US Senators back web censorship

Nick Farrell
The Inquirer
Thursday July 26, 2007

US senators issued a bipartisan call for filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet.

In a meeting where civil liberties groups were not invited, Democrats and Republicans said that the web needed to be censored to protect children.

Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted 'The Internet is made out of tubes" Stevens argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone could not protect their children.

While parents can buy filtering and monitoring technologies to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child’s online activities, the use of these technologies was far from universal and may not be fool-proof, Inouye said.

Stevens, who has also been arguing for phone companies to charge Internet customers twice for the same service, said that Congress has an important role to play to ensure that the protection available in other parts of society find their way onto the Interweb.

The committee wants the FCC to identify industry practices "that can limit the transmission of child pornography".

The FCC would have to come up with a way to identify filtering technologies and identify what could be done to improve the process and better enable parents to "proactively protect" children online.

More here.