Sex offenders face website bans

Sex offenders face website bans

The beeb today report that the cunning new plan devised by the Home Office to keep sex offenders off social networking sites is to force them to give their e-mail addresses to police, these would then be passed onto the social networking sites to, I imagine, be blacklisted so that these individuals cannot sign up.

Don't get me wrong, the spirit of what this tries to achieve is admirable, but, unfortunately it seems to be another over simplistic, knee jerk piece of legislation aimed at appeasing those of the electorate not tech savvy enough to see the flaws that make it a worthless gesture. As far as keeping control of those who are really a risk, and protecting those who they may prey upon, it is an utterly meaningless waste of time.

The move seems to revolve around the erroneous idea that an e-mail is somehow a personal and distinguishing ID rather like a passport number or social security number. Firstly, how many people have only 1 e-mail? I certainly don't, I have any number set up over the years, and most now dormant and forgotten. Secondly, does the Home Office not know that a new e-mail account, completely anonymous and free can be set up in about 30 seconds by anyone with internet access? Personally I generally set up a new one from some free e-mail service or other everytime I need to sign up for something which I don't then want to send endless spam to my "real" e-mail.

So how does this system prevent the sex offender going down to his local internet cafe and opening a dozen new hotmail accounts? And I hope it is sex offenders we are talking about here, and not wasting public money keeping tabs on some poor harmelss fool who was caught trying to hoover his underpants or copulate with a park fence.