Want to know when Congress is really fucking you?? When they say they’re doing it to ‘protect children’ from the dangers of this scary world we live in. Yeah, the same people who protected Mark Foley when they knew what he was up to.

Here are a few excerpts from Press Esc

US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited.

And, from Ted “series of tubes” Stevens:

“While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child’s online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material,” Sen. Inouye said. “In that context, we must evaluate our current efforts to combat child pornography and consider what further measures may be needed to stop the spread of such illegal material over high-speed broadband connections.”

“Given the increasingly important role of the Internet in education and commerce, it differs from other media like TV and cable because parents cannot prevent their children from using the Internet altogether,” Sen. Stevens said. “The headlines continue to tell us of children who are victimized online. While the issues are difficult, I believe Congress has an important role to play to ensure that the protections available in other parts of our society find their way to the Internet.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology released a statement on this issue:

Constitutional Issues Critical in Online Child “Protection” - As the Senate Commerce Committee debates how best to protect children on the Internet, lawmakers must take special care to avoid overly simple solutions that would do more harm than good. In its zeal to protect kids from predators and potentially inappropriate content, Congress must not trample the First Amendment rights of Internet users, CDT said in a statement submitted to the Committee today. The Committee is holding a hearing entitled “Protecting Children on the Internet,” that features no representatives from the civil liberties community. July 24, 2007

This is how they will get their foot in the door, with regards to censoring the web. If we allow this to happen, we can kiss our First Amendment goodbye, as protecting children will quickly become censoring any content they deem undesirable, whether it be political speech, religious messages, or news they don’t want reported.

Call your Representative and Senators in Congress, and tell them we will not accept any form of censorship of the internet by the Government.