British MP Claire Perry is one of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s top advisers on his Quixotic campaign to eliminate porn from the Internet. So when news was announced this week of wide-ranging Internet filters to be enacted in the UK that will make British adults ask ‘Mother May I?’before viewing pornography on their home computers, Perry made a natural target for those upset over the new policy. And perhaps unsurprisingly — this is the Internet, after all — a few of those disappointed individuals proceeded to hack Perry’s website, replacing the front page with porno, porno, and more porno. They didn’t out Perry as being completely ignorant of how the Internet works, though — she did that all on her own.
News of the hack broke yesterday, with British blogger Guido Fawkes being one of the first sites to publicize it. An understandably upset Perry, though, apparently confused “covering a piece of news” with “being responsible for it” and promptly took to Twitter to accuse Fawkes of being involved in the hack — something she had a grand total of zero evidence for — while also demonstrating she doesn’t know the difference between a link and a screenshot. And believe it or not, the exchange actually goes downhill from there, quickly devolving into an object lesson on how not to do Twitter going so far as to threaten Fawkes’ weekend job as a newspaper columnist. You can get a blow-by-blow account of the whole sordid affair courtesy of Ministry of Truth right here.
A couple of things, Claire. First of all, think before you get up in arms and start accusing someone of breaking your website with bad Internet magic. Right off the bat, get someone to tell you the difference between a screen shot of a URL and a link to a page, for instance. Don’t worry, any handy intern can probably explain this to you. Then, while you’re waiting for an intern to explain the differences between those two things — this could take a while, as they are very, very different things — count backwards from 10 and try to relax before you accuse a blogger of sponsoring the attack because he took a screenshot of your hacked site and posted it. Again, those are two things that are very different things.
Oh, and last I checked, going into a public forum like Twitter — you know people can see things you post on Twitter, right, Ms. Perry? I mean, I assume you do, but the whole link/screenshot confusion means I can’t take anything for granted — and accusing people of things you have no evidence they were involved in bellies right up to defamation.
Oh, and the part where you go on to implicitly threaten that bloggers job as a Sunday newspaper columnist because you’ve decided he did bad Internet magic to you? Not classy, Ms. Perry. Not classy in the least. You should be careful with that sort of thing — it has the potential to make you look like someone who arbitrarily decided to appoint themselves ‘Boss of the Internet,’ tell people what they are and are not allowed to do there, and threaten the livelihood of anyone who has the gall to disagree with you. And we wouldn’t want people to get the wrong impression, now would we?
(via Ministry of Truth, image via Guido Fawkes)
- Man, she is not going to like Google Glass. That thing basically IS porno.
- I hope you didn’t like porn, dear UK readers
- Perry should get in touch with this guy, who is trying to sue Apple because Internet porn exists
