Tag Archives: Topic: Internet

CNN.com: Think about all the data — photos, videos, text messages, calendar items, apps, call log, voice mail, and e-mail — on your cell phone right now. If you’re arrested, could the police search your cell phone? And would they need a warrant?
That depends on which state you’re in.

AP: Turkey’s government has defended a new regulation that will filter the Internet and restrict access to websites that show pornography, bomb-making and violent content.

PC World: The “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″ aims to amend Section 2703 of title 18 of the United States Code to make it compulsory for the provider of an electronic communication service keep IP address records for at least 18 months.

Reuters: One in three university students in the German capital would consider sex work as a means to finance their education, a study from the Berlin Studies Center said Wednesday.

WPIX.com (includes video): Two New York City councilmen said they want to introduce a bill that would make it illegal to watch porn within 100 feet of a child in the library. The legislation would make it a misdemeanor and could be punishable with up to $1,000 in fines.

MyFoxHouston: The American Civil Liberties Union is taking aim at 3 Texas school districts for their “viewpoint-based” censorship against web content geared for lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.

Guardian: America funding technology to break web censorship in repressive regimes, such as China and Iran

Christian Institute: The findings are based on research conducted by Dr Tim Jones, senior lecturer in Cognitive Psychology at Worcester University and top criminologist Professor David Wilson from Birmingham City University.

ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arkansas sent letters today to the Little Rock School District and eStem Public Charter Schools demanding that the schools cease viewpoint-based censorship of web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. The organization has sent demand letters to school districts across the country as part of the organization’s national “Don’t Filter Me” initiative, which seeks to combat illegal censorship of pro-LGBT information on public school computer systems.

Claudio J. Pavia, Constitutional Protection Of “Sexting” In The Wake Of Lawrence: The Rights Of Parents And Privacy, 16 Va. J.L. & Tech. 189 (2011)

NY Post: Kids don’t have to hide dirty magazines under their mattresses anymore — they can just go to the library.

Wired.com: A federal appeals court is issuing a clear warning to employees: Violate your employer’s computer-use policy and be fired. | Zellner v. Harrick, No. 10-2729 (7th Cir. Apr. 29, 2011)

LifeNews: A Department of Health spokesperson says the controversial Massachusetts taxpayer-funded web site MariaTalks.com will remain online in its current format despite promoting abortions and Planned Parenthood.

BBC: China has set up a new government body to control information on the internet.

Christian Newswire: Christianity Today International is pleased to announce the launch of ChurchLawAndTax.com, a completely redesigned website that helps church leaders with critical church legal and tax matter.

NY Times: Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.”

Boston Herald: “A group of Massachusetts lawmakers is calling on Gov. Deval Patrick to cut off state funding for a sexual education web site aimed at teens, saying it uses “disgusting” language to describe sex acts and downplays the risks of abortion.”

Deseret News: “According to TG Daily, Catholic Leagues President Bill Donohur said, “What they’re doing is publicly funding an appetite for the most debased fare available. It’s not like a Playboy centerfold anymore — it’s far worse.”

How Appealing links a news report and the ruling in Doninger v. Niehoff.

Rasmussen Reports:
“The Justice Department recently cracked down on three top online poker websites, but Americans still appear to have more faith in the private sector than in the government when it comes to gambling on the Internet.”

EU Observer: – The European Commission has decided against introducing legislation to protect net neutrality on the continent, preferring to leave it to the market to resolve any concerns about the blockage or throttling of services or content.

Telegraph: A controversial new corner of the web has finally opened for business after a decade-long regulatory wrangle, offering addresses ending in “.xxx” to pornography websites.

Miami Herald: The lawsuit said school officials knew Hope was the victim of “extraordinary ridicule and harassment” because of the “sexting” incident in the fall of 2009 at Beth Shields Middle School.

The Hill: The data mining will be driven by keywords, including lawmakers’ names, and also by threatening terms such as “kill,” “slash” and “shoot.” Asked at what point comments would require further attention, Gainer said it would be depend on the situation.

WSJ(full text via Google): The Obama Administration continues to ignore court decisions on Internet regulation and use agencies like the Federal Communications Commission to circumvent Congress. We’re happy to see House Republicans vote to overrule this behavior.

Breitbart Big Government: Since donating over $1 million to the president’s campaign and building its online presence and fundraising base, the company has reaped continued returns on their investment, so much so, that Google’s former CEO is rumored to be on the shortlist to be the nation’s new Secretary of Commerce. In order to pad its bottom line, Google made a conscious effort to grow its influence in Washington . . .

The ACLU has posted this press release and it has also posted a map showing “Schools and Web Filtering State by State.”

AP: “China accused the U.S. on Monday of pushing for Internet freedom around the world as a way to undermine other nations, while noting that Washington’s campaign against secret-spilling website WikiLeaks showed its own sensitivity to the free flow of information.”

Wall Street Journal (via Google): Governor Pat Quinn recently added to his reputation as America’s most taxing politician by signing a law applying the state’s 6.25% sales tax to Internet purchases made in Illinois. Within hours, Amazon, the online book and merchandise seller, announced it would discontinue using any of its 9,000 Illinois small business affiliates to avoid having to collect the tax. Congratulations, Governor.

AP: The Obama administration warned Friday that governments around the world are extending their repression to the Internet, seeking to cut off their citizens’ access to websites and other means of communication to stave off the types of revolutions that have wracked the Middle East.

AP: “Behind some of the anonymous online appeals for pro-democracy protests in China that have roiled the authoritarian government is a group of 20 mostly highly educated, Internet savvy Chinese scattered inside and outside the country, the Associated Press has found.”

National Journal: The House Rules Committee was meeting on Monday evening to consider a measure to repeal the Federal Communications Commission’s regulations, designed to prevent Internet carriers from blocking websites that use too much bandwidth.

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: The policy the FCC is trying to enact is known as “net neutrality,” an unfortunately vague code word for government regulation of the Internet. Supporters of net neutrality will tell you the regulation is necessary to keep the Internet “free and open” and to prevent corporations from “throttling” network speeds, making it faster to download some things, slower to download others. And, in this doomsday, apocalyptic, dystopian future, only the FCC can save the day with more and more government regulations. FCC, stay home, the reality is much different.

Jeff Buchanan of Exodus International at Charisma: Some may say that losing an iPhone app for Exodus International isn’t that big a deal — just like it wasn’t a big deal when Apple banned the Manhattan Declaration app! But it’s not just about apps. It’s about freedom of speech, the ability to participate in the marketplace of ideas. The gay-rights groups have shown their fangs. Victory in the courts or in the legislatures is not enough for them. They want to silence, yes, destroy those who don’t agree with their agenda. So they target Christian groups and corporate America to do just that. The writing is on the wall, folks. For the sake of religious liberty and free speech, we must not remain silent. Not on this issue, or on any issue that would threaten free speech and freedom of religion.”

Lee Goldman, Student Speech and the First Amendment: A Comprehensive Approach, 63 Fla. L. Rev. 395 (2011)

ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Michigan and the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri sent letters to public high schools today demanding that the schools stop viewpoint-based censorship of web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. The ACLU was notified that the schools were censoring material after teaming with Yale Law School to launch the “Don’t Filter Me” campaign, which asked students to check to see if their school was blocking content

NY Times: In the last two years, legislators have been weighing graduated responses to sexting between minors. Some legal scholars refer to the images as “self-produced child pornography.”

“Apparently Apple is afraid of real diversity and tolerance,” said Christopher Doyle, former homosexual and PFOX board member. “Individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction deserve support from the same technology that gays benefit from – why are ex-gays being singled out for blatant sexual orientation discrimination? If Apple is dropping its ex-gay apps, it must also drop its gay apps.”

ConservativeActionAlerts.com: In every instance where any government in the world has triggered their Internet kill switch (which every government in the world possesses), whether affecting only their broadband users, or both broadband and dial-up users, and whether those shutdowns were complete or impacted only segments of the Internet market in that country, those shutdowns or denials of access to the Information Superhighway targeted the law-abiding population at large whom those governments felt they had cause to fear.

Carl Bialok at WSJ (3/11):  My print column this week examines a widely reported claim that one in five divorces is linked to Facebook . . .  Mark Keenan, managing director of Divorce-Online, which first released the stat, acknowledged in an interview that this may not be representative of all divorces . . . For one thing, the site’s users tend to be young, owing to its online presence and that it is likely to appeal to people seeking relatively simple divorces, without thorny issues such as child custody. | Hat tip: IMAPP

Toronto Star: Police say they have arrested four people and seized millions of child sexual abuse images in New Brunswick as part of a targeted effort to reduce child pornography and the exploitation of children via the Internet.

Guardian: “Chinese authorities have dismissed Google claims that they are to blame for technical problems with the country’s Gmail service.”

AP: “Google said Monday the Chinese government is interfering with its email services in China, making it difficult for users to gain access to its Gmail program, amid an intensified Internet crackdown following widespread unrest in the Middle East.”

“The group in charge of Internet addresses on Friday opened the door for websites ending with “.xxx” but delayed deciding whether to open the floodgates for other suffixes.”

Daily Mail: “A survey reveals that 40 per cent of 11- to 14-year-olds have used their mobile phones or computer to send pictures of themselves or receive naked or topless images of friends.”

Digital Trends: “ICANN may decide Friday whether it will grant the porn industry its own section of the Internet in the form of a unique domain suffix.”

AP: “Some Nevada lawmakers want the state to be the first to regulate the multibillion dollar, quasi-legal Internet poker industry.”

Christian Post: The mass online support through social media sites Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook for an Oregon man who says he plans to end his life on Tuesday because he has terminal cancer is “disturbing,” said a Christian bioethics professor.

WXYZ.com: “Facebook seems to be the number one offender with one in five divorced couples claiming the popular site led to the end of their marriage.”

National Journal: “The House passed an amendment Thursday that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from using any funding to implement the network-neutrality order it approved in December.”

AP: “China on Thursday warned the United States not to use calls for uncensored access to the Internet as a pretext to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries.”

Torrent Freak: “The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.”

Examiner.com: In his article on Wired, Venkatish found that “sex workers were turning to Facebook: 83 percent have a Facebook page, and I estimate that by the end of 2011, Facebook will be the leading on-line recruitment space.”

CNET: “Scott Seitz has the dubious distinction of proposing what might become the most controversial new top-level Internet domain: .gay.”

AP: “Rep. Christopher Lee of western New York abruptly resigned with only a vague explanation of regret after a gossip website reported that the married congressman had sent a shirtless photo of himself flexing his muscles to a woman he met on Craigslist.”

NBC17.com: “The NC Department of Revenue does not need access to private customer records that reveal which specific customers in North Carolina have ordered which specific books, music, or movies in order to complete its audit of Amazon and collect any taxes owed,” said Jennifer Rudinger, Executive Director of the ACLU of North Carolina in a press release.

Christian Today: “The 10-minute film, Exposed, has been developed by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in response to the increasing popularity of sexting among teenagers . . . The film is available at www.thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers”

The Witherspoon Institute has launched this new resource website.

LifeNews: “The popular video sharing web site YouTube is threatening to censor a new video that exposes how a Planned Parenthood center in New jersey aided and assisted actors in an undercover investigation with sexual trafficking of minors.”

Times of India: “Australian couples seeking divorce are now increasingly doing it through the Internet, with more than 250 people using an online service in almost 18 months.”

New York Daily News: “Mustafa Fteja is suing the Internet giant for $500,000 for shutting down his access to the site – and many of his overseas friends – without explanation . . . Fteja, who is Muslim, also accuses the company of religious discrimination.” | Via Religion Clause.

CNN: “Hours ahead of what are expected to be massive displays of anti-government ferment across the world’s most populous Arab nation, the internet went dark in parts of Egypt early Friday, and text messaging appeared to be blocked.”

Reuters: “Verizon Communications is going to court to challenge the top U.S. telecommunications regulator, saying the FCC overstepped its authority with the recent adoption of open Internet rules.”

“The White House cybersecurity adviser joined Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Jan. 7 to announce what amounts to a national ID card for the Internet.”

Fast Company: “The Middle Eastern kingdom has just enacted one of the world’s most stringent sets of blogging regulations: Non-citizens can’t write about news, chat room users are encouraged to register with the government, and everyone needs to be very careful about religion.”

USCCB: “In a letter to Congress, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), outlined the ‘principles and priorities that will guide the public policy efforts’ of the Bishops’ Conference during the new legislature. The letter was mailed to all members of Congress on January 14.”

Associated Press: “China’s online population rose to 457 million in 2010 as use of mobile phones to surf the Web spread rapidly, an industry group reported Wednesday.”

University of Gothenburg: “A national Swedish evaluation study has highlighted the need for a chain of interventions to offer children who have experienced violence against their mother the right level of support to work through their experiences. There is also frequently a lack of structured risk assessments for identifying children who are at continued risk of exposure to violence, reveal researchers from the universities of Gothenburg, Karlstad, Uppsala and Örebro.”

The Standard: “Professional counselors are calling for immediate action to tackle increasing cases of addiction to internet pornography among Kenyan youth.”

Associated Press: “The maker of BlackBerry promised Indonesia on Monday it will meet the country’s request to filter out pornographic content on its smartphones in the next four days, according to a government spokesman.”

Deseret News: “A controversial posting by the Weber County sheriff referencing service to God was removed from the department’s main Facebook page . . . An employee . . . didn’t feel the letter was appropriate and complained to Salt Lake-based civil rights attorney Brian Barnard. Barnard sent a letter to Thompson asking him to remove the letter, saying it violated state and federal laws separating church and state.” | Via Religion Clause.

ISPreview: “A new Europe-wide study (‘EUKidsOnline’) by the London School of Economics (LSE), which looked at the use of parental controls and internet filtering, has revealed that UK parents lead the rest of Europe with 54% blocking or filtering their children’s internet access. By contrast the EU average is just 28%, with Romania on the lowest at 9%.”

eWeek Europe: “BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has two weeks to block porn websites from its smartphones in Indonesia or risk being shut down, the Indonesian government has said.”

New Zealand Herald: “McDonald’s is under pressure to change the internet access policies at its restaurants because gay websites are not accessible.”

The Oregonian: “Oregon Attorney General John Kroger announced today that he will draft legislation that will make it illegal under state law to look at child pornography on the Internet . . . [the] announcement comes one day after the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that state law doesn’t make it a crime to look at child pornography while surfing the Internet if the viewer doesn’t purposefully download the images, print them out or pay for them.”