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Florida Bill Targets Internet Predators
by Michael Martinez
Florida lawmakers this week advanced legislation to stiffen the state's penalties against people who use the Internet to prey on children.
A state House committee on Wednesday unanimously approved a measure to boost penalties for the distribution and possession of online child pornography and to create a separate penalty for contacting minors via the Web to facilitate in-person sexual encounters. Under the measure, H.B. 573, prison sentences for those crimes would be extended to 15 years.
"Passage of this legislation will demonstrate that Florida has zero-tolerance for online child predators," state Rep. David Rivera said in a statement. "These repulsive crimes against our children are committed by sick individuals and must be stopped."
Florida has been ahead of the pack in recent years in enacting sex-offender laws. A Florida statute widely known as "Jessica's Law," after 9-year-old kidnapping and murder victim Jessica Lunsford, has been the blueprint for such state laws. Jessica's Law requires that registered sex offenders be monitored with global positioning devices for life.
Attorney General Bill McCollum said the new legislation would provide vital protection for children in cyberspace. He also lauded state Sen. Nancy Argenziano for introducing a companion bill, S.B. 1004.
"This legislation sends a clear message to online predators who abuse our children," McCollum said. "This type of behavior will not be tolerated in Florida."
The legislation also targets the dangers children may encounter on social-networking sites such as MySpace by requiring registered predators to provide the state with their e-mail and instant-messaging addresses and screen names. MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam lent support to the bill this week at a House Security and Public Safety Committee hearing.
"Every time we prevent one of these heinous crimes from occurring, we protect the innocence of a child," Argenziano said in a statement. "The children of Florida are our most precious asset. We must do everything we can to protect them from evil."
Oklahoma lawmakers also zeroed in on sex-offender legislation this week. The House Criminal Justice and Corrections Subcommittee approved a bill authored by Republican state Rep. Paul Wesselhoft that would let judges prohibit registered sex offenders from using social-networking sites to communicate with minors.
That bill, H.B. 1714, now heads to the House Judiciary and Public Safety Subcommittee.
N.Y. Lawmaker Targets 'Dangerous' IPod Uses
New York state Sen. Carl Kruger has seen people in his state walking into busy intersections with music streaming into their ears from personal electronic devices, and he aims to protect them.
Kruger has pledged to introduce a bill to ban the use of Apple's iPod and other digital music players, as well as cellular telephones and wireless e-mail devices, while crossing streets. He told AP this week that he began working on the legislation after learning of the death of a 21-year-old man in his district who was hit by a bus while he was listening to his iPod.
"If you're so involved in your electronic device that you can't see or hear a car coming, this is indicative of a larger problem that requires some sort of enforcement beyond the application of common sense," Kruger said.
The bill, which he said would be unveiled this week, would impose $100 fines on violators. His chief of staff said the measure would only require pedestrians to remove their headphones for the few seconds it would take them to walk from curb to curb.
Some people already are openly mocking the proposal. E. Christopher Murray, a civil-liberties attorney based in New York, told AP that the legislature has better things to do with its time.
"With our schools failing, health costs out of control and crushing property taxes, the legislature would rather play mother by legislating how we cross the street," he said. "What's next? Do you get fined if you don't look both ways?"
Ohio Election Official Announces Resignation
A local official in Ohio who oversaw one of the most controversial primary elections in the country last year announced his resignation this week.
Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Michael Vu said Monday that he will step leave his post at the end of the month. He has agreed to remain available to the county as a consultant until June.
Vu guided Cuyahoga County through a disastrous primary last May in which e-voting glitches and human errors delayed the release of final vote totals for a week. The county is now considering scrapping the touch-screen machines it used last year in favor of optical-scan devices.
"When I came to the board, my objective was to move the election process from a punch-card world of hanging chads to the new technology of touch-screen voting," he said in a statement. "This was a once-in-a-generation challenge for those who work in the world of elections. Now, after facing some serious challenges, we are well on the way to successfully integrating electronic voting into our elections system."
Board Chairman Robert Bennett said a search committee already has been established to find Vu's replacement. He praised Vu for helping to fix the flaws in the county's voting system before the general election.
"[Vu] oversaw a difficult transition period at the board, including the implementation of a new electronic voting system county-wide in the May primary followed by a near flawless general election," he said. "His work will give the new director a solid foundation upon which to build."
Federal, State Battle Over Spying Continues
The Justice Department this week asked a federal judge to block the Maine Public Utilities Commission from moving forward with a contempt hearing regarding the potential participation of Verizon Communications in a federal anti-terrorism surveillance program.
The Portland Press-Herald reported that Justice wants to prohibit the commission from holding a hearing into the adequacy of Verizon's responses earlier this year to questions regarding whether the telecommunications firm violated customer privacy by giving the National Security Agency telephone records.
A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday at the U.S. District Court in Bangor, Maine. According to Justice, the commission was told months ago that the federal government believes Verizon cannot respond to the inquiry without jeopardizing national security.
Maine Assistant Attorney General Chris Taub told the Press-Herald the state intends to ask the court to allow the contempt hearing for Verizon on Friday.
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