I wrote several months ago that the government's plans to introduce identity checks on those citizens wishing to view "adult" content over the internet were appalling. Not so much the genuine need to protect children that was at the root of the proposals but the inept way they were going about it by asking an American porn-site operator to run the scheme.
After a barrage of criticism from people who actually know something about the internet, unlike, it would appear the ministers and their senior advisers (who presumably get their servants to look things up online because no person of breeding would go near a computer) have finally grasped what the rest of us knew from the start. The plans for the "pornpass" would not safeguard anyone but would certainly provide rich pickings when the database storing details of who asked for them was hacked. It was announced today that the plan is dead.
Make what you will of the reaction from a firm hoping to make money out of the scheme "it is shocking the government has done a U-turn" and from a civil liberties group "We are glad the government has stepped back from creating a privacy disaster".
I remain angry that civil servants and politicians are still obsessed with online porn and not with the spread of online hate and violence. How many of those hooded, black-jacketed thugs, who gave nazi salutes at the Bulgaria-England match on Monday night, got their ideas from the web?
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