Nu Labour and t'interweb.

Don’t get me wrong, paedophilia is a blight. Anyone who abuses kids deserves to be seriously punished. And it is absolutely correct that government should try to stop abuse and limit any potential opportunities for abuse. It doesn’t, however, stop our government from coming up with some seriously stupid ideas.

Today’s stupid idea is around e-mail addresses. Those dirty paedos are doing to have to give the authorities their e-mail address, so stop them grooming children on line and abusing social networking sites. Don’t worry – this proposal is backed up by the full force of the law.

Under government proposals, offenders who do not give police their address - or give a false one - would face up to five years in jail.

Fair enough. I have to say that it would be a stupid person who doesn’t hand over their e-mail address in a pretty damn sharpish way under those circumstances.

Because – ignoring the five year prison sentence incentive/threat – it is really easy to get a new e-mail address. Seriously. In-between typing these very words, I’ve set up a new e-mail address.* And regardless of what e-mail addresses sex offenders might give the government, they would find it just as easy to set-up a new e-mail address.

There is a risk posed by social networking websites – and the interweb as a whole – and that threat is not just limited to kids. However, the internet is less of a scary place than the government would have you believe. The government seems to be carping on about how threatening and terrible the internet is, and actively campaigning for other ways for kids to enjoy themselves. Whilst I conditionally support plans to make kids more active, part of me wonders why the government appears to be so scared of the internet.

Maybe it is as simple as they don’t understand it. Certainly, they seem to have a very limited understanding of web design…

*I haven’t actually. I’m hungover and can’t be arsed. But it is very easy, if memory serves.