Onward in the 21st century: surveillance without end

Courtesy Mitch Radcliffe, a story on a new Republican effort to force ISPs to archive users' searches, supposedly to aid in the search for child pornographers and so on. As Radcliffe points out, we already have enough law to pursue child pornographers. So the real agenda is probably just the Republicans' crazed quest to increase the power of the executive branch -- in this case the Justice Dept. -- and chip away at people's civil rights.

Ironically, this news comes on the same day a federal judge struck down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, declaring it unconstitutionally broad and harmful to free speech. This was the case in which my friend Marilyn testified, reading into the record a couple of sentences from my pseudonymous porn novel Lesbian Camp Girls. See my previous post from Nov. 2006 when she testified and was interviewed, with her mother, by Nerve.com.

technorati: Republicans, civil rights, COPA