Internet crackdown follows Akiba outrage

The kids are not all right

It wasn’t hard to predict that the June 8 Akihabara killings and subsequent identification of suspect Tomohiro Kato as a card-carrying otaku would lead The Powers That Be here to turn their attention to the evil that is the internet, but we had no idea how far the online smackdown would go.

Among dozens of people arrested by police for making online threats (“I hate myself and am going to kill ’em all”) in the month after the incident was the usual gaggle of disaffected youth, but one of those banged up was a junior-school child aged just 11.