I'm really disappointed with this whole situation. The government. The parliament. The people & the media. I resent all the apologizing and explaining and the "don't attribute to malice…" excuses. I also think that it's very possible that unrelated "side effects" like surveillance and control of the internet "media" have always been an intended unstated goal.
This article is right on the right track. This is an attempt to control the discussion, the definition of normal and public morality. It's is not a response to an actual problem. It's old fashioned conservatism and paternalism.
The bottom line here is choice. Parents everywhere have easy solutions for voluntary porn filters. You can have them set up by your the people you buy your internet from or the people that sell you your computer. It's cheap or free and it's available. I do not buy the "it's too complicated" argument. This is parents responsibility and it just ins't that hard to meet that responsibility.
But buying and installing filters is hard for many people. They don't know anything about networking or the internet. These people need help setting up wifi.
This is just movong the filter from existing software providers to the ISP. It's not at all ISPs so you can shop around[1] if you want to avoid it. It's optional so you can tirn it off if it's on bu default for you, and not all of them are.
[1] shopping around isn't possible for broadband because of the weird way it's provided in the UK.
A - Nonsense. It's not hard. You can take your computer to any "computer repair" shop and get it installed. You can install something yourself or you can call your ISP and ask them to install it. You can get help from your kids' school or you can get help from whoever it is that helps you set up your email or home wifi network. It may not be absolutely trivial, but it is a solvable problem for an adult willing to invest an hour or two and/or a little bit of money. I just hate this "people are dumb, this is hard for them" argument. People are capable if they are interested.
B - You can use legislation to make it easier while preserving freedom. I don't like this option, but it's much better than mandatory. Make it mandatory for ISPs to offer free filtering.
This is a case of not trusting people to manage their own families' affairs.
The argument is an extension of the reason we don't let stores sell porno mags to 13 year old's -- it is ridiculous to assume the parents will always be with their child to make the decision for them.
I've no measured and thought-out opinion on porn filtering or censoring at ISPs one way or another. But a lot of recent research on the subject of youth and lewd material consumption suggests the current free and unfettered access to pornographic material is unhealthy.
Is there a "slippery slope" to cry out with where this line of thought goes? Sure. But in societies that decide their federal system should be arbiter of its health care system, it makes no sense to argue when that government takes measures to act on information regarding the health of its citizens.
The big difference here is that purchasing a porno magazine requires interacting with a clerk who will then verify your age and send you on your way. A better comparison would be banning the sale of all porno magazines unless the buyer registers for a porno card for his/her family (which would then provide unlimited access regardless of age).
I tend to agree that unfiltered access to all sorts of things can have an unhealthy impact on the minds of kids, but this is still the wrong way to handle it.
in societies that decide their federal system should be arbiter of its health care system, it makes no sense to argue when that government takes measures to act on information regarding the health of its citizens.
I really hate that argument. It's extremist and righteous.
I don't even see it as a nonsensical statement. Public healthcare does create a public interest in public health and a minor conflict with free society. But to extrapolate from that places with public health are slave societies where everything goes so stop complaining about freedom is the most annoying kind of extremist logic.
It's like listening to mullahs and rabbis talk about how since you are all a debaucherous bunch anyway with your shorts and music videos, surly you shouldn't be complaining about child molesters.
I can't reply to netcan unfortunately -- this isn't a conclusion that the British people are a "slave society", that's a distraction. I'm saying that, if a government has the power to make decisions that affect the heath of its population, it's probably going to make decisions under the guise of that power.
I'm not saying that I think it's a good decision - I feel quite in line with the majority voice here that it's a Bad Idea.
Sorry to pull the conversation in an uncivil direction.
If you do think this is a bad idea why would you voice that opinion. If I can restate it in a less divisive way it's that as the UK Government is responsible for health, they need to have a say on (all?) things which potentially affect the mental health of UK citizens. You are (I assume based on your rhetoric) against public health services on those grounds - the loss of freedom.
That frames the whole discussion in an extremist way: IE that those of us rejecting censorship are extremists and we see a choice between welfare societies (which are what the public want in most of Europe) with benefits like public schooling & healthcare or a free society without censorship.
That's what I mean by extremist. I also think it's a false choice. We can have healthcare and a free internet. The connection between those two things would be difficult to explain to someone without a fundamentalist mindset to begin with. I can't even imagine a pro-censorship person making it though I can see them making a utilitarian mental health argument (Porn causes mental health issues and that is bad).
I guess this news simply feels like a natural conclusion to me -- why wouldn't the British government see it within its powers to act in what its medical research suggests in the best interest of its people?
I think the contention would be must lower on this site, if the news didn't involve making laws about the Internet. If it was about a food or something, it'd be a relative non-issue.
There are many things which we know which mich more certainty are harmful to the public. A diet high in sugars and fat but low in protien, vitamins minerals and fibre is not healthy.
Too much alcohol is not healthy.
The uk recently rejected minimum pricing for alcohol. That minimum price was strongly aupported by doctors who see the fallout both acute and chronic of long term drinking. A lot of 999 / 112 emergency calls have alcohol involvement.
We have predatory cynical manufacturers exploiting weak people with gutrot disgusting product for profit.
I suspect that a closer analogy is the classification system on films - which as far as I know is in effect in the vast majority of the world. Governments long ago decided that certain things are far too extreme for (young children / older children / anyone) to see, and have been censoring or restricting access to video media ever since.
Now that the internet is becoming mainstream, and a powerful provider of videos / pictures, they will seek to install similar systems to censor or restrict access.
Since thw british government isn't forcibly preventing anyone from getting porn your point fails.
But, trying to answer your question: if coca cola marketed their product as having health benefits they'd be stopped by one branch of government. If they advertised it as being totally safe in inlimited quantities they'd be stopped by another regulator. The food industry haa been warned to make labelling clear and to reduce sugar, salt, and fat content or face strict regulation. So, yes, i'm happy for government to regulate the food supply.
>Should the British government forcibly prevent you from drinking Coca-Cola because it's bad for you?
Your example is bad. These two things are clearly not the same. Porn (even in a small dose) for young children is almost universally accepted to cause long term psychological damage. Cola in a small dose is universally accepted to cause zero long tern harm. I think that if you gave your kid enough Cola to where it was universally accepted to cause major long term harm to them - CPS would come take that kid from you and you would likely be arrested for child endangerment (thus it is against the law).
Secondly the govt is not forcibly preventing you from uncensored internet. It is the ISPs, and not forcibly, all you have to do is acknowledge that you want it (this could hardly be considered forcible)
If a 4 year old kid drinks a bottle of soda, how will that affect them for the rest of their life? If a 4 year old kid watches a (simulated) hardcore porn rape scene, is that more likely to affect them negatively for the rest of his or her life?
How does that kid get at the soda? usually their parents or caretaker gives it to them right? Is that how they usually run across porn randomly on the web too? Maybe parents should watch kids every second they are online, but that is hardly possible with the ubiquity of internet devices today. At least if a kid sneaks a Cola at 2am whilst his parents are asleep - it is clearly missing the next day. Not so obvious if they were sneaking out and surfing the web incognito.
> I think that if you gave your kid enough Cola to where it was universally accepted to cause major long term harm to them - CPS would come take that kid from you and you would likely be arrested for child endangerment (thus it is against the law).
Oh? Well, what if you spank your child? -That certainly causes psychological harm. Does CPS take people's children away for clearly causing long term harm to them in that way?
> Secondly the govt is not forcibly preventing you from uncensored internet. It is the ISPs, and not forcibly, all you have to do is acknowledge that you want it (this could hardly be considered forcible)
This has been covered elsewhere. But you do realize that it's the government that runs those block lists, and that they can put whatever they want in there, don't you? For example, I don't think China approves of Chinese people reading naughty anti-government material. You see, people need to be protected from something so disconcerting and potentially harmful (to the government itself).
> How does that kid get at the soda? usually their parents or caretaker gives it to them right? Is that how they usually run across porn randomly on the web too? Maybe parents should watch kids every second they are online, but that is hardly possible with the ubiquity of internet devices today. At least if a kid sneaks a Cola at 2am whilst his parents are asleep - it is clearly missing the next day. Not so obvious if they were sneaking out and surfing the web incognito.
They're going to be exposed to porn and even actively seek it out eventually anyway. I'm not saying little kids should be watching porn, but I'm not sure it would harm them either. Recently, my sister's 3-year-old daughter happened to witness a sex scene in some soap opera that was running in the background while we had dinner. She just completely disregarded it.
>Oh? Well, what if you spank your child? -That certainly causes psychological harm. Does CPS take people's children away for clearly causing long term harm to them in that way?
There is no conclusive proof that spanking children causes psy harm. Nor is there a consensus of people who think is is. Every large study about psy effects by spanking is split one way or the other. A study of these study organizers found that the study results were always slanted in the favor of their original opinion. Your statement is (thus far) non deterministic and thus factually and even consensually incorrect.
>This has been covered elsewhere. But you do realize that it's the government that runs those block lists, and that they can put whatever they want in there, don't you? For example, I don't think China approves of Chinese people reading naughty anti-government material. You see, people need to be protected from something so disconcerting and potentially harmful (to the government itself).
China? I thought we were talking about England here... No, the govt there does not maintain the lists there. That is one of the issues that some here are taking. There is no centralized list.
>They're going to be exposed to porn and even actively seek it out eventually anyway. I'm not saying little kids should be watching porn, but I'm not sure it would harm them either. Recently, my sister's 3-year-old daughter happened to witness a sex scene in some soap opera that was running in the background while we had dinner. She just completely disregarded it.
A soap opera is a far stretch from rape pornography. And how do you really know how your niece was affected deep down? Perhaps she is even desensitized to seeing things like this since apparently her parents just let her see it.
Since you are not sure it would harm kids to watch porn I guess it is all right then huh? How is this even an argument? I'm not sure it would harm them Are you kidding me? I certainly hope you don't have kids anytime soon. BTW, the consensus of physiologists, studies and general public conclude that it IS rather harmful to kids.
I'm not aware of this research but lets just say it's true. The purpose of the laws isn't about any concern for children's health (otherwise they would be outlawing fast food, or caffeine or sharp objects other "dangerous" things kids could get exposed to.) It's because of social taboos against porn and viewing it as obscene or immoral.
In any case it should be up to the parents and should not at all be necessary for the government to force people into it. ISPs are not selling internet access to 13 year olds in the first place, and if they were, under the current law they can easily opt-out.
> But in societies that decide their federal system should be arbiter of its health care system, it makes no sense to argue when that government takes measures to act on information regarding the health of its citizens.
1) How did "society" decide that?
2) Why should the "federal system" be an arbiter of health care?
3) Why would it not make sense to discuss whatever the government is doing?
The filters are voluntary - ISPs do not need to provide them. They are free and optional for customers to use. Some people need to opt put, some people need to opt in. The actual situation is freer than your proposed situation.
What about for your kid's smart phone? What about in library computers, or the your kid's friends computer? Internet devices are ubiquitous. Most kids today probably surf the web as much if not more outside the house than in it.
Most kids are more tech savvy than their parents and can easily get around software installed on the PC with a Ubuntu live boot disk or by other means.
Many of these filtering softwares have less than current definitions, or need constant updating. Others have terrible fuzzy logic engines.
PC web filtering software has been around for at least 20 years and are not the answer to the porn industry targeting children.
Electricity is much more dangerous than porn. Unlike porn, electricity kills. The trick is to hire an electrician; and if you don't, and let wires hang about in your bathroom, then it's your problem.
I think the point was that this filter is optional, but the next one may not be. This one gets people used to the idea of having a filter, and gauges public reaction / outcry.
You mean that it's optional for users because the can "call this number to opt in for porn and dissident information" or optional because the handful (4) of ISPs who control most people's access to the internet have the option of "making progress on this issue" or else they will have progress made for them. Do these 4 companies need the government for contracts? How about broadcast licenses?
The thin veneer of optionality is (IMO, of course) the most offensive part of this.
I realize I'm sounding shrill and dramatic but… optional here is just a steam vent. The proudly perverted, politically active or other fringe people will be able to access anything easily enough. They're hard to control anyway. The happy 90% will make do with approved content.
If an ISP chooses to force people to call in to modify their filter level that's their prerogative, but the government hasn't required that and as far as I know all ISPs currently have it handled through their website(s). For example my ISP BT just has it as a clickable option in the account management panel, here's a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/dWxORfJ.png
That was the most amusing (and scaring) screenshot that I've seen in a while. No popular Facebook joke/Reddit meme ever made me chuckle that hard.
So .. you actually can tell your ISP that you're more into alcohol and nudity, but dislike porn? Tasteless would be nice, though?
I wonder if they wouldn't be more helpful if they'd just take the list of keywords/categories from YouPorn so that you can express your preferences in a better and more specific way..
Aren't we going in circles? If they can make it that easy to opt out, why not make it that easy to opt in? Isn't the whole premise that it's too hard and you can't expect normal people to opt in to a porn filter?
You realise that your ISP knows exactly what porn or disident material you're reading, right? Unless you're one of the few people who use privacy methods).
It's quite a difference between saying 'I like hardcore porn' and watching it. While the ISP might certainly create a profile about you that lists you as a porn lover, that's a lot harder (for example: You might go for lesser known/_unfiltered_ porn sites anyway or tell them that you want porn because you don't understand the filter and assume that all your torrents with new 'material' won't be available otherwise).
I agree with your general point, but I don't think these things should be conflated. Having to state one's stance towards any kind of content is different from someone watching over your shoulder.
Opting out of the filter is not saying "i like hard ore porn", it is saying "i want to read sites like HN that are wrongly blocked by your shitty filters".
Please take a look at the screenshot posted elsewhere. BT at least seems to offer you ways to do exactly that: Stating that you like porn (one category), nudity (another), alcohol/tobacco (third) or 'tasteless' content. There are more categories, but these are quite .. interesting.
Sure, you _can_ opt out completely (not sure if that means that the BT site lists you as looking for all of that though, which might scare users again: "What, no I don't need tasteless material!").
Still, the UI leads you to state what you want (custom) or some predefined presets for all I can tell. That IS close enough to saying 'I like porn'.
I don't argue that
- disabling the filter might have other/better reasons than mature content
- filtering is broken, stupid, idiotic and will never work correctly - and opting out for that reason alone is a good idea
Yes, that's how it reads to anyone in the know, but how does it read to the general public? To you future employers? To your electorate, should you ever run for office?
You're basically saying that you're happy for someone to collect information that -- at least in prudish Britain -- could be easily used against you. I'm amazed that so many HN users seem fine with this, given the normal outcry when Google wants to gather something as trivial as your geo-location.
It's a thin veneer because ISPs have been strongly pressured into "providing" this. They did not do this freely in response to their customers' desire. This give the government some plausible deniability as well as immunity from responsibility for cockups. It's also a thin veneer because most moderate people will not want to contact their ISP and fill out a form^ requesting access to obscene and tasteless content.
Since many people in the UK were fine with the odea of ID cards (which did have some strong opposition but oy really failed when people thought they'd have to pay £120 to get one) and many people in the UK used to volunteer to have their DNA on the national database it is a bit worrying when we rely on punlic opinion to stop this kind of stuff.
In theory this is what elected representitives are supposed to prevent - the stupidity of the masses.
ID cards were always thoroughly unpopular and AFAIK never saw anything even near majority support (indeed, generally opposed by a significant majority).
I never heard of any 'volunteering' to get your DNA added, unless you mean via getting arrested.
People volunteer to be profiled when there are local hog profile cases. Here are some people saying that they'd never give their dna to the police along with other people saying that they're happy for the police to have their dna.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7532856.stm this page gives more evidence that people volunteer. It also shows how large the dna database is, and how few crimes it helps solve.
You are just wrong about id cards. The detica poll (2004) showed something like 80% support.
The 2004 yougov poll showed 61% support.
Even in 2006 support had only dropped to 53%, but opposition is only 37%.
And all the way through pepple were clear about cost being very impotant to their acceptance of the scheme - when asked about id cards costing over £25 the support drops dramatically.
Any support remaining for the cards collapsed when the estimated costs rose from about £40 for combined passport id card to about £120 for just the card.
I'm ok with ISPs having a 'child-protect' feature on your internet connection as a benefit. I'm less ok with the government working to develop the filters. I'm not really ok with the government mandating that ISPs provide such a service. And I'm very much against this service being on by default. I'm terrified by mandatory use of the service.
As hard you think it is to buy and have filters installed, its equally hard for people to disable filters. Both require the same level of expertise, willpower, and time.
Shopping around for broadband in the UK is not difficult, broadbandchoices, MoneySavingExpert, uSwitch & MoneySupermarket are 4 places I know off the top of my head where you can type in your phone number & it gives you a list of providers, and there always "cheap broadband uk" in Google too.
Typing "cheap broadband uk" into a search engine will definitely not get you quality, just the pile-em-high bottom-grade ISPs who profit from having massive contention and passing off Indian call centres reading off a script as 'support'.
All of those are geared around getting the cheapest internet possible, which will most likely put you in a position of having to opt out from this filter.
I doubt any of the top10 ISPs on ispreview.co.uk have a filter in place.
But yeah, I agree, it's not too hard to shop around.
> I also think that it's very possible that unrelated "side effects" like surveillance and control of the internet "media" have always been an intended unstated goal.
It's not only possible, it's exactly what's going on. How long did the NSA monitor the whole world before it became widely known?
I am firmly against the concept of internet censorship - but a line has to be drawn somewhere. The internet is ubiquitous. Four year old kids can surf the web proficiently these days and easily get to hardcore porn by accident. That is by design of pornography marketers.
The porn industry blew it. They shamelessly market to kids. anything to get them interested/hooked. Do you think that they would get away with putting porno mags on the lower shelves of toy isles?
There are laws to keep tobacco companies from marketing to kids. There are a slew of laws which prevent marketing all sorts of things to kids. How is the gist of this any different.
I agree that this should have been done in a different way. Each ISP potentially having a different blacklist is ridiculous. The organization and execution could have been a lot better. An exemption list should be standard across ISP's rather than only offered by a few and not shared (exemption list where say an actual sex ed site with an approved/compliant password protection and validation system for people to use to sign up for it is Not Blocked by default if it's owner registers it)
BTW, those of you who say that parents could install filters locally to block this content are out of touch. These filters need constant updating or the fuzzy logic is very poor. Today, most kids today are more computer savvy than their parents. They easily get around these filters, anyway what about smart phones and tablets? What about friends houses? Unfiltered internet devices are ubiquitous. Putting a filter on your home PC would be like putting a band-aid on a severed limb to stop the bleeding.
I wish there were a better way besides censorship. Anyone have any ideas?
> Four year old kids can surf the web proficiently these days and easily get to hardcore porn by accident.
Bullshit. I work at a kids' technology centre, teaching them computer and Internet stuff. This is in the Netherlands, ages 8-18. (no filters, but they are supervised and we can see what's on their monitors at all times)
The only stuff I have seen them accidentally stumble upon is the odd bikini image in Google Image Search.
I can't imagine any scenario how a four year old could accidentally stumble upon rape porn (which is the type that's supposedly psychologically damaging, right?). In particular because they can't type (they lack the motor skills).
(actually I'd question how four-year-olds "surf the web proficiently" at all, for any definition of "proficiently" and any reasonable definition of "the web". Public libraries are easier to use, they're not proficient at those either)
In a hypothetical thought experiment, give 1,000,000 four-year-olds a tablet with a browser opened on a child-friendly start page, and let them play for an hour. None of them will stumble upon rape porn. The "proficient" ones will find something fun and colourful to play with. Your biggest problem is the ones that don't, get stuck on something boring, and start crying. Good luck with that.
> Today, most kids today are more computer savvy than their parents. They easily get around these filters
Also not true. I put this to the test back when we still had these filters enabled. The two smartest kids (ages 11-12) couldn't do it, there's just too many hurdles, passwords, blocking, safeguards going on. It's horrible software, really cripples the machine (which is one of the reasons why we got rid of it, favouring simple supervision). It's quite hard to disable even if you are the administrator of these PCs. Super easy to set up, though. It's a real trapdoor.
I have to admit I believe that they might have had a better chance if they could read English natively. At age 11-12 Dutch kids can read English, but not fast enough to do proper research on the English language web (so the solution would be for English parents to install Chinese filters, they got the experience anyway :-P).
Kids ages 8 or lower couldn't do it no matter the language. There may be the odd (extremely) high-functioning exception, but we were talking about most kids.
And by the time they're 16 it doesn't matter if it's a parental filter or a government one, they can--and will--get around government-grade censorship too. But then, a 16-year-old mind can think of depravities with or without help of the Internet.
> I wish there were a better way besides censorship. Anyone have any ideas?
Sure! Education. Of the parents. Way before they're parents. It'll take a while before it pays off but when it does, oh boy, just look at all those bad statistics just evaporating!
If you really care about the children you'd put all the money spent on this and other bullshit into improving their education.
>Bullshit. I work at a kids' technology centre, teaching them computer and Internet stuff. This is in the Netherlands, ages 8-18. (no filters, but they are supervised and we can see what's on their monitors at all times)
The only stuff I have seen them accidentally stumble upon is the odd bikini image in Google Image Search.
I can't imagine any scenario how a four year old could accidentally stumble upon rape porn (which is the type that's supposedly psychologically damaging, right?). In particular because they can't type (they lack the motor skills).
(actually I'd question how four-year-olds "surf the web proficiently" at all, for any definition of "proficiently" and any reasonable definition of "the web". Public libraries are easier to use, they're not proficient at those either)
In a hypothetical thought experiment, give 1,000,000 four-year-olds a tablet with a browser opened on a child-friendly start page, and let them play for an hour. None of them will stumble upon rape porn. The "proficient" ones will find something fun and colourful to play with. Your biggest problem is the ones that don't, get stuck on something boring, and start crying. Good luck with that.
My 4yo stumbled on porn so this is my personal experience. A co-worker of mine says his 5yo that has also.
>Also not true. I put this to the test back when we still had these filters enabled. The two smartest kids (ages 11-12) couldn't do it, there's just too many hurdles, passwords, blocking, safeguards going on. It's horrible software, really cripples the machine (which is one of the reasons why we got rid of it, favouring simple supervision). It's quite hard to disable even if you are the administrator of these PCs. Super easy to set up, though. It's a real trapdoor.
I have to admit I believe that they might have had a better chance if they could read English natively. At age 11-12 Dutch kids can read English, but not fast enough to do proper research on the English language web (so the solution would be for English parents to install Chinese filters, they got the experience anyway :-P).
Kids ages 8 or lower couldn't do it no matter the language. There may be the odd (extremely) high-functioning exception, but we were talking about most kids.
And by the time they're 16 it doesn't matter if it's a parental filter or a government one, they can--and will--get around government-grade censorship too. But then, a 16-year-old mind can think of depravities with or without help of the Internet.
I personally got around more than one of them when I was 12 so again, this is my personal experience. I recently looked at these softwares and they are no more secure than they used to be. Add bootable live linux cd's and mobile devices and you can forget about this approach altogether.
>Sure! Education. Of the parents. Way before they're parents. It'll take a while before it pays off but when it does, oh boy, just look at all those bad statistics just evaporating!
If you really care about the children you'd put all the money spent on this and other bullshit into improving their education.
Parents can't be forced to be good parents or be educated in this way. They make more and more bad choices for themselves and their kids as the ages roll on.
Kids education is highly agendaized and liberally biased these days. It's a govt job, of course this would eventually happen.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (1)
As a UK citizen, I've been very disappointed by this debacle. I suspect that Cameron's heart was actually in the right place (protecting the children, etc) but he does not understand the significant number of unintended consequences that we are likely to see (and are already seeing).
I would suggest doing the following to make this workable long term:
- Centralise the list of sites categorised as obscene/pornographic/etc (why should it be different for different ISPs?)
- Make the list of these sites publicly accessible and searchable
- Ensure the list is maintained by a non-political and balanced panel (is this possible?)
- Implement a process for removal requests where a site is mis-classified and ensure that this appeal process is separate from the initial panel
- Implement KPIs on the effectiveness of the filter that take into account false positives + false negatives
- Remove any automatic categorisation based on keywords, this is too crude
- Make publicly accessible the guidelines for classification
Unfortunately, I don't expect the above to actually happen :(
I downvoted your comment because I could not disagree more with what you are saying. If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that this is a good idea, only with sub-par implementation.
But it's the idea that is bad; more than bad, it's despicable, it's an abomination.
The government should not be in charge of what my children can or cannot read in my own home; I'm in charge of that, thank you very much.
Besides, what raising kids teaches you is that in many ways, kids are little adults; they grow better and are more happy when one treats them with respect.
> The government should not be in charge of what my children can or cannot read in my own home; I'm in charge of that, thank you very much.
That's exactly what this filter is though. It's not implemented by the government, it's an opt-out filter implemented by your ISP. If you want to use their defaults then it's there and free, if you want to allow access to everything then control it yourself then fine.
I don't think this should exist, but you're hurting the fight against it by not even bothering to check the most basic of facts.
It seems to me as if HN has been taken over by deceptive shills supporting the surveillance state.
"Creeping normality refers to the way a major change can be accepted as the normal situation if it happens slowly, in unnoticed increments, when it would be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period. Examples would be a change in job responsibilities or a change in a medical condition.
Jared Diamond has invoked the concept (as well as that of landscape amnesia) in attempting to explain why in the course of long-term environmental degradation, Easter Island natives would, seemingly irrationally, chop down the last tree:
Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important.
By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm."
In that case it should've been an opt-in filter with possibility of white-listing any blacklisted host (using a password assigned to contract's owner).
> it's no good for the people asking for these filters.
Are anyone asking for these filters? If there was a lot of demand for them, you'd think the ISPs would have long ago offered equivalent filters as a service.
Exactly. ISPs can already offer this with a simple question/checkbox on the act of signing up for service, no technical knowledge needed.
If you're going to legislate for the stupid, you better completely forbid driving, drinking, nightclubs, free marriage, having children, knifes and gas sales etc etc. You see where that leads.
> This filter is aimed at people who are so bad at Internet that they cannot search for, buy, and install any of the existing parental filter software.
If they are so bad at using the Internet, his lack of knowledge and skill poses way more (severe) problems to the upbringing and education of their children than not being able to filter Internet porn. The latter is just a tiny aspect of the multitude of problems a child faces when their parents don't know how to use the Internet or a computer (finding a job, looking up a common medical problem, etc).
Spend the money for this filtering on providing (or improving) education and computer usage courses for these parents, and you'll solve this problem, as well as a myriad of other problems. Much bigger, and more pressing problems.
This is actually empowering people, in a dignified manner, that is appropriate for a free society.
It also has long-term benefits, instead of detriments. Crippling of the Internet and blocking the public's free access to knowledge is detrimental to prospering of society on all levels. Giving people the knowledge and the means to learn and educate themselves is extremely beneficial to the well-being of everyone.
If you'd really care about the children and their future, you'd approach the situation this way. The other way is just an inefficient band-aid to force a short-sighted morality on people, that will only lead to problems in the end.
I think you're skirting over the more complicated issues here, contained in the fact that UK citizens have to officially opt out on what society deems prudent.
> I think you're skirting over the more complicated issues here
There's no point talking to someone about the more complicated issues at play if they're shouting nonsense. Just as discussing the pros and cons of different programming languages is useless when you're talking to someone complaining that C is terrible and slow because it runs in the browser and they want access to pointers.
> IMHO he was spot on.
They were factually incorrect about the most basic aspects of the story. Their complaints are irrelevant because they're arguing against a fantasy. If they really believe what they say, they should be fine with the current state of affairs, a non-government controlled filter which the parents get to choose if they want or not.
I will readily admit I don't fully understand the whole thing, but can't find a reasonable and non-partisan explanation anywhere (I'm not British and not even from an English-speaking country).
What are those facts exactly? If it's just something implemented by ISPs, how is Cameron's government implied?
What I understand is that the British government made it compulsory for all ISPs in the UK to implement that filter, and make it "opt-out", and left it to ISPs to decide the lists of things to "filter".
If that's the case then yes, it is a abomination.
If ISPs are somehow free to make it opt-in or opt-out it's less worse but still not good.
(And of course I have no problem with parents wanting to filter things on their home network if they so choose).
> What are those facts exactly? If it's just something implemented by ISPs, how is Cameron's government implied?
Cameron has pushed the ISPs to make some form of parental filtering either default on, or what's called "active choice" (which is where it doesn't default to anything, you have to explicitly choose filtering or no filtering). This basically amounts to you getting two options when ordering for the first time, filter (and then options on what to filter) or no filter. There's an example of the signup screen for BT here:
This is not a legal requirement, nor is it compulsory. There are no new laws, that's very important to remember. Not all ISPs are implementing it, though the major ones are. A&A's stance is that your active choice is "if you want filtering by your ISP, don't buy our stuff".
There is no particular filtering tech they're required to use, each ISP may use their own settings/lists of sites/etc.
Filters are not effectively applied by the majority of parents who feel unmatched to the task of implementing safe/clean internet for their children.
These parents want more help doing so, they don't want to have to learn more/new technology. That is the perceived issue this was designed to resolve.
You may think it's an abomination, many think that children being able to access any manner of pornography by default is more abominable. And if, as I interpret what you say, you believe that children are better off having access to everything online in order to feel trusted and respected? Well I disagree pretty damned strongly. That's ok, but there isn't really a middle ground.
ISPs have been historically strong-armed into providing as close to Net Neutrality as possible. This obviously flies in the face of that, and there would be a disincentive to implementing such a service if not for the weight of the government behind them.
> And if, as I interpret what you say, you believe that children are better off having access to everything online in order to feel trusted and respected? Well I disagree pretty damned strongly.
You're entitled to your opinion regarding your own kids. You're not entitled to an opinion regarding my kids or how I raise them.
Well, you may have an opinion about my family, but don't expect me to respect it or even take the time to discuss it.
There are parents who feel so strongly about filtering their children's access to the internet they were willing to put pressure on politicians to strongarm ISPs into implementing opt-in filters, but aren't willing to click the big "parental controls" button that was already on their ISP's website? That sounds incredibly unlikely.
Not at all - I'm just trying to keep my comments balanced. By drawing attention to the insurmountable obstacles involved in achieving Cameron's stated goal, I would hope people can draw their own conclusions.
I personally think censorship is both unworkable + immoral, but I think the HN crowd can draw their own conclusions.
>The government should not be in charge of what my children can or cannot read in my own home; I'm in charge of that, thank you very much.
You are naive if you really think this has ever been the case.
First, stop your misdirection. this is not about reading, it is about viewing. If the only pornographic material that ever existed online was written material, this sort of thing would never have happened.
Second, try to give your young kids porno mags in your house and if work ever leaks out - lets see what happens.
The in my own home argument never applies when abuse or mistreatment is occurring. Showing your kids content that is inappropriate for their age (as deemed by a consensus of society) has always and will always land you in trouble. The internet never changed this nor should it have.
> Unfortunately, I don't expect the above to actually happen :(
The problem is that the incremental cost to filtering additional material is now virtually zero. I'm not sure how this would play out in Britain, but I know many countries where a conservative government would have a field day expanding this list. It is easy for a politician to make the case that something should be blocked (think of the children!), but I am guessing no politician would stake his personal capital on unblocking something even remotely controversial. Unfortunately, now Britain has set a precedent, and I could easily see other governments in Europe pointing to Britain in justifying similar firewalls.
Therefore, I have concluded that we have a binary choice, firewall or no firewall. To me, this is a simple decision, I would not entrust any committee at all with the management of what should be considered obscene.
There needs to be a mechanism added that would make removing an item from the filter as easy as adding an item to the filter. Some way of doing this without putting reputation at risk. Any ideas?
You're trying to solve, with extra policy, technology and ingenious ideas, something that wouldn't be a problem in the first place without the stupid law.
That's how some supporters of free speech and people against censorship are now on the defensive -- trying to imagine how to make a censorship system "better" instead of questioning it's legitimacy in the first place.
> trying to imagine how to make a censorship system "better" instead of questioning it's legitimacy in the first place
Next, apply this same reasoning to governments themselves.
For example, there's practically nothing we can do to make governments better. No, voting doesn't count. Obama vs Romney is a prime example - which of them was not going to be serving Wall Street's interests?
Writing to your representatives isn't working all that well either. SOPA? CISPA? NDAA? -Where are they now, and in what form?
>Next, apply this same reasoning to governments themselves.
For example, there's practically nothing we can do to make governments better.
Sure there is.
For one, fuck this gerrymandering BS, and use a totally representative of the general population voting system. Encourage the removal of a two-party system.
Second, make voting available to all, remove any obstactles like registration that are made to not let black/poor/etc people vote.
Third, disallow ANY donation over say $100 dollars by any individual entity. So a popular politician can get millions of dollars (by thousands of people), but a not popular cannot get the same amount of money by just one rich backer. And no personal financing of campaings over some small amount (say, $10,000), so that a rich candidate should have no headstart compared to a poor one.
Fourth, make cabinet members electable by the people. With the option to have them thrown out and replaced mid-term.
Fifth, have public referendums for all major new laws, like those SOPA, CISPA etc.
Those are just off of the top of my head. We can come up with much better. Heck, didn't even mention taking advantage of all the internet can offer with regards to e-voting, referendums, transparency, etc.
"Rep vs Dem" and "writing to your senator" is not even politics or democracy. It's a very narrowly defined experience of those, that they have convinced Americans that it's their only option.
You're describing various potential changes to how we're ruled that might make things better. But you see, the problem is that we're ruled at all, not that we're ruled in an unsatisfactory way. This is comparable to thinking that a specific instance of slavery could be "fixed" by getting the slave-master to promise he'll whip his slaves less.
Politicians, and the people in power behind the scenes in particular, aren't responsible to us for anything they decide to do. That's part of why we're all unhappy about the way we're "governed" (=ruled over). Sure, pot was legalized in one state, but meanwhile, the police state kept creeping up just like until now.
Do you think they don't know that people don't want to live in a police state? -Of course they do. But still, they just keep on enacting a police state. Why is that? Either they're somehow not aware of what they're doing, or they simply don't care about what people want (or don't). Now, which do you think is more likely?
> For example, there's practically nothing we can do to make governments better.
Sure there is.
> No, voting doesn't count.
Sure, voting on its own is of limited utility. Marketing better ideas of what government should be doing is the big thing that can be done to make it better. If there's not better ideas, or they aren't widespread enough to have a electorally-significant constituency that prioritizes them, voting isn't going to be able to effect much positive change.
> Marketing better ideas of what government should be doing is the big thing that can be done to make it better.
Also known as "writing to your representatives" or "political activism" etc. But it doesn't work, and it doesn't matter. Does a slave master care about what his slave wants? They simply don't give a fuck.
Do you think the people in power do not know that Americans don't want to be detained indefinitely without due process or declared "enemy combatants" and shipped off to Guantanamo to be tortured on a whim?
If they do know, why is the NDAA in effect and why has it been renewed?
Do you think the people in power do not know that Americans don't want to pay for untold billions of dollars' worth of Wall Street's gambling losses?
If they do know, why are big banks given all those bail-outs?
And so on. The list of offences is practically endless.
> If there's not better ideas, or they aren't widespread enough to have a electorally-significant constituency that prioritizes them, voting isn't going to be able to effect much positive change.
I can't help but wonder whether you're working for the government. But I'll wrap this up here.
>Do you think the people in power do not know that Americans don't want to pay for untold billions of dollars' worth of Wall Street's gambling losses? If they do know, why are big banks given all those bail-outs?
Those are the wrong questions (or the right questions but with a wrong premise).
That's about the current people in power and their interests and ties.
Not every system of voting/government (including some that are not in effect anywhere currently) has the same potential for abuse, or puts the same scum in power.
Do you think it really matters that a hypothetical future group of rulers might conceivably make decisions that actually benefit the people, when the current ones clearly don't?
Here we are, in 2014, and under these specific circumstances. Reality matters, hypotheticals don't.
This isn't the kind of problem that policy is good at solving. This is a cultural issue: so long as people in general are conservative about what they want their kids to see, removing things from the block list will carry a political penalty for the remover.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Bullshit. That phrase is down there with "what have you got to hide?". Its a disgusting attempt to hide reality, with diversionary language.
And how the hell is "stupidity" a defense? This man is the PM of a G whatever number it is now country. He had the best education could offer and has slimed his way to the top with all his family connections. Stupid? I dont think so.
Camoron does not give a toss about children. He's happy to see them suffer with all manner of cuts. So, these kids can't eat properly, cant get much of an education, have no future worth a jot, but thats all fine 'cos they will now find it a bit harder to find porn? Oh please.
As for your solution, what a nightmare. All that will do is begin a highly creeping policy with will end up censoring in a way not seen in any way before. Who the hell is anyone to tell me what information I am allowed beyond an official secret?
As a father of 6, I despise this "for the children" excuse for conservative, right wing control freaks who seek to control my thoughts. What happened to the old UK conservative notion of personal freedom and responsibility?
>"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (1)
Sorry, but that does not apply here. This is not the action of some stupid person -- this is legislation, compiled and overseen by several experts, advisors, offices and politicians. Furthermore, it follows a clear pattern of government interference and suppression of free speech.
>I suspect that Cameron's heart was actually in the right place
I very much doubt it. Would you say the same thing about Blair's lies and action?
It's not legislation yet, but it's official government policy, and with threats to make it into law if the government is not satisfied:
"Cameron gave the companies an October deadline to comply with the demands to filter the terms. He said that if the government is not satisfied with the progress it is prepared to take legislative action."
Except now we have a bunch of concrete evidence of just how stupid and flawed these filters are if the gov tries to force them into legislation. (For example, to force filters onto all ISPs.)
And a chorus of silence from the general population. The bad guys won here, no matter how upsetting it may be to the general HN crowd (at least, if I've read the mood correctly).
Censorship in the UK has a touch of 'gentleman's agreement' about it rather than 'by decree'.
If the British government want to ban something outright then they can issue a 'D-Notice' to the press. Notionally the 'D-Notice' system is 'advisory', i.e. a paper could publish if they wanted to.
The British government can also rely on self-censorship, disinformation, misinformation, spin, the art of burying bad news under a mountain of trivia and setting the news agenda.
So, on the surface there is the 'never assign to malice what can be attributed to incompetence' way of seeing it, you have to remember that these are politicians we are dealing with. They know what they are doing.
Sometimes malice tries to hide behind stupidity's back.
What you are suggesting (or quite in the spirit of that) is currently being implemented in Russia [1] as a so called Unified Register of Forbidden Websites. It is perceived by a lot of people in Russia as a dumbest initiative by government in the whole IT-regulation field and continues to produce suspicious, erroneous, as well as erratic and simply idiotic bans.
A lot of this is being done by the Open Rights Group tech volunteers. If anyone wants to help, there will be a meeting in the next few weeks to discuss strategy, & the mailing list is here https://lists.openrightsgroup.org/listinfo/tech-volunteers
"As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."
Completely disagree that this is just an "unintended consequence". This is exactly what David Cameron wants. To muddle the waters, and say they are blocking "obscene" stuff, when in fact they are blocking free speech sites and the like.
Porn filters are always abused (intentionally). Always. I can't stress this enough. You should've learned from the Australians who tried implementing this sort of filter before, too, and it ended up a miserable failure. Not only can you not implement such a system without a ton of "unintended consequences", but it's also very trivially abused, too, by those in power, and they could abuse it for many years before the public even realizes it.
Ensure the list is maintained by a non-political and
balanced panel (is this possible?)
When the Arts Council of Great Britain was formed (by Keynes in the 1940s) it was intentionally set up to have an arms-length relationship with the government, with the aim of independence to avoid the political use and censorship of art seen in Nazi Germany.
By all accounts it works better than other countries where the politicians change every few years and the funding objectives change with them.
Of course, the arts council has a natural constituency and source of board members as they can appoint anyone high profile from the arts community. I don't know what the equivalent would be for internet users.
IMHO the provisions in your list plus a few more would make the whole thing unobjectionable. My additions:
- It's opt-in. The ISPs are required to notify subscribers that it's available, with clear explanations.
- Allow parents to opt in or out of each of various categories
Such a scheme would accomplish the purported/advertised purposes, without harm to civil liberties and without interference in home life.
Unfortunately, these "how to fix it" ideas are misplaced. The fact that non-pornographic sites, obviously selected by political criteria, are deliberately packaged together with pornography, is not merely a bad implementation. In fact it is clear evidence that the real motive is not to protect children at all, but instead to protect state power, and disempower the public and keep them ignorant.
Given this evident intent and purpose, attempts at partial reform are pointless, and the right thing is say no to the would-be gradualist-censors and call out their plan for the creeping fascism that it is.
I suspect it is more a case of Cameron being lead by people who's hearts are not in the right place, but present it in a way that appears to be, so they can then reap the rewards of those 'unintended consequences' later.
If I was British, I would do anything I could to urge politicians and the public to dismantle this firewall. Our biggest problem, not just in Britain but in all countries, is that the public does not understand how serious this is at all.
> The category of "obscene content", for instance, which is blocked even on the lowest setting of BT's opt-in filtering system, covers "sites with information about illegal manipulation of electronic devices [and] distribution of software"
They have since changed the wording on that section to be less obviously evil. The "homosexual lifestyle" part is discrimination against a Protected Characteristic just as badly as if it said "black culture".
I have an ongoing complaint with BT as to whether the actual filters have changed. Nobody has yet said "no, it's secret"...
This already happens on Giff-Gaff (a mobile network) and is opt-out only. It's not uncommon to find out a security-related blog on the front page of HN is blocked by the filter, and sites for projects like Metasploit are also blocked.
All mobile networks have this censorship, but it was easy to opt out of, and the censorship is very sloppily implemented (for me, changing DNS servers or using any trivial proxy bypassed it before I opted out).
Censorship never works because it's so easy to turn it onto a game of whack-a-mole with next to no money and effort even aside from all the other flaws.
And it's also taught anyone who use TPB in the UK that the first thing to do if you can't get to a site is to search for proxies. Every extra hurdle makes people better at avoiding the next one...
I'd like to think that the uk web filter and the wider government surveillance narrative of the past few months is actually a ploy by our leaders to slowly educate the public in circumventing censorship and to stimulate the development of a free internet - like the Socratic method, but for culture.
Then it gets cloudy outside and I stop thinking that.
This is not censorship. It's an opt-in web content filter, operated by the largest ISPs, with no statutory backing. It's intended to encourage ISPs to provide optional parental controls for every subscriber, and no more.
Frankly, I think this is actually a pretty good outcome, if not deliberately so. It completely kills the arguments for actual Web censorship by eliminating the "think of the children" argument, which is probably the one which the media bang on about most, without imposing any legal requirements or mandatory filtering.
So there are plenty of options for users who don't want to be subject to the filter. Switch to another DNS provider, or don't opt in to the filtering, or even better – switch to one of the ISPs that don't offer this feature and never will.
Ironically, I think that these filters are going to encourage the preservation of Internet freedom in the UK in the long run.
It's technically only opt-out for new customers. And even for them I believe they are specifically asked "Would you like us to use our home safe system to block dangerous material for children blah blah blah". So it's really only a matter of saying "no thanks". I don't think they trick you into using it, or set you up without informing you that you have the right to turn it off.
Edit: I could be wrong but this was how it worked when I last signed up about 12 months ago. The law hadn't come into effect I don't think but my ISP was already offering filtering.
I visited a friend's house for NYE and he let me have his WiFi details, the parental filter option kicked in immediately even though he'd already chosen to not opt-in. Every new device that was added (and there were a few, as we arrived as a party staying for a long weekend) had to go through the same opt-out process.
Therefore, and with only this limited exposure to the system, I would guess that the preference is stored by MAC address per BT customer.
Unless my knowledge of network hardware is way off, MAC addresses are only relevant on a LAN - the ISP should know the router's MAC address, but not anything behind the router.
If the routers are cooperating with the censorship, they could be stored that way, but that seems like a lot of routers to patch (unless this feature was there from the start?)
If you visit the page for "Parental Controls" then right at the top is the picture of the Home Hub router and the "No software to setup"... because it's your connection that has the filter rather than local software:
From appearances this looks like a per-customer opt-opt, and then if opted-out (unfiltered ... well, still Cleanfeed) then it goes down to a per-device opt-out.
Most major UK isp's provide their own routers. While for most of them you should be able to use your own router, most people don't. Sky at least provides a router that is Sky branded and running Sky specific software - I would not be surprised if it does automatic software updates.
Most ISPs use configurations which expose connected devices and their identifying information to the ISP. There was a good thread on it yesterday but I don't have it saved.
The major ISPs in the US, in my experience have always allowed either opting for a straight modem instead of one with router/switch/firewall, or at least let the customer set bridge mode so it's passthru.
If this is ever not the case, it ought to be a big story and controversy, because the subscriber then could not get the connection entirely under his own control (and two firewalls and/or double NAT can cause problems).
That was the main thread in the discussion yesterday -- you're renting access to the provider's network and the endpoint connection hardware is a part of that. Even if you buy your own modem, the configuration is controlled by the ISP through the setup and the router (again, even if it's yours) will also be configured to allow some backdoor information for the ISP. I may be misremembering a bit of that.
Cameron's filter is opt our for new customers, but opt in for existing customers.
It's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of banned sites. And the filter is optional - selling adult magazines in modesty sleeves isn't censorship.
>It's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of banned sites.
First, it's still censorship.
Second, the government can start supply a list of banned sites at any time.
Third, the way telcos/ISPs work with governments (and how they have to work with them, in order to get certain contracts, favors, bandwidth etc) it's very easy for government agencies to supply lists (not only of "adult content" but also of "extremist content", whatever that is), under the table. Who will let you know that the sites ISP x blocks were given to them by government agencies?
>And the filter is optional - selling adult magazines in modesty sleeves isn't censorship.
Well, the very role of "modesty sleeves" IS censorship. It might be to censor those covers from childrens eyes, and we might agree with that, but it still is censorship.
>I genuinely don't understand how some companies voluntarily providing filters to their customers, that those customers can chose to use or not to use, can possibly be censorship.
1) That the companies provide it "voluntarily" doesn't matter at all.
For one, the government asked them to do it (and they want to have good relations with the government, it's good for business).
Second, the government threatened them that if it's not satisfied with their "voluntary" progress, it will make it into law.
Third, even if a single company, totally voluntarily, filters content, it's still censorship. Censorship is not just about totally blocking access to content: it's also about intimidating people that want to see certain content, which is what the need to go on record and opt-in does.
And that's just for the head of a household. Do you think their spouses or kids will have much say about if they want to opt-in or not themselves?
>It's fucking insulting to people living with real censorship.
Let's not pull the "there are people having it worse" defense. Shouldn't, say, blacks protest in the USA in the sixties because other blacks had it much tougher in South Africa?
What would actually be insulting to people living with real censorship (if they cared about us in the first place, which they don't much) is that we are ready to accept any form of censorship ourselves willingly.
I genuinely don't understand how some companies voluntarily providing filters to their customers, that those customers can chose to use or not to use, can possibly be censorship.
It's fucking insulting to people living with real censorship.
I've lived in countries with what seemed like real censorship to me.
I guess there were warehouses of people somewhere with black marker pens, it was interesting to see the way they took different approaches as individuals applying the rules. Adjacent Nirvana Nevermind albums stick in my mind; one with a perfect rectangle drawn over the naked baby, one with swimming trunks creatively drawn on.
There's nothing amusing about this, no creativity to find in the black. It stinks of blanket censorship on a very inhuman level to me. But maybe my idea of censorship still isn't real enough. How much further does it have to go before it's real, how close should we get to that?
This is the same argument that companies like to use when they shift blame onto a third-party contractor.
Back to my question though. Third party or not, how is this not censorship?
(Your example of modesty sleeves is a bad one: the filter doesn't apply only to "adult magazines" (porn sites, here) but to lots of other non-"adult" content too.)
> It's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of banned sites.
By that definition, the Chinese government isn't censoring internet access either - they leave compiling an actual list of banned sites to internet providers, which is why what's blocked varies depending on your provider.
Can you back this up? I've seen no evidence that it's opt-out; new users are presented with the choice before gaining Internet access, and existing users are presented with the choice at some point.
Outsourcing censorship to the private sector is an ongoing trend. See also the various Pirate Bay blockades.
Just because it's executed by private companies and the decision making process is somewhat obscured and decentralized, the net effect is the same.
In a way, it's quite similar to the way we're being drawn into wars which aren't "technically" wars, and intelligence gathering against terrorists of course isn't totalitarian spying on their own people.
They just tilt the paradigms a bit to avoid association with the evils of the past, whilst effectively pursuing the same old agenda.
There's no evidence (yet) of there being ANY Government list of sites which must be blocked. All ISPs are going their own way and basically letting the decisions be made by whatever technology partner they have engaged to back-end the filtering.
The only thing close to a UK-wide list of sites which MUST be blocked is the IWF/CEOP list, which exists specifically to deny access to images of child abuse and selected 1970s rock albums. (Search "Virgin Killer IWF") - That filtering is entirely separate and long-established in the UK, known as "Cleanfeed", and generally adopted by most major ISPs (but again not all.)
I don't believe this is the case, given that there is no legislation regarding this filter, meaning that there can't be a list of sites which must be blocked.
There's the issue of Cleanfeed and the IWF, but that's not a government thing.
Until government says that the optional filters are not enough and they push for stricter filters.
That's not an outlandish suggestion: mobile providers have had opt out filters for years now. Gov said it's not enough and pushing for wider coverage of the filters.
Yeah, opt-out filters in mobile data connections are fucked up. I had to give giffgaff my passport information (no, not "the passport number", but all the letters and numbers at the bottom. They were very cumbersome to type, I had to count characters and what not.) I can clearly see people losing interest halfway through and "letting it slide".
There is no such thing as "Cameron's filter" though. David Cameron is a politician whose party has a "think of the children" policy and has pledged to "get tough" and "crack down" on the availability of naughty material online.
The filtering "policy", if you can even call it that, is basically just to urge ISPs to implement content filters of some kind. Not mandatory - not all ISPs have chosen to play along, but the big ones have due to the risk of reputational damage if not. Customers of ISPs with such filtering get the choice either to allow or disallow the content that their ISP's chosen filtering solution thinks may be unacceptable. Some ISPs offer more comprehensive and flexible filters than others. E.g. Some will just block anything "not for kids and nice families", others have a wide range of categories and options - just like corporate filters and technologies like WebSense offer. (e.g. Only block porn, allow sexual health, block humour and social networking sites, allow file sharing, etc etc etc)
There is NO "Government" filter. There is only a POLICY. Just a policy - barely even that. Certainly no legislation or law. Just a statement of intent, that "we think people should do this" and that's all.
Fight censorship, absolutely. But be right about what you're fighting. Opponents arguing against this policy using outlandish and wrong claims just blow holes in the credibility of the "no" camp, which will just make it all the harder to argue the case if/when genuine, non-optional, state-backed censorship DOES come to tea.
Eh, we agree with each other. I've made similar arguments on HN in the past.
But this newer lever of filtering is called camerons filter because he's been heavily pushing it, and he has said that more needs to be done on top of that filtering.
Perhaps a solution to this is a very public campaign to opt out of these filters. This would achieve 2 goals:
1. Good plausible deniability excuse. If asked why one has opted out, or would like to opt out of the filter, one could always answer: "Because I saw comparing X and it has convinced me that this is the right thing to do to secure my rights to free speech..."
2. The more people opt out the more likely this project is going to be either a) abandoned or b) made mandatory rather then optional. If the latter happens, I am sure the people are going to take to the streets.
Technical solution to this would be to create a simple website that tests your Internet connection, tells you if it's possible filtered, and based on your ip, tells you who to contact to remove the filter.
I always thought of the UK as highly educated and less gullible. This is the entry point for a world as described by fellow UK citizen George Orwell. It's a shame that people's honest hopes & beliefs in conservative "leaders" seem to be what could turn this into 1984.
Anybody else think the hacker community will suffer a bit since it will be just that much difficult to learn hacking since the information is in some mysterious way related to pornography?
I keep getting blocked by T-Mobile's porn filter even while accessing certain posts on HN.
I'm referring to people just starting out that have no clue how to bypass the filter just yet. Not someone who already knows some stuff and it's quite easy for them to bypass it.
Say using SOCKS5 and SSH tunneling to a box not covered by this bs filter.
It's my company phone and it requires a credit card (which i don't have).
I only use debit cards which they don't accept.
It's a personal choice but i shouldn't have to be forced to own a credit card to unlock my fking porn filter.
Did I mention anything i see on HN most certainly doesn't qualify as porn?
Does qualify as hacking though if technical blogs on device vulnerabilities or back doors are considered hacking.
I would qualify it as security research but that just another loose term the ISPs can play with to ban important information on potentially insecure devices.
At present the UK has a variety of different filtering systems.
There's the IWF list, there are the mobile filters, There are the voluntary ISP filters and if they're not good enough there's the proposed mandatory filter. Edit {there are also the court ordered blocks of file sharing websites}
This is a serious problem because some of the filtering is too broad and catches stuff that shouldn't be filtered. There is often no way to get things taken off the list.
Sometimes things that should be filtered are not, and again there's no way for users to report that.
The IWF list claims to have a tight focus on images of child sexual abuse and other pornography that is illegal in the UK. But that means the list of sites and news groups and etc are not easily available. I'd hate to be a researcher testing those filters because it'd be easy for police to spin the collection of information into something sinister.
Some kind of standards process might be handy. That would list things the filters must do, should do, must not do, and should not do. It would cover how to report mistakes in filtering, the evidence needed for proof of age, etc. that would improve the filters but keep the government out of providing the filters.
Ideally politicians would know enough about technology to understand what people are telling them about filters - i find it hard to believe that politicians are that stupid.
EDIT: interesting to hear the US reaction to these optional filters. They're in place but I'm happily playing poker with money on my phone.
I'm very disappointed with UK people. They should've known better. They should've seen this coming from miles away. But they've been reprogrammed to think that surveillance, and to a degree even censorship is "okay" if it's done for "good". They should've known that censorship even for "good" always, and I mean always, leads to censorship for evil, too. It leads to politicians censoring anything they don't like. And the worst part about censorship, is that you may not even find out what has been censored, and what you weren't allowed to know.
David Cameron is nothing short of a dictator. It's just that he doesn't have all the dictatorial powers he would like yet. But he seems to be working hard to get them, and this porn filter, the charging of friends of journalists with terrorism, and other such things are only the beginning. Throw Cameron David and his party out of office, and go to the streets and demand the banning of the porn filters at the next elections. Otherwise, expect much worse to come over the next years.
This is just bad. First of all even though the filter is optional - most large scale ISP's are rolling them out as an opt-out option. I bet a lot of people will not even find out there is such a filter.
Secondly, with such ambiguous categories like "obscene" and "extremist" content that have proven to block sites that contain information on LGTB issues and helplines for abuse people get trapped in filter bubbles. People are treated like mindless zombies and it's a self fulfilling prophecy because without alternative opinions or a wide and diverse specter of information people do indeed become mindless zombies.
Finally, this is the most lazy and stupid solution to the problem - does the state not want it's people to be able/learn to deal with various information that's out there (because remember - if you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there) and to think critically? Or is this a vile and through-through attempt at gagging the internet?
Bonus food for thought: remember how Tories recently deleted their internet archives... ?
The basic notion of empowering corporate and political entities to judge for a people what information is and is not "acceptable" is scary to me, and I would imagine, to most Americans. (I expand on this here: http://blocvox.com/americans/93Mz6FfGIku-CcH8JHndIg )
To my knowledge, the word "acceptable" is never used in any pertinent legal code, but it is used by MPs and other officials, and therefore represents the cultural understanding of the law. So one must then ask, what is culturally made of people who are interested in material that is not "acceptable"?
I wonder if my repulsion to this is a cultural thing, Americans having more governmental skepticism and having a tradition of individualism, versus Britons having more faith in (to put it nicely) the potential of government to foster order and maintain cultural heritage.
This will lead to a blossoming of linguistic creativity. People are going to grow a new sexual slang that evolves arms race pace in order to get around this.
If this happens a person will need to be able to trace the evolution of the slang/code words for whatever they're looking into in order to trace a topic back throughout its history.
All this happens now in a lot of ways and in a lot of different subjects, but I think it's going to become much more important.
Judging from natural progression that usually follows such decisions made by any government following is highly likely to happen:
The blacklist will expand, not shrink, becoming tight with political agenda.
Pressure to stay opted in will increase.
Process to opt out will become more complicated in order to keep people from opting out.
Final blow - blacklist will br enforced by default and opting out removed.
I'll give you a clue which party implemented this legislation.
It's always been about censorship of lifestyles the Tory party and the Daily Mail don't approve of in an attempt to return Britain to some golden age that never happened.
It's censorship and social control, plain and simple.
There could be an unintended side effect of this mess. People will get so fucked off with Cameron and Co., it could lead to a dramatic increase in (black) hacking activity in Britain. I've already bought a black hat in preparation (similar to the one that is sported by Odd Job from Golfinger).
In fact, it is not the start. Its a finish. Once the system is in place all you need is to add URLs to block. And it is already in place and seems to work fine. Except it is still avoidable via proxies.
Someone is just using the "slippery slope" argument, which may be true but this article wasn't that convincing to me. The internet for most people is only 10-15 years old but somehow life is not possible without it?
"The internet is a lifeline for young LGBT people looking for information and support – and parents are now able to stop them finding that support at the click of a mouse."
How does the filter work in Britain? Can you go to a cafe with your mobile device and use different settings?
Can someone explain how the filter actually works. Google has a filter, for example. Is it a bunch of checkboxes or do you actually talk with someone on the phone?
Look, I am against censorship of the internet - but a line has to be drawn somewhere. The internet is ubiquitous. Four year old kids can surf the web proficiently these days and easily get to hardcore porn by accident. That is by design of pornography marketers.
The porn industry blew it. They shamelessly market to kids. anything to get them interested/hooked. Do you think that they would get away with putting porno mags on the lower shelves of toy isles?
There are laws to keep tobacco companies from marketing to kids. There are a slew of laws which prevent marketing all sorts of things to kids. How is the gist of this any different.
I agree that this should have been done in a different way. Each ISP potentially having a different blacklist is ridiculous. The organization and execution could have been a lot better. An exemption list should be standard across ISP's rather than only offered by a few and not shared (exemption list where say an actual sex ed site with an approved/compliant password protection and validation system for people to use to sign up for it is Not Blocked by default if it's owner registers it)
BTW, those of you who say that parents could install filters locally to block this content are out of touch. These filters need constant updating or the fuzzy logic is very poor. Today, most kids today are more computer savvy than their parents. They easily get around these filters, anyway what about smart phones and tablets? What about friends houses? Unfiltered internet devices are ubiquitous. Putting a filter on your home PC would be like putting a band-aid on a severed limb to stop the bleeding.
I wish there were a better way besides censorship. Anyone have any ideas?
Oh give me a f*cking break. Attempting to regulate the distribution of pornography on the internet is no different than attempting to regulate the distribution of pornography via other media - magazines, video, television etc.
We've had rules and regs and laws for decades on pornography, these were/are no more an attempt at "censorship" than this attempt is.
It may be badly implemented, it may be impractical, it may have issues, but lets stop all this 1984 conspiracy bullshit.
The Guardian is just churning out more bollox tailored to the world view of it's largely young, largely left-wing, largely public sector readership who believe David Cameron and the Tory party is some sort of devil incarnate.
Before the Snowden leaks anyone who said something about government mass surveillance was some tin-foil hat wearing crack pot. This is no longer true, this is no longer a conspiracy theory it is mainstream. If you still sincerely believe that the government is doing this 'for the children' then you are incredibly naive.
> We've had rules and regs and laws for decades on pornography, these were/are no more an attempt at "censorship" than this attempt is.
Except that these rules explicitly targeted only that: the actual distribution of pornography.
This one, on the other hand, is aimed at something a lot broader (protecting children) and can block access not only to unauthorized distribution of pornography, but also block access to information about topics like abortion, sex education, LGBT and many others. It's a God-given tool to a conservative government.
A lot of the things we take for granted now are actually far newer than we could imagine. Much of the outrage over the anti-abortion law in Spain was grounded in information that the younger generation can readily access over the Internet, but was far harder to obtain thirty or fourty years ago. Not just pro- and con- opinions from wannabe bloggers, but solid medical and physiological data, life experiences of women who had to go through it and philosophical debates.
The younger generation is a lot less meek than their parents and grandparents were, and a lot more politically unwieldy, precisely because of the ease with which they can obtain the knowledge they need in order to make a decision. Not an objective one, mind you; the Internet isn't an oracle of impartial information. But a decision people are comfortable with. It's hard not to bring up the 1984 mantra on this one.
Edit: it's also worth pointing out something else, which I learned back when they didn't filter porn where I live -- they filtered every single thing the government didn't like (and the list was long) -- and they didn't do it on the Internet (because there was no internet back then).
The Internet is big. It's so mind-bogglingly big that I am astounded at it, every single day, and every time I think I probably know enough of it to be considered a well-traveled Internaut, something comes up and slaps me back to my senses.
Most underage porn viewers will simply stroll to the well-known websites. Xvideos, Redtube, whatever. There are websites where everyone knows they're under heavy scrutiny from the law. Pedophilia, animal abuse and all that have very short lifespans there. There's a lot of porn, but it's well regulated, and generally scam-free.
By definition, a website filter will always be behind on the websites it filters. Because (doh!) a website first has to be live and to have visitors before it is filtered. Block the high-profile websites, and what happens?
Everyone -- including the underage viewers who don't have the psychological maturity required to deal with a lot of the things people film these days -- flocks to the "underground". Those, on the other hand, aren't regulated. There's every sort of crap to be found, from malware to child pornography, especially when augmented by the anonymity of tools like Tor (not that the tools are bad; they're not, but that's not true of their every use). The idea that they won't get to those websites is just laughable. Never underestimate the intrepid spirit of a horny teenager.
> but also block access to information about topics like abortion, sex education, LGBT and many others
oh yeah right, the government actually want to block these topics!! Of course they don't. Britain has one of the worst teenage pregnancy rates in Europe and successive govs have spent a huge amount of time and money trying to correct. As I said, if these resources are blocked it's bad implementation, not deliberate, and I am sure will be rectified in due course.
> oh yeah right, the government actually want to block these topics!! Of course they don't. Britain has one of the worst teenage pregnancy rates in Europe and successive govs have spent a huge amount of time and money trying to correct.
Yes, but depending on the side of the political fence they're on, they have done so in vastly different manners. Hardline conservatives would see the solution to that in measures like banning abortion, minimizing social assistance and various other things which, in their view, strengthen the traditional family and scare or marginalize those members of the society that don't adhere to it.
This is, of course, the more extreme case; most conservative MPs aren't that hardline, but restricting access to those topics has a remarkable quenching effect on the social unrest of an increasingly cosmopolite Britain. Remember that it's not just websites about how to have anal sex with men that fall under the "LGBT" tag -- it's also websites, Twitter and Facebook pages of LGBT communities or activists. The last five years or so have shown that the Internet is a most effective rallying medium; the response times against abusive legislation has dramatically decreased as of lately.
It's also worth noting that the definitions are broad enough that they can be excuses for pretty much anything. A reporter has gained possession of documents that attest the corruption of someone big? Cool -- find an article about abortion or pornography and poof! their website is conveniently blocked. Before calling me paranoid, do remember that checks and balances are a part of every democracy. The Habeas Corpus Act is a fair example of that. It requires that the courts examine the legality of a prisoner's detention, in case abusive detention occurs, either as a mistake or as a political or economical mechanism (which it actually was, several times, before the law was adopted, and the precedents indirectly contributed to its adoption). What exactly is there to guard against abusive filtering?
oh yeah right, the government actually want to block these topics!! Of course they don't.
Paleoconservative and other strict ideologies like the one that espouses the benefits of country-wide Internet censorship like this typically don't hold favorable positions to the aforementioned topics.
Having a problem doesn't mean one necessarily wants a proper solution for it. Rather, as history has shown us many times, governments frequently take the easy way out either by denying it and skewing information, covering it up or implementing a faulty solution so as to appear that they're trying, when in fact it often worsens the situation (case in point: abstinence-only sex education).
This article is right on the right track. This is an attempt to control the discussion, the definition of normal and public morality. It's is not a response to an actual problem. It's old fashioned conservatism and paternalism.
The bottom line here is choice. Parents everywhere have easy solutions for voluntary porn filters. You can have them set up by your the people you buy your internet from or the people that sell you your computer. It's cheap or free and it's available. I do not buy the "it's too complicated" argument. This is parents responsibility and it just ins't that hard to meet that responsibility.