andygates

Social media compares well to a pub: it's vaguely compartmentalised and mostly public, a hubbub of conversation that ebbs and flows.  Sometimes, one of the barflies says something so dumb that the jukebox skips, the bar goes silent, and then there's a roar before he's thrown out into the street. 

That's what just happened to Carter Ruck, the scumbag-protecting lawyers who put a gagging order on the Guardian preventing them from reporting a parliamentary question, who was asking it, what it was about, when it would be asked, and so on.  But the scandalous gagging was reported, got onto Twitter, and that's when the roar started. 

So Carter Ruck managed to bring the full glare of the Streissand Effect down on their clients like an arc-lamp.  And they are skeezy clients, too: toxic dumpers Trafigura.  We know that, because the paperwork was lurking up on Wikileaks and St Stephen of Fry, tapping his jillion followers for all they're worth, tweeted it out.

The legals have caved in and dropped it.  The angry tweeting mob are turning on the Justice Minister to use this to ensure that all proceedings are protected from this sort of rubbish. 

Gag the fourth estate and the fifth just get louder. 

This is the good side of the death of privacy: the death of the abuse of smoke-filled rooms and private chambers.  Panopticon, baby.  We're watching.

The panopticon isn't always a bad thing.  The BNP's* membership list has been leaked online.  You can even check it yourself and see just how many knuckle-dragging racists there are in your town!  And for giggles, here's one of their blogs: you can smell the panic among the big strong boys who sign on as "anonymous". 

Bless.  They're worried that they might lose their jobs (plenty of jobs formally preclude political activism such as party membership).  Give 'em a week and they'll find a way to blame it on the Muslims, darkies or Poles, you bet.

Yes, I'm gloating.  Light exposes cockroaches.  You see, I'm a kind of tolerance-fundamentalist.  That means that I'm fiercely antagonistic to intolerance.  This has to be the case: if tolerance tolerates intolerance then it gets swamped and less tolerant; to be maximally tolerant, it must be maximally intolerant of intolerance. 

No, I won't repeat that three times when drunk.

How could this secret club have done better?  Well, they could have encrypted everything, but this looks like a deliberate leak: someone with a grudge published the list.  Can't really defend against that one.  How does this affect other secret clubs which, maybe, don't stink as much?  Will my Sea Shepherd sponsorship come out?  Or my Masonic Lodge dues?  Maybe it's time for real secret societies to come back: ones with handshakes and deadly vows, and no access to email.  I don't think it will work.  

So: don't join anything you'd be embarrassed to be identified as a member of.  Anywhere.  Ever.

Meanwhile, I have to work out what to do to the three scaredy-cat thugs in my town.  Suggestions?




* Basically homegrown nazis, "send-em-home" Little Englander racist cretins.  (wiki)