That’s a typically thoughtful, distinctive, actually quite inspiring reply, Charlotte – I only wish I felt more confident that everyone who watched those videos was as morally alert and responsible as you are.

http://www.pjtv.com/video/PJTV_Daily/Klavan_on_the_Culture%3A_Shut_Up/1612/

Following your comment, I wonder what effect this will have viz foreign nations, since the email logs include inbound emails and emails outbound from the UK, that means the email activities of foreign nationals e.g. Americans are being logged. I wonder if that could be the basis for a challenge my an international, US based corporation such as Google? Doesn’t it mean that Google are being asked to hand over private information of their US and other national customers?

I actually think the best thing that could happen would be an international quarantine of the UK on that basis. How long would the government take to cave in when the entire population of Britain lose the capability to email abroad?

I wonder how this is going to affect people using Gmail? It’s run througth ‘the web’ so they can log the fact that you’ve been using it, but it’s also on SSL so technically the pages are encrypted. Will Google be asked to surrender the email logs of UK based users? Will they simply ban UK users from Gmail? Will they fight it in the courts? Will The Government threaten to block Google in the UK unless they comply?

This could get very ugly.

I make a point of trying not to do things that terrorists want me to do.

I completely agree with this, especially refusing to be afraid – fear and reason rarely go together

You’re right that these videos are put out either by terrorists (trying to make you afraid) or others (trying to you afraid of the terrorists). I’m afraid I am more than capable of falling for, “you don’t want to watch this” as a way of getting me to watch something.

“Conventional wisdom” is that imagination is usually worse than the reality. In this particular instance, the conventional wisdom was wrong.

But I didn’t see the video as a demonstration of their power. I saw it as a sign of their weakness. As repulsive and horrible the act itself was, the whole thing was squalid and cheap. It was obviously a profoundly symbolic moment for them, but the symbolism for me was that of a bunch of young men with weapons killing a helpless old man – a demonstration of power because, in fact, they have none at all.

I regret watching it because I could have done without the mental images, thanks, but I suppose with hindsight it did mark a bit of a turning point in my attitude towards the jihadists, and I’ve not been afraid since.

Personally, I avoid watching that sort of thing, if only because the people who put those videos online are, roughly speaking, the people who do the beheading and so much else, and I make a point of trying not to do things that terrorists want me to do. But I don’t mean that to sound sanctimonious, and I do appreciate the reasons why decent people might come to different conclusions – Ian’s I prefer to see things for myself than to have them described to me by someone. Then I can actually form an opinon being perhaps the most recognisable of these.

Just to reiterate, though – up to the point where people start putting the lives of others in serious danger, I can’t see why we shouldn’t have an absolute right to look at these things. The alternative is, among other things, an example of letting terrorists win by effecting profound changes in the way our legal system operates.

And finally ….

I guess if I were to live in the UK, I’d be a Tory.

Don’t count on it. As mentioned to another Lib Dem pal yesterday, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d come to political maturity when the choice was Brown-Cameron-Clegg rather than Thatcher-Kinnock-Ashdown, with the elegant spectre of Dr Owen lurking enticingly on the margins ….

My email both incoming and outgoing are using a server on my domain hosted in the USA. So so far as I can tell, there is nobody to log them. My ISP are just passing the data packets through. I’m not saying they couldn’t be intercepted and logged, of course they could, but I don’t think that’s what this law actually asks them to do. If I’m correct, it would make sense for people to buy domains offshore and relay email through them. It then never touches a UK email server so won’t be logged.

As to web browing, presumably the ISP is required to keep a log of every http:// request. That’s an awful lot of data. Any page with images or other embedded content in it is going to generate a whole slew of http requests. (This fact allowed BT to wildly over-egg the pudding when they set up the initial censorship system which is already in place, Cleanfeed, which ISP’s were “asked” (arms twisted behind backs) to “voluntarily” adopt. They were able to announce that it was blocking, I think the figure was around 30,000 requests per day. They deliberately ignored that most of those were multiple requests for the same page, and that anyone clicking refresh multiple times was generating massive numbers of requests. And of course, the figure was announced to the press as “there are 30,000 active online paedophiles in the UK”.

I guess if I were to live in the UK, I’d be a Tory. Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.