My OperaWarning: idiot alert!
Tuesday, January 22, 2008 6:22:46 PM
I know I should be used to it by now, but some politicians really do take the biscuit for being thick as a plank...
The latest manifestation of which is Jacqui Smith, our current Home Secretary, who has just announced that she wants to get all terrorist web sites taken down. Clueless or what? The fact that they haven't yet found a way of removing child pornography from the web, after years of trying, should have given her a hint or two about the stupidity of that idea. Even the Chinese, with the Great Firewall of China, can't successfully control internet content.
Whether it's good or bad to do so is almost irrelevant to the issue: it comes of the internet originally being a military idea, and designed so that you can remove great chunks of it and it still works, and the plain (if uncomfortable) fact that there will always be somewhere where you can host whatever nefarious content you like. Filters can be routed around, too.
Better to accept reality and concentrate on the real task in hand, eg countering the arguments of the terrorists, winning hearts and minds, instead of just demonising them and making them look like victims/martyrs.
Knee-jerk statements by the ignorant help no-one.
The latest manifestation of which is Jacqui Smith, our current Home Secretary, who has just announced that she wants to get all terrorist web sites taken down. Clueless or what? The fact that they haven't yet found a way of removing child pornography from the web, after years of trying, should have given her a hint or two about the stupidity of that idea. Even the Chinese, with the Great Firewall of China, can't successfully control internet content.
Whether it's good or bad to do so is almost irrelevant to the issue: it comes of the internet originally being a military idea, and designed so that you can remove great chunks of it and it still works, and the plain (if uncomfortable) fact that there will always be somewhere where you can host whatever nefarious content you like. Filters can be routed around, too.
Better to accept reality and concentrate on the real task in hand, eg countering the arguments of the terrorists, winning hearts and minds, instead of just demonising them and making them look like victims/martyrs.
Knee-jerk statements by the ignorant help no-one.
