Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act

Posted by jerry as Ron Paul, politics, technology

The US House of Representatives passed the SAFE act by a 409 to 2 margin.  It also appears likely to pass the senate.  It is interesting to note that one of the 2 “nay” votes on the bill was none other than Ron Paul.  While I agree with his decision to vote against the bill, it will certainly come back to bite him.  “How can you be in favor of exploiting children, Mr. Paul?” 

On the surface, the bill appears to be a draconian measure placed on ISPs, web hosts, public wifi provders, etc, requiring them to report all instances where child pornography is transmitted over their network to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  The penalty for non-compliance is $150,000US for a first offense, and $300,000 for subsequent offenses.  Complying with the law provides civil and criminal immunity from any resulting legal issues of the disclosure.  That’s about the extent of what is being reported in most of the alarmist media.

If you ACTUALLY READ THE BILL, you will notice this interesting section:

`(f) Protection of Privacy- Nothing in this section shall be construed to require an electronic communication service provider or a remote computing service provider to–

•   `(1) monitor any user, subscriber, or customer of that provider;

•   `(2) monitor the content of any communication of any person described in paragraph (1); or

•   `(3) affirmatively seek facts or circumstances described in subsection (a)(2).

Very interesting.  So, the law doesn’t require the providers to proactively monitor traffic.  So, what does it do then? 

Providers that use technology to determine if someone is viewing an inappropriate site - from a known list of sites or from some form of intelligent analysis of the image content - they are compelled to report such traffic to the NCMEC.  If a web hosting company discovers that a customer is hosting child porn, the hoster must report it.

The other important aspect of the law is what must be reported.  Essentially all identifiable info that is know must be submitted, presumably in an attempt to track back to the owner.

In some respects, this bill just makes something that’s illegal even more illegal.  The bill does add some additional mechanisms to find the child pornographers, distributers and those that view it, and does not appear to place a major burden on providers. 

The downside, as usual, is in the interpretation of child porn.  It’s interesting that a definition of “child pornography” is not included in the bill, yet many other things like “web site”, are.  It is conceivable, as some reports of the bill contend, that clothed children in lascivious poses could constitute child porn.  I wonder how the average Abercrombie & Fitches catalog would fare?