"Do Not Track Kids Act"
Cannot these people do anything not wrapped up in Mom and Apple Pie and Thank the Veterans? It's a privacy bill FFS, it ought to apply to all.
It's no wonder Trump runs rings around them, they're infantile themselves.
US Congress is pondering a bipartisan measure to expand the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) – the law that, well, protects children's privacy online. Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), along with Represetnative Joe Barton (R-TX) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) have introduced bills in both houses …
"We can protect them from those evil advertisers.
But guns? Meh, let the slaughter begin.
They'll be in our thoughts and prayers."
This, in bucket loads. What's the point in protecting them from an advert for a kids toy, if they have a limited likelihood of graduating school because some trench coat wearing tw*t comes in and shoots them and their friends.
America, you need to sort your fucking priorities out!
Says the guy from a country that has a city with a murder rate higher than NYC; life destroying acid attacks; gangs on mopeds; huge groups of child paedophiles; a flourishing child sex trade; and police who withhold evidence from innocent men charged with sex crimes.
Both our countries have huge problems because of a systemic breakdown of our cultures, led by those in the educational systems, and supported by globalist, socialist politicians.
And before any of you point to guns and Conservatives as the problem, let me point out one significant observation: guns, and even kids with access to guns, have been around for centuries. Mass murders were virtually unheard of until recently. What has changed?
"a country that has a city with a murder rate higher than NYC"
For two months out of this year so far, and that's mainly because New York has finally managed to reduce their murder rate to something similar to other large international cities (eg Paris).
I'm going to assume that if you lead with that bit of cherry picked statistics then the rest of your examples are equally bogus, still, hope you had fun playing, come back again when your trolling skills have reached primary school age :)
And before any of you point to guns and Conservatives as the problem, let me point out one significant observation: guns, and even kids with access to guns, have been around for centuries. Mass murders were virtually unheard of until recently. What has changed?
It's not the schools, liberals, or globalists. The problem is much closer to home than that. I do agree with you that it is demonstrably not guns. If it were the current disturbing trend we're seeing with school shootings would have started a century ago instead of just a few decades ago. And besides that, there are nations out there with far higher gun ownership rates than the US (guns may outnumber people here, but they're owned by a proportionately small number of people with large gun safes) where this doesn't happen.
Somewhere along the line a basic respect for life has been lost in our society. We've also failed to teach our kids to cope with adversity. Most of these school shooters have been bullied kids, which is where some people want to lay blame. Well, I was a bullied kid (likely along with a lot of other Reg readers given how the tech field attracts the less-than-socially-adept) with access to guns but shooting up my classmates never entered my mind. And mainstream media doesn't help matters at all by turning every mentally disturbed kid who shoots up his classmates into an instant celebrity.
That said, measures that will make it harder for kids to get guns are a reasonable stopgap measure while we address the real problems. I'm a strong gun rights advocate myself, but this is getting ridiculous.
"Mass murders were virtually unheard of until recently. What has changed?"
That's one's easy -- we keep count now.
Ever since we started counting crime rates, we've had mass murderers. Before the middle of the last century, no-one really knows what the murder rate was, but historians reckon it probably wasn't zero. Disappearances and even actual dead bodies weren't investigated with quite the care that we take now. There are plenty of poisonous plants to choose from and no way to tell if one of them had been used deliberately in any particular case. Dead bodies might not be found if they were disposed of carefully.
And if you were a complete pyscho, unable to resist the temptation to slaughter loads of people in one go, you took the King's shilling and made a name for yourself. As an added bonus, there were no silly laws about civilians and war crimes, so once you'd had your fill of the enemies menfolk you could lay into their women and children. What's not to like? Why would you be a mass murderer when you could be a hero?
"can we ALL have one of these, please?"
Well, no, of course, which is why this whole thing is just stupid politicians pretending to care in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with even more stupid voters.
With a bit of luck, there are sufficient numbers of smart voters to see through this and punish the offenders in November. Please? Pretty please?
Wrong suspect list. The right one is: Google, Facebook, etc. Or to take things even further various Californicating school support platforms used by schools in UK like Edmodo.
Read their T&Cs for Europe - they have COPPA cut-n-pasted into them courtesy of the firm belief that the only law which applies is USA law and it is universal. Similarly, courtesy of COPPA they assume that they are entitled to process the data of anyone above 13 years old anywhere based on their concent alone.
Well... Easy Tiger on that one. As anybody who actually has done some work with DPA and contracts will tell you that is not the case by far in most of Europe. You cannot process minor's data without written parental consent (in a lot of countries both parents) until their "legal major age" which varies between 16 and 18.
Read their T&Cs for Europe - they have COPPA cut-n-pasted into them courtesy of the firm belief that the only law which applies is USA law and it is universal.
So much this.
And they can replace that with GDPR. The boot's on the other foot now.
This may be the first time in my life I've ever used that term and actually backed what was being proposed.
Yes I'd like to have some of those options as well (minus the whole someone else deciding to delete everything for me), but I'll be more than happy to have some of the population get it versus none. Especially considering that children have no feasible way of understanding the consequences of handing over their data.
I echo what many others have said here (that this should apply to everyone). The problem, it seems to me, is that the US is currently being ‘governed’ by a criminal cabal which has somehow hijacked the Republican Party. Unless there’s money in it for the man at the top, Don Corletrumpe, nothing is going to happen - and not only is this not going to directly benefit Trump, it may actually inconvenience some of those who have his ear. So this eminently sensible plan is DOA.
It is a great pity that politics is as partisan as it is, and not only in the US. The attitude of Republican / Democrat / Labour / Tory no matter what the policies and no matter what the consequences is insane - politics is not a football team. Look at what’s happening - look at the lunacy of the leader of the party and, if you really can’t bear to vote for another ‘team’, consider spoiling your ballot - or not voting at all. Better yet, just leave the tribalism out of politics.
I look forward to a future where the Republican Party regains its sanity.
At least they asked when it came to UK sovereignty and membership in the EU. In much of the Western world voting cannot result in any real change. Most in the West did not want to export their jobs and import more workers, spend more money invading other countries and less on fellow citizens and almost none thought that the wealthy shouldn't pay the same total tax rates as the average taxpayer.
Voting did nothing to change those trends. In the USA it results in Trump in Canada it results in Trudeau.
Of course Canadians that know their country (very few have any idea) know that voting cannot change anything significant and it never has. This is because Canada is ruled by the appointed, not the Elected.
Of Canada's three branches of government two are appointed, the Court and Senate, and the third with elected members are controlled by party rule. The Elected do not vote to the benefit of constituents or their hopes and dreams, they vote as told to by the party even when doing so is very much not in the interest of constituents or Canadians. If democracy did manage to break out in the Canadian House of Commons the appointed Senate and Court are there to protect our Elite.
Canadians can wish and vote all they want for some basic rights to their data and data they generate but that's all they can do. Voting can rearrange deck chairs, change the music even but that's about it.
and of course the usual disclaimer: This site is moderated, all posts including this one meets the objectives of the site, and you'll never see or know which ones didn't.
At least they asked when it came to UK sovereignty and membership in the EU.
The UK has never usually gone in for offering the public a choice outside the carefully choreographed Elections.
Which may go a long way to explain how badly handled the EU one was.
Who would you vote for in the uk then?
I had a choice of the 3 main parties at the council elections. It really wasn’t much of a choice and was pointless spoiling my ballot as it would not have made a difference here.
We all need to implement the Libertarian practice of automatically adding "None Of The Above" to every ballot.
You'd better try telling that to some of the parents that let their kids play 18+ rated games and never bother to check the equipment that their rug rats are using... because that's someone elses job to ensure they don't have it in the first place.... 'innit.
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/03/head_teachers_in_the_uk_issue_warning_to_parents_on_18-rated_games_being_played_by_children
In some ways you have to be thankful for US social media companies believing COPPA applies everywhere, because the UK didn't do a damn thing.
Neither did the US - as long as corporations cut & pasted some COPPA boilerplate onto a registration form and added an "I promise I'm over 13, honest" button then everybody pretended all was fine and nobody had to do anything.
If they applied UK law to UK residents then it would have been a free-for-all from age 0.
If the current crop had any say, the Internet would consist of 'lies told to children' also for adults and nothing else. You wouldn't be able to see any adult content outside of government offices or without signing a register.
The usual way is to demand a credit card. This at least sorts out the ones too young to reach Mom's purse while she's not looking, and the slightly older ones who can't get one of the many for sale online (did Silk Road require age verification?). Avoiding infinite regress might involve buying a gift card with sofa-change.
Of course, the sites would _never_ charge anything to that card, and have rock-solid security so the alleged credit cards of a few million little darlings will never be stolen.
So are all the websites that currently allow 13+ children to register going to delete the accounts of anyone who is under 15 when this new law comes in?
The horse has already left the stable regarding children well under 13 signing up and using sites such as Facebook. Some schools even actively set up Facebook pages for the kids to help with homework etc.
Heck people have Facebook accounts for pets which are clearly under 13.