http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7328170.stm
Sex offenders' e-mail addresses are to be passed to social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo to prevent them contacting children.
In the usual "won’t something think of the children" government attempts to legislate lack of parental supervision on the internet; assuming that an email address is permanent and can never change.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she wanted children to be "free from fear".
"We need to patrol the internet to keep predators away from children in the same way as we patrol the real world," she told GMTV.
Of course in the real world we would hope parents don’t allow their children to go clubbing at 14, or put themselves in dangerous situations. The internet, on the other hand, well, it would be too much to ask parents to supervise their children wouldn’t it?
She said she accepted such a scheme could never be "completely foolproof" but did not see that as a reason not to try.
Frankly such a scheme is nowhere near fool proof; but is damned well near "fool". Given the widespread availability of free email addresses from hotmail, gmail, yahoo et al. attempting to provide a blacklist of email addresses is an impossible task. Not only does it depend on the honesty of people on the offender’s register (and if people are going to re-offend then their honesty is, at best, suspect) but it shows the usual governmental lack of understanding when it comes to technology.
The real problem lies with
a survey by telecoms regulator Ofcom found nearly half of children aged from eight to 17 had a profile on a social-networking site.
The obvious question is why? What does an 8 year old need social networking for? If a bookshop sells children’s books do we expect someone at the door of the shop to check everyone’s identity against the sex offenders' register? Why should social networking sites be held to a different, unenforceable, useless standard? Unless of course it’s just to win votes, or to push the current UK identity card agenda. Politicians would never do that.