IP: CONGRESS: "The Rogues Gallery"

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

THE ROGUES GALLERY


Meet the legislators who helped make government censorship a reality on the
Internet.


By Brock Meeks


The history of the Communications Decency Act - legislation that became law
as part of the sweeping telecommunications reform bill - is a twisted tale.




Championed by Senator James Exon with ample support from the Christian
Coalition, the Communications Decency Act criminalizes constitutionally
protected speech on the Net. Americans who prove unwilling to abandon their
First Amendment rights may be subject to US$250,000 fines and two-year
prison terms.


The United States Supreme Court says that the state has a "compelling
interest" in protecting minors from inappropriate or potentially harmful
media content. The Court also says that the government must always use the
"least restrictive means" short of broad, content-based regulation to
achieve this compelling interest. The new legislation clearly fails this
critical First Amendment test.


Wired asked several proponents of the act to clarify their decision to
forsake the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedents protecting our
civil liberties. Here are the tortured explanations and flat-out evasions
offered by legislators - some of whom previously distinguished themselves
as advocates of free speech.


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SENATOR JAMES EXON (D-Nebraska), sponsor of the Communications Decency Act.


"There is enough of the self-serving philosophy of the 'hands-off elite.'
They seem to rationalize that the framers of the Constitution planned and
plotted at great length to make certain that above all else, the
profiteering pornographer, the pervert, and the pedophile must be free to
practice their pursuits in the presence of children on a taxpayer created
and subsidized computer network. This is nonsense."


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SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-California) voted for the Communications
Decency Act during a Senate vote on 14 June 1995.


Feinstein's office flat out refused to return repeated calls. Later, when I
met face-to-face with her staff, they continued to stonewall. Finally, with
deadline pressure looming and after a Wired editor strong-armed her press
aide, the senator issued this statement:


"While I strongly believe in our First Amendment right of free speech, I
also believe that we need to reconcile First Amendment freedoms with other
fundamental rights and concerns - in this case our need as adults to be
able to protect children from obscene and indecent material. I recognize
that there currently are software filtering programs that have the
potential to screen out certain pornographic 'discussion groups' to prevent
our children from being able to access them. I hope that even better
software can be developed to address this problem more successfully in the
future."


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REPRESENTATIVE PATRICIA SCHROEDER (D-Colorado) voted to adopt Senator
Exon's "indecency" language provision during a 6 December 1995, meeting of
the House Conference Committee on Telecommunications Reform.


"I voted for the 'no indecency for kids' provision because, in my view, all
doubts about the competing provisions had to be resolved in favor of
children.


I'd be the first to say that the options before us weren't perfect, and the
process was abysmal. The House had no hearings on this issue, no committee
deliberation, and no floor debate. A better process would have given us
better options. My requests for a more open process were ignored - not too
surprising from a Republican majority, which rushed through too much
legislation by a similarly slipshod process."


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REPRESENTATIVE JOHN CONYERS (D-Michigan) voted to adopt Senator Exon's
"indecency" language provision during a 6 December 1995, meeting of the
House Conference Committee on Telecommunications Reform.


Previously an ardent supporter of the First Amendment, Conyers's position
on Internet censorship made us wonder why he voted to adopt the "indecency"
language. Rodney Walker, Conyers's press secretary, evaded me for a week
when I tried to reach the representative by phone. "This is a very hard
question for us, which is why I haven't been able to answer it," Walker
confessed. "Let me get the congressman's guidance on this." He never called
back.


Later, I caught Walker as he was ducking into an elevator: "Have a seat in
the office, I'll get back to you in a minute," he pleaded. After spending
45 minutes cooling my heels in Conyers's waiting area, a call came in. It
was Walker, calling from a committee meeting room, with a statement from
his boss. Conyers had decided to punt:


"When I voted for the indecency language, I was looking for a vehicle to
balance freedom of speech with the state's compelling interest in
protecting children from indecent and obscene material."


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SENATOR BARBARA BOXER (D-California) voted for the Communications Decency
Act during a Senate vote on 14 June 1995.


Boxer's staff couldn't get her to cough up a statement explaining her
support for the Communications Decency Act. Boxer voted against the
flag-burning amendment, but when it came to discussing Internet censorship,
her press secretary explained, "I've never really heard her talk about her
position on that. The only thing I've ever really heard her say is that she
wanted to send a signal to technology companies to encourage them to come
up with better solutions for protecting kids from indecent material."


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Brock N. Meeks (brock () wired com) is Wired's Washington correspondent.




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