The Atlanta Journal Constitution Reports Gwinnett County library workers will be able to capture browsing histories from library computers and call police on suspected child pornography viewers under an Internet safety policy approved Monday. The responses include counseling users on appropriate Internet usage for less serious situations, ordering users to stop viewing obscene materials, or calling police and capturing the computer’s browsing history as possible evidence in the case of child pornography.
“A lot of the pornographers, child predators and now the gangs are going to the library because they know they won’t be tracked,”
come again?
“A lot of the pornographers, child predators and now the gangs are going to the library because they know they won’t be tracked,”
Gangs? Entire gangs? Like in the “Bad” video?
And why shouldn’t gang members be allowed in a library? As long as they conduct themselves properly and don’t act the fool. Crips gotta read. Bloods need DVDs.
I totally dig your comments
I totally dig your comments Mr. Chuck! There was one additional thing I picked up on in that statement too.
Pornographers.
Pornographers are the people who make pornography. Now I tell ya, if I come into the library and there’s pornographers running about doing what pornographers do… that’s going to make for a really interesting day.
As to the gangs, I was thinking more like West Side Story. “When you’re a jet you’re a jet all the way…”
And I can’t use the internet for unless it’s for “serious business” (because the interwebs are serious business)? What if I’m doing a paper or research project on pornography? They never think of that, do they? And to be honest, I have done a paper on pornography and that involved talking with pornstars and visiting their sites.
Thankfully I had my own internet connection as, under their restrictions, I couldn’t have written my paper. But hey, protecting the public, man. Protecting the public.
Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes. Tycho (Jerry Holkins) @ Penny Arcade
National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families
Mommy always said, consider the source…
The quote (“A lot of the pornographers…”) comes from Claire Hertzler, Regional Director for the “National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families” (NCPF)
Mission: “To move the people of God to embrace, live out, preserve and advance the truth of biblical sexuality.”
I wonder what “biblical sexuality” is all about…
The Better Business Bureau page on the group has the following description:
I could go on but you get the point.
I want a piece of that
Wouldn’t Biblical sexuality include polygamy like Abraham?
I’ll be a NCPF member by the close of business today.
Hrmmm I dunno
Bibilical sexuality also involved Lot sleeping with his daughters. So I’m not too into that. Of course, given givens it wasn’t his fault. Lecherous womenfolk got him drunk and took advantage of him. See there? Once again the corruption of man is the fault of the women!
Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes. Tycho (Jerry Holkins) @ Penny Arcade
You folks are missing the point
A lot of the pornographers, child predators and now the gangs are going to the library because they know they won’t be tracked . . .
The entire point of a free society that upholds the principle of freedom of information is that no government force is allowed to track what information you are accessing. And whether you or your religious lunatics like it or not, or agree with the ideas or modes of expression of pornography, it is protected speech. Strictly speaking, “child pornography” is proscribable obscenity, a subgenre that is illegal and indictable. But, of course, control freaks don’t care about that. So now, Gwinnet Libraries are going to treat as thought criminals people who will be exercising their legal right to access legal materials.
Oh, and someone please explain to me the relationship between child-rapists and cliques of young adults. If you’re going to crack down on “gangs” you should start by turning your high schools into prison blocks.
There is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere.
Internet Safety
We should have internet safety classes on library computers. I know some other libraries that use http://www.isafe.org resources. They are totally FREE to libraries. Very dissapointing!
Terrible
Yes, telling people you are keeping a list of sites they visit, and then actaully doing it will be the downfall of the nation.
How terrible. will the ALA get involved? I hope so, we need more political posturing and bending over backwards to show just how free we are. We need to allow people to look at porn in the library. It is a Right !!!1111!!! Guaranteed by the Constitution!!!!111eleventy!!!
Code pink!!! Boycott the library!!!!!!
People have rights, information wants to be free, butterflies are free. That means you don’t have to pay for butterflies.
When will you people ever learn that no one cares. The library filters internet access now, and they are going one step beyond that and changing their policy which says they will not ask a pervert to stop looking at porn on public computers to one that says they will ask the perverts to knock it off if another patron complains. It seems the community has spoken, and the only ones who object are not from that community.
Why, yes this civil liberties violation is terrible
Yes, telling people you are keeping a list of sites they visit, and then actaully doing it will be the downfall of the nation.
Treating people as if they guilty until they prove themselves innocent, and not just shitting all over, but scrapping entirely, the principle of Habeas Corpus, will certainly be the downfall of a society that is supposed to be free and open. The country might survive as a country, you will continue to have governments to fuck things up, but you will not have a system of liberty in a free state.
Welcome to your slavery; hope you like the chains and shackles.
There is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere.
Habeas Corpus
Why are you talking about Habeas Corpus?
Keeping a list of sites visited by computer users in a public library at a publically accessible computer terminal using bandwidth paid for by public funds has absolutely nothing even remotely -even in the most liberal ACLU whackjob’s erotic dream- to do with Habeas Corpus.
It is perfectly legal, does not abridge any of the Rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and is a reasonable action to combat unlawful behavior. Remember the governments in the United States serve the people; the people do not serve the government. In this instance the people have decided they want to discourage perverts and other unsavory types from using library computers for illegal activities. Just as Toronto has red light cameras which capture images of motorists violating the law, the library has the same ability to capture publically available information to stop other transgressions of the law.
Thanks for getting your knickers in a twist for no reason. You stick to that Constitution you kids up in the Great White North adopted in 1982 and we down south will worry about ours that has withstood the test of time, and attacks by whackjobs who think they know it better than we do.
You are going to end up with our constitution
The constitution we have is the wet-dream of your whack-job, ultra-right wing nuts. They would love nothing better than to have one which says that rights and freedoms are void where prohibited by law, and are doing everything they can to shove such an abortion down your collective throat.
There is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere.
I’d rather have the clap
We are quite happy with our Constitution just the way it is written, not necessarily the way activists wish to interperet it, but since the fellas that wrote it are not here to tell us exactly what they wanted we have to do our best.
Too bad they didn’t have signing statements back then.
agreed
He right, you know. You just can’t excuse certain behavior or practices by saying things in a worldly and sarcastic manner. Like that make it ok for some reason.
These topics are worth a more serious discussion than “stop loving the pervy pervs, Nancy Pelosi loving, pervert loving perv.”
OK, you want a serious discussion (again)
It is legal for the library to keep a record of the sites users access at a publically accessible computer terminal.
If it will keep perverts, criminals and the like out of the library is debatable, personally I don’t think it will. However that does not mean the sage citizens of Gwinnett County, Georgia may not employ any and all legal methods to dissuade persons from committing crime.
You may look at it in the manner that the religious group’s spokeswoman does in suggesting that it protects children and families – I don’t but you may.
You may look at it from an offender’s point of view in that they may be less inclined to violate the law, a far more likely proposition however given the ubiquity of criminals who facilitate their crimes with library computers, I say that preventing a crime and keeping someone out of prison is certainly a valiant goal, and much more likely than running all the perverts off to a different county.
Now that library internet code of conduct says they will not interrupt a patron to tell them to stop looking at porn, the library will not capture a URL that some pervert has been looking at before the next person logs on, nor will they interrupt a user to tell them that another patron complained that they were looking at disgusting pornography.
They are changing it so they can tell people they are looking at porn and others don’t like it, they can tell people they are doing something illegal if they are and the staff is made aware of it, and now they can capture that list of sites visited if it may be used in furtherance of an inquiry into possible illegality.
Bear in mind that this list of URLS may be exculpatory as well.
If it is done in public, it is done in public. One does not have an expectation of privacy in public, and the new library policy makes that perfectly clear. It would be disingenuous not to make the policy known.