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UK Government Crowd-Sourcing Censorship

Posted by samzenpus on from the tell-us-everything dept.

angry tapir writes "The UK public can report 'terrorism-related' Web sites to authorities for removal from the Internet under a new program launched by the British government. The program is a way in which the government is seeking to enforce the Terrorism Acts of 2000 and 2006. These laws make it illegal to have or to share information intended to be useful to terrorists, and ban glorifying terrorism or urging people to commit terrorist acts."

17 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Me! Me! by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hereby report "slashdot.org".

  2. "Removal from the internet"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good luck with that.

    No, seriously, all the best to those making a grand attempt to remove something from the internet without just causing it to be spread around even more. I imagine you'll have many fun years of failure.

    1. Re:"Removal from the internet"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I tipped them off about 4chan.org and their constant hate speech. Unfortunately, the process seems anonymous, so I'm now the number one suspect.

    2. Re:"Removal from the internet"? by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wonder how many things are removed from the Internet that we simply don't get to hear about...

      Sure, there are high-profile cases in which it backfires and causes the offending material to be spread far and wide, but I'd be willing to bet that that happens in a tiny minority of the cases, and that in the rest, almost no-one not directly involved ever even knows.

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
    3. Re:"Removal from the internet"? by VShael · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wonder how many things are removed from the Internet that we simply don't get to hear about...

      Good question. There are websites, such as The Memory Hole, which specifically try to maintain records of things which perhaps the powerful controlling interests of mainstream media would like to scrub from history. Like Benazir Bhutto's confirmation that Bin Laden was dead. Or the Pentagon admitting that it targeted civilian water supplies in Iraq. Or Israel claiming to reprimand two top army officers for ordering the Jan. 15 attack on the UN compound in Gaza last year that used white phosphorus shells, but actually not disciplining them at all. That sort of thing, of which there is plenty. Project Censored does a yearly round up of the most important stories ignored by the mainstream media.

      There are the things which disappear because no one gives a crap. (My old Geocities website)

  3. What is considered "terrorism-related"? by thijsh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Scaring large groups of the population by threatening to report them for a terrorism-related fate of certain doom could in itself be considered an act of terrorism... Maybe not by the standards of the 2000 and 2006 laws, but surely by the future 2012 law am I required to proactively report your attempted terrorism on "slashdot.org".

    1. Re:What is considered "terrorism-related"? by LingNoi · · Score: 4, Funny

      By that time everyone would be on IPv6 and their site won't work.. https://reporting.direct.gov.uk/bin/url_checker.php?url=ipv6.google.com

    2. Re:What is considered "terrorism-related"? by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, but you're potentially advocating committing a crime under the Computer Misuse Act by encouraging people to launch a DDoS attack against the site...

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
  4. Catch 22 by netpixie · · Score: 5, Funny

    Citizen: "Ossifer, I've looked at this website and it is terism"
    Plod: "So you admit to looking at terism? Go directly to Belmarsh. Do not pass go"

  5. I'd like to report New Labour's web site by VShael · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because they scare the sh*t out of me, and I'm pretty sure they're doing it to influence my vote.

  6. Wrong URL. by onion2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sure that should be http://ministry_of_love.direct.gov.uk/ .

    (If you've not read Orwell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Love )

    --
    http://twitter.com/onion2k
  7. Report your friends, family and neighbours... by mayhem79 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What worries me is the term: 'intended to be useful to terrorists'; this is so broad a definition, in theory anything could be deemed as useful to terrorist. For example, how to fly a plane, how to drive a car, self defense techniques. It also concerns me what implications to freedoms this may have on non-violent polictical protest sites i.e. any site that may critise a governments policy. I am a UK citizen and am becoming increasingly worried as my freedoms are being slowly litigated for my 'own good' to combat terrorism. Reminds me of a joke on Red Dwarf: 'Report your friends, family and neighbours... wonderful prizes to be won.'

  8. One day they'll have to confront it head on by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These laws make it illegal to have or to share information intended to be useful to terrorists, and ban glorifying terrorism or urging people to commit terrorist acts.

    I would hazard to guess based on the media reports that Britain's radical Muslim problem is only topped by the Netherlands (where prominent critics of Islam have been routinely murdered or credibly threatened with murder). There was even a survey done of the British Muslim population that said that about 40% of the young Muslims in the country want to live under Sharia.

    The British government is going to have to start rounding up the radical clerics and deporting them. Hell, banish them from the United Kingdom altogether. The problem is, they know they'll inflame a lot of anti-British sentiment if they do that. Then they'll have to either start cracking skulls left and right or start en masse rounding up and deporting the Muslims who go to those mosques, deport them and put a marker on them that permanently marks them as a ne'erdoweller who has no business ever setting foot on British soil again.

    The British National Party is getting support now precisely because the common man in Britain can see what the elites can't: you can't have two nations living inside the same country, especially when one nation is composed of hostile immigrants who won't adapt. The British government has two choices: either solve it now by harshly cutting out any part of the Muslim population that looks even remotely likely it sympathizes with Islamists, or face the prospect that in 20 years as demographics shift, a group like the BNP will stage a coup and take matters into its own hands militarily.

    The political correctness of the British government is not doing genuine moderate Muslims any good because it's creating an environment where the extremists can thrive under "diversity" and the native population can be slowly radicalized against the entire immigrant population starting from the working class up (IIRC, the British working class were the primary support behind the BNP when it recently won a small, but worrisome amount of the vote for the first time).

    1. Re:One day they'll have to confront it head on by FourthAge · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a very difficult problem, and the response of the three major parties is "Denial". All three say "Immigration and Islamisation are not a problem. We will not even consider them as issues. P.S. You are a racist." I see you have already been called a Nazi for posting this.

      Which is ironic, because your post is a warning about the Nazis in their BNP form. The National Socialists recognise and acknowledge the issues that the main parties do not. They are capitalising on the refusal of the main parties to talk about the issues.

      I think it is obvious now that the multiculturalism policy of the UK government has been a complete disaster. It's created ghettos. Entire cities like Birmingham and Bradford are divided by ethnic groupings. It's encouraged fear and hatred between the groups, fueling terrorism. It's exactly what should never have happened.

      Immigrants should have been welcomed into Britain provided that they were willing to merge into the existing culture and society, as many immigrants are. But instead, they were encouraged to be separate from the existing societies. Ghettos were created, and any concern about the ghettoisation process was dismissed by the UK Establishment as "racism", even though the concerns were well-founded. And it's not just the UK. The same problems exist in France for the same reason.

      It is time to abandon cultural relativism, the idea that each culture - each approach to life - is just as valid as any other. It is simply nonsense. Some cultures are inherently better than others. Absolute comparisons are possible and useful.

      The UK Establishment tells us that such comparisons are "racist" - but why? What is racist about comparing one society and another? Racism is discrimination based on ethnic grouping, not discrimination based on social structure or cultural values.

      It is our duty to discriminate against the values and culture of dark age theocracies. We must not allow the civilisation we have built to be undermined by Sharia and the Middle Eastern dictatorships. The only way to do that is to stick up for what we have, and that means we must all be able to acknowledge that our ways are better.

      --
      The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
  9. Sorted by robably · · Score: 5, Interesting

    These laws make it illegal to have or to share information intended to be useful to terrorists

    Check

    ban glorifying terrorism

    Check

    or urging people to commit terrorist acts.

    and check.

  10. In all seriousness... by Grundlefleck · · Score: 4, Funny
    FTFA:

    Content deemed illegal by the U.K. includes videos of beheadings, messages that encourage racial or terrorist violence and chat forums revolving around hate crimes, according to information on Direct.co.uk.

    (emphasis mine)

    YouTube comments, anyone?

    --
    I accept I know nothing. Insulting my ignorance is wasted on me.
  11. It is Government mandated by mdwh2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Government have repeatedly told the ISPs that if they don't do it "voluntarily", they'll pass a law forcing them to do it. And from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7904607.stm , Home Office Minister Alan Campbell said: "Currently in the UK, 95% of consumer broadband connections are covered by blocking. The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%."

    Yes, they're so far "only" at 95%, but that just means they're not all the way there yet. It is Government mandated though.

    It's the worst of both worlds. We're being forced into it by the Government, but because it's handled by a non-Government entity, there's no oversight or right of appeal, and the Government just say "Oh it's nothing to do with us, the ISPs 'chose' to do this".