This is what the SAFE Act requires: Anyone providing an "electronic communication service" or "remote computing service" to the public who learns about the transmission or storage of information about certain illegal activities or an illegal image must (a) register their name, mailing address, phone number, and fax number with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's "CyberTipline" and (b) "make a report" to the CyberTipline that (c) must include any information about the person or Internet address behind the suspect activity and (d) the illegal images themselves. (By the way, "electronic communications service" and "remote computing service" providers already have some reporting requirements under existing law too.)
"Who learns about" means if they do not learn then it doesn't apply to them, right? No, since our police state always assumes only head cheese could not possibly know and actively ignores that our mass media culture encourages people to effectively be as smart as head cheese (in their world, all television is Masterpiece Theater, Cliff Notes do not exist, and you are born a genius and sage and therefore have no excuse to not know, at least when it comes to your culpability in anything, never theirs).
Furthermore, you must implicate yourself by part (a) since you provided them the means to do it and the law in no way holds you harmless hence you are automatically open to being charged as an accessory.
Part (b) interestingly forces you to report yourself to a private NGO whose outlook is that you are a child molester unless G-d tells them personally, big tall beardy white guy in robes and everything, that you're not.
Part (c) goes with what I said about the assumption of your guilt. You better damn well come up with something to hang on someone else or it's your network info they are left with.
Part (d) even better yet enshrines in law that you must violate another law and must transmit copies of the illegal images to that private NGO. So you will have to posses them which is illegal, and then retransmit them, which is also illegal. You're forced to implicate yourself as an accessory, snitch on the other guy to cover your ass, then re-implicate yourself directly by committing the same crime.
Wow! We're going to fight crime by ordering you to report the crime, then perform the crime to justify reporting yourself after the fact!
Oh, but it gets better:
The definition of which images qualify as illegal is expansive. It includes obvious child pornography, meaning photographs and videos of children being molested. But it also includes photographs of fully clothed minors in overly "lascivious" poses, and certain obscene visual depictions including a "drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting." (Yes, that covers the subset of anime called hentai).
For the record, courts have held that hentai, while distasteful, is not in fact actionable. Were they to do so, furry fandom (look it up, I dare you) would replace Al Queda as public enemy organization number one.
As one poster in the comments put it, the alternative is to report every single piece of information, image, etc. and bury them in it. Another one would be for an enterprising ne'er do well to write a viral worm that distributed kiddie pron images like spam.
However, I think that yet again, this shows we're going to have to fight back ala Ghost In The Shell with cyber-revolution and hide everything, even when there's nothing to hide, simply because it is our nothing.
This quote is important I feel:
V: Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.
This is where we are headed in this country and in this world. We are letting the political class rob us of our G-d-given right to something better and they are doing it by trading fear for it and we all know after we've walked out of the dentist's office, fear is ephemeral and gone soon. We get nothing, and they get to speak for us, the decide for us, to choose for us.
We get nothing.
Further:
Valerie: It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the worlds turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you.
BitTorrent is just the beginning. Onward comes the storm of the cyber rebellions, the people fighting back against the cancer of conformity for the sake of mere survival on our knees as slaves to other men, the intellectual battles to get through the fog of laziness and fear. Onward comes the future. Onward comes the distributed net. Onward comes the blizzard.
I warned you, but you wouldn't listen. You'll just have to wait and see how it will play. I'll have nothing to do with its creation or design, but I can guarantee you it is coming. As Agent Smith would say, "not impossible... INEVITABLE."
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