Wake me up when there are no more serious threats to women such as female prisoner abuse in the U.S., sex trafficking in SE Asia, or continent-wide torture of women in Africa; and then maybe I’ll care about some upper-middle-class white woman behind an Apple widescreen in a gated subdivision of McMansions.

Seriously, have people not seen the online death threats, vitriol and violent fantasies about Hillary Clinton? What have people on the Internet said about Dick Cheney, Reade Seligman, Sarah Brady, Al Franken or Condoleeza Rice?

Don’t get me wrong- I seriously hope nobody kills Kathy Sierra. I don’t think anyone deserves to die just for typing some stuff and posting it on the Internet (a few exceptions aside, but the point is not this Kathy person). In fact If I were rich I’d even donate money toward the “Glock and a concealed-carry license for Kathy” foundation. I’d buy her a Rottweiler and a lock for her door, at the very least. Maybe I’d just get her a computer without an ethernet card so the bad people wouldn’t bother her, I don’t know.

Bottom line, though, is that to suggest that she is somehow a unique example of online targeting or misogyny (and to suggest that she isn’t benefiting from the publicity) is intellectually dishonest.

“The government knows that terrorists are effective not because they kill people (many other things do a far better job), but because they terrorise [sic] the population simply by threat (amplified by precedent).

The government does not actually have to prevent terrorists commiting [sic] crimes such as mass murder (one of the things it can’t do if it is to uphold a free society - it can’t prevent anyone committing crimes). What it has to do is to counter the terror.

No-fly lists, proscribed luggage item, racial profiling, etc. It doesn’t actually matter that in terms of effectiveness these border upon superstitious talismans against evil, the point is that they are effective in countering terror.

The no-fly list is not directed at terrorists (potential or real), but at law abiding citizens - precisely so that society feels comforted and the terror is assuaged.

So, no-fly lists work.

This is precisely the same basis for the ‘Blogger’s code of conduct’. It’s not designed to dissuade sociopaths, but to reassure blogger’s audiences that something is being done (however ineffective) - and consequently to raise those bloggers (who are ‘doing something’) in the esteem of their own [self-selected] audiences.” ”

-from freedom-to-tinker.com poster CrosbieFitch

I wholeheartedly agree with his post. It’s about maintaining the illusion of self-policing and to let the “somebody ought to DO something!” crowd sleep a little easier in their nanny-state beds.