GA- Decoding stupid law

1-14-2009 Georgia:

IT’S A NEW YEAR so of course Georgia has put onto its books another new law that won’t work. And, once again, it has to do with sex offenders. Legislators have a real fetish about such folks.

There’s nothing wrong with the intention, of course. Indeed, the state’s version only seeks to implement an act of Congress approved by entirely different politicians of higher rank who similarly know too little about the computer age.

The 2006 federal law simply requires authorities to keep track of the Internet addresses of sex offenders. Georgia one-upped this by requiring them to hand over all their passwords along with screen names and addresses. The only other state to have gone this far is Utah, where one portion of the law has already been overturned by the courts.

The perceived purpose of such laws is entirely valid as regards predatory sex offenders. It’s no secret that the Internet has become the happy hunting grounds for them, particularly as regards children.

THE PROBLEM, in Georgia, is once again the state’s overly broad definition of sex offender — basically anybody ever caught with their pants down in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re also put on the sex-offender registry for life, even if the offense was premarital sex with the woman, then a teen, who is now their wife.

Making Internet prowling difficult for true perverts that prey on children is entirely worthwhile although, as often mentioned in this space before, if authorities really believe such now-released ex-convicts are still this much of a danger why did they let them go in the first place? Why didn’t they commit them to a secure mental-health facility for treatment until cured (or chemically castrated)?

The real predators are a very small minority of the 16,000 Georgians currently on the registry, some of whom are there for offenses pretty much ignored nowadays, such as voluntary oral sex.

Until Georgia changes its definitions and zeroes in only on true predators for intensive scrutiny, and further ceases to release them until treated and cured, all this constant attack by the General Assembly on this front is utter nonsense and, as the courts regularly agree, unconstitutional to boot.

PERHAPS EVEN worse, in this instance, is pretending this can do any good whatsoever and keep predators off the electronic hunting ground. Maybe they can catch the really, really dumb offenders with this but those would trip themselves up anyway. It’s the clever ones that are truly dangerous, and particularly if they are even modestly computer savvy.

First of all, it is child’s play to open a new account with e-mail, a different name and a different password every day. Heck, every minute if so inclined ... and all for free.

Plus, there are also such things as anonymous surfing through servers located overseas that are immune from Georgia (or U.S.) snooping and encryption programs of such a level that only the CIA — maybe — can decode them.

Sound-good, feel-good laws that don’t work are dangerous to a public that largely is deluded into believing it is somehow protected by them. The best way to protect our children from Internet predators remains strong parental/adult super-vision of computer usage.

While defenders of such laws are often heard arguing that “sex offenders have no rights” the reality is that they do, and particularly so if not in a cell and “having paid their debt to society.” They’ve got mostly the same rights as everyone else, particularly if they behave themselves.

SURRENDER THEIR passwords in an era when computer users are warned to protect their Social Security numbers at all costs?

Surrender access to bank accounts and credit cards managed online?

Surrender privacy in making political comments or in communicating with one’s minister?

The rest of us would tell the General Assembly to go to hell if asked to do this. Why should released sex offenders, most of whom are trying to become ordinary people once again, feel any different?

It is appallingly easy to predict that this new Georgia law will be struck down by the courts, assuming any sex offender is actually ignorant enough of it and computers to be caught.

Indeed, one looks forward to the case where a sex offender if found not to have revealed his account and password on his church-operated server and is threatened with being sent back to prison for making contributions to his denomination’s mission fund “in secret.”

The risk that the General Assembly seeks to address is real, although far more limited than its overly sweeping law. It also won’t work, which makes it a fraud.

SO LONG as the legislators aren’t willing to pay for identifying true predators and keeping them confined, and giving them medical treatment, it remains their political stagecraft that poses the largest danger to the state’s children. ..News Source.. by Rome-News Tribune.com