The SOPA/PIPA Result

The people spoke on Wednesday and, it seems, they were heard by some of the Senators and members of Congress debating these proposals. And they didn't like what the people were telling them (and, no doubt, worried about whether they would be re-elected again) and so they have — for the moment at least — stopped further activity on these two bills.

But it isn't over. The powerful media forces will try to get new versions back to the House and Senate in the future. We must remain vigilant and prepared.

Once, the internet was the plaything of the USA Department of Defense. Then it moved into academe and commerce. Now, the internet is the tool of people all around the world; every minute of each day and from every country around the globe people use it to freely communicate with each other. To share news, photographs, information, their life.

The internet is no longer the private property of one country, or a single guiding mind. It was created by many many people and is for the benefit of all human kind.

And any time it may be threatened again it will be all human kind who will respond: "KEEP YOUR HANDS OF OUR INTERNET!"

Age and DNA

Over the last few days a similar topic has come up during online and offline discussions with friends: does one's political world-view change as you get older?

There seems to be some received wisdom that you get more 'right-wing' as you get older, and though this has been supported by some others had suggested the reverse has applied to them. I'm certainly aware that while I've always had personal views which could be considered to cover the entire gamut from broad-left to far-right on specific topics — I've never been a believer that single Political Parties, no matter how broad a church they try to make out that they cover, are a valid answer — I can see in myself some 'focus' changes over maybe the last 15-10 years.

Making this a matter for a blog post though was prompted by one of the questions in today's YouGov survey request, "Different people have different ideas about whose DNA should be held on a national database, with the police allowed access when seeking to investigate crimes. Which of these options do you personally favour?"

They've supplied four answers, alongside the "don't know" get-out, being

1. There should a national database of everyone's DNA
2. There should be a national database of the DNA of everyone who has been arrested by the police in the course of investigating crimes, including those not charged, or charged and found not guilty
3. There should be a national database of the DNA of people found guilty of a criminal offence
4. Keeping anyone's DNA is an invaion of their privacy: no national DNA database of any kind should be kept

and the trouble starts there. There is absolutely no question that a DNA record is an invasion of personal privacy, and that every database is open to abuse. But it is as likely true that repeat offenders exists and whilst mere suspicion (or testing for exclusion) is not a crime there would be a clear deterrent effect if everyone knows without a shadow of doubt that the merest trace of their DNA at the scene of a murder or rape would attract the immediate attention of the investigative team. I am very firmly against the death penalty and find that it is still used in some countries — most notably the USA — as completely abhorrent; the state has no more 'right' to take a life than a sick individual, and the numbers demonstrate it is no deterrent.

But then my knowledge of the ease with which databases may give the wrong results (or fail to give the right one) and that, just as with the common cold you have no idea what the route of contagion was five or ten steps back, you have no idea where your DNA — be it a fleck of blood, 2mm of hair, or a few skin cells — might be carried completely innocently, then the idea of having everything on record becomes a case of 'too dangerous to take the first answer'. There are over seven billion souls on this planet and unless you have the complete DNA record of every single one then you will be searching against an incomplete set which might easily have a close match but not the exact, correct, guilty match. And we've returned to the past dangers of hanging the wrong person.

Who are you

This is actually an issue I've been meaning to write about for a week or two, but it has taken a tweet earlier this evening to get me to write about the issue. The tweet — the person writing it declares herself to be age 17 — reads

"My mom doesn't like me having a twitter anymore. She thinks you all are some pedophiles or something. I'm not joking."

Thing is, just as it was once said that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, on the internet it is also true that you have very little idea whether what the person at the other end of your tweet or blog post may claim as their age, sex, location, gender, politics, everything really has any basis in truth. More to the point, most people use pseudonymous handles and don't specify personal anything about themselves.

Which has meant that — sometimes — I wonder just how innocent I might be behaving if someone engages me in a spot of mild online flirtation and I respond in a similar manner. Are they under-age? More importantly, being in mind the global nature of the internet and the commonality of the widespread use of English, what is the age of consent which applies for them? We all know that such things vary widely around the world. For that matter maybe I am chatting about something completely neutral with an agent provocative for some police service! Back in 1995 when I worked on the Microsoft Network (msn) I had to create a second, artificial, user identity separate from my 'working' one. I clearly did it so well my fake user received three offers of marriage within the first couple of weeks!

Which brings us back to the main issue. Who takes responsibility for what happens online when people exchange messages? Does it make a difference if they are public or private? If I talk about particular subjects could I be accused of what is called " grooming", indeed what actually comprises evidence of that? Entirely innocent statements or activities everywhere, not just online, are frequently misunderstood. Similarly there are few, if any, effective ways to confirm what anyone online says about themselves; indeed this fact is one of the prime issues about internet usage generally — how do you prove who are 'are'. We take so much on the internet on trust, just as we often find ourselves doing 'in real life' too.

So is it right there could be a penalty for being ignorant about whom we are talking to online when there is no way to discover that you have been misled? "Natural justice" would suggest not.

State-sanctioned murder

Earlier this evening I watched a powerful drama on Channel 4. The Execution of Gary Glitter was — in its final outcome — expected from the very name of the programme. A superbly made film, with an absolute tour-de-force from Hilton McRae in the lead role, it was disquieting and terrifying in the possibility that state-sanctioned murder could ever come back to this country.

The ' death penalty' (ie Judicially-sanctioned murder) does not work - just look at the countries which still have it and note how often those crimes which get 'death' as the punishment still happen regularly. It has no deterrent effect whatsoever and instead, just as this film showed, we end up with a population in a state of 'excitement' of mob rule and their belief that they should have their way. A (fictional) Home Secretary saying that a decision was based on the desire of the people to have a killing is not an acceptable way for the elected government to act. Death, for practical purposes of the person found guilty, is no different from a whole-life sentence served behind bars, yet just as we abhor death by terrorists so we must find state-sanctioned murder no better.

In many ways we are all children of the modern era, in that most of us - thankfully - rarely see death in front of our eyes. We watch hundreds of fake deaths daily on television and in films, yet news programmes ensure they do not show the act of violent death when reporting from war zones or relaying film from al-Qaeda showing another captive being beheaded — little different to the effect of a hanging. Cowboys and Indians as children again make us learn that death is an impermanent state of being and little happens to change that early view. Even in the case of this dramatisation the executive producer, Samir Shah, has said "The director Rob Coldstream felt we had to show enough to convey the grim reality of the execution but it would have been gratuitous to show more."

That some comments on the Channel 4 website have said things such as "that drama put a smile to my face. bring back the death sentance (sic) and hang huntley and glitter. they won't be smiling then", and "The only dissaponting (sic) thing about this programme is that it wasnt for real" makes me feel very sad and disappointed, not to say very worried.

For the state to accept mob rule and fail civilisation in killing offenders for the fun of the few should never be acceptable. That polling suggests 54% of the UK adult population want the 'death penalty' returned shows both that there is a lack of education about what it really means, and — arguably — that the result of any polling is questionable, based on the way a question is asked ( Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister comes to mind) and how inaccurate electoral polling often is.

Whilst some may believe in the (Judeo-Christian) bible's "an eye for an eye" approach, I believe we have moved on. Even Gandhi noted "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" and we no longer permit many activities sanctioned in the bible and to kill someone because they did something we find totally, utterly, and completely reprehensible makes us as bad as them.
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clip from Yes, Minister
"Are you worried about the number of young people without jobs? … Are you worried about the rise in crime amongst teenagers? … Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our comprehensive schools? … Do you think young people would welcome some authority and leadership in their lives? … Do you think they'd respond to a challenge? … Would you be in favour of re-introducing national service?"

"Are you worried about the danger of war? … Are you worried about the growth of armaments? … Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill? … Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will? … Would you oppose the re-introduction of national service?"