Mick Hall makes the point that:
Yvette Cooper threatened Google and Facebook with dire consequences over content while they rob the national exchequer blind.
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The internet can no more be policed by state agencies than the
printing press was, it's people the spooks spy upon not machines.
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When I read or hear the likes of Yvette Cooper claiming the Internet needs to be policed by the State it reminds me of what ruling class toadies they are.
Today this woman is at the forefront of the reactionary campaign for the state to police the WWW. Yet when her party leader Jeremy Corbyn was being smeared and lied about daily on the internet and in the MSM she never said a word about that fake news, indeed on more than one occasion she joined the hounds.
She now prattles on about how politicians from all Westminster parties are being targeted and smeared online. When was it never so whether on the net or via the old media, it doesn’t make it right but it goes with the job and as the saying goes if they cannot take the heat they should get out of the kitchen.
She claims some politicians are intimidated by such behavior. If true which I doubt, then they're clearly in the wrong job. Down the years I have been threatened online with dire consequences including death, been bullied and smeared online and off for expressing my political opinions. But I learned long ago, unless they are an imbecile if someone wishes to do you real harm, which I have sadly experienced, they do not forewarn you, let alone leave a footprint on the internet of them making threats.
What people like Mrs Balls really hate about the Internet is it gives people who had no access to the mainstream media an opportunity to express their opinions and that is what she and her ilk fear. Of course unsavoury elements also use the Web to express their opinions and desires but we already have laws, far to many in my view, and if they break them it is for the police to act.
The fact they rarely do tells us more about the nation we live in than the WWW. The authorities have no problem taking before the courts whistleblowers and hackers who expose the State's dirty dealings, but when it came to the powerful men who were exposed in the latest brouhaha for treating women appallingly by sexually harassing them, as far as I'm aware not one has been brought before a UK court of law.
So much for social media being all powerful.
Besides beyond shutting down the national grid, the world wide web cannot be censored effectively by state agencies and those reactionary governments who have tried have been outwitted by a simply work around.
Mrs Balls claims she is now trying to reign in the big beasts of the Internet, the Facebooks the Google's etcetera, not because they fail to pay their proper share of tax but because she allegedly objects to a tiny amount of their content. It's as if Mary Whitehouse is back from the dead and her name is Yvette.
The bosses of Facebook and Google must be howling with laughter, there they are robbing the national exchequer of billions and she demands they remove what 'she' regards as fake news.
Of course she is doing the ruling classes bidding, she is well aware Britain already has some of the most draconian laws, a bill giving the UK intelligence agencies and police the most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world has passed into law last year with barely a whimper, and without any opposition from the saintly Yvette Cooper.
Not once when a government minister did she demand the removal of Britain's draconian anti strike laws. Indeed she and the government she served all but endorsed them. Thus the low wages, zero hours contract and poor working conditions of today can be directly laid at the feet of Cooper and her New Labour ilk along with the current Tory government and the Tory led coalition.
Indeed when her boss Tony Blair published his dodger dossier Cooper supported his lies and had not a word to say about fake news, let alone the downright lies which sent young British men and women to war, to kill and be killed.
Yet now she also wants the state to police the WWW, making it even more difficult for trade unions whistleblowers and the rest of us to get our opinions out there via social media.
This issue is not about left or right but freedom of expression and our human rights, as Voltaire said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
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