Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Ban The Web

The government, the BBC and Daily Mail have decided that they critical fact about the murderer Peter Chapman is that he met his victim on Facebook. Indeed according to Home Secretary Alan Johnson the British and American governments are thinking of "ways to flag up when a convicted sex offender goes online", because computers can be made to detect Paedo-fingers when they start tapping at a keyboard.

The focus on the least important aspect of the story, Facebook, is particularly absurd given that Chapman's crimes, including abductions and rapes of women, began well before the internet era. If he was prevented from meeting potential victims on the internet he could just as easily have gone back to the manner in which he found them before the internet. The danger wasn't that he was allowed online but that he was allowed out of prison.

On the plus side perhaps the hysteria about the internet will at least result in parents forcing their children out of the house, thus doing wonders for the child obesity rate.

4 comments:

Senior said...

Apparently, people at high risk of committing sex offences are let out of jail. To me that is a bigger issue than Facebook. Peter Chapman could have grabbed a girl who was going home from school. Nobody knew where he was or what he was doing. That is the problem.

JuliaM said...

Note the self-harm news that was all over the Beeb today. The culprit? The Internet, of course!

Ross said...

What is responsible for more bad things, the internet or global warming?

NickM said...

This is Brass Eye's Peadogeddon!