Social Terror Networks

So, the government wants to monitor our social networking activities as part of its fight against terrorism. Now, quite apart from the civil rights issues raised by such a move, the main thing which requires challenging here is the government's apparent belief that we are under constant threat from an all pervasive terror organisation hell-bent on destroying the UK. Such a world view smacks of paranoia, or, at the very least, of having seen too many James Bond films. What concrete evidence is there for the existence of such a threat? OK, I know all about the World Trade Centre, the Bali bombings and the London bombings over the past few years, but the reality is that - despite the loss of life involved in them - these were pretty much isolated incidents, rather than being part of a co-ordinated campaign. But none of this deters the government from pursuing its campaign of alarmism. Only the other day we had the Home Secretary telling us that the risk of a 'Dirty Bomb' attack on the UK was now higher than ever, indeed the situation was 'pink and beige striped critical' (or whatever system of alarmist alerts they use now). The 'evidence' for this assessment? The 'fact' that countries like Iran pursuing nuclear power programmes made it much more likely that 'terror groups' could obtain the materials needed to build such a device. So, no concrete intelligence on planned attacks at all, just more speculation.

It seems that the government is intent upon recreating the mind-set of the 1950s, with its 'Reds Under the Beds' scares and the promotion of an amorphous 'communist threat'. The trouble is, with all those terror 'show trials' (in which people are accused of plotting to blow things up on the basis of idle comments made in private conversations), and the detention without charge or trial of alleged terror suspects, it all seems more like the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Getting back to the original point - the surveillance of social networking activity - this just underlines how woolly the government's thinking is on terrorism. Bearing in mind that terrorist organisations work in small cells, known only to each other, is it really likely that they're going to discuss their plans on what are essentially public networks like Facebook? Moreover, the whole strategy is dependent upon knowing who the terrorists are in the first place. Unless they're all members of the 'Facebook Crazy Fundamentalists Group', or they're all 'friends' of Osama bin Laden's MySpace (where you can hear his latest rantings and read his terror atrocity blog), the Security Services are going to have to trawl through vast amounts of absolute drivel posted by regular users of such sites. But of course, this is like many of the 'initiatives' announced by the government - ill thought out and designed to grab headlines rather than actually be effective.