Are we policing the Web? Well, should we?

Yet again politicians do not seem to grasp what they are dealing with. They keep on burbling about the same old thing over and over again. Britain is a good country, British people are not like that (like what, precisely ?), we are a diverse country, multicultural blah, blah, blah. This morning the Policing Minister (Who? Never heard of this government post) continued the show as shown above. Adding that the social media companies must bear the responsibility of policing their sites. OK dear, how precisely are they going to do that? Do you know anything about software, the Internet and how it operates? Why don’t you go first and foremost getting to know all of that before opening cake-hole? Most communication between the organisers of these riots takes place on the Dark web and if they were not then will be soon. It could still be traced but would take quite a lot of resources and time. 

So my dear Policing Minister, do you have the time, the money and the people? No? The social media companies provide a service which is basically a website allowing people cheaply or even free of charge, to communicate. I use WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends. It is a system when you invite friends you want to speak to. On top of that it is encrypted, meaning no-one can eavesdrop. The experts that developed this system or systems and theoretically could check the messages, all trillions of them but who in their best pyjamas could even start such a task? It would need thousands of people and two trillion quid. 

Even if Artificial Intelligence could be worked properly it would still be some task! Then the next thing is language, there will always be ways of hiding intentions, i.e code in such way that even AI would not be able to decipher it. Of course if messages included the names of explosive material you could intercept but how would AI figure out a simple message telling people to meet at some time and place couched in quite ordinary language and correct spelling? Something like ‘Hey people, meet at 11 at the corner of the big house for drinks. Would be great if you brought your own drink because the boss said he is out of lager. You know the one we like. See you then, don’t be late as the doormen will close the joint’. 

 Looks pretty normal but for those in the know it means to meet at an previously arranged place and to bring their own weapons. Could be fireworks, anything useful for the purpose. Doormen being the police. This is quite imaginary of course, I am just surmising but I hope one can see the point? It is quite easy to talk about policing the Web but pretty difficult to carry out. Not impossible but very costly. We just need to make our minds up what we want. Free speech or an Office of the Censor? 

Knowing politicians if we start on that slippery slope there will be no stopping them. Even so I do think we need care to not descend into a free-for-all. We need to rethink how we should use these communication tools. Should they be free or not? After all, we used to pay postage for letters. IP companies like BT, Plusnet, Email companies like Google etc must be much more careful who they sign up to the services. It is not too difficult today to ascertain who they are dealing with. The right age (perhaps a code on birth certs?), the correct address, passport number, NI Card number? I suppose even then someone can slip through the net but it is not so easy!

So, Ms Policing Minister something to think about over the Corn Flakes, hopefully it will help stopping you shaking your head in disbelief these things happen in Britain today. But they do and have, so over to you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where are the aliens?

  The question and Answer software called ‘Quora’ had some quite interesting debate about aliens. I am bowled over by how many, and some are quite educated, believe in aliens. Particularly that they have been here and not just that, are still here and doing great intelligent things like making crop circles. I have to be honest here and say that yes there are aliens except we will never see or hear them. As probability will tell you that with trillions of galaxies, having billions of stars the likelihood of other life is near to 100%. The problem is that life such as ours on Earth needs to move but in such a way as is possible on Earth. That is to say, a gravity of 1, oxygen to breathe and food of a kind that is digestible. The next thing to consider is movement, meaning star travel. It is pretty clear that life such as on Earth is not really around in our solar system. We might find some microbes but that’s about it . The distances between the star systems even
Read more

Is there such a thing as mind-control?

One of my favourite author’s Scott Mariani. Writing explosive stories with the great character he created, Benedict Hope. The latest gung-ho story called The Moscow Cipher actually highlights one of the things that has bothered a lot of people. That of mind-control. I’ve wondered about that as well since even in this country that is a process carried out. It is not a bloody affair as depicted in the book but nevertheless computers, the power of the chip has made it so much easier to influence the minds of the general public. Fake news, little bits of untruths here and there. No hesitation in deluding the general public. Just read, listen and make your mind up. All done in the name of “the truth would harm us all”. But will it? . We have smart phones. With chips that know where we are, what we do and what we say. And yes, it is logged somewhere. We have been rail-roaded into using Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp. Google knows more about you than the taxman or even your partner and that
Read more

Is humanity performing euthanasia on itself?

Looking at the happenings in the Middle East I wonder how suddenly Hamas, i.e the de-facto army of the so-called Palestinian state, took it upon themselves to invade Israel. It cannot be a coincidence that Russia needed some pressures, not in Ukraine but somewhere else to take away the limelight on them. W here better than the Middle East. I am virtually certain that one way or another there are political shenanigans afoot. What IS Palestine exactly? I know about Bedouins, Arabs and Jews, are these not all one and the same? Sure, there are different religions but if you look very closely there are great similarities. It is stupid of most of us not to notice but three of the most followed religions are all based on the same precedents. So w here does the term Palestine come from, I might ask. There was the Ottoman empire, and prior to that the Roman. Prior to that Alexander rampaged through the area. Prior to that we had Egyptians, Hittites and God knows what else. Even monkeys held sw
Read more