The president picks up a long forgotten campaign talking point in light of the Parson’s Green explosion
The details of this morning’s explosion in Parson’s Green Tube station are still far from clear, but the Metropolitan Police are now officially calling it an attempted terrorist attack. This has led to President Donald Trump taking to Twitter with some speculation of his own.
(A Metropolitan Police spokesman told Buzzfeed News that Trump's tweets were both "pure speculation" and "unhelpful," adding that "anyone with information relating to the investigation should contact the counter-terrorism hotline".)
After this, Trump took the opportunity to reignite one of his campaign hits: that we should somehow ban terrorists from the internet as if it’s as simple as blocking someone on Twitter.
On one hand, you can’t expect great policy detail in 140 characters, but the fact that Trump hasn’t revisited this concept since December 2015 suggests his thought process on the subject hasn’t really developed. Cutting off the internet to terrorists is something that’s impossible to do, and even if it were possible, there would be serious collateral damage before you even get into the serious question of whether it would actually end terrorism. How would you disconnect someone from all their devices wherever they go? How do you know who is a terrorist? How do you ensure only the right people are banned?
“Use better” is a term that’s almost completely meaningless. Not only does it not explain how we should be using the internet better, it’s also the kind of bland positive that it’s very hard to disagree with. Do you think we should use the internet better or worse? As binary referenda go, there’s just no contest.
When Trump first raised the idea of banning terrorists from the internet, he showed an, at best, flimsy understanding of how the internet works, seemingly of the view that different geographical regions have their own internet. ““We're losing a lot of people because of the internet,” Trump said. “We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways.”
Some slightly anaemic-looking meat was put on the policy bone a little later during the presidential debates when he said: “ISIS is using the internet better than we are using the internet, and it was our idea.
“What I wanted to do was get our brilliant people from Silicon Valley and other places and figure out a way that ISIS cannot do what they're doing. Second, we should be able to penetrate the internet and find out exactly where ISIS is and everything about ISIS, and we can do that if we use our good people.”
Responding to a follow-up question from Rand Paul, the future president replied: "As far as the internet is concerned: I'm not talking about closing the internet. I'm talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is. Spotting it. Now, you could close it.
Responding to a follow-up question from Rand Paul, the future president replied: "As far as the internet is concerned: I'm not talking about closing the internet. I'm talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is. Spotting it. Now, you could close it.
"What I like even better than that is getting our smartest and getting our best to infiltrate their internet. So that we know exactly where they're going, exactly where they're going to be. I like that better!"
One can only assume from the president’s latest comments that he hasn’t had the promised Silicon Valley meeting yet. I would say he’s in for a rude awakening, but he seems to have slept through an awful lot since taking office, so it’s doubtful that reality will bring him back down to Earth now.
Source: http://www.alphr.com
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