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NZ Government dusts-off its ban-hammer

There are many ways to manage problems and mitigate the negative effects of something.

Smart people tend to analyse the problem so as to work out the root cause and focus on that. Stupid people, especially those wooden-heads in our government, tend to take what appears to be the easy-route and simply ban that which they can't be bothered analysing.

Ever since the internet became "a thing", members of the NZ government have been trying to ban some aspect of it; perhaps because they believe it poses a threat to their authority and power; perhaps because they simply don't understand it.

Hands up all those who remember MP Trevor Rogers' attempts to shut down certain elements of the Net? He wanted to force censorship on NZers under the guise of protecting our children. It's interesting to note that after leaving parliament he ended up in jail.

Well if reports in the media today are anything to go by, the government are again dusting off their ban-hammer in a crude attempt to deal with a problem they believe has been created by ubiquitous access to the internet.

Just as back in Trevor's day, the claim is that unfettered access to certain elements of the Net are harming our children and that we must protect them by banning their access to such things.

I'm refering to this story on Stuff in which it's claimed that the government is considering following in the footsteps of the Australian government by implementing an age-restriction on access to social media.

Well fortunately this isn't (yet) government policy but simply a private member's bill proposed by National MP Catherine Wedd. However, the PM has hitched his wagon to this horse and says he's now investigating exactly how such a ban could be implemented.

Oh dear... that age old cry "wont someone please think of the children?" is always a great way to drum up public support for such things so I expect we'll be hearing that soon.

As I've mentioned before... this likely has far less to do with protecting our children and far more to do with forcing a universal digital ID on the population as a whole.

There are no simple ways to prevent under 16s from accessing social media unless there's also a way for over 16s to prove their age and identity is there?

Forcing a universal digital ID on the general population is the holly grail of all politicians in an authoritarian style government. They feel threatened by the very thought of anonymity and the potential for citizens to legally operate in a way that they're not able to identify and track. Such activities are almost always labeled as a threat to society when, in reality, they are likely no such threat at all. Remember that there are certain groups within our society who prefer to engage in their lawfull activities without the oversight of "big brother" and the concept of "privacy" should always be recognised as a basic human right.

As we approach another anniversary of VE day, the words "[digital] papers please" should not even be in our lexicon but sadly it appears that, if Ms Wedd has anything to do with it, we could be aligning ourselves with the practices of The Third Reich, a regime far too many brave men gave their lives to protect us from over 80 years ago.

Across the ditch in Australia, the whole damned thing has been made into a farce after the government there decided to exempt YouTube from the provisions of this law as implemented there. YouTube is the biggest hotbed of disinformation and scams on the social media landscape as I think you might agree after watching this video I posted a couple of weeks back that now has had almost a quarter of a million views, attracting over 15,000 likes and 5,000 comments, almost all of which agree that YT is now a hotbed of fraud and censorship.

I guess the boys at Google are doing a damned fine job of lobbying Aussie politicians and I have no doubt they'd do the same here if our internet gets Weddified -- which makes a joke of the entire social media ban-hammer idea.

It also kind of furthers the assertion that this is more about forcing digital IDs on the general population than it is about protecting the children.

Oh, the disingenunuity of politicians.

Carpe Diem folks!

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