Want to Know How Ridiculous The Omnibus Bill Is? It Has a Meaningless Porn Filter Clause Four Times

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Dec. 18, 2015

Following Congress passing the Omnibus spending bill, it of course did not take long for President Obama to sign the bill, meaning that the fake cybersecurity bill/actual surveillance bill, is now law. Particularly ridiculous is that in his little speech about it, Obama talked about how he "wasn't wild about everything in it" but that he was happy that it was a bill "without ideological provisions." Except, you know, for the many ones that did get in there.

But, what do you expect with a 2000+ page bill that Congress was only given a couple of days to look at before voting on. Zach Carter, over at Huffington Post has examples of a couple of ridiculous provisions in the omnibus, starting with a ban on giving any funding to ACORN, the organization that was the target of scorn from Republicans a few years back. So what's so ridiculous about that? Following the pile on against ACORN years ago the organization shut down. It hasn't existed in years. Preventing funding for it seems, you know, kinda pointless, as it doesn't exist.

But it's the other wacky provision that caught my attention. Apparently this provision is in the omnibus no less than four times in different places:
"None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to maintain or establish a computer network unless such network blocks the viewing, downloading, and exchanging of pornography."
Apparently, this little clause has become so standard, you can find it in earlier funding bills as well. It's the 2013 funding bill the the 2012 funding bill and many more, I assume.

And, as Carter notes, this language is "completely meaningless," but it's still in there four times. Just because.

So Congress can't seem to get much of anything done, but it does pass an omnibus bill that includes a weird meaningless porn filter requirement four times... and a damaging surveillance bill. And you wonder why people dislike and distrust Congress.












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