The trouble with e-petitions

Is the truth out there? This week, the US government has insisted it has ‘no evidence’ that extra-terrestrial life forms exist. The statement was a formal response to a petition on the White House website. In the name of ‘fostering a focused and civil conversation about how the federal government should address a range of issues’, the ‘We the People’ section of the site had promised to answer any petition which received more than 5,000 signatures, or mouse-clicks.

But if you’re a conspiracy theorist who suspects the CIA has been covering up alien activity for decades, you’re hardly likely to be satisfied by an official denial. And if you’re not an ET believer, you probably signed the petition for fun.

Either way, the whole exercise is a joke. And that’s the problem all this democratic transparency and inter-active governance – a vogue which the British also follow, with all our e-petitions and direct gov schemes.

It all sounds pleasant and sensible, but really it’s a waste of everybody’s time. The White House has reportedly now raised the threshold of signatures to 25,000 to deter practical jokers and fringe fanatics. But it won’t stop them. One petition, created last week and highlighted by Alex, is called ‘We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition’. It already has almost 10,000 signatures. The people who clicked on it will probably get what they ask for.