Bloody Sunday, election, Irish, Ireland, British, Ulster, Unionist, Sinn Féin, SDLP, Ahern, Blair, Irish America

(by Liam Fay, Sunday Times)

Sinn Féin chiefs appear excited by news that a tracking device can identify contributors to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

The Shinners couldn't contain their glee at reports that the Wikipedia biography of their president, Gerry Adams, had been favourably edited, allegedly by a computer user tracked to the Vatican.

However, the party didn't thank the Good Samaritan who had rid the Adams profile of links to newspaper stories that claimed his fingerprints were found on a car used in a 1971 double murder. Adams, after all, needs no help at rewriting his past.

It was the existence of the tracing technology that raised the party's spirits. "Any device that allows us to track users of the internet is a positive development," it said. The use of the word "us", one assumes, was a Freudian slip. Free speech is instinctively distrusted by Sinn Féin. They may pay lip service to the web as a democratic platform, but the party's impulse is to take names and monitor debate.

Having worked to keep Orange feet off the Queen's highway, the Shinners now apparently want to control the footprints on the information superhighway.

This article first appeared in the Sunday Times on August 18, 2007.

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