U.S. House Passes SAFE Act: Hide Your Open WiFi and Half-Naked Pictures

Was it only last night that I was questioning the ability of governments to legislate online activity? It seems too recent to comment on yet another stunning display of the cluelessness of governing bodies with regard to how them thar tubes work, but the United States House of Representatives presented such a classic example that it has to be noted.

On Wednesday, the House approved, with an overwhelming 409-2 vote, HR 3791, otherwise known as the SAFE Act, a piece of legislation with wording so vague that it rolls open WiFi networks (including those at places like Starbucks as well as your own hippie-dippie share-with-the-world home WiFi) as well as social networks into the broad description of “Internet providers” mandated to report any instance of a similarly vague description of child pornography. In other words, if you are sitting at your out-of-town relatives' house over the holidays and surfing some questionable sites using their neighbor's open WiFi network instead of the horrible AOL dial-up at the house you are in, that neighbor is technically liable for any potential kiddie porn you download.

Don't get me wrong; I in no way, shape, or form condone child pornography. But here in the United States, there is no set definition of what child pornography is, and here they are expecting everyone from ISPs to social networks to define and report who views it?

The perfect example will be everyone's current scapegoat: Facebook. A quick browse the other day located a second cousin of mine (no, we don't have the same last name, so you can quit the search). I know she's not 18, and her Facebook profile picture is an overhead shot of her looking up the camera. You can guess that her shot actually ends up looking down her shirt, whether by accident or design, I'm not entirely sure. Is that porn? She's not legal. She's not naked, but the line here according to the SAFE act is pretty grey.

Now, Ars Technica disagrees that smaller WiFi providers would be liable under the SAFE Act, using the same information that The Iconoclast received from the office of the bill's sponsor, Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX): that the intent wasn't to go after the little guy. Do we honestly think that the Courts are going to think about intent when some DA with political aspirations goes after Starbucks on a kiddie porn case?

I think at this point it's fairly obvious that the various world governments, starting with the U.S. could use a course on “Tubes for Dummies.” There are too many small details that can be overlooked when you pass legislation with broad definitions in order to make people feel better. The House (and probably Senate) assume that the majority of their constituents aren't any more Web-savvy than they are, and no one ever needs to learn more in order to actually pass meaningful legislation. Feel free to start a chapter and send it off to your Senators before it reaches the Senate for a vote.