10/17/2006

Hoo boy, here we go.

Secretary Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Insecurity said this today:

We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the internet. They can train themselves over the internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination. Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.

While I don’t think “radicalize” is a word, this ominous statement definitely spells the beginning of the end of the internet. If people can really go online and learn about how to make a bomb (seriously? you can do that?) we absolutely must shut down the single greatest communications device in history. We can’t risk it.

Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI, chimed in today with his own frightening rhetoric:

Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms.

Whoa. So the internet is basically a place where terrorists and pedophiles hang out? I’m so dumb. I thought it was used for all kinds of good stuff. But gee, if it’s possible to use it for something bad, like Terrorism, it’s got to be eliminated. That’s the only solution.

With the elections coming up in a few weeks, I envision desperate Republicans jumping on the Internet Terrorist Bandwagon and screaming about how unacceptable this is, and how the new laws just enacted are simply insufficient to combat such a serious menace. They’ll have the internet shut down by Christmas.

I guess I’ll have to quit my job then, and become a shepherd.