twitter's Journal: Security Focus Analyzes Fear Mongering.

There's a lot of hype about "parental controls" going around. M$ has them in useless spades, even Apple has got parental snooping. Clueless legislators are picking up on the demand. Where does it all come from? Scott Granneman of SecurityFocus has an insightful analysis.(google cache)

Other fears, however, are manufactured by politicians and the media (heck, some so-called "news" channels base their whole business on this practice) in order to manipulate us. ... It can be argued that the constant message of impending destruction is simply a way for the media to keep us watching television - "Are cyber predators targeting your children?" is a tagline that is going to get the audience's attention.

He then gets more specific and splits useful behavior from FUD driven stupidity. To avoid the Windows born virus and botnet plague, he has moved his dad to GNU/Linux which worked out well for him. He then quotes Bill Gates' recent Apple FUD, infamously carried by Newsweek. His conclusion:

My reaction, like most knowledgeable people who read this, was open-mouthed astonishment. ... Bill Gates knows that he's at best exaggerating and at worst completely lying through his teeth.

So why's he doing it? Because he also knows that Apple's new ads are helping Macs to sell like hot cakes, and that security is a big reason why a lot of people are throwing up their hands in disgust at Windows and switching to Apple's computers.

Who reads Newsweek? Not computer pros, but Joe and Jane Computer-user, and Joe and Jane tend to believe what they read in the mainstream media

The end result of all this fear mongering is a complete loss of privacy for kids and worse. Society has reached a fevered pitch of distrust and self abuse where 15 year old kids being punished for their own pictures or worse, sharing . Lockdown is a prison term that has escaped into mainstream use because the world is looking more like a prison.