More Security Theatre

Surely, with the California economy in freefall, the budget process hopelessly broken, and a water crisis about to cause major damage to both agriculture and fishing, Joel Anderson (R, 77th) has more important things to worry about than the fact that shock! you can see both ground-level and satellite pictures of buildings on the Internet.

But, no, one of the brilliant minds that held California's budget hostage for months and was a cheerleader for the misbegotten anti-vehicle-registration-tax has decided that his next mission is to censor Google Earth, and so is putting forward AB-255 (see http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/11/google.earth.censor.california/).

The idea is to make Google blur images of "important" buildings: government buildings, schools, churches, and medical facilities. Supposedly this is to fight terrorism. How a blurry image of a hospital on Google Earth will prevent terrorists from parking a truck bomb in front of the main entrance remains unclear. How this will prevent terrorists from going to the hospital's own web site which probably has useful things like maps to help people find their way and a street-view picture of their main entrance anyway also remains unclear.

Why churches? Can't God protect His own? Anderson states that churches and synagogues have been attacked . True. I don't see any evidence that tossing a firebomb through a window was aided and abetted in any way by the presence of a picture of said building on the Internet. Indeed, a map indicating the location was probably more useful. Shall we censor that next? And then the white page listing giving the address?

Why not shopping malls? Theatres? Sporting venues? Don't people congregate there too?

It is ludicrous to suppose that this bill would prevent any terrorist attack, or that it would seriously hamper in any way the efforts of those intent on such attacks.

No, this is not about counter-terrorism at all. It is about the appearance of counter-terrorism. And what it is really about is taking a first step into censoring content on the Internet that some government busy-body finds objectionable. Anderson says that this would only be doing what other governments around the world have done. What do you want to bet that a year from now, the argument is that since we already censor pictures of government buildings, censoring information about government officials is just the next logical step in the "War on Terror"?