So a package on Radio4’s Today programme about the (subjective opinion!) ludicrous “right to be forgotten” – and they wheel out the usual suspects: Cluley to nitpick Gmail’s advertising parser, Gus Hosein of Privacy International, and Jeff Jarvis for the optimist.

I suspect this is what the BBC called “balanced opinion” – and you know what, I’d agree, it was a nice package.

BUT: it was laced-over with plinky-plonky spooky “psycho”-type music, bracketing it with FEAR! FEAR! FEAR! FEAR! YOU SHOULD BE SCARED OF ALL THIS CYBER PRIVACY INVASION! I AM A BBC PRODUCER AND DON’T GET IT SO IT MUST BE SCARY!

If Rory approved the music then the Geek community should flatly disown him – you would not do the same to (say) a package on Government immigration policy:

Foreigners are coming! FX: SPOOKY MUSIC

– there would be uproar!

In 1995 I participated in a Open University TV programme re: Security (along with Gene Spafford, Mark Lomas, Brian Neale and Whit Diffie) and back then it would have been vaguely excusable for the novelty; but now, NO, please, stop it.

Please get with the programme; some of us are trying to get people to take this seriously, and the BBC does not have the excuse which a print journalist once gave me in 1995 – the requirement to pander to its demographic to retain advertising revenue driving reinforcement of existing prejudices.

The young generation can cope with privacy issues just fine – in an industry where the world turns upside down every 5 years then all legislation will be knee-jerk. Feeding fear will make it worse.

Regarding privacy: yes there will be a few goofs as people learn to cope with change, but having a bunch of 50 year old journalists telling a 50 year old demographic that something needs to be done is a task best left to the Daily Mail where we can ignore it.