Tom Hoffman, writing as an ed-tech insider – comments on the tendancy of congress to respond to a problem by proposing new legislation. Quick, the elections are coming and how could anyone oppose legislation to protect our children. Among the concerns, IM messages are not stored by ISPs so evidence is lost.
Imposing restrictions on schools would not have stopped one of our nations leaders and according to the data on how other predators contact minors, it would stop only a small proportion of inappropriate attempts. But, why bother with the data. Unfortunately, the Foley example is a typical situation – an adult made inappropriate online contact with a minor outside of the environment in which restrictions and monitoring are or will likely be applied. I am just guessing that IMing will not be banned (except perhaps in schools).
Should ISPs be required to store IM transactions? Is a record of the communication the issue? Is IMing more dangerous than cell phone communication that involves audio? Perhaps providers should be responsible for storing the audio too. But wait, what problem really needs fixing? At least in the Foley case, lack of evidence does not seem to be the problem.
