Source: reason.com 8/20/24 From Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Rokita, decided Friday by Judges Frank Easterbrook and Amy St. Eve: Indiana seeks a stay of the preliminary injunction that a district court entered preventing the enforcement of Ind. Code § 24-4-23, which requires web sites to limit minors’ access to certain sexual materials. Indiana’s statute is functionally identical to one adopted by Texas. That statute has been held to be valid [by the Fifth Circuit, though the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case]. Free Speech Coalition, Inc., which…
Read MoreTag: Internet
TX: Texas Sues Pornhub for Failing to Check IDs
Source: news.yahoo.com 2/28/24 The first age verification lawsuit against a major web porn purveyor is here. On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he was suing Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo. Paxton claims it is violating HB 1181, a Texas law passed last year. The new law requires porn websites to use “reasonable age verification methods” to make sure viewers are 18 or above and to post warnings about porn’s alleged harms, along with a number for a national mental-health hotline. “Texas has a right to protect its children…
Read MoreUK accuses Meta of empowering child sexual abusers with encryption rollout
Source: theguardian.com 12/7/23 Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has been accused by the UK government of empowering child sexual abusers after the tech firm began rolling out the automatic encryption of all messages on its Facebook and Messenger platforms. The home secretary, James Cleverly, described the move as a “significant step back” for child safety after Meta said it would introduce end-to-end encryption on the apps. The move means that only the sender and receiver of messages on the platforms will be able to access their content. Cleverly said: “Law enforcement,…
Read MoreCanada: Sharing intimate images without consent may soon land you on sex offender list
Source: globalnews.ca 4/26/23 The federal government has introduced legislation to add the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and extortion to the list of offences that could land someone on the National Sex Offender Registry. The addition was highlighted in a statement on Wednesday, ahead of a press conference from Justice Minister David Lametti and Women, Gender Equality and Youth Minister Marci Ien. The bill in question was introduced in the Senate earlier in the afternoon. “Sexual offences are amongst the most heinous and degrading forms of violence. They have devastating…
Read More1,000 federal judges seek to remove personal info from internet as threats skyrocket
Source: cnbc.com 3/17/23 More than 1,000 federal judges have asked the U.S. Courts system for help removing personally identifiable information from the internet under a program implemented after a New Jersey judge’s son was murdered at their house. That is nearly one-third of the active and retired federal judges eligible for the program, a spokesman for the U.S. Courts system told CNBC on Friday. The response to the online scrubbing program was detailed in the agency’s annual report, released Thursday. The report also details what it called “a dramatic rise in threats and inappropriate communications against…
Read MoreNJ: Area men among 21 accused of being child predators
Source: centraljersey.com 5/26/22 New Jersey Acting Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo J. Onofri announced the arrests of 21 alleged child predators in “Operation Risky Business,” a multi-agency undercover operation targeting individuals who allegedly were using social medial in an attempt to lure underage girls and boys for sexual activity. The defendants will be prosecuted by the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office and the Division of Criminal Justice. The underage “children” were, in fact, undercover officers, according to information provided on May 26. Most of the defendants…
Read MoreUS appeals court ruling could ‘eliminate internet privacy’
Source: theregister.com 4/28/22 Tech terms of service dissolve Fourth Amendment rights, EFF warns The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed the 2019 conviction and sentencing of Carsten Igor Rosenow for sexually exploiting children in the Philippines – and, in the process, the court may have blown a huge hole in internet privacy law. The court appears to have given US government agents its blessing to copy anyone’s internet account data without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing – despite the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. UC…
Read MoreHow a suicidal pizza man found himself ensnared in an FBI sting
This isn’t a story about the police stings that we are all too familiar with. But it is another example of how the FBI goes too far with sting operations. This is based on a story on CNN.com back in 2017 Every day was the same for Rayyan, 21, a depressed pizza delivery man from Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Working for a pizzeria in Detroit, he’d drive late nights on desolate inner city streets, smoking pot hoping to keep boredom at bay. He carried a pistol to protect himself from robbers.…
Read MoreNY: Why Keeping People With Sex Offense Convictions Off Social Media Sites Does Little To Make Those Sites Safe
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal purports to take sexual violence seriously, but it aggressively ignores reality in favor of lazy solutions. Full Opinion Piece By Guy Hamilton-Smith, ACSOL Board Member
Read MoreTinder Lets Known Sex Offenders Use the App. It’s Not the Only One.
Match Group, which owns most major online dating services, screens for sexual predators on Match — but not on Tinder, OkCupid or PlentyofFish. A spokesperson said, “There are definitely registered sex offenders on our free products.” Full Article
Read MoreIL: Former Sex Offenders can Proceed with Lawsuit Challenging Restrictions on Internet Use
A group of former sex offenders may continue with their lawsuit, challenging the constitutionality of the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC’s) restrictive policy on internet access for those convicted of sex crimes. A federal district court has ruled that it is premature at this early stage of the litigation to dismiss the lawsuit. Full Article
Read MoreHow Social Media Shapes Our Identity
[newyorker.com – 8/8/19] The Internet constantly confronts us with evidence of our past. Are we losing the chance to remake ourselves? … Humans have always tried to cope with the difficulty of memory, to turn it “from an intolerable horror to something which is reassuringly innocuous and familiar.” Social media just makes us more adept at it. On the other hand, Eichhorn writes, such media can prevent those who wish to break with their past from doing so cleanly. … This is of particular import for those who yearn to…
Read MoreVA: Sex Offenders’ Social Media Notice Law Upheld
Virginia’s law requiring sex offenders to provide law enforcement officials with information about their social media identity is constitutional, a Virginia appeals court ruled. Full Article
Read MoreBahamas: ‘Don’t Let Public See Sex Register’
The country’s leading counselling and advocacy services provider for abuse victims does not want a sex offender register to be made public. Dr Sandra Dean-Patterson, director of the Bahamas Crisis Centre, said a public register would be ineffective and would lure people into a false sense of security. Her comments when contacted yesterday came after the government published draft regulations for a sex offender registry earlier this month on its website. Full Article
Read MoreNY: Social media accounts raise complexities for sex offender registry
The law that went on the books 24 years ago has had updates and spawned a number of requirements for sex offenders. One of them is that they must disclose to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services the “internet identifiers” that they use when they go online. The rationale for that is simple to understand since it is so easy for people to use social media accounts to pretend they are someone they are not and attempt to initiate communications with an unsuspecting person. But how much information must…
Read MoreThe rise of fear-based social media like Nextdoor, Citizen, and now Amazon’s Neighbors
[vox.com – 5/7/19] Violent crime in the US is at its lowest rate in decades. But you wouldn’t know that from a crop of increasingly popular social media apps that are forming around crime. Apps like Nextdoor, Citizen, and Amazon Ring’s Neighbors — all of which allow users to view local crime in real time and discuss it with people nearby — are some of the most downloaded social and news apps in the US, according to rankings from the App Store and Google Play. Nextdoor bills itself as the…
Read MoreIA: Iowa Supreme Court rules requiring sex offenders to report social media presence is not a First Amendment violation
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that requiring sex offenders to disclose their social media identities and other digital information does not violate their free speech rights. Five of the seven justices agreed that the requirement, part of the state’s sex offender registry, was put in place a decade ago to protect children and victims from possible abuse but was not a “proxy for content regulations.” Justice Thomas Waterman’s opinion emphasized that sex offenders aren’t required to disclose their passwords and aren’t prevented from participating in social media. Full Article Opinion
Read MoreNY: People are using a new app to report sex assault anonymously
[nypost.com – 9/21/18] In the wake of #MeToo, more than 1,000 people have downloaded an app aimed at rooting out repeat sex offenders by allowing victims and witnesses to report the crimes anonymously and join forces against the sickos. Called JDoe, the free app launched on the Apple and Android app store in April. It works by prompting users to report when and where an incident took place, along with the name of the perpetrator and any details of the crime. The information is then stored in an encrypted database.…
Read More