For Kids' Sake

Hey, kids! And by kids I mean grown persons - not actual children, let's just be clear.

So, our illustrious leadership has taken to subpoenaing and now suing Goggle so that the government can search:

a broad range of material from [Google's] databases, including a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

Dubya's cronies are alleging that this is the best to prove that children can be subjected to online smut -- the rationale:

The government contends it needs the data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches as part of an effort to revive an Internet child protection law.

This child protection law, The Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule can be reviewed at the Federal Trade Commission's Website. It lays out ground rules for how businesses are supposed to create barriers against children interacting with smut and from signing up for “adults only” entertainment.

If you look at the rules established by this legislation, you'll notice:

The term "child" means an individual under the age of 13.

May I ask a question?

Is it really Google's responsibility to make sure children under the age of 13 cannot watch or experience online porn?

I dunno about you – but I don’t expect Google to baby-sit. It ain’t Google’s fault that this country is overrun by piss-poor parenting, lousy teacher supervision and a commodity mentality that looks at children as nothing more than the next-wave of cell phone customers, who’ll be sporting some Diesel Jeans.

In the interest of protecting the children, the Federal Trade Commission opened up the Kidz Privacy website. Kidz. That’s real cute, huh? That’s a great way to learn-em...

This site has information and resources and downloadable files that explain how to keep your kids from looking at smut.

The real kicker? The “Adults Only” section isn't.

If the government is, indeed, in the business of policing and protecting our children at risk, it seems to me that an "Adult's Only" section might actually utilize the technology they are trying to legislate.

Granted this "Adults Only" section contains no offensive material - but what is offensive is lame-ass legislation that doesn't do a damn thing to truly protect kids. I'd like to know, does Dubya really think that legislation, alone, is going to prevent child sexual abuse?

Now, look - I ain't got no Goddamned problem with preventing pedophiles from destroying some children’s lives. But does seizing Google's records really do such a thing? If they wanna know what makes pedophiles tick, why doesn't Dubya just pick up the phone and call our old pal the Pope?

Talk about an institution that protects and shields child abusers.

If you wanna know why your seven year old knows all about John Holmes, you might want to ask yourself where you were when that happened in the first place.

Give me a break. If this country wants to really do something to advance the quality of children's lives, get our asses out of Iraq, put some money into quality education and take the mouse of a child's hand. Put a paint brush, a trumpet or a basketball there instead.

There are, I might remind you, a number of activities in which children under the age of 13 can participate that are healthy and educational.

Googling, unsupervised, is probably not one of them.

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Just for a lark, go check out the Federal Trade Commission's Privacy Policy:

If you visit our Web sites to browse, read, or download information:

We automatically collect and store: the name of the domain and host from which you access the Internet; the Internet protocol (IP) address of the computer you are using; the browser software you use and your operating system; the date and time you access our sites; and the Internet address of the site from which you linked directly to our sites.

We use this information only as anonymous aggregate data to determine the number of visitors to different sections of our sites, to ensure the sites are working properly, and to help us make our sites more useful. We do not use it to track or record information about individuals. Generally, we delete this information after one year.

We do not use persistent "cookies" or tracking mechanisms that collect personally identifying information on our sites.