14 DAY TRIAL // New devices sold in South Carolina, be they PCs, phones, or tablets, might have to be equipped with a special filter that would block access to adult content if a newly-proposed bill gets the go-ahead.
The so-called Human Trafficking Prevention Act, proposed by State Rep. Bill Chumley, isn’t necessarily supposed to block access to porn, but to help combat human trafficking and prostitution, he explained in an interview.
The digital blocking system would have to be installed on all devices sold across the state, and manufacturers or buyers who want to turn it off would have to pay a $20 fee, with the money to then be transferred to the so-called S.C. Attorney General’s Office’s human trafficking task force.
“If an end user buys an apparatus, a computer, and they want access to that, they would have to pay to have that filter removed,” Chumley was quoted as saying. “The human trafficking thing has exploded. It’s gotten to be a real problem.”
Even more filters planned
While it would be a lot easier and more affordable to block access to adult content at the ISP level, Chumley says that the digital filter that would be installed on new devices could also come with a reporting option that would allow buyers to submit content violating the rules and not yet blocked.
“If we could have manufacturers install filters that would be shipped to South Carolina, then anything that children have access on for pornography would be blocked,” Chumley said. “We felt like that would be another way to fight human trafficking.”
As surprising as it may sound, Chumley says this is “just the beginning” of more methods to restrict access to porn, but he didn’t provide any other specifics on other changes that he has in mind.
South Carolina, however, has indeed struggled to deal with human trafficking, as the state had no less than 308 cases since 2007. Authorities claim that many cases are not even reported, and this is why additional measures such as a digital filter would be necessary.