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UK Gov. Wants IWF List To Cover 100% of UK Broadband
wild_quinine writes "The UK government stated in 2006 that they wished to see 100% of UK consumer broadband ISPs' connections covered by blocking, which includes images of child abuse. 95% of ISPs have complied, but children's charities are calling for firmer action by the government as the last 5% cite costs and concerns over the effectiveness of the system. According to Home Office Minister Alan Campbell, 'The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%.' With a lack of transparency in the IWF list, firm government involvement, and blocking that only 'includes' (but may not be limited to) images of child abuse, it looks like the writing is on the wall for unfiltered, uncensored Internet connections in the UK."
I am all for enforcement of laws, when they are reasonable. But things like this stink of nanny state. Child abuse is horrible, we can all agree, but pretending like it doesn't exist is sad, and ineffective.
Sadly this is another knee jerk reaction to a serious problem in society. Just by making access to the images difficult, child abuse will not go away. The British government should look at the roots of anti-social behaviour in society and put in place programmes of education to ensure that the next generation are not abusers.
This kind of popluist resonse fomented by the gutter press has never been effective and never will.
I for one won't miss Chinese or UK pron.
That won't help much if they ever start cutting you off for mere suspicion of wrong doing. Proxies are great for "fooling" the guy at the other end. Don't know how well it will protect you from the guy in the middle, or close to your end of the connection.
What?
I agree the call for 100% is idiotic but I don't see it being a government forced initiative only that they'd like to see it.
The only people demanding 100% right now are the childrens charities, but I already knew they were the pinnacle of the "think of the children" croud hence why I'd never donate to them. In cases like this they ultimately do more harm than good because they simply just cover up the fact a problem still exists.
It's currently only the childrnes charities that are the problem here, the government, despite me hating them dearly for their repeated idiocy have not yet demanded 100% coverage, only said they'd like to see that. I'd like to see the existence of god disproved once and for all but that doesn't mean it's going to happen does it?
> meanwhile, they did it in Italy, and nobody said a thing.
Duh! They've already started blocking outgoing content which protests it!
I wish they wouldn't refer to it as child abuse. While sexually/mentally abusing children is child abuse, child abuse often times focuses on the physical abuse (at leaset in my area of the country in the US). That said, this law is probably targeted at filtering pornographic images of children who were abused. There (is?) should be a better term to describe what they're trying to filter.
That said, I don't think the governments of individual countries should censor the internet. By all means, censor public access, but as far as I am concerned, my connection to "the internet" is (or should be) a "private tunnel" that means no interference (from anyone, including the ISP!)
More to the point, the legislation just states that ISPs must have a filtering system in place. My ISP does exactly that, and builds their own filters based on user reports. So far, no problems accessing Wikipedia (or indeed anything else).
[FUCK BETA]
This "voluntary" and "recommended system" doesn't seem to be very voluntary all of a sudden. Why doesn't this surprise me?
Australia isn't too far behind...
Maybe I'm missing something here. I've always wondered why there was a rush to block images of child abuse like this. As long as these sites are up, there is still a possibility for authorities to identify the guilty parties through the websites.
If every ISP blocks 100%, then not even cops can get an unfiltered connection. That means that they have stopped trying to catch the child pornographers, they just want to pretend they don't exist.
These are real children being abused. Their abusers are handing the police evidence. Why the rush to ignore it? Why not just monitor them? Keep track of who visits www.kiddieporn.com or whatever.
Are they really serious about cutting out access to sites promoting or depicting child abuse? If so, I look forward to them blocking all sites which aid or abet or encourage the religious indoctrination of children. They're all malevolent, and far more prevalent than any other form of abuse.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Can let me know who the 5% that arent signed up are so I can transfer over to them? If i wanted censored internet, Id move to China.
Child pornography? That's a shit reason censor.
It also happens to be the one reason people aren't able to argue with.
Where did all these child abusers come from?
1. They were already there, the internet changed nothing.
2. They were created by the internet. They spawned from caves just like a MMORPG.
3. The internet magically turns people into child abusers just like that ActiveX control you didn't want.
4. The whole thing was blown out of proportion by the media creating a moral panic.
I've lived in several countries that have extensive censorship of all media, and that is the most scary thing on earth. It breeds a level of ignorance and double-think that just blows your mind. Censorship has the power to destroy your nation, however powerful it is today.
Watch this space. As America and the UK among others become enemies of the internet, strangled by copyright laws run amok, and kids banned from playing with their chemistry sets, other countries will usurp us all.
Maybe I should say that anybody on your side of the proxy can see what you're doing?
OK -:)
My point is really that with the Internet trust is implicit (and necessary), but it is also as dubious as putting your money in a bank account.
You must trust your ISP, your proxy, your Web browser, your operating system, etc and so on. There are too many avenues for failure. Though the complexity of systems does help to provide security through obscurity, assuming that a consumer has an advantage over an adversary.
It's all pretty much an illusion though. Any dedicated and persistent attack will have an increasing probability of success over time.
When they came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
The crucial difference here is that nobody will admit to viewing kiddy pr0n, but the government has already set its sights on extreme and violent porn [although to be fair to the IWF, they apparently want nothing to do filtering this].
IANA trained psychologist but, it seems to me that the whole idea of making the viewing/downloading of CP illegal, will only have the opposite effect of whats intended (assuming whats intended is a reduction of child sex abuse), because pedophiles dont decide what they are attracted to anymore than anyone else.. Considering the stigma attached to even the suggestion of being a pedophile, I think its quite reasonable to assume that given the choice, a pedophile wouldnt be one if they could help it. Given that, I would much rather they got their kicks jerking off to CP, than taking it out on a child because they have no other avenue.
Sex is a very powerful motivator for anyone (just look at the advertising industry for proof of that) and to assume that someone will just control their urges for the rest of their lives without any way to 'release' (for want of a better word) them seems very dangerous and ignorant of human (and animal) behaviour. I dont know what the solution is to child sex abuse, except maybe compulsory therapy for abusers as well as the abused (although, by then the damage is already done), but Im pretty sure this isnt it.
Some ISPs will never comply. Super Awesome for the win!
http://superawesomebroadband.com/
I'll get me coat
Super Awesome Broadband
My position is that, given that we're not going to be able to avoid the basic problem, legislation is actually not necessarily a bad thing. It would plave the IWF on a legislative footing, which would alter the governance and the contestability in potentially a good way. But people I have immense respect who know a lot more about this stuff disagree, and think the upside (judicial oversight) would not be worth the downside (ministers making positions).
Sadly, it seems that a huge part of the e-crime agenda is being devoted to child porn, which is only one past of the issue and one where the end users aren't the victims. Fraud and other issues are being subsumed.
What's the point though? The act of making the "child porn" in the first place is already illegal. Hunting down porn sites to block is basically an exercise in futility, and kinda assumes that it's impossible for people to use 'covert channels' for such things.
If you depend on Google for your searches, you don't have access to the whole internet
As soon as you use those words, you have lost your argument in the eyes of the general public. Studies have shown that most illegal images of children do not involve sexual abuse. Data from Garda (linked above) shows that the most serious image possessed in 44% of "child pornography" cases in Ireland (whose child pornography laws mirror those of the UK) decpited no sexual activity whatsoever.
Pictures of naked children, which presumably comprise the majority of blocked images, should not be called "child abuse images". That term is just newspeak designed to justify the vast powers of censorship and funding which are handed to the IWF.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
"it's more "Any kind of filtering is bad"
thin end of the wedge type of thing. First it's Child porn, once that's gone we'll move on to the next most horrific thing, until eventually all we have left are things we don't consider bad at the moment."
Actually, they're already starting to use child pornography as a wedge tactic for wider censorship of the internet. A research paper for the Coroners and Justice Bill mentioned that a clause criminalising foreign ISPs who violate UK virtual child porn laws "could potentially provide a test bed for the future development of wider internet regulation."
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop what you are doing. You and others.
Every time you or anyone else adds pandering disclaimers like this you are undermining your own argument and are undeniably contributing to the problem of censorship in our society.
Why do you think the "Think of the Children" brigade have gotten so far? How do you think that these people have been so successful at slowly introducing censorship to the Internet, and into society in general? It is because they rely on fear and intimidation to produce capitulations such as your disclaimer. Without fear, they are powerless in the face of common sense.
No reasonable person need declare their revulsion. Yet everyone does so, because they are afraid of a pointing finger. Our society has been intimidated into censorship, and no one dares speak against it.
Your statement even went so far as to seek greater consensus "we can all agree", adding to the cycle of intimidation and fear. This is where giving in has gotten us, and there is no end in sight to the injustices that will be heaped on us all "In The Name Of The Children". No end. These people will not stop, ever.
Please do not capitulate in this way. There is no need to, despite how fearful you may be.
May the Maths Be with you!
Why does this sound so familiar?
Oh, wait, yeah.
Here in Finland we have DNS-blocking of whole domains by "voluntary" ISPs for the use of blocking child pornography.
( Voluntary in the sense that the actual argument goes, if they won't participate we'll make it mandatory. )
A) This just hides the problem from people's minds without doing anything to prevent the actual child abuse from happening. It also takes resources away from this work.
B) The time to go around the block is the time it takes to type (for example) OpenDNS DNS numbers.
C) The list is secret so there's no way of knowing what is being blocked...
D) ...Unless of course you do a comparison of blocked DNS listing to a one not blocked. Essentially the police is just posting a list where to find the stuff.
E) Mistakes happen and stuff ends up on the list that should not be there. We are supposed to trust that this happens really seldom and is corrected.
F) We already had laws that covered everything needed to prosecute people guilty of child abuse. There was no need for this.
G) As an added bonus the law violates the Finnish Constitution.
H) As was predicted, there has been suggestions of blocking net poker sites, sites that violate copyright...
So, UK, welcome to the club. My English is much better than my Chinese.
Indeed - the recent Wikipedia / Virgin Killer example shows that their definition is not just about abuse. Another example would be to note that the law now covers images up to 18, even though the age of consent is 16, so anything above that is entirely legal to do.
The IWF like to talk about "child abuse images", but their actual list covers anything which is potentially an "indecent" image of somebody under 18.
I'm particularly displeased at the BBC's bias on this article - they reproduce the spin that this is just about images of child abuse, and don't give any opposing point of view (apart from a brief statement from Zen Internet - good on them). No mention of the issues with Wikipedia (it only appears in "See also", which is presumably an automated list).
They also mention the NSPCC and the Children's Charities Coalition on Internet Safety, implying that two organisations are lobbying for this - but the NSPCC are in fact a member of the latter group!
You can complain about bias: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
I think you are missing the point, daveime. I don't think the intent is to stop those that actually want to watch child pornography. That simply isn't going to happen. There are a zillion ways to bypass any filters the government could force on ISPs. I think the idea is to stop kids surfing around the net late at night and casually browsing onto really disturbing images. Look on youtube at the reaction videos to 2girls1cup, something even I refuse to watch, most of them are teenage kids.
Where the UK govt. miss the point by several thousand miles is to hand blanket censorship for an entire country over to some shadowy unaccountable group that decides what is and isn't an abusive image. They've only just started and shown they get things horribly wrong. There is potential for spiteful abuse, imposing arbitrary moralistic values, and blackmail.
The obvious solution to me is:
* a government recommended list, published online
* an arbitration board so people that end up on the list (in their opinion) wrongly can appeal to be removed
* forcing the ISPs to add a PICS rating to the http headers of sites on the list
* release a downloadable local proxy, and firefox plugin, that requires a user definably PIN number to access restricted content
* allow ISPs to charge a monthly fee to proxy with PIN number server-side, much like they do for VOD.
The benefits are as follows:
* government gets to look reasonable - with both transparency and recourse available.
* the ISPs get a fixed cost target to implement, and aren't chasing a moving target. The watch list is downloadable on a daily basis, and the PICs system is nearly 14 years old with reference implementations available.
* adults have the option of viewing whatever they want, possibly with a "Are you sure?" click-through supplied by the ISP
* parents have the option to secure their children from viewing unwanted images
* parents have the easier option of doing from the ISP side, but the ISPs can actually cover their costs for doing it. For those that cry loudly about protecting their children, isn't that worth £1.50 per month?
I agree with your fundamental premise though, the idea is to give greater control to the parent and not take it away from everybody.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France