> Theoretically, would a general citizen be exempt from the ban if he manufactured his own CD-ROMs, and his own CPUs in-state? I would be seriously impressed i

> Theoretically, would a general citizen be exempt from the ban if he manufactured his own CD-ROMs, and his own CPUs in-state? I would be seriously impressed if you could manufacture your own computer capable of accessing the Internet and displaying an image from a single US state. Semiconductor manufacturing, networking software, electronics manufacturing, and so on are thoroughly global industries. But even if you could, in the end, they're using this clause from the constitution: > To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes. to give them jurisdiction in cases of Internet child pornography. The entity determining whether or not this jurisdiction is valid is not like a computer program that will look at a homebrew computer, check where all the parts came from, look at the text of the law, and say "Whoops, nothing in this case crossed state lines, we don't have jurisdiction, you're free to go." I see this attitude on HN way too often. Instead, remember that it's a bunch of humans who considered the problem of child pornography, chose to fight it, and only then looked for a source of jurisdiction. That source does not actually need to be valid (not that I actually dispute that the FBI should have jurisdiction when US citizens commit crimes using the Internet), but it's important to realize that it only needs to be strong enough to stand up to the political will to oppose it. And there are no prosecutors with a will or the political power to oppose the FBI for going after sexual predators. This state of affairs probably results in some overreach. But even considering the potential problems with this approach taken to the extreme, I find it extremely hard to align myself against the FBI. What if the FBI operated honeypot sites with zero-day exploits inserted for them by Microsoft, Apple, and Google, hacking modems and demanding ISPs snoop on their users, opposing HTTPS rollout, and generally causing great harm to law-abiding users of the internet? But these actions protected kids? How much harm would it take to shift my allegiance into opposing the FBI? Scary stuff.