Proposed California Bill Would Require Sites to Hand Over Private Info on Kids to Their Parents
8th March 2013
How shocking! It’s an outrage! Oh, wait….
Normally Mike Masnick is a reasonably intelligent guy who has a common sense view of things, but this is a bit off-base.
Now, think about that for a second. Since this is for any kids up to 18, we’re talking about most of the teenage years for most kids. These are the years in which many teens rebel against their parents, which is, in many ways, a natural part of growing up and becoming an independent adult. To think that parents should be able to find out information directly from various sites about their kids’ use of those sites seems incredibly problematic. There may be sites where the teens have tried to keep information private from their parents. And maybe that’s because, say, the parents are anti-gay, and the child is gay. Do we really want parents to have easy access to that material? Or… what if it’s a site for abused kids, and they are signing up to get help and to report that abuse? Under this law, it would appear that parents can check up on their kids on those sites.
I can’t think of a better ‘growing up’ experience than for teenagers to learn as soon as possible that (a) their ephemeral impulses don’t govern the world, (b) their ephemeral impulses don’t even govern their own lives, and (c) among the chief virtues of adulthood are circumspection and discretion. There’s nothing like living in a police state to teach you the value — and limits — of freedom, and isolating teens from their parents merely encourages them in delusional thinking that ultimately produces fools like the people who populate most Democratic administrations. This is not a trend that we ought to encourage.