From KHOU:
H-I-S-D Superintendent Abe Saavedra issued an urgent bulletin to parents Thursday warning of the dangers posed by internet predators.
The Houston school district—working with the secret service — reports that one in five children who chat online have been approached by pedophiles.
Most never tell their parents.
HISD expects children to spend a lot of time on their computers during the holiday break which starts Friday.
One in five???
That brings Polimom much closer to understanding McCain’s proposed legislation… speaking of which, has he declared a “war on blogs”? Or not? I’m inclined toward the latter, particularly given the HISD bulletin.
I recognize that enormous blogs with multiple sub-sites and participants would face a problem, and while I can sympathize, I can’t actually empathize (this being a little blog rather than a monster).
So yeah, I know — easy for me to say — but assuming HISD is even close with those numbers, this really is a dangerous situation.
Update: Still thinking about this — A number of posts online suggest that expecting the online community to “police itself” is unreasonable. They evidently feel that this, like everything else, is better left to professional law enforcement.
Why is it that nobody is willing to sweep their own nests these days?
FWIW — no, there’s no possible way to know who every person is online, nor where every bleeping link will lead… but I suspect that if McCain’s legislation were to pass, we’re more likely to see a dramatic increase in filtering software rather than the blogosphere (and free speech) shutting down.