Tweaking or Borking? UK Government Seeks Further Internet Bans
An excellent article by John Ozimek at The Register, Net Suicide Bill would breathe life into government censorship. The preamble:
Government moves to reduce the availability of suicide sites on the internet may herald a new era of online censorship in the UK.
Last week, Justice Minister Maria Eagle announced a review of the law on suicide. Citing the usual suspect – “public concern” – she said: “Protecting vulnerable and young people must be a priority and a responsibility for us all.
“There is no magic solution to protecting vulnerable people online. Updating the language of the Suicide Act, however, should help to reassure people that the internet is not a lawless environment and that we can meet the challenges of the digital world.
“It is important, particularly in an area of such wide public interest and concern, for the law to be expressed in terms that everyone can understand.
“We continue to work with the internet industry to look at long-term ways to keep people safe and without jeopardising our freedom of speech.”
Or in plain English: We are finally going to do something about people who have the temerity to use the internet to talk openly about this subject. “Freedom of speech” is optional.
John makes a number of very important points in the rest of his piece but doesn’t mention what is perhaps the biggest fallacy in this whole debate, i.e. that there is a causal link between ‘suicide sites’ and suicide. As with the internet radicalisation/terrorism nexus with which I wrestle every day, there is simply no empirical evidence to support the thesis that the internet is the prime mover behind an individual’s move into violence, either against others or themselves.
This is not to say that it is not a factor. It is. But to target the internet as the solution to either suicide or terrorism misunderstands both the internet and radicalisation. Neither occur in isolation and, whilst we should be assisting people and communities to overcome the problems of violence which undoubtedly exist, creating dangerously transferable models of internet censorship can only bode ill for us all.
And speaking of models, the belief government seems to have is that the internet is just like traditional print and broadcast media – one-way traffic from a sender to the passive receiver. This outdated application of 1940s information theory fails to recognise the interactive nature of the internet and the role of ‘user-generated content’.
Like Ozimek, I feel there are ways through this morass. I also think that suicide (in the context under discussion here), like the particular brand of terrorism that imposes a security paradigm onto our treatment of certain communities, has a relatively short shelf life. John’s final comment echoes what I have said many times over recent months:
It is probable that the intention of government is no more than tightening up the law on suicide – its stated aim. However, in order to do so, it is going to get used to new habits of censorship. Given its track record, it may be that such habits, once acquired, will be very difficult to let go.
