Arizona The Latest To Explore Dumb Porn Filter Law, This Time To Help Fund Trump's Fence
from the filtering-the-naughty-bits dept
For some time now, a man by the name of Chris Sevier has been waging a fairly facts-optional war on porn. Sevier first became famous for trying to marry his computer to protest same sex marriage back in 2016. He also tried to sue Apple after blaming the Cupertino giant for his own past porn addiction, and has gotten into trouble for allegedly stalking country star John Rich and a 17-year-old girl. Sevier has since been a cornerstone of an effort to pass truly awful porn filter legislation in more than 15 states under the disingenuous guise of combating human trafficking.
Dubbed the “Human Trafficking Prevention Act,” all of the incarnations of the law would force ISPs to filter pornography and other “patently offensive material.” The legislation would then force state residents interested in viewing porn to pony up a one-time $20 “digital access fee” to whitelist the internet’s naughty bits for each internet-connected device in the home. The proposal is patently absurd, technically impossible to implement, and yet somehow these bills continue to get further than they ever should across a huge swath of the boob-phobic country.
Once people have realized the ignorant futility (and under-handed sales pitch) of such model legislation, it usually fails to gain any steam in most states. But it’s back this week with a decidedly new wrinkle in Arizona, where State Rep. Gail Griffin is pushing Arizona House Bill 2444. HB 2444 would mandate that any Arizona internet user would need to file a request if they want to access porn online, proving they’re at least 18 years of age. Porn seekers would then pay a one-time fee of $20 (plus additional fees) to access porn. Of course since this effort (like past efforts) is technically futile, the proposal is going nowhere.
But it’s getting some extra attention this week because the bill mandates the creation of something called the “John McCain Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Fund,” which, if past precedent for these bills holds, likely has less than nothing to actually do with, and was never sanctioned by, the family of John McCain.
That fund, in turn, would go to a number of different causes, including a program designed “to uphold community standards of decency” and develop “programs for victims of sex abuse.” But Arizona’s incarnation of this dumb law has a small wrinkle in that Griffin is trying to claim this money could also be used to help fund Trump’s unnecessary border fence:
“At the top of the list of 10 explicit things the grants can be used for is ?build a border wall between Mexico and this state or fund border security.” Other grant purposes include mental health services, temporary housing, assisting victims, training, assisting school districts and assisting law enforcement. It is unclear if the McCain family is supportive of the legislation or a fund created in the late senator?s name.”
Again though, that funding is never going to happen because this law, like the last fifty times we’ve covered it, isn’t likely to pass. It isn’t likely to pass because filtering porn on such a level is arguably impossible, as we’ve seen every time someone attempts to erect such government-mandated censorship of porn. And it’s not going to pass because the folks behind the draft legislation it’s based on not only have absolutely no idea how the internet actually works, they consistently misrepresent what the law is supposed to actually do (and fund).
But the real story here isn’t the dumb filter, or the Trump wall wrinkle (though both will happily feed the clickbait machine for much of the week). The real story is how successful Sevier has been, despite his very checkered past, at getting more than a dozen state legislatures to mindlessly embrace terrible, unworkable legislation that happily gives a giant middle finger to the Constitution.
Filed Under: arizona, chris sevier, donald trump, filters, gail giffien, human trafficking prevention act, john mccain, porn, porn laws, porn license, wall
Comments on “Arizona The Latest To Explore Dumb Porn Filter Law, This Time To Help Fund Trump's Fence”
In other news…
Sales of anonymizing VPN services jumps.
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Easy. My “George Washington Peeping Pervert Prevention Fund” law Explicitly outlaws VPNs from being used to transmit porn across state lines.
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Since subpoenaing the anonymizing VPN service, assuming it is within AZ, would get them nothing since nothing is logged, how could they prove anything unless they go door to door checking each person’s computer for porn and VPN software?
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Even simpler:
My “George H.W. Bush Drug Empire Prevention Fund” law allows law enforcement to enter and search the home of anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant at any time.
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This is Arizona. Our law enforcement doesn’t exactly have a history of worrying about whether it’s legal to search someone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.
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First, if they come to your door, you ask to see a search warrant.
Second, you jusr reguarly use a program like the old Evidence Eliminator to erase any evidence from your computer. No evidence = NO CASE
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Arizona gun owners will NEVER head to L.A. OR Vegas. California is anti-gun and Nevada doesn’t like our concealed carry requirements.
Irony?
Just because walling off something in that manner is proven not to work doesn’t mean that the U.S. is not in a government shutdown currently because someone still wants to divert huge swaths of money into his and his croneys’ pockets for years to come.
I don’t see what stops Arizona from the same kind of stupidity that government employees are currently being held hostage over.
> facts-optional war
didn’t know there was any other type
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On a side note, I first read this headline as “Verizon The Latest To Explore…”.
I only realized my mistake when I reached the bottom of the article with no mention of Verizon.
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I wouldn’t put it past Verizon at this point, though…
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Don’t give the FCC ideas
For some reason, I get the sneaking suspicion that Gail Griffin thinks only Democrats(/liberals/progressives) will ever pay this tax because Republicans(/conservatives) are fine, upstanding, morally righteous people who would never do anything so heinous as look at “porns”. I mean, just a hunch, given the whole “this will help build The Wall” thing.
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I have a hunch that at the last minute the same senator’s that propose this bill will also add in phrasing that exempts themselves from the bill’s requirements.
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This will upset Utah very much!
>John McCain Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Fund
But…didn’t he die? So why do we need to put together a fund to prevent him from exploiting and trafficking more kids?
So Republicans will mostly be paying for the wall that Mexico is paying for.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-human-beast/200903/why-conservatives-spend-more-pornography
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GOP rep: “Ha! Mexico is already payign for that wall. When I ate at Taco Bell last week, I didn’t give them a tip in their tip jar.”
“Instead, I put it in my ‘money for Trump’s Wall’ jar! See! Mexico is paying for the wall. I am forcing them to give their tip money to the wall. WIN AMERICA!”
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Mexico will pay for the wall in a roundabout way. In the form of Tariffs. But not going to wait around for that money to come in as we’re being invaded. Every country has a right to protect their border. Without borders, there is no country.
I don’t care if it’s the southern border or the Northern border or someone overstaying their visa. They shouldn’t be allowed in and if they’re in, they should be booted out. Get in the back of the line and wait your turn. There’s a number of reasons why we only want people coming into this country LEGALLY!!! Many people can’t seem to figure out LEGAL and ILLEGAL. Think it’s one and the same. It’s not!!!!
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Do tell … just when are you planning on leaving?
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“Every country has a right to protect their border.”
I’ve never seen anyone say they don’t, personally.
“I don’t care if it’s the southern border or the Northern border or someone overstaying their visa”
Then, hopefully you’ll see why only addressing one of these problems, at a massive cost, in a way that is almost certainly not going to work, is not a popular move with thinking people.
But, for some reason, the people who claim to want to fix this issue won’t fix the real problems such as the proxy drug wars that are destroying the homes of many of these migrants, punishing the people who knowingly provide them jobs when they get to the US and streamlining the legal routes so that people don’t have to wait a decade or more to come in on anything but a temporary visa they can overstay.
Nope, a magic wall will fix everything!
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Unfortunately they do exist, and they have some degree of a following. Google "open borders" if you’ve got some free time (and a strong stomach.)
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You hit the nail on the head. Saying “Build a wall!” certainly plays better than “Let’s streamline the institutional and bureaucratic processes of immigration so those coming from another country can become legal, productive citizens of the United States and… sorry, did I put you to sleep with that explanation?”
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That maybe should have been “No one worth paying attention to say we don’t need borders.”
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As an addendum. The no borders people are like the ammosexuals who think the 2nd admendment includes anti tank missiles and nuclear bombs.
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That depends whether you mean against people or money. A lot of powerful people want money and goods flowing freely across borders, even if people can’t, and US policy supports this.
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“Mexico will pay for the wall in a roundabout way. In the form of Tariffs.”
Do explain. Such as “Product A gets a tariff of $ and that money goes to B”.
Go.
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By the way, what are all those European descent honkies doing in North America? America should be for Americans!
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As there are no real “Americans” (every group ever to inhabit North America came here from somewhere else) who, exactly, are you talking about?
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That’s what they all say.
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Tarriffs are not Mexico paying for a wall. It is the American people paying higher prices for Mexican goods, and those higher prices are paying for a wall.
Secondly, I do not disagree that border control and border security are valuable. But a border wall on the southern border does nothing to address border security. We don’t even know what kind of wall/fence Trump wants, where he intends to erect it, how he intends to steal the land from American Citizens, ect. A wall is ineffective at “protecting” the border from a financial or logistical standpoint. And even if it could, the ‘threats’ described largely aren’t coming from illegal entry on the southern border, so a wall wouldn’t stop them anyway.
Add to that many of the illegal entries we see are not illegal entries under US and international law. It is why those who crossed the border from the November Caravan were released – They satisfied initial requirements for asylum requests, and so aren’t considered to have broken the law. (crossing the border to make a facially valid asylum request isn’t an illegal crossing, much as a valid claim of self-defense can render you innocent of Battery or worse).
I support extra funding to improve processing times of asylum requests. I can support extra funding for border patrol personnel and training to ensure that items are not being smuggled through legitimate ports of entry and to improve our processes so asylum seekers don’t feel the need to enter our country outside normal ports of entry. I support increased spending to reimplement and expand the highly successful asylum case management system used by the Obama administration which saw 97% of asylum seekers under the program meet their court dates. (Similar systems have been shown to significantly improve the attendance rates of bailees and parolees in the criminal justice system for much lower cost than incarceration for failing to attend court dates)
I support funding for border security. However, the Trump administration had $1.3 Billion for border security in 2018, and only spent $0.7 Billion. If they needed more money, they had it. 2018 also saw a reversal of a 2 decade trend of reduced illegal immigration, and according to the Presdient we are seeing far higher levels of drug smuggling and criminals entering the country, which seems to indicate the trump administration failed to utilize the resources provided to it by congress. You don’t reward apathy by giving in to a tantrum.
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This is actually up for debate. What all the news is reporting under the headline "Illegal Immigration On the Rise!" is really an increase in apprehensions. There is no direct link between "number of immigrants" and "number of apprehensions" that can’t also be explained by hiring more border security, changing border security policy or even getting border security off their asses to enforce immigration law more consistently.
We don’t have the full story (yet) because the current narrative and illogical association between immigrant count and apprehensions serves the narrative for both sides of the isle. But we do keep seeing people mindlessly parrot the same false equivalency.
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I accept that we can not say that the increased number of apprehensions does not necessarily represent an increase in the number of border crossings overall. We have not shown correlation.
However I would not say it is an illogical one. presidents since Reagan have increased immigration enforcement every administration. It would be illogical to assume enforcement of border crossings was not a priority as well. It would follow that the steady reduction in apprehensions over the past two decades likely associated with a proportional reduction in overall border crossing attempts. And since Trump hasn’t felt the need to crow about the new patrol methods his Administration implemented to catch all those immigrants slipping by the Bush and Obama administrations, I feel that logic makes sense – something has changed in the border crossings themselves, and the volume seems more likely than than the intelligence in the attempts.
However, granting that this logic might not be valid, I don’t think it changes my overall argument. I The Trump Administration spent a bit over half Its designated Border Security funds and found border crossings were far more common than expected and didn’t spend more money on enforcement? It doesn’t matter if you assume the volume of border crossings have increased or if you assume the volume of crossings has remained the same but we are discovering more of them. Either way, the money should have fully utilized. The Trump administration felt it only needed $0.7 Billion for border security last year. why does it need $7 Billion this year? (The $1.3 B was provided again in the funding bills, and trump is demanding an additional $5.7 specifically for the wall, which is only about border security, not at all about needing a policy win)
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Tariffs raise prices at the point of sale. You and Trump clearly no nothing about how they work.
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And that Wall GoFundMe (made by a professional liar) turned out to be the scam that everyone with a brain expected.
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The Ladder GoFundMe page should offer some new uses for their funding since the Wall GoFundMe has imploded.
A clown to visit each Wall GoFundMe donator?
A Trump University diploma?
A Wall Lego set?
Yet another politician who thinks math is a foreign language
As of 2017, the population of Arizona was just a bit over 7 million people. If every single one of them pays that $20 fee, that raises some $140 million. That’s not even a rounding error on the $5 billion Trump wants for the wall, let alone the estimates from people with experience in construction projects.
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They use alternative math. It’s much easier.
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You have to use the correct pronouns these days. Maybe "non-binary math"?
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It’s GOP math. The kind that makes them feel better.
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Never let math get in the way of politicans making asses of themselves.
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The calculation being made here is not "can this fund the wall", it’s "how will saying ‘wall’ affect the results of the next election?"—and it’s likely that this politician understands the math better than you.
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It’s also about generating support for his bill. Any of his constituents who don’t really care about suppressing porn might instead care about building the wall. This change draws support from a broader set of voters.
'Look at me, I'm DOING something!'
The real story is how successful Sevier has been, despite his very checkered past, at getting more than a dozen state legislatures to mindlessly embrace terrible, unworkable legislation that happily gives a giant middle finger to the Constitution.
Unfortunately, it’s really not that surprising that he keeps finding eager politicians to push his beyond stupid/bigoted/blame shifting ideas, because it provides a perfect, risk-free source of cheap PR for them.
Propose ‘anti-porn’ bill that will never pass a constitutional challenge in any court that even begins to respect said constitution, and will be wholly ineffective at it’s stated goals even if it does.
Make several sound-bite quips about how ‘concerned’ they are about the ‘evils of pornography’ and how it ‘corrupts the vulnerable youth'(bonus points if they slip in mention of human trafficking), with nary a mention that a simple fee allow people to see all the ‘evil porn’ that they want.
Extra bonus points if you name it such that you get to spin anyone against it as obviously heinous people. (‘What kind of monster would oppose the Puppy Protection Act?!’)
When the bill gets shot down, either in the legislation or court, tut-tut about how those dastardly [insert opposing party/parties here] have absolutely no interest in protecting the children, stopping porn, or saving puppies(because why not?), and if their supporters care about those sort of thing(won’t they think of the children?) they’d better keep electing the politician pushing the tripe so they can try again at some point down the line.
Move on to next no-risk cheap PR stunt. Rinse and repeat.
No risk, all reward? The surprise isn’t that he keeps finding eager dupes to push his rot, it’s that he hasn’t found more.
As always with bills like this however the fact that you can pay to bypass it creates just the funniest and most telling situation, where the very same politicians that claim to oppose porn makes it crystal clear that they only oppose porn that they can’t make money from, going from voicing opposition to porn to profiting from it.
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This ^
It isn’t about preventing human trafficking. It’s about the government profiting from it.
LMFTFY
Our fence.
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The American public may "own" whatever gets built but it’s still Trump’s baby. Calling it "our fence" implies broad support across the nation that simply doesn’t exist.
This is all nothing more than security theater akin to the war on drugs and anything containing the word "terrorists!".
“Patently offensive material?” That would cover Alex Jones, so while it might take a while for his fans to save up the $20, that might well pay for the wall.
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It’s CNN and most of the Mainstream news along with you crazy leftist. Just look at the FAKE narrative that was going around about the kid with the MAGA hat. Turned out to be complete B.S. But there you all were with the Death Threats, to the kid!!! Death THREATS!!! I mean really? Really are a bunch of sick people with TDS.
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LOL – wut?
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By the look of things – too much right-wing echo chamber, not enough critical thinking or communication skills
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You mean like how the kid’s family hired a PR firm RunSwitch, who’s co-owner, Scott Jennings is an adviser to House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)?
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Something tells me you were pissed off when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem. Just a hunch.
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I take it you haven’t ever read any of the comments on breitbart. I’ve never seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy outside of Tatooine. Literally every blog article posted there generates death threats from its readers against the target of the posting. To top it off, most everything posted is twisted and exaggerated to the point of being fake news itself.
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I think you are confused. This is Techdirt.com, you want WND.com
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Wow. Who knew Alex Jones was a Techdirt reader?
Supports concealed carry with no permit, locking up people for small amounts of pot, and this anti porn law. She’s 85 years old and probably doesn’t use a computer. I don’t know why my state elects people like this.
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So between guns, pot, and porn, she considers guns the least harmful of the lot and deserving of the least restrictions on/penalties for use?
Fun priorities.
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To be fair, there are some legitimate, non-harmful uses for guns.
Short Sighted
Maybe they should have let him marry his computer. The offspring would have been awesome, and seriously outdated by now.
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Pretty sure even computers have better standards than that.
If this passes, it’ll be thrown out. Porn is the Internet. It’s a 1st amendment protected activity.
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Porn and video games have driven technology for a long time now. Those supporting this bill should be thanking porn, not seeking to suppress it. At least that would have some kind of positive outcome.
Weird … he wants to ban something that he obviously likes – and enjoys in weird sorts of ways apparently.
Is there something in the AZ water that could explain their behavior?
Show me a porn filter and I’ll show you a backdoor into the system.
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They filters, at least for PCs, would probably be a commercial product like CyberSitter.
And that could be gotten rid of by installing a fresh copy of the operating system, problem solved.
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Unless you go on a Mission Impossible mission with a quirky super hacker sidekick and your trusty wheelman with a heart of gold, but a dark past, to break into the secure server room of your local ISP – you are not going to uninstall this software.
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These filters would be in the PC or phone,and not at the ISP level.
Otherwise people close to the Mexican border could use a cell phone or other wireless provider in Mexico.
ISPs in Mexico are not subject to either US federal law, or the laws of any of the 50 states, even if there are customers in the USA connecting.
Cybersitter is a client-side filtering program which could easily be removed from a PC by installing a fresh copy of the operating system
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These filters absolutely exist at a network and ISP level.
If you think it must be client side, you may want to explain that to my company that the system they have in place is impossible. Because I have no software installed on my personal laptop, yet when I connect to work network it absolutely filters based on their permission set.
Same for my spouse’s school.
Same for my university more than a decade ago.
Granted these are all local network examples, but my understanding of the idea behind it should extend to an ISP.
I am not saying this thing should exist. It is an incredibly dumb idea to filter any internet content. But from a “how do we do it” standpoint – that stuff has existed for years that never touches the person’s computer.
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If Arizona mandates they be installed at the ISP level, it will likely DNS filtering, which could be circumvented by using public DNS outside of Arizona.
And ISP level filtering can be circumvented by using a a proxy or a VPN.
VPNs cannot be banned becuase businesses use them to for secure remote access to their networks, and banning VPNs would cause problems for business travellers who have to access the company network.
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Funny you mention VPN blocking.
I used to use a VPN for a former employer on a work laptop about eight years ago. Tried to log in from my vacation in Canada to do a bit of work for the company. Would not connect at all. For some reason, Rodgers was blocking it. Never figured out why or how.
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[dang no edit function]
No lesson there or argument. Just that your comment reminded me that exact thing happened to me.
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However, like I mentioned, there is a clever around it, just like I did with Taco Bell.
Just set up an SSL proxy on your network, and then when you connect, just connect the network VPN using the internal IP of your network VPN.
And like I said, bypass blocking in the manner does not break the law in the United States.
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If either of your school’s filter, you can circumvent the filters, even if they block VPN usage.
Taco Bell near where I live used to do that, but I found a way around it.
I would log into the SSL proxy on my home network, and they would log into the main VPN on my network, by using the internal address of 192.168.1.1, instead of the public IP address for it, and I was able to bypass their blocking of my VPN and their filters altogether.
Their filtering went way too far, and even blocked streaming, and I could not access my Live 365 station when I had it, so I found this clever way to bypass their filters.
And doing this did not break any laws. Bypassing the Bell’s filtering, the way I did it, did not break any Federal law, or any California law.
Circumventing network does not break California state laws, or any Federal laws.
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Are we not doing phrasing anymore?
“It isn’t likely to pass because filtering porn on such a level is arguably impossible…”
So, like the idea of secure encryption with a backdoor, then.
Every time I see the word “porn” in an article, I expect to see a dick pic.
Since this site doesn’t allow image embedding, I’ll just have to doodle one up:
Chris Sevier
Ah, magnificent, if I do say so myself.
Then computer stores in Blythe, California will see a huge increase in sales, as people in Arizona go to Blythe to buy their stuff.
Phoenix, where a lot of the population is, is only about 2 hours drive or so away from Blythe. So if this passes, computer stores in Blythe can expect to see their busines increase by a lot.
This could easily be circumvented by installing a fresh copy of the operating system, and the filtering software will be GONE from your computer.
It should be noted that the laws making it illegal to circumvent that filter will only apply to those who distribute the cracks to get around it, not the end user.
That law makes “sharing” anything to crack it illegal. Otherwise the state will have so many criminals the state won’t have enough jails to hold them all.
That is what the DMCA, for example, requires that circumventing copy protection be for “commercial or private financial gain”, for it to be a felony. That part of the law specifically limits felony prosecutions to those who distribute the circumvention tools for the purpose of making money.
More living proof that someone can be an absolute cockup and still somehow succeed in modern society.
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Only if you count southeastern Arizona as "modern society".
I’d have to pay to remove a fence… and that payment goes towards building another fence? Sounds like a zero sum game.