NY: State poised to institute sex-offender ban on mass transit
New York State is poised to enact a ban on some sex offenders in New York’s mass transit system, a move long sought by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and long dreaded by civil libertarians.
The state budget that leaders are now finalizing would allow judges to ban individuals convicted of some sex crimes in mass transit from using the system for up to three years.
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What crimes would be included on that list of eligible offenses? Would any charge involving child molestation qualify?
Child molestation ON THE SUBWAY would apply, yes.
What has not been widely reported on yet is that they had also passed those new E-Stop rules as well. It’s basically the same details as a couple months ago (Assembly Bill 9505) but they had amended it this week with something really bad.
Basically [under eighteen years of age] is removed from #16 of the list of definitions. Long story short, it should make the entire internet where we make actual contact with another person of any age reportable. Reference People v Ellis YouTube video which caused this law to happen. The state’s lawyer basically said that they wanted us to report everything where we make contact with another person, as well as names of the websites we post on. Harsh! And it seems now that they have it. Then again, the new law is so confusingly worded in which it could mean several different things but ultimately I expect this is how it’ll end up being interputed until we win something in court to say otherwise.
Fortunately, my research has shown that that the state is after dating, gaming and plainly obvious social networking sites. You probably won’t loose your Reddit, Twitch, Skype, Google, Youtube, Amazon, etc. as they would have kicked you off years ago by now. Also if you look really deep into things, you will find sources that alludes to that the state wasn’t really all that successful into getting companies that they wanted into E-Stop. The state has even tried to shame companies into signing up by outing who they were, but it didn’t work. Reading in between the lines, no one really wants it other than perhaps Facebook, Cuomo and a few others.
Overall, I feel we’ll loose a couple more sites, probably new fangled ones like Tiktok and it’ll be status quo as always. Of course it is not something that should be ignored. I do wish some Civil Liberty Union will take this up but they’ve never really been all that interested in this until just recently. NYCLU actually filed a lawsuit for offenders on Parole/Probation being banned from using the internet entirely. (https://www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/nyclu-sues-end-internet-and-social-media-bans-people-convicted-committing-sex) Sadly they are not interested in the E-Stop part of the law at all and said so in their filed lawsuit.
This post was posted elsewhere as well, so please excuse the cross posting.
I have been reading about this for months now — something Governor Cuomo has been pushing. It was intended only for REPEAT offenders but who knows what the actual legislation will say.
I will say this, though, that when I first started reading about the banning of repeat offenders, both articles that I read used horrible descriptive words in describing registrants, and this was by journalists. I, as well as other readers, complained to the papers about their inappropriate choice of words and since then I have not seen those particular words used again. Maybe people really are listening.
Keep educating ‘em, SarahF, on appropriate terminology. Ever notice how sometimes that alone changes the entire conversation? We all (including me) need to do more of that.