Slipped into a bill called the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act, down in Sec 113, is a re-writing of exisiting telephone harassment laws to include computers and software that goes well beyond any existing laws:
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
Yes, Bush just signed a law stating that if you annoy someone on the internet by writing something on a web site or in an e-mail, you must disclose your real identity, or face jail time. The claim is that this will prevent cyberstalking.
An earlier version called for action if someone caused substantial emotional harm, but that was changed to the extremely vague notion of "annoy".
Now this may have been signed into law by Bush, but it is also in direct opposition to the First Amendment which protects ones right to write something that annoys. There are legitimate reasons for citizens to set up web sites and write something that may be annoying to someone else, and not revealing one's identity in doing so can make perfect sense.
A whistleblower in a small town might not want to use their real name, but may have important information they want to put on their blog or send to friends on a mailing list.
What if a citizen send what they feel is constructive criticism to their representative, but the representative feels annoyed by so much e-mail. Send the police?
Here at iBrattleboro, we've done our best to protect the identities of people using pen names, and certainly things have been written that annoy someone somewhere. We do ask that personal attacks and name-calling be taken elsewhere, but we support the right of citizens to start a blog and say whatever they want. We do not advocate jail time or fines.
Here is a picture of Leahy smiling as the bill was signed into law on January 5th, 2006.
Maybe some voters should contact him (but not with a computer) and ask him what he was smiling about. Be nice, though, and try not to annoy.
You can read the Telephone Law here.
You can read H.R. 3402 here.