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ISPs Warn Europe — Website Blocks Don't Work
Mark.JUK writes "The European Internet Services Providers Association has today warned the European Union that plans aimed at tackling online child sexual abuse content, which propose to force ISPs into adopting mandatory website blocking (censorship) technology, will not work because such methods are easy to circumvent; an ISP might cover your eyes but anybody can still take the blindfold off. Instead the EuroISPA has called for members of Parliament to consider permanently removing Internet-based child sexual abuse content at source, although this also runs into problems when the servers are based outside of your jurisdiction."
No one proposes banning pawn shops and second hand shops just because these are used by the criminal element to fence stolen goods. Legitimate businesses or structures are sadly used to illicit ends. You deal with crimes as they happen, not try all manner of questionable laws that infringe on civil liberties in the vain hope that somehow you can prevent crimes from happening.
The only thing filtering will do is catch the more inept child porn producers and consumers. The smart ones have a command of the technical aspects of the networks they swap their foul evil on. The best we can hope to do with child porn, like any criminal act, is create savvy enough investigators to catch and prosecute them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If I point a gun to your head and tell you that I will kill you if you don't jump over the moon, that still doesn't mean you will jump over the moon. Bypassing any blocks by an ISP can easily be bypassed.
Using DNS to assign bad sites with fake IPs? Use a different DNS server, any DNS server outside your country. Takes about 1 minute to setup in Windows, or install your own DNS server on your desktop, which will take about 10 minutes. Blocking IP addresses wholesale? Use a proxy server. Slightly slower, but bypasses any block by the ISP in seconds. Deep packet inspection? Use https. The point is that anyone that even remotely wants to bypass the "security" setup by the ISP can, with very little effort. If you don't remove the source (and all mirrors) of content, it is virtually impossible to prevent access to it on the net. Even China can't, and heaven knows, they are trying.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore, Internet Pioneer
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permanently removing internet based child sexual abuse content at source, although this also runs into problems when the servers are based outside of your jurisdiction."
No, it doesn't. This is the argument the proponents of filters are putting forward all the time. They've smartened up since we sunk their ship last, and are now claiming their goal is to "only block where we can not delete".
Well, that would be nowhere because for a year now we've been asking them the same question, and they still haven't provided an answer: "Where in the world would that be?" It turns out that child pornography is illegal in every country on earth that has any Internet infrastructure worth mentioning. An especially naive and dumb politician here in Germany threw out a few country names when the debate started, and was quickly proven wrong in addition to receiving angry comments from those countries ambassadors. Then she tried a stupid trick, claiming that in some countries (again, names were named) there was no law against child pornography. She was technically correct - the muslim countries she had mentioned consider all pornography to illegal, punishable by death, so there is no specific law mentioning children.
This whole campaign has been lies and bullshit on the side of the proponents from the start. I have yet to hear one argument from their side that is not a lie. However, they aren't dumb. They know how to play the public. They tested the waters and found them hotter than they had anticipated. But their current campaign is lot more "reasonable". In a debate, they stand a great chance of being able to convince Joe Public that they have a moderate POV that takes all eventualities into account and only wants to reserve the most drastic measure for the exceptional cases, but those freedom hippies they are the extremists and refuse to consider the possibility of evil, evil people abusing children by the thousands.
So, remember, even the "block what we can not delete" is not a balanced position, it is a strawman. The only reason that the police here in Germany does not currently contact providers outside of Germany with a simple notice "hey, you are hosting child pornography, did you know that?" - which according to tests done by an NGO last year leads to a 95% takedown rate within a week, and a 100% takedown rate within a month - is that they are not allowed to do so. Not allowed by whom? Take a guess. Yes, that is right, the same people that need their "inability" to act so they can push for "block where we can not delete".
They are lying bastards, and children are the least thing they worry about.
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Here's the problem I see -- it's not that blocking sites is infeasible and ineffective, and it's not that an ISP can't do it anyways, because they can. The problem I see is that when/if an ISP does implement a censor, no matter how ineffective, it will be abused and legitimate content will be blocked for legitimate users. Child porn will still be out there, and the people who participate in that industry will at best be inconvenienced -- it's the legitimate content that accidentally or maliciously gets caught in the crossfire that concerns me. The potential for good approaches zero, and the possible harm is non-negligable. This is why it shouldn't be implemented.