It's Safe Internet Day!

Since I’m so in with the yoof, I thought I’d let you in on a big secret: oh yes, it’s Safe Internet Day courtesy of your local EU funded quango, INSAFE.

Insafe is a European network of Awareness Centres promoting safe, responsible use of the Internet and mobile devices to young people.

So basically it’s a fucking waste of money. Another pointless group of psychology graduates whose closest contact with anything technical is playing bowling on Wii Sports.

These muppets - who think that using text speak such as Think B4 U Post in their campaigns means kids will take notice of them – don’t know anything about the internet, internet culture or anything related to computing, yet very much like the whole climate change smokescreen they continue to mislead parents to create a sense of fear and hysteria (and job security for themselves).

Talking online is just text on a screen and the internet is inherently safe: you can’t be attacked or abducted, which are the two things that a parent would worry the most about. But these groups go out to persuade parents that this can happen online.

They tell us that child sex offenders are prowling the internet, giving off the impression to clueless panicking parents that their kids can be “got at” by a “predator” hiding within a website.

In fact Chris Morris’ Brasseye episode about paedophilia enforced this by visualising ridiculous scenarios such as paedophiles disguised as schools and online paedophiles disguised as a cartoon puppy being able to touch your child through a computer screen using a special glove. If you can cope with satire based on paedophilia hysteria without going off on a crazed rant about the cheeldren, it’s well worth a watch.

I’m sick of seeing these non-technical do-gooders on TV reading from their script about how it’s dangerous for kids to be on Facebook and how it’s the fault of Facebook if any kid chooses to add someone to their friends who is not the person they say they are.

In November 2009, Jim Gamble from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) which not coincidentally is part of the INSAFE group, was demanding that “help buttons” that direct people to the CEOP website should be implemented on Facebook and other social networking sites. He was hacked off when only Bebo implemented one.

What’s wrong with closing the web browser, or deleting the offending “friend”? It’s bollocks. Reading further about what Gamble had been saying, it’s clear that he is clueless like all the others. He refers to MSN Messenger as a website for a start, and anyone that has actually used it knows that it’s not. CEOP are just trying to justify themselves like so many other quangos.

Facebook did change their permissions recently which meant that profile pictures suddenly entered the public domain without you realising, but so what? If you want child pictures just go to Google Images. (“Results 1 – 18 of about 384,000,000 for children…”)

I know and accept that child paedophile rings exist but are they picking up random kids on Facebook? Probably not. Whilst you read this, Madeleine McCann could be being flogged senseless by a Romanian bodybuilder in a gimp mask but she wasn’t groomed online, she was snatched, and the plethora of money, law enforcement bodies, media exposure and child support quangos couldn’t do a damn thing to help her.

So why would any potential offender use the internet when it would make far more sense to cut out the middle man, step out of the house and snatch a child on their way home from school? I remember the Stranger Danger campaign when I was at school, but that made sense because it was about avoiding strangers that are within touching distance.

I accept that there are those that use things such as Internet Relay Chat and pretend to be people they are not, but I really don’t believe that its as big an issue as they make out. We have already seen the liars in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change feeding us garbage to hype up the latest economy driver in order to create wealth and prosperity for themselves and I don’t think this child safety online thing is much different.

Of course children should be aware that almost anything they put online will remain there, but it really doesn’t need all these stupid online agencies that offer no protection at all and very, very basic advice that any parent could and should give. Kids don’t want or need scaremongering, hysterical propaganda. Just the facts, thanks, ‘cos I’m busy on Facebook.

I can’t see many kids in the world visiting the INSAFE website today.