Comment by Larrikin
2 days ago
Shutting down the conversation by saying parents should have the last say is how we got these ridiculous laws in the first place.
What happens when someone wants to explore their sexuality by finding someone other than the pre-approved person from the parents?
I'm not sure how online privacy laws (or a lack of them) would spare a child who objected to marrying someone their parents wanted to force her to. Murdering your children is/was already illegal and the parents did that anyway. We can't worry about what the small number of psychopathic parents might do if kids don't have online privacy. We should instead try harder to make sure that kids are protected against their abusive parents regardless of the situation. There should have been places Shafilea could have gone to or reached out to for meaningful help and protection long before it got to the point of a murder.
That said, I personally think good parenting means giving children privacy, even online, and doing so increasingly at ages set according to the maturity/capability of the child. That's the sort of thing a parent is in a better position to assess than the government. I also think that this particular law is garbage. I just don't think "We must protect children from their parents by allowing them to access the internet in secret and anonymity" is a very compelling argument.