I remember the rhetoric only too well. The internet was going to usher in an era of brave new freedoms. In which information would be available at the press of a key. In which knowledge truly would be free. In which people could express themselves untrammeled by the restraints of censorship. In which every form of cultural product could be distributed and shared at no cost. Music. Literature. Comedy. Films. All ours. For nothing.

It often occurred to me that someone from the CIA might have been writing the script. Not that the manifesto was ever entirely wrong: clearly it is a phenomenal privilege to live in a world in which otherwise inconceivable connections can be made across continents and almost any kind of information can be found behind the screen of a laptop. But I could never understand the inability – or was it the unwillingness? – of those who were shouting (and boy did they SHOUT) about the benefits of the ‘net, to acknowledge the potential downside of the onward march of the encroaching technological invasion, and of Data Capture in all its manifestations.
The issue of illegal downloading of music, films and other cultural products was one battleground. Advocates of the idea of an oncoming utopia of free access refused to listen to counter-arguments. Like: someone has to fund this shit! And if there are no revenue streams, then that funding will dry up. And if it dries up, then art will need a life-support machine to survive. It was as if the proponents of the joys of the web believed that the fuckers who were stuck in the analogue world would go on providing the funding, while they surfed along for nothing, enjoying the ride.
The maxim that there’s no such thing as a free lunch was conveniently forgotten. Now the truth of that old saw is being rammed down our throats with merciless force. Because while the internet is undoubtedly a massive influence for good in a myriad of ways, it’s also a source of dangers, the likes of which we have never encountered before.
Here in Ireland, the impact has been felt recently on an intensely personal level by a small number of individuals. Last year, a series of vicious cyber-bullying incidents led to teenage suicides. You could of course try to argue that these kids were vulnerable and might have taken their lives anyway. But it is the broadcasting of hate, vitriol and scorn via-social networking sites that inflicts the deepest wounds. From the point of view of the victim, it can seem as if the damage that has been wrought by public humiliation can never be undone. And in a way this is true: no matter how hard you try to erase stuff, you will find it cached somwhere. The interweb never forgets.
More recently, there was the girl who enjoyed a threesome with a couple of international rugby players. There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way, but the indiscreet use of Facebook by one of her friends turned the adventure into a bonanza of national prurience, with crushing results for the young woman involved. And last week there was the case of Slane Girl – a 17-year-old who was recorded giving a blow-job to a bloke during the Eminem concert at Slane Castle. Or rather two blokes. There was also footage of her, apparently the worse for wear, being buffeted by the crowd and looking rather forlorn and vulnerable.
What followed was an example of the brave new world we were promised at its most inglorious. In addition to having the images broadcast in a way that she never would have wanted, Slane Girl was publicly vilified in the most appalling and insensitive way by a host of keyboard warriors, engaged in the deeply misogynistic sport of so-called ‘slut shaming’.
What did I think, watching the story unfold?
First of all, that people are entitled to have sex with any other consenting adult they like. The idea that having sex with two different people within a short space of time (or indeed simultaneously) is automatically ‘wrong’ is rubbish. We have just recently established our freedom from the constraints imposed by the local version of the Taliban. Irish men and Irish women are equally entitled to have sex without having to refer to any moral court for permission. Offering blow-jobs does nobody any harm. And it is wrong also to assume that the pleasure is one-way. A woman is perfectly entitled to feel that she is receiving as well as giving – just as a bloke would if the roles were reversed.
It would be silly, of course, not to acknowledge that there is a complication here. The relevant sexual events took place not in the privacy of anyone’s boudoir but in broad daylight in a public place. Strictly speaking, Slane Girl was breaking the law that forbids so-called lewd or indecent acts, as were the guys to whom she administered oral sex. But...
I hate to disillusion those who have been wagging their fingers with such disapproving relish, but this sort of stuff has been grist to the rock’n’roll mill since the first ever outdoor gigs took place. Have these people never been at a festival before? Have they really never seen someone giving a blow-job, or performing cunnilingus? Do they think Woodstock happened without multifarious exercises in open air sexual gymnastics? Might they imagine that Glastonbury is a blow-job free zone?
The truth is that, historically, festivals – like carnivals and Mardi Gras celebrations – were occasions when people could let their hair down and do those things from which, on an ordinary day, they might hold back. Whether this is an explanation of Slane Girl’s behaviour, or not, only she knows.
But the difference now is that virtually everyone is packing a camera on their smartphone. And the vast majority have instant access to the web via-Facebook or Twitter. And so what up until very recently would have remained a private matter between the individuals involved, and maybe the few people who happened to be in close proximity, can now be instantly broadcast to the world.

It is possible, of course, that Slane Girl was not entirely compos mentis when all of this took place – and she may as a result regret what she did. But you have to ask: why do so many people lack the intelligence, empathy or discretion to think twice before they post potentially damaging material about someone else online?
The Slane Girl incident is, however, only the tip of the iceberg. The power of the internet is being badly misused in this kind of way by millions of people, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere, with images of third parties, often in potentially compromising situations, being posted online without either permission or a second thought. Indeed, some of the material people post about themselves would make your skin crawl: do they really want the world and their potential future employers to know all of this about them?
But if the internet and its potential are being misused by individuals, it – and other computer-based technologies – are also being ruthlessly exploited by Governments and used against citizens.
A rumour did the rounds at one stage that Facebook had in fact been funded by the CIA. Well, that apocryphal tale’s essential believability has been underscored by Edward Snowdon’s revelations in relation to the US National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programme, Prism. While working for a government contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowdon had been shocked to discover the extent to which the majority of ISPs and internet corporations in the United States were – and are – willing to cooperate with agencies of the State by providing them with easy access to emails, calls, texts and other data belonging to individuals.
The malaise is not confined to the US. Snowdon also revealed details of the British surveillance programme, Tempora, run by GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in London.
According to reports, the two principal components of Tempora are headed “Mastering the Internet” and “Global Telecoms Exploitation”.
The aim of each, according to Snowden, is to collate online and telephone traffic and information into a single narrative on the activities of targeted individuals. Throw in a trail of your credit card transactions, and there is effectively nothing that they don’t know.
It is the worst nightmare of anyone with an interest in civil liberties, as if the Stasi had been invited to set up in the US and the UK to do their snooping thing, but with new and previously undreamt-of resources at their disposal.
Edward Snowdon clearly acted in the public interest by revealing the extent of what are often illegal mass surveillance programmes run by governments of States that claim to be democratic.
Rather than acknowledging this, US President Barack Obama has insisted on pursuing him, across international frontiers, in an attempt to have him arrested, tried and jailed. Snowdon has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, where he may be stuck forever.
In Britain, meanwhile, citing the Terrorism Act, police detained David Miranda, partner of Glen Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who interviewed Snowdon and broke the story on Prism and Tempora; and they carried out the symbolic act of destroying the computers in the Guardian offices on which the material Greenwald had gathered from Snowdon was filed. Big Brother’s arm gets ever longer. But of course, the material is also stored on computers in other jurisdictions. And in theory it can also be published on the internet by Guardian-controlled companies based in those countries. It is a fascinating example of the contradictions of webworld in microcosm.
Are we any more cognisant of civil liberties here in Ireland? In 2011, an astonishing 12,675 requests were made by the Gardaí, the Defence Forces and the Revenue Commissioners to ISPs, for access to data on the internet, mobile phone and landline records of their Irish customers.
Under Irish law, records should only be requested if needed for an investigation into a serious criminal or tax offence, if the security of the State is at stake or if it is deemed necessary to save a life. Yet Ireland is among the States with the highest number of requests of this kind in Europe.
What does that tell us about the utopian dream of internet freedom? On the one hand there is the extraordinary potential of the internet as a resource for education, learning and communication. And on the other there is an increasingly totalitarian world where State authorities have the means to know where we are at any time of the day or night, and if they feel like it, to track our every movement, and our every communication.
Indeed so prevalent is the use of social media, mobile phones and credit cards that there is almost nothing that a determined third party can’t find out about you, whether by hook or by crook.
Welcome to the future. I am not sure that it’s a place in which we will really want to live...