NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: California Bill Would Give Parents Access To Kids' Facebook Pages
George seems to hit the nail on the head below. Parents today seem all too willing to cede their responsibilities to the state. In my own view, it's difficult to see how this manner of Facebook "parental control" could be implemented effectively without an entire vast identification infrastructure that would need to cover virtually *all* accounts, since there's no obvious way to know that any given account really is that of a child, or a parent. That, as you know from our previous discussions, is an extremely complex, and, uh, controversial topic. The forwarded message text below should have come directly from George -- the original text was deleted from the input queue in error. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator ----- Forwarded message from George Ou <george_ou@lanarchitect.net> ----- Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 15:16:02 -0700 From: George Ou <george_ou@lanarchitect.net> Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] California Bill Would Give Parents Access To Kids' Facebook Pages To: 'Lauren Weinstein' <privacy@vortex.com>, nnsquad@nnsquad.org This first comment in the article quoted below pretty much sums up my opinion on this. Monica Van Leer . Rutgers "I have no control over my child, so give me control of their Facebook account." Either don't let your kid have an account, or talk to your kid about having an account. Either way be a parent not a friend. Parents should stop relying on the state and do their jobs. You can control how and where your child accesses the Internet. I think some privacy should be respected so long as everything else (academics and overall behavior) is in line. But this should be up to the individual parent on how to manage this and not up to the state. George -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Lauren Weinstein Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 2:03 PM To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] California Bill Would Give Parents Access To Kids' Facebook Pages California Bill To Give Parents Access To Kids' Facebook Pages http://j.mp/mLpHE6 (TechCrunch) One assumes laudable motives behind this, but the issues are formidable. Do children have *any* right to privacy in this context? How would "parents" establish and authenticate their relationship vis-a-vis any given child's Facebook pages, especially with Facebook only having 48 hours before a potential $10K fine hits? That is, how can you *prove* that you're really the parent of whomever is behind a given Facebook page, and that you have the *right* to make demands under this proposed legislation? The list of even purely logistical issues alone associated with something like this is extremely long. And of course, where does this lead? On-demand access to email? Instant messages? This smells of being (a) politically motivated, and/or (b) very poorly thought through. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com ----- End forwarded message -----