Also, you don’t have to be the most digitally savvy person to know they can already catch people doing legitimately horrible things. It’s already legal that companies have to hand over people’s data with warrants but those require evidence of serious crimes, they’re trying to weaken the 4th Amendment. End to End Encryption doesn’t stop the government from finding people committing crimes, it just stops them from easily mass spying on everyone. They don’t need any of these bills to be able to prosecute CSAM rings and terrorist groups, they want to grossly weaken those definitions to go after marginalized groups without due process.

These are not tasers, they’re not designed to incapacitate someone who is an active threat, they’re only designed to cause pain to an already restrained person with seemingly no limit on how many times they can be used. It’s for torture. That’s unambiguous, the purpose of these is torture. We’re already getting reports of widespread torture in ICE concentration camps, now they’re giving them torture devices to use on anyone on the streets, anyone they grab into their unmarked vans, on activists and neighbors and family who oppose them, etc.

Big Tech is increasingly pushing technology that’s sole purpose is to sexually terrorize women and children. Musk is suing Minnesota to allow AI nudification claiming it’s “Free Speech” and denying the proven fact it’s being used for rampant CSAM online. The only use of that is to take pictures people didn’t consent to taking nude because they took them clothed and make them naked. They’re pushing these spyware glasses no one needs unless they’re filming without consent and knowing they can be used with AI to dox and/or create explicit images of women and children even if they never upload photos publicly.

1. It reinforces the dangerous myth that sexual violence is about sexual deviancy and perversion instead of power and control. Sexual violence is violence not sex, it’s about wanting power and control over children more than being attracted to them. This is the same underlying assumption that Conservatives use to call LGBT people a danger to children because they think being too sex positive leads to a slippery slope to sexualizing children which it doesn’t. Theres no data to suggest that. Sex positivity centers enthusiastic consent which is incompatible with assault, what is compatible with assault is conservative and restrictive ideas about sex as an obligation, as an expression of hierarchy and manifestation of ownership.

2. Pedophilia is a paraphilia, it’s a pathology that, as far as we can tell with the research so far, is caused by miswiring in the brain. That explains the behavior and the conversation ends there. It individualizes the issue and ignores cultural and systemic issues. But factually we know most offenders don’t have that miswiring which leads to a discussion on why so many men are sexually abusing children if they aren’t just mentally ill and attracted to them. When you look at offenders who meet the criteria for pedophilia and those who don’t, men who sexually abuse boys are far more likely to be pedophiles than men who sexually abuse girls are. Pedophilic offenders tend to have more victims and perpetrate outside the home whereas there is estimated to be far more perpetrators who abuse girls within their family, mainly biological or non-biological daughters. Thats important because rape isn’t equally common across cultures or genders, sexual violence is a product of patriarchy. Cultures where women are respected and in leadership roles, where there is less gender roles, and where fathers are actively involved in raising and nurturing children there is far less abuse. These are men who aren’t bonded to their children and easily see them as sex objects.

3. About 1/4 to 1/3 of child sexual abuse is committed by other children. When you refer broadly to sexual abuse and say “pedophiles”, you’re perpetuating the myth it’s only adults hurting children. The fact that other children can be a risk is dangerously overlooked in prevention. It’s also not fair to class children with adults who offend, most of those children have been abused themselves and are highly rehabilitatable unlike adult offenders. Most will never commit these offenses as adults (the likelihood they will goes up if they are violent offenses or if they are older and going after much younger kids but they’re still more rehabilitatable overall).