When I first heard about John Reid's latest policy proposals for registering online handles of sex offenders my initial reaction was "what a load of bollocks". This morning I 've read the papers and digested the proposal some more and am happy to inform that I was indeed right in my assessment.As has been pointed out elsewhere by now, the idea that simply by making sex offenders register their online handles you will stop them going on IRC and grooming people is pathetically stupid (and that is actually being kind to the good Dr Reid.
I have been trying to give the good doctor the benefit of the doubt and figure out how this could be a workable - and more importantly, worthwhile - policy. I guess if you forced all registered sex offenders to use a special ISP just for them you could monitor them.
Of course that doesn't preclude them getting a second phone line in their house and a second service provider. Unless you were also monitoring their bank transactions and every aspect of their lives you wouldn't know, unless of course you had to produce your ID card to get a phone line and thus be flagged up.
Still, even in that circumstance they could just buy a laptop for cash, go to a free wifi zone and log on to wherever they wanted. There would be no way of tracking that unless someone was watching them all the time via CCTV.
Some may see where I am going with this. Whilst John Reid's idea is pathetically stupid, the only possible way it could work would be if there was total surveillance of everything a registered sex offender did. Cameras in their home, cameras on every street corner, a tap on their phone lines, bank records monitored and every transaction inspected.
Given the state of the Home Office today, and the sheer incompetence of Government in general I doubt very much they could ever achieve that even if they did desire it.
Image from The Spine
4 comments:
Dizzy - as usual bang on the money.
Simple solutions:
1. Lobotomy
2. Exile to a Siberian jail
3. 10 minutes in a room with parents of abused children.
It just seems that Nu-Lab and John "no hope" Reid seem to manufacture a crisis in order to enact further big brother control.
I mean lets face it, how difficult is for a person to say no I don't want all these big brother measures when it comes to paedophiles, even when you know the consequences of a big brother state.
Roll on the elections!
Dizzy, you forgot the most obvious one, buy a wifi card and see how many networks you can connect to from your own house.
I doubt there are many built up areas where you could not find at least one usable unprotected wifi conection if not 3.
Yes this is a useless proposal.
However, your last point needs considering further.
Of course the home office is incompetent....but ideologically do they want to be able to track these people 24/7. Scarily I think the answer is yes.
Of course there is always the option of putting electronic tags on our children so as to monitor their safety.
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