http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41234
US Senators back web censorship
By Nick Farrell: Thursday 26 July 2007, 08:38
US senators issued a bipartisan call for filtering and monitoring
technologies on the Internet.
In a meeting where civil liberties groups were not invited, Democrats
and Republicans said that the web needed to be censored to protect children.
Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye and Senate Commerce, Science,
and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted 'The Internet is made out
of tubes" Stevens argued that Internet was a dangerous place where
parents alone could not protect their children.
While parents can buy filtering and monitoring technologies to screen
out offensive content and to monitor their child's online activities,
the use of these technologies was far from universal and may not be
fool-proof, Inouye said.
Stevens, who has also been arguing for phone companies to charge
Internet customers twice for the same service, said that Congress has an
important role to play to ensure that the protection available in other
parts of society find their way onto the Interweb.
The committee wants the FCC to identify industry practices "that can
limit the transmission of child pornography".
The FCC would have to come up with a way to identify filtering
technologies and identify what could be done to improve the process and
better enable parents to "proactively protect" children online.