Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
None of the circumstances that figured prominently in La-mont exists here.
Though petitioners cannot reasonably fear the specter of an officially published list of leased access indecency viewers, it is true that the fact that a subscriber is unblocked is ascertainable, if only by the cable operator. I find no legally significant stigma in that fact. If a segregation and blocking scheme is generally permissible, then a subscriber's access request must take some form, whether written or oral, and I see nothing nefarious in Congress' choice of a written, rather than an oral, consent.17 Any request for access to blocked programming—by whatever method—ultimately will make the subscriber's identity knowable.18 But this is hardly the kind of chilling effect that implicates the First Amendment.
Though making an oral request for access, perhaps by telephone, is slightly less bothersome than making a written request, it is also true that a written request is less subject to fraud "by a determined child." Ante, at 759. Consequently, despite the fact that an oral request is slightly less restrictive in absolute terms, it is also less effective in supporting parents' interest in denying enterprising, but parentally unauthorized, minors access to blocked programming.
The segregation and blocking requirement was not intended to be a replacement for lockboxes, V-chips, reverse blocking, or other subscriber-initiated measures. Rather, Congress enacted in § 10(b) a default setting under which a subscriber receives no blocked programming without a writ-17 Because, under the circumstances of these cases, I see no constitutionally significant difference between a written and an oral request to see blocked programming, I also see no relevant distinction between § 10(b) and the blocking requirement enacted in the 1996 Act, on which the majority places so much reliance. See ante, at 756-758.
18 Indeed, persons who request access to blocked programming pursuant to 47 CFR § 76.701(c) (1995) are no more identifiable than persons who subscribe to sexually oriented premium channels, because those persons must specially request that premium service.
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