Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis was a very interesting read. It starts off by exploring the realities that this nation (along with any other nation with internet access) and the troubles that can be found through the World Wide Web. In chapter 7, the authors told about a story of a girl in Michigan, United States who met a guy from Jordan online through Myspace. As their conversation grew more frequent, so did their feelings for each other. This turned into ‘love’ and soon the girl, who was only 16, managed to obtain a passport and found herself fleeing the country to go visit her new lover, who she had never met on the internet.

This is really scary because it happens all the time in our culture. Not all stories are as bizarre as the girl flying from one country to another, most occur within city/state borders. The internet is a powerful tool that has helped our civilization, but it has some unavoidable consequences. Online predators have existed as long as chat room and AOL has existed. DOPA was created to target those online predators. Many people have seen the Chris Hansen, from Dateline NBC, who is known for his sting operations, mainly from inline predators. Most of the time, it is a fake girl created by the police that engages in a conversation with some pedophile and they arrange to meet up and when the guy comes Chris Hansen walks out of the kitchen and immediately the ‘online predator’ tries to say he just wanted to hang out. Chris then shows him a copy of the online interactions between him and the ‘girl’ he was going to ‘visit.

Going into chapter 8 we find ourselves at the height of the security as the government tries to control our internet. The guy from the previous example thought he was completely safe in his private online conversation with the [girl]. Here, Dateline must lie to the person and say that they are a young girl under the age of 18 and occasionally use luring language. The lying part is the part that many people would find a violation of our civil rights, that if you are a cop, that you must openly admit you are a police officer in certain occasions. There is a feeling of entrapment, but at what cost? This man who was once thinking he would have intimate relations with a girl 5 years younger than him (the guy could even turn out to be 10 years older than he stated online) is now behind bars. I feel that this is a victory. These kind of sting operations bring justice to those whose heads just aren’t where they need to be, and that is looking out for the best interest of others.

The government is trying to take over the internet. I say, let them. I know I won’t be doing any kind of illegal activity and be posting about it online [or at all, for that matter].  The big dilemma is where does freedom of speech go from speech, to media to twitter to Facebook? Under what codes does ‘freedom’ stand for? and what is now defined as ‘speech’ that we should have freedom in?

I think the internet is a gift and when we start to abuse it, we need to be disciplined for it. Just like if a son gets a toy hammer for his toy construction set. If your the parent and you see him hitting his little brother in the head with it, you are going to take away the hammer and discipline the kid. We have the internet to do WHATEVER  we want with it. Facebook our lives, tweet our thoughts, blog our ideas and comments. But the government sees that we are starting to abuse our own freedom of speech and we inadvertently are starting to use it for consequential and illegal purposes.