That's the wording: Annoy.
Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
Superficially, this is a measure against cyber-stalking. But the law appears to be extremely broad -- after all, any form of criticism, even well-founded criticism, can be labelled an annoyance. Ann Coulter, for example, may want to test the boundaries of this law by taking to court anyone who makes another "Mann Coulter" crack.
The signing of this law gives conservative forces an excuse to pressure ISPs into divulging the identities of anonymous bloggers, commentators, and usenet posters. Until now, ISPs protected the privacy of clients who had merely hurt the feelings of someone else.
Hurt feelings are now a serious legal matter.
7 comments:
As the victim of a stalker, I can tell you that the authorities won't bother to enforce the laws they've had up to now, both state and federal. I'm not convinced this new law will have any teeth either. Regardless of good intentions, it's a poorly worded law and should be dumped. Hmm, I wonder if it will work against those annoying spam messages I keep getting! ;-)
.R.S.E.
This isn't about stalking.
This is about giving the feds a legal reason to find out names and addresses of individuals who post material harmful to the administration. Once that info is acquired, those individuals can be subject to IRS audits and other forms of retaliation.
Consider the case of James Moore, author of "Bush's Brain." Homeland Security put him on a "no fly" list, just because he wrote a book about Karl Rove.
Now all sorts of folk known only by a nomme-de-net (such as Georgia10 or Xymphora) may receive the same treatment.
In other words, this law gives BUsh the right to stalk US.
Outrageous! Surely this is unconstitutional?
Seems to me that the right-wing bloggers have a lot more to worry about from this masterful piece of legislative logic. Think of now many people could finally tear off a piece of Coulter's slatty ass the RIGHT way.
Frankly I've been extremely fearful of previous comments I have posted on Joseph's Cannonfire blogs over the past 18 years. I have always posted as "anonymous" and usually take an angle that this country is closer to being moved under martial law than anyone suspects.
Now this new law just gives the feds legality to go after critics. They will track who posts what comment from what IP address and get the list of user logID's who used a specific IP address from their ISP.
I was wondering why for example the FBI is now has nearly 200 technical positions that just opened up on their website: www.fbi.gov/jobs
Now I know why.
we'll all have to be super careful.
I give this country from 8 months to a year before we get shifted over to martial law. Have your passports ready and friends/relatives in foriegn countries ready to receive you and help you make a new life.
I meant 18 months, not 18 years.
oops
WELCOME TO THE CYBER-IRON-CURTAIN .
MMIIXX
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