Politics and Law

The accidental disclosure of a House ethics investigation has kicked up quite a fuss on Capitol Hill as it turns out that more than 30 congressman and aides are under investigation. But after committee chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) disclosed the breach on the House floor late Thursday, her colleague, Rep. Jo Bonner (Ala.), who is the committee's ranking Republican, spoke next, telling fellow members that the breach was an isolated incident.

Not exactly.

In February, a company that monitors P2P networks said that it had found blueprints and avionics about the president's helicopter, Marine One, on a computer in Tehran. An investigation later found that a third-party defense contractor with access to that data was using a computer that also had P2P file-sharing software on its hard drive...

Read more of "File Sharing's Mysteries Again Stump Uncle Sam" on CBSNews.com.

The just-signed Illinois law banning sex offenders from social-networking sites might seem like a good idea to protect children, but it will have virtually no impact on their safety and could wind up making things worse.

The law, which was signed Thursday by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, would prevent registered sex offenders in Illinois from using a social-networking service defined as an "Internet Web site containing profile Web pages...that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs...or any other personal or personally identifying information."

The definition also includes "the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile Web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile Web page," which might be interpreted to include news sites, including CNET News, that allow visitors to register and leave comments.

But let's start with the problem the law is trying to solve. It's aimed at adults who troll the Web in search of children to sexually exploit. While such people do exist, they are rarely successful in harming youth whom they meet through the Internet. Every peer-reviewed study conducted by the Crimes Against Children Research Center and other scholarly organizations, as well as the report of Internet Safety Technical Task Force, has concluded that the risk of online predators is greatly exaggerated.

I'm not aware of any cases of a predator harming a prepubescent child whom he met on the Internet, and there are very few publicly known cases of sexual contact between a teenager and an adult they met online. In those few cases where contact has occurred, it is often because the teenager was aggressively seeking the contact and where the teen was also engaged in offline risky behavior. These cases are typically between a teenage girl and young adult male between 18 and 25.

Law enforcement officials and politicians will point to plenty of Internet predator cases, but the overwhelming majority are either sting operations, in which no child was harmed, or child pornography cases which, while horrendous, are not addressed by this law.

A January 2009 analysis of Pennsylvania cases by the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use found, during a four-year period, that "only eight incidents involved actual teen victims with whom the Internet was used to form a relationship," compared to 9,934 children who were sexually abused in a single year in that state.

If the law had no negative consequences, I would give it a pass. After all, who cares about the rights of people who have been convicted of sex offenses? Well, I do. Not because I think they're wonderful people but because it's in all of our interest that, if they're not in prison, they be integrated into society to the extent that they can function and be able to find and hold appropriate jobs. Keeping these individuals away from the very types of sites that can help them in their careers is counterproductive to the goal of rehabilitating them.

The other issue is how we classify sex offenders. Not everyone on every state sex offender list is a danger to children. A recent article in The Economist, entitled "Unjust and Ineffective, observes that "Many people assume that anyone listed on a sex offender registry must be a rapist or a child molester. But most states spread the net much more widely."

Citing a report from Human Rights Watch, the article says "at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public (in two of those states, only if a child was present). No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers."

The article describes the plight of a young woman who, in 1996 at age 17, was charged with having oral sex with a 16-year-old boy. She was given jail time and probation, and wound up on a sex offender list. Should she be banned from having a Facebook account or the ability to publicly comment on posts like this one? I think not.

I'll leave it up to others to debate our sex offender registry policy. Adam Thierer and Robin Sax have just written thoughtful responses to The Economist's article, taking differing points of view, but I do think that we need to be careful about not indiscriminately shutting down social-networking access to all registered sex offenders. Some probably yes, but not every one of them.

Another reason to question this law is that it can lead to more than one false sense of security. To begin with, the most dangerous sex offenders aren't necessarily the ones who are registered but the many who haven't yet been caught and convicted. And if we focus exclusively on predation, we're likely to lose track of the most dangerous aspects of youth online behavior, which are mostly either kid on kid--such as bullying, harassment, and impersonation--or self-imposed risks such as sexting or posting information that could be embarrassing later in life.

CBSNews.com's Declan McCullagh has also weighed in on this case.

If you believe its sponsors, a new Illinois law will keep sex offenders from recruiting children on the Internet.

"If the predator is supposed to be a registered sex offender, they should keep their Internet distance as well as their physical distance," said sponsor Bill Brady, a Republican state senator, according to the Chicago Tribune. "The object is to protect innocent individuals on the Internet from sex offenders."

If that were its effect, this would be a laudable piece of legislation. But in reality, the state law is written so broadly, it would effectively prohibit registered sex offenders from using the Internet.

It says "social-networking Web sites" are off limits, and defines those as "an Internet Web site containing profile Web pages of the members of the Web site that include the names or nicknames of such members," or photographs, or any other personal information. Offenders must "refrain from accessing or using" such Web sites.

Unfortunately, the Illinois state legislature didn't seem to recognize that many popular Web sites--perhaps even the majority of the large ones--fall into those categories.

Google.com features user profiles, including name, photos and personal information. So do Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, geek site Slashdot.org, and aggregator site Digg.com.

Sites like Hulu.com, Netflix, and Pandora do, too, as do TV.com, MP3.com, and CNET.com. This overly broad scope makes the law vulnerable to a First Amendment challenge. (Those last three are our sister sites and are owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive.)

(It is surely coincidence that Bill Brady is a candidate for governor of Illinois, whose campaign biography says: "He fought for and passed legislation to protect children from sexual predators.")

Now, perhaps Brady's intent truly was to ban sex offenders from the Internet, although if that's true you wouldn't know it from the former developer and real estate agent public statements on the topic. Nor was it probably apparent to his colleagues in the state capitol, where the legislation was unanimously approved by both chambers--or to Gov. Pat Quinn, who signed it into law this week.

Like it or not, using Google, Yahoo, TV.com, and so on is part of modern life, and it's reasonable to hope that even sex offenders could be reintegrated into society rather than cordoned off from it and therefore more likely to relapse. One Justice Department release says that 5.3 percent of male sex offenders were rearrested within three years after their release from state prison.

Brady's legislation also does not distinguish between violent criminals who have served prison time for rape--and adults who are registered sex offenders because of youthful hijinks.

The Economist published two stories on this topic last week. One, called "America's Unjust Sex Laws," says: "Janet Allison was found guilty of being 'party to the crime of child molestation' because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married. But Ms. Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender."

A second article tells the story of Wendy Whitaker, a 17-year-old high school student in Georgia, who preformed oral sex on a boy in her class. "Her classmate was three weeks shy of his 16th birthday. That made Ms. Whitaker a criminal. She was arrested and charged with sodomy, which in Georgia can refer to oral sex. She met her court-appointed lawyer five minutes before the hearing. He told her to plead guilty. She did not really understand what was going on, so she did as she was told," the magazine reported.

No wonder a Human Rights Watch report recommends a rethinking of U.S. laws in this area.

It would be one thing if Illinois' new law said "sex offenders shall not use the Internet to harm or seduce a minor," or language to that effect. Unfortunately, the man who would be governor of that state seems to be more interested in taking credit for enacting a law rather than ensuring the right law is enacted.

CNET Blog Network member Larry Magid has also weighed in on this case.

The Federal Trade Commission is planning to crack down on bloggers who review or promote products while earning freebies or payments, the Associated Press reported Sunday.

This would, for the first time, bring bloggers under FTC guidelines that ban deceptive or unfair business practices.

"New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers--as well as the companies that compensate them--for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest," the article explained.

The rules could be quite strict, even extending to the practice of affiliate links--for example, a music blogger who links to a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes that earns an affiliate commission in the process.

The practice of free products for bloggers, most of whom are not bound by ethical guidelines that journalists have historically followed, has been making headlines for some time now. Microsoft, for example, created a wave of bad press a few years ago when it gave free Acer laptops preloaded with Windows Vista to several dozen bloggers.

Some companies have sprung up around the whole notion of blogger compensation and giveaways. The AP article mentions some of the marketing companies that have made a business out of offering bloggers incentives--free trips, products, gift certificates, or outright payments--for coverage. One of them, Izea, has been generating controversy in the tech press since it started PayPerPost.

Izea says that it requires bloggers to disclose what they've gotten paid for or what they've received for free. But with the proposed FTC guidelines, if a blogger fails to disclose a freebie or payment, both Izea and the blogger could be held responsible. The FTC could also take issue with the fact that for at least one promotion, Izea has said it avoided including bloggers who would be likely to give the company negative press.

Izea CEO Ted Murphy wrote in a blog post Monday that the company supports stricter FTC regulations for bloggers.

"The companies that should be worried about these changes are those that have no standards and no way to enforce disclosure," Murphy wrote. "We have invested millions of dollars creating systems that allow us to automate transactions and verify standardized disclosure."

But some bloggers, the AP article mentioned, are concerned that the FTC's efforts could go too far, possibly generating probes into posts that were written without any compensation, and possibly leading bloggers to post with more restraint. And some believe it would be better if bloggers created their own standards based on niche and industry.

Then there's this: does the FTC realize just how many small-time bloggers are out there? Championing business ethics is a worthy goal, but, um, good luck getting much done when there are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there and new ones popping up more or less daily. Ever heard of the expression "herding cats?"

This post was updated at 11:37 a.m. PT with comment from Izea.

The tweet that shall live in infamy.

(Credit: Twitter)

You can't make this stuff up: Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan, set off a political-blog firestorm when he posted to his Twitter account on Wednesday that "Iranian twitter activity (is) similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

Presumably he was talking about rallying in the face of adversity. But, um, really? The U.S. congressional elections might be rife with mildly nefarious characters on both sides of the party line, but the current upheaval in Iran deals with a totalitarian regime, media blackouts, and mass protests with casualties. Talk about a gaffe. Rep. Hoekstra has said he will not seek re-election and is reportedly considering a run for governor; I'm sure his potential opponents are taking note here.

Anyway, somebody brilliant (I learned this is, unsurprisingly, Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger fame) seized the opportunity and created a hilarious blog called "Pete Hoekstra is a Meme," devoted to photo captions much like the perennial "lolcats" craze. "To Hoekstra is to whine using grandiose exaggerations and comparisons," the site explains. Each "Hoekstra is a Meme" caption illustrates a similar, though generally more offensive claim.

(Credit: hoekstraisameme.com)

It gets better. This is the same Rep. Peter Hoekstra who, you might recall, Twittered his secret trip to Iraq back in February. This guy is just comedy gold. I'm sure he's a fine public servant to the good people of Michigan (Is he? Michiganders, please weigh in!), but when it comes to Twitter, you'd almost think he had been planted by the writers for The Daily Show.

And while some might say Rep. Hoekstra's staffers ought to gently prevent him from Twittering, in the future, I say keep 'em coming. It's been a while: Politicians have been getting awfully digital-savvy for the past few years. Back in 2006, we were guaranteed loads of hilarity whenever Ted Stevens tried to explain the Internet, Robert Wexler wasn't aware that his Colbert Report joke about being a cocaine fiend would be mixed and remixed all over the Web, or George Allen mouthed off in the presence of YouTube-ready cameras.

These days, however, we're stuck with far too many Beltway types who are woefully adept at Twittering, like former Bush strategist Karl Rove.

And honestly, that's just no fun.

This post was updated at 11:33 p.m. PT.

news analysis The U.S. House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing Tuesday to examine a bill that would force peer-to-peer applications to provide specific notice to consumers that their files might be shared.

The hearing before a House Energy subcommittee comes about a month after reports that specifications about the helicopter used as Marine One may have been leaked through a P2P network. Meanwhile, a second House committee is probing whether LimeWire or another P2P application was responsible.

Tuesday's hearing is expected to focus on a bill introduced in March by Rep. Mary Bono Mack, a California Republican. The catch: while it appears intended to target only P2P applications, the measure sweeps in Web browsers, FTP applications, instant messaging utilities, and other common programs too.

Bono's Informed P2P User Act says that it will be "unlawful" for P2P software to cause files to be made available unless two rules are followed. First, the utility's installation process must provide "clear and conspicuous notice" of its features and obtain the user's "informed consent." Second, the program must step through that notice-and-consent process every time it runs.

Her bill defines P2P applications as software that lets files be marked for transfer, transferred, and received. (The exact wording: "to designate files available for transmission to another computer; to transmit files directly to another computer; and to request the transmission of files from another computer.")

Every copy of Windows, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X sold in recent memory includes a command-line FTP client fitting that definition but lacking the proposed warning. Does that mean that Microsoft, the Free Software Foundation, and Apple could be fined for "unlawful" activities? If the definition stretches to include the rsync utility and open-source software too, will volunteer maintainers and foreign citizens have to comply?

Another example: Web browsers could also be regulated and subject to Federal Trade Commission enforcement action unless "informed consent" is obtained each time the desktop icon is double-clicked. (Every Web browser allows the user to "designate" files to be uploaded--ever post a photo?--and request that files be downloaded.)

It's true that forcing compliance--at least for those programmers who are paying attention to legislative proclamations from the U.S. Congress--shouldn't be too difficult. A few warning messages and click-here-to-continue dialog boxes would suffice.

Still, the argument that a particular piece of proposed legislation could be worse is no argument at all. What the bill's drafters may not appreciate is that the Internet is, by definition, a peer-to-peer network. Restricting its P2Pishness, for lack of a better term, is difficult to do with restricting Internet access completely.

The point here is not that LimeWire and its rivals are without risk; misconfiguration probably would expose sensitive files to the public.

It's more that software is uniquely malleable, difficult to define, and better overseen by West Coast coders voluntarily adding warning messages than East Coast lawyers making it illegal not to do so.

The U.S. Supreme Court failed to reach a consensus about regulating obscenity a generation ago; do we really think that computer code today won't be equally slippery?

You know a Web app has come into its own when it gets banned in courtrooms and locker rooms.

Twitter, which went from being just another Web geek service to an Internet phenomenon lampooned on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," is now becoming a nuisance for at least two American institutions--the judicial system and the NBA.

Some judges and lawyers believe the integrity of trials is being threatened by jurors posting comments about cases on the popular microblogging service.

Lawyers for a building products company are asking an Arkansas court to overturn a $12.6 million judgment against the firm after a juror tweeted during the trial, violating court rules, The New York Times reports.

And in Pennsylvania, defense lawyers for a former state senator found guilty of corruption failed to persuade a judge to declare a mistrial after a juror posted updates on the case on Twitter and Facebook. The lawyers plan to use that for grounds for appeal, the newspaper reported.

For some jurors, the 140-limit of Twitter may be too limiting. A juror blogged about a drunk-driving case before and after a guilty verdict was rendered, in 2007. Regardless, the verdict was upheld and a request for a new trial was denied.

The report also found that jurors are using their iPhones and BlackBerrys to do research in cases, which also is forbidden.

The use of the Internet for research isn't new. In 2007, the conviction of a man accused of sexually abusing minors was reversed and a new trial was granted after two jurors searched for the alleged victims on MySpace.

Sports players are also communicating with their fans on Twitter. Although that is not likely to interfere with game scores, it is still worrisome, at least to Milwaukee Bucks coach Scott Skiles. He has asked his players not to use Twitter from the locker room after learning that Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva tweeted from his mobile phone during halftime on Sunday.

"In da locker room, snuck to post my twit. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up," Villanueva tweeted using the screen name CV31, his initials and jersey number, according to the Associated Press.

The fact that the Bucks beat the Celtics 86-77 didn't really appease the coach.

"You know, (we) don't want to blow it out of proportion," Skiles said. "But anything that gives the impression that we're not serious and focused at all times is not the correct way we want to go about our business."

(Credit: Twitter)

A clarification has been added to this story. See below for details.

John McCain has come a long way, technologically, since his days on the 2008 campaign trail.

Less than a year ago, the Republican presidential hopeful admitted that he needed help logging onto the Internet. Now the 72-year-old, four-term senator is practically leading Washington's foray into the Web 2.0 realm as the subject of what ABC News claims is the first "Twitterview"-- an interview conducted entirely on Twitter.

It might be better said that this is the first such high-profile Twitterview. Interviews via Twitter, including ones with politicians, have been conducted before, such as an exchange in February involving John Culberson, a Texas Republican.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday interviewed McCain through the microblogging service. In no more than 20 minutes and 140 characters at a time, Stephanopoulos managed to ask the senator about AIG, Pakistan, and Iran, and whether President Obama is putting the nation at risk of another terrorist attack, among other things. McCain proved, however, that a character limit cannot stop a seasoned politician from using a bit of rhetorical agility to avoid a reporter's questions.

"AIG: Would a President McCain break bonus contracts?" GStephanopoulos asked.

"@GStephanopoulos i would have never bailed out AIG, the real scandal is billions to foreign banks," SenJohnMcCain replied.

McCain, who has been tweeting on a near-daily basis since late January, controls 100 percent of the content of his posts, according to his staff, and posts tweets either from his PC or his BlackBerry, which he may or may not have helped create.

The senator is one of 69 congress members on Twitter and certainly not the only one whose use of Web 2.0 tools may be subject to a learning curve, as evidenced by one congressman's announcement of a secret Iraq trip via Twitter.

Undeterred by such gaffes, at least four congressional committees now have their own Twitter accounts as well: the House Committees on Science and Technology, Education and Labor, Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Clarification, March 19, 6:37 a.m. PDT: This story initially implied that the McCain-Stephanopoulos exchange was the first-ever Twitter interview. We've since made note that this was a first for McCain and that other Twitterviews had previously taken place.

Police Blotter is a regular CNET report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: Facebook photograph shows part-time teaching aide at Ohio high school with three cheerleaders holding Smirnoff bottles.

When: The Court of Appeals of Ohio, Twelfth District, rules on February 9.

Outcome: Conviction for allowing minors to possess alcohol upheld.

What happened, according to court documents and other sources:
Most people are merely embarrassed by photos a friend tosses onto Facebook. Mary Ellen Hause went to jail because of them.

Hause, who worked as a part-time teaching aide at Springboro High School, near Dayton, Ohio, was photographed in her basement posing with three cheerleaders holding Smirnoff bottles. The cheerleaders were friends with her son.

That photo, of course, ended up on Facebook. And Springboro High School Resource Officer Sgt. Don Wilson, who regularly poked around students' Facebook accounts, discovered it and turned it over to the local police.

Hause was charged with three counts of violating Ohio code 4301.69, which says no person "shall knowingly allow any underage person to remain in or on the place while possessing or consuming beer or intoxicating liquor," unless a parent or legal guardian is present and approves. (Underage person is defined as someone under 21 years old.)

State prosecutors alleged that Hause allowed the cheerleaders to consume Smirnoff, Sparks, and beer at her home and presented testimony from two of the minors who claimed that Hause participated in drinking games with them.

A second Facebook photo from the same gathering showed another minor holding a can of Sparks, a caffeinated alcoholic beverage.

For her part, Hause said that she didn't know at first that the cheerleaders were drinking, and when she found out, she kicked them out.

"I went downstairs and I saw the kids down there," she said, according to a report by the local ABC affiliate. "I sat on the couch and the girls -- they know me because of working at the school --they all jumped in my lap. And I did take the picture and I didn't notice anything right away."

Her testimony proved to be less than convincing: a jury convicted her and she was sentenced to 30 days in jail, a $500 fine, 10 days of trash pickup, and three years of probation that prohibits her from drinking alcohol or having it in her house.

"What should have happened when you discovered that these kids were drinking is that immediate action should have taken place... that all of these parents should have been notified and that your actions should have been very, very different," trial judge Judge Donald Oda II said, according to the transcript.

Hause appealed, saying the no-alcohol-on-probation rule was an abuse of the judge's discretion, that there should have been one charge instead of three, and the law is unconstitutionally overbroad. On February 9, an appeals court upheld her conviction and sentence.

The Dayton Daily News reported last year that the school decided not to punish the cheerleaders.

Excerpts from the recent opinion from the Court of Appeals of Ohio, Twelfth District, Warren County:
Appellant argues the trial court abused its discretion in imposing as conditions of community control that she not consume or possess alcohol and that she not have alcohol in her household. Appellant argues these conditions do not relate to the crimes for which she was found guilty.

The trial court has broad discretion in imposing conditions of community control pursuant to R.C. 2929.25(A)(1), which governs the authority of the trial court to impose one or more community control sanctions in misdemeanor violations, including residential, nonresidential, and financial sanctions, and any other conditions the court considers appropriate. We will not reverse such conditions imposed absent an abuse of the trial court's discretion.

A trial court's discretion in imposing community control conditions is not limitless, however. In determining whether a condition reasonably relates to the three probationary goals -- doing justice, rehabilitating the offender, and insuring good behavior -- a court "should consider whether the condition (1) is reasonably related to rehabilitating the offender, (2) has some relationship to the crime convicted, and (3) relates to conduct which is criminal or reasonably related to future criminality and serves the statutory ends of probation." In addition, the community control conditions "cannot be overly broad so as to unnecessarily impinge upon the probationer's liberty."

After reviewing the entire record, we find the trial court acted within its discretion by concluding the restrictions on alcohol use and possession as conditions of appellant's community control, as applied to appellant only, are reasonably related to rehabilitating the offender, have a reasonable relationship to the crime charged, are reasonably related to future criminality and serve the statutory ends of probation. Appellant was convicted of an alcohol-related offense-allowing juveniles to consume alcohol in her home. If she is not allowed to possess or consume alcohol or have alcohol in her home, it is less likely that juveniles will consume alcohol in her home...

Judgment affirmed.