<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There's a new post on the <a href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">Web of Language</a>:<div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; white-space: pre; ">Letter from London: Brits fear Facebook friends are really bombers</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Lucida Grande'"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre; "><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Lucida Grande'" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; white-space: normal; "><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">The British Government thinks some of your Facebook friends and friends of friends may actually be terrorists, so it wants to monitor the nation's 27 million Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo users to prevent further attacks like the London tube and bus bombings of July 7, 2005, and Guy Fawkes' earlier bombing of Parliament, in 1605 ("Now 'Big Brother' targets Facebook," </span></font><em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">The Independent,</span></font></em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"> 25 March, 2009, pp. 1-2).</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Britons are used to being watched. After decades of IRA violence, her Majesty's crime fighters set up thousands of closed-circuit TV cameras to monitor the behavior of ordinary British citizens as they go about their daily chores. After 07/07, the government also began to compile a massive DNA database of UK residents, and it supports a European Union plan to record all email and internet activity in the 27 member states.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">But Prime Minister Gordon Brown's new proposal to have the government friend your friends outdoes the slavish imitation of the Bush-Cheney war on civil liberties of his predecessor, Tony Blair. Facebook has already been accused in Parliament of </span></font><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage" mce_href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">causing autism</span></font></a><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">, hyperactivity, cancer, and even death. Now Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker wants to revise the government's "intercept modernisation programme" – that's newspeak for </span></font><em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">more spying</span></font></em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"> – to force social networking sites to turn over information on their users' friends networks. Opposition Liberal Democrats are charging that the government's revision of the Post Office "I Spy" Bill is one more terrifying, costly, and extremely leaky example of the big brotherism that has become rampant in this country since the July 7 bombings.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Find out more. Read the rest of this post on the </span></font><a href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Web of Language: </span></font></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(20, 79, 174); font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage" title="The Web of Language blog" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); text-decoration: none; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage</span></font></a></span></span></span></p></span></span></font><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; 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"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>____________________</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Dennis Baron</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Professor of English and Linguistics</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Department of English<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span><span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">University of Illinois<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">608 S. Wright St.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Urbana, IL 61801 </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">office: 217-244-0568</font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">fax: 217-333-4321</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></div></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 11px; "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron" title="My faculty home page" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); text-decoration: none; ">http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron</a></span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">read the Web of Language:</font></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#144FAE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 11px; "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage" title="The Web of Language blog" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); text-decoration: none; ">http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage</a></span></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><br></span></font></div></span></div><div><div><br></div></div></div></span></div></span></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></body></html>