MikePadgett.com

Out of touch

— When it comes to the Internet, crime does pay. Shame so few of our public sector institutions understand it.”

About eight years ago when I was still a student, I visited New York and Washington DC. Washington is home to many of the United States’ government agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose headquarters I toured like a good little tourist.

As well as the historical and scientific elements and the obligatory firearms display, at the end of one corridor there was an inocuous-looking wall display. It turned out to be a kind of leaderboard for the FBI‘s 10 Most Wanted.

Yes, it’s a lengthy preamble, but I was eventually going to come around to a couple of United Kingdom equivalents [1],[2], [3].

The Crimestoppers site is relatively new. According to a BBC news article, it received 350,000 hits in its first day live. Even the fervently archantitech amongst the mandarins in Whitehall must have noted that.

However, it seems that our nation’s leaders have a bit further to go before they truly appreciate the scope of the Internet. It seems today that the Home Office, ever confident of the infinite wisdom of its management cadres, has announced that sex offenders may be forced to register their email addresses and chatroom handles.

Presumably this glorious concept will allow those who run websites to sort the fiddlers from the tiddlers, so to speak.

The internet child safety expert of children’s charity NCH applauds the idea. Well, perhaps the expert needs to be retrained, because whilst a Most Wanted mugshot is fairly hard to fake, an internet identity is not.