.

Fish and chips is what I had for dinner.

------
aerotwelve
Point of personal privilege: I am so embarrassed that Iowa is on that list.

If your state happens to be listed, please remember to vote in November. There
has to be serious electoral consequences for every politician who thought it
was a good idea to put their name on such an abhorrent piece of legislation.

Freedom of speech is not an in-app purchase.

~~~
bb88
Really, that makes you embarrassed?

Not US Rep. "McCarthy was an American Hero" Steve King?
[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-king-iowas-
embarr...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-king-iowas-
embarrassment_us_58eec357e4b0156697224c4a)

Not giving gun permits to the blind?
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/08/iowa-g...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/08/iowa-
grants-gun-permits-to-the-blind/2780303/)

Not the Iowa State Basketball Coach making out with the coeds?
[http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_37ac54e3-06c1-563...](http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_37ac54e3-06c1-5638-9230-0696077aed1e.html)

THAT... THAT embarrasses you about Iowa?

------
bediger4000
Don't you think it's the other way around? Lawmakers want to block free speech
and eliminate privacy by using pornography as an excuse?

------
tzs
> The gist of the model legislation is this: Device manufacturers would be
> forced to install "obscenity filters" on cell phones, tablets, computers,
> and any other Internet-connected devices. Those filters could only be
> removed if consumers pay a $20 fee.

Assuming that the device manufacturers do not actually want to participate in
this, is there anything that stops them from making the removal code be some
simple function of the serial number, and throwing up a website that will
compute that function for $20? It will quickly get cracked, of course, and for
the most part won't serious inconvenience anyone during the time it takes to
get the stupid law overturned.

------
xorxarle
Surely this just isn't even practical, even if it does pass... if the filter
has to be installed on the end user device it will be widely known how to
bypass it. Why do people even write these rediculous things (the bills in
question).

~~~
russdill
Don't forget that most new phones have locked bootloaders and
cryptographically secure boot processes. If lawmakers required manufactures
put a piece of software on every phone, it would be technically possible and
very difficult to bypass.

~~~
ball_of_lint
What about phones that have already been bought? You can easily get a phone
today that runs an open source OS and boatloader: As bad as this bill may be,
I doubt they could justify confiscating all of them, but short of that there
is no way to enforce that law.

Similarly with computers - with a law like this in place Linux cannot exist.

~~~
russdill
It's not about controlling all the people, it's about controlling a
significant percentage of people.

------
philsnow
> Anyone who wants to unlock the filters on their devices would have to put
> their request in writing, show ID, and verify that they’ve been shown a
> “written warning regarding the potential dangers” of removing the obscenity
> filter.

A near-future dystopian fiction could involve the opposite, with people being
required to show their ID and aver that they've been shown a "written warning
regarding the potential dangers" of installing censorship software on their
devices, abrogating the decision of what's decent to either the state or to
the device manufacturer, and paying $20 for the privilege.

------
limeblack
Laws like this reminds me how little many people understand technology. There
is no realistic way to my knowledge to implement this on all devices when
torrents and open source operating systems exist. The article even agrees with
me at some levels "The technical requirements for this kind of aggressive
platform censorship at scale are simply unworkable."

~~~
4ad
On the contrary, now with locked smartphones and tablets this is very easy to
implement. Of course it would be trivially defeatable, but that is never the
point. The vast majority of people would not know how to defeat it. The law is
not concerned with edge cases, it's concerned with bulk surveillance.

Just like the laws against cryptography. Lawmakers are not stupid, they know
they can't stop bad actors from using crypto. They don't care about bad
actors, they care about you and me.

~~~
mirimir
Well, sure there are "bad actors". But some of us like to work around that
bullshit just for fun, and to share :) And indeed, many of those "bad actors"
are actually pretty clueless.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Would you really share if you knew you would get charged as someone who
supports human trafficking and faced a decade long prison sentence? Even if
you beat the charge, how employable would you be of the first thing people saw
when they searched for you is your mugshot as someone arrested for supporting
human trafficking?

~~~
mirimir
Huh?

First, I wouldn't knowingly consult for human traffickers. But I do share
online in various forums, some of which are effectively anonymous.

Second, Mirimir is a pseudonym. It's quite well firewalled from my meatspace
identity. And it actually plays pretty safe. For anything at all iffy, I use
temporary personas, and compartmentalize more thoroughly.

Third, by that standard there'd be no Tor Project, or Freenet Project, and a
lot fewer Github sites.

------
naiveai
Wow, they're being so goddamn vague with it as well in order to mislead
people. "Protecting children" my fucking arse.

------
justonepost
A better way would be to require all browser makers or OS makers add an easy
to use child protection filter that can be easily enabled by parents.

This is a serious issue and while the OP bill is obvious censorship, all
parents want more easy control.

~~~
interfixus
> * all parents want more easy control*

Refuted. I am a parent. I do not want 'more easy control'.

~~~
justonepost
Really? You don't want to be able to easily ensure that your pre-teens aren't
able to easily access violent porn?

Alright, I guess "all" is little hyperbolic. But I think the sentiment stands
firm.

I also think we need to avoid censorship as much as possible, and ensure
parents have more control by default is the best path forward. Otherwise we'll
end up with a solution like the UK has where age registration has to be done
by everyone.

~~~
jononor
Aren't there hundreds of parental control applications available out there
already?

------
nickpeterson
Apple could basically choose to ignore this law if it passed and these state
governments would reveal they have no actual power in the globalized world.
Oops

~~~
4ad
Why would Apple do such a thing? Presumably there would be fines if they
didn't comply. If everybody is doing it (which is just Google and Apple,
really), nobody gains or loses and advantage, so why would they care?

~~~
ball_of_lint
Apple has a large part of their reputation built on security and privacy,
neither of which is at all possible with arbitrary government censorship
software baked into every device.

~~~
confounded
Blocking malware for the security of the nation is the justification for GCHQ
building a Chinese-style firewall around the UK’s Internet.

So in that case, the pitch _is_ security. The pitch can always be varied as
long as there are bogeymen.

This is the problem with relying on marketing (or markets) to protect you.

------
cityofghosts
China already does this, and it works to a large extent. If you want to do it
in a free society it's not too hard...

1\. Enforce OSHA workplace safety law on all u.s. porn sets. 2\. Enforce
international trade rules against labor safety arbitrage, and or create new
ones. 3\. Enforce copyright law against tube sites that have made a mockery of
d.m.c.a 4\. Unionize all porn workers

Of course this will never happen... Porn is a symptom of the underlying I'll
of our society.. where the accumulation of wealth and power are the only
denominators of worth or virtue, then things like OSHA, labor rights,
copyright law for small producers, and unions, are all seen as enemies of ,if
not progress then the system itself.

If the u.s. loses a war to China because China infiltrated our computers with
free porn, while they had mass censorship which prevented it, then American
capitalism will have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

In other words... If porn destroys society, it might be a natural feedback
loop, a self correcting mechanism whereby unrestrained , brutal greed is kept
in check, by the society that glorifies it the most , collapsing in on itself.

I did not think of this myself. A young porn star aka victim made a
documentary a few year back, about the disgraced CMU professor who began the
true mass industrialization of porn. She called it "McDonald's for sex" or
something like that. The point is that you can't apply Harvard business school
brutalistic to every human process and expect a positive result.

------
thntk
What does porn have to do with free speech and privacy?

~~~
thntk
Oh, that is so ridiculous that I have to come back and LOL.

------
echevil
Sigh... If the lawmakers want to copy from China, why not copy their gun
control laws first and actually save some lives..

~~~
mmirate
Because copying their gun control laws would, at best, not save any lives.

If you outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have guns.

~~~
echevil
A few decades ago, before China enforced strict gun control laws, gun
ownership were also quite common in China, and it was also a big problem. Now
China is way more safer than America (in terms of violent crimes)

Well, I was being sarcastic and don’t actually believe it would work that well
for US. But gun control laws certainly saved many lives in China, and there is
at least hope that it could actually save some American lives. It would make
it much harder for new outlaws to obtain guns at least

------
bogomipz
It's worth notice that many of these same states[1] mentioned in the article
lack any interest in enacting an assault weapons ban to protect their citizens
from deadly violence.

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/assaul...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/assault-
weapons-laws/)

~~~
Pyxl101
It's worth notice that "assault weapons" is a loaded term, that really just
means "rifles that are [scary looking | painted black | etc]". It's not a
meaningful technical class of weapon distinct from other semiautomatic long
guns, or really from handguns. (Handguns can be semiautomatic, can shoot the
same caliber ammunition as rifles, and can have the same size magazines.)

In any case, it is reasonable that states have no interest in trying to enact
some kind of "assault weapon" ban, because that would be contrary to the
United States Constitution: "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
shall not be infringed". Just like this "human trafficking" law would be
obviously contrary to the Constitution as well. I can't imagine how any
lawmaker could seriously consider introducing a bill like is mentioned in the
article - I guess it goes to show how corrupt some politicians can be.

No one should expect state legislatures to infringe the rights of the people
that are protected by the Constitution. If someone wants to amend the US
Constitution to take away either of these safeguards of peoples' rights, then
let them propose that honestly instead.

