If you're a horny child molester looking to score a little online nooky, you don't have much to worry about if the General Assembly ratifies bill 5790, "An act concerning the Internet and [the] protection of children," into law.

But if you're a parent hoping to keep your children away from such people (child molesters, not legislators) — well, the kids'll probably be all right so long as you look out for them rather than think our Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, can do it for you.

He's the one who proposed the bill.

Some parts of it make sense: Under the law, schools will have to give lessons in online safety, and child pornography will remain illegal. Other sections might set a scary precedent: In certain cases, the bill says cops "may issue a request [for information to an ISP], without compulsory legal process or court order." We wanted to ask Blumenthal if that means cops won't need a warrant to get computer records, but we had no luck in reaching him.

Other sections of the bill are either unnecessary or downright counterproductive, in that they might lull parents into a sense of security while doing nothing to justify it.

The unnecessary part says that if an Internet service provider "knows or has reason to know ... that a subscriber currently resides within this state, the provider shall make available to the subscriber a product or service which enables the subscriber to control a child's use of the Internet."

In other words, your ISP has to offer parental controls that let you block your kids' access to certain sites. And chances are your ISP already does.

We couldn't find a comprehensive list of every single ISP selling Web access somewhere in Connecticut, but a quick poll of our officemates yielded 13 companies, mostly familiar names like Comcast, AT&T, Optimum and Juno. All 13 offer parental controls as part of their packages. By contrast, we couldn't find a single ISP without this option.

So if you're a parent looking to keep your kids off naughty or dangerous sites, you can do this already. Ironically, this unneeded part of the bill is also the one most likely to get it struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court if it's ratified into law.

Why is that? It's only been a couple of weeks since the Supremes struck down a similar attempt by our state to ban cigarette sales over the Internet. The ruling invoked the Commerce Clause, interpreted in this case to mean that Connecticut can't tell companies in other states what they can or can't do online. That's exactly what the parental-control mandate sets out to do, and it's probably not good for any state's reputation, let alone the "Constitution State," when its laws keep getting struck down on constitutional grounds.

The main part of the bill would require people convicted of crimes against children to undergo "a sentence of lifetime supervision" over their online access. This would entail "continued supervision, either in person or through remote monitoring, of the person's ingoing and outgoing e-mail and other Internet-based communication," as well as "the person's history of [W]eb sites visited" and "periodic unannounced inspections of the contents of the person's computer or any other device with Internet access."

The intent of these provisions is to keep such people from online contact with children. A noble goal, but this bill won't accomplish it.

Imagine the sort of guy the bill singles out. He knows his home Web activities are being monitored; modern technology makes it remarkably easy. You don't even have to be a cop to do it; a determined hacker can infect your computer with spyware that keeps a record of every letter you type and every site you visit. Monitoring a person's at-home or at-work online communication is very easy to do.

So what's this guy going to do if he wants to go online without police oversight? For starters, he can go to a public library. Or an Internet café. With a few hundred in cash, he can even buy a cheap, untraceable laptop and bring it to a coffeehouse or restaurant with open wireless Internet access, or drive through town looking for a wireless hot spot. (Depending on where he lives, he could access several of his neighbors' unsecured wireless connections from his own apartment. And so long as he doesn't download movies or other data-heavy files, chances are his neighbors will never know he's there.)

Yes, it'll be easy for him to get online without supervision. And once he's there, he can open an unlimited number of free and anonymous Web e-mail accounts like Hotmail or Yahoo, and register to join chat forums where kids hang out. The law won't prevent him from contacting your kids; at most, it will make such contact slightly more inconvenient.

So what do you do if you're a parent who wants to keep your kids away from such people? For starters, activate the parental-control options offered by your ISP and any instant-messaging services your kids use. And pick a good password; if you use your birthday or mom's maiden name we guarantee your kids are smart enough to see through it.

Here's the most important thing you can do: sit down and talk to your children. You already know that anti-kidnapping laws aren't enough to keep your kids safe; that's why you've had real-world safety discussions about why they should never accept candy or car rides from strangers. Now sit down and have a similar talk about online safety, and that'll do more to protect your kids than any number of useless but well-meaning
laws.

Write to us at editor@hartfordadvocate.com or jabel@hartfordadvocate.com