London asks Facebook to provide a Panic button!

There's been lot of misuse of popular social Networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace etc and the same is the case with the numerous public forums. The misuse that I'm particularly talking about here today are those of stalking, rapes, kidnapping, deaths and what not but what I'm not able to understand is that how these sites become the target of making changes implementing things like "PANIC BUTTON". These sites were designed for people to connect and they serve the pupose well however, like everywhere else these sites are not sanitizied of the bad people who go to these sites with only bad motives like raping an innocent girl etc.

So, I argue on the fact that these sites are responsible for all these social crap happening around us, neither do I agree that these make it simple for criminals, sociopaths, paedophiles etc to find their victims because if not on these sites such people will find these innocent souls in local pubs, bus stands, subways, metros, streets, city parks etc. The fact that we need to correct people and the way think cannot be done all the time by having a PANIC BUTTON to everything, you can't do that much policing (or may be you can if you have everyone joined the police force) but what you certainly can is save yourselves by not getting into all those sorts of discussions which lead to an un-acceptable circumstance. Can we have a PANIC BUTTON to a marriage where a man/woman are not what we expected them to be? Can we have a PANIC BUTTON in the bus in which we travel everyday? Can we have a PANIC BUTTON at the traffic signal where a chain snatcher awaits? No, we can't but what it requires is awareness, sense of responsibility and not some swanky version of Distress numbers like 911. These sites already offer the choice of blocking a person or if you feel so afraid you can simply opt out of the website and the first level of defense is to never share your personal details that can be from your photographs to your birth date.

So, I will rest my case of I can go on arguing on it that we DON'T need another PANIC BUTTON help people become aware of steps to ensure their safety first rather than finding unneccesary troubles for the police or the CSI teams. There're lot of bad guys out there stop them but do what you do best don't just put your feet in all the boats 'cos you've got only two.

- Vineet "The Bard"