Have an Open WiFi Access Point? Be Prepared to Track and Report Child Porn or Face a $300,000 Fine

Wireless routers are proliferating homes nation wide as technology improves and prices decrease from market competition. Many people have home WiFi wireless routers so that they can use the web on their laptop throughout their home. The signal from these routers can often extend a few hundred feet outside the walls of one’s home, so some people choose to leave their wireless access point open as a common courtesy so that other people can jump on the internet if they’re in the neighborhood if they need to. Now congressional Democrats want businesses and individuals who offer WiFi to the public to track and report child pornography for face a $300,000 fine.

The Securing Adolescents from Exploitation Online (SAFE) Act requires anyone who provides a “remote computing service” or an “electronic communications service” to the public who learns about the storage or transmission of an offending image or an illegal activity must register their name, mailing address, phone number, and fax line with the CyberTipline at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The person finding the violation must also make a report to the CyberTipline that includes all of the information they know about the person as well as the illegal images themselves. This law would require individuals to collect, store, and submit any child pornography that an individual recognized to the government.

The bill was rushed through congress in a very hurried fashion that was only designed for non-controversial bills or emergency pieces of legislation. This means that there were no committee hearings and time for public comment. The vote passed the house on an extremely lop-sided vote of 409 to 2. Only Rep. Ron Paul and Rep. Paul Broun voted against the legislation. The bill will now move onto the Senate and then to the President’s desk for a signature.

The authors of the legislation claim that they are not trying to target individuals who have open WiFi routers, but rather internet service providers. Unfortunately the language in the bill is so broad that anyone enforcing the law could easily interpret the legislation to apply to individuals. There have been many instances in the past where the letter of the law has trumped the intent of the law. The Senate version of the legislation would be well served to clarify this section of the legislation so that individuals wouldn’t be forced to monitor, collect, store and report offensive imagery.