Report Highlights 10 Sites Unfairly Blocked By UK Mobile Internet Censorship

Mark.JUK writes "The Open Rights Group (ORG), which works to raise awareness of digital rights and civil liberties issues, has published a new report that examines the impact of internet censorship on UK mobile networks and lists an example of 10 legitimate websites that often get unfairly blocked (PDF) by adult content filters (over-blocking). The study is important because similar measures could soon be forced upon fixed-line broadband ISP subscribers by the UK government. Some of the allegedly unfair blocks include censorship of the 'Tor' system, a privacy tool used by activists and campaigners across the globe, and the website of French 'digital rights' advocacy group 'La Quadrature du Net.'"

Comments

ORG?

[tocsy]

Am I the only one that was hoping their website was www.org.org?

Britain leads the way yet again...

[dryriver]

Having the highest density of CCTV cameras anywhere in the world (London) isn't enough. Toying with biometrics (face-recognition specifically) at every opportunity isn't enough.Trying to pass national data retention laws that would log and store every little thing any UK person does on the internet in a data center for 24 months isn't enough. Trying to extradite Julian Assange to the United States on nebulous charges isn't enough. Putting anti-aircraft missiles (2012 Olympics) on the rooftops of London housing estates isn't enough. Putting a battleship on the river Thames (also 2012 Olympics) isn't enough. ---------- Now add to that list UK mobile/cellular phone operators randomly censoring websites you can('t) access on smartphones. --------- All of this and more makes me glad at times that I don't live in the UK. ------ What's wrong with the UK these days anyways? I used to think that Britain was the "cradle of democracy" with its televised Parliament debates, quality newspapers, speaker's corner and such. -------- What happend to you, UK? Why is all this negative stuff happening in the UK?

Re:Britain leads the way yet again...

[IamTheRealMike]

The idea that the UK is some kind of surveillance state is a myth propagated on Slashdot by people who don't know better. If I recall correctly the "highest density of CCTV" meme comes from an article in the Daily Mail (aka Daily Fail). They counted all CCTV cameras, including all private cameras, in one very small and specific part of London. Despite the fact that these cameras are subject to the data protection act and typically not even connected to a communications network, they then extrapolated that small area of London to the entirety of the UK and asserted everyone was "being watched all the time", which is about as accurate as saying your email is always being read (by automatic spam filters).

Internet censorship proposals keep getting floated every few years by "save the children" types in the UK, whereas the idea is taboo in the USA. That's good for America. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean there's no censorship in the states. US residents and citizens are subject to a comprehensive and effective system of financial censorship instead. For example, when politicians there decided that internet poker was bad, they decided to censor online poker sites. Rather than do it via DNS or IP blocking they commanded banks and payment processors to block financial transaction to those sites instead. The effect was the same - Americans cannot use these sites.

The financial censorship system operates the same as you would expect from an online censorship system. There is a large blocklist of questionable accuracy - it includes companies and people who do not exist and performs matching by name only. There is no right to appeal and no evidence is required to be added to the list. It is subject to political manipulation as we saw with the WikiLeaks blockade. It requires pervasive monitoring, implemented via government access to banks financial records. Foreign financial transfers are also available to the US government via the "Terrorist Finance Tracking Program", which basically dumps every wire transfer, credit card transaction etc into a giant database that is queried hundreds of times per day - essentially the equivalent of deep packet inspection.

Of course, like any form of censorship, ways around the system are also censored. Whilst attempting to evade online censorship is typically not treated as a serious crime even in places like China, attempting to evade US financial blocklists is considered to be money laundering and can result in imprisonment for up to 20 years. In fact, being used by third parties as a way to evade this type of censorship is also money laundering even if you're simply an unaware middleman! The original formulation of these laws had a "mens rea" requirement, ie, to be guilty you had to actually intend to break the law and have a guilty mind. Virtually all money laundering cases fell because of this, so Congress simply removed the requirement.

Finally, because censorship systems have to be global to be truly effective, the USA has been persistently "harmonizing" this system onto the rest of the world since its inception. It gets tiresome to read posts from Americans trashing the UK for being some kind of censorship crazy surveillance state when the depressing reality is the reverse.

Re:Britain leads the way yet again...

[Raenex]

Rather than do it via DNS or IP blocking they commanded banks and payment processors to block financial transaction to those sites instead.

Later on, they seized domains too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/16/feds_online_poker/

False positives are a surprise?

[redelm]

Any sort of selection or filtration system is going to have TWO very different forms of error: false negatives and false positives. Missed badguys and caught goodguys. Most of the testing is done to reduce false negatives, so that you're not embarrassed by a glaring badguy getting though. As a result, lots of false positives are generated because they are less unacceptable. Do not expect rationality from censors -- that is not their objective.

The real customer's objective is to minimize the total cost both of false negatives and false positives. It doesn't help until people realise the [often high] cost of a false positive -- a large sales order that was missed & lost by a spam filter.

Some areas like police, do not have any notion of a false positive -- "It's all good -- they needed a warning".

Re:Some of the most popular sites...

[houghi]

I read about Sodom and Gomorrah in The Bible.

On a more serious note, when I was 15, I wanted to see a movie, but for that you needed to be 16, so I bought the book instead.

Years later I saw the movie and I must tell you that the book was much more, uh, adult then the movie. So kids, if you want to get around censorship on the Internets, go to the library. Shocking amount of books with adult content available.

Re:Some of the most popular sites...

[Galestar]

Manage Blocked Sites: https://www.google.ca/reviews/t
I've had Experts Exchange blocked for years now.

Re:Tor...

[betterunixthanunix]

What Tor is is a network allowing for file exchange which makes it impossible or very difficult to tell the identity of the file sharers

Who told you that? Tor is an anonymity system for TCP/IP, which is primarily used for HTTP. It is frequently used to defeat national firewalls in countries like China and the UK; it is no surprise that these countries try to block it. It is embarrassing that a member of the free world is resorting to the tactics that we see out of China, but that is sort of the point of TFA.

The 10 blocked sites

[Anonymous Coward]

1. ‘Tor’ (www.torproject.org). We established that the primary website of this privacy tool (meaning the HTTP version of the Tor Project website, rather than connections to the Tor network) was blocked on at least Vodafone, O2 and Three in January.

  2. La Quadrature du Net (www.laquadrature.net/en). The website of this French ‘digital rights’ advocacy group was reported blocked on Orange’s ‘Safeguard’ system on 2nd February. La 13 Quadrature du Net has become one of the focal points for European civil society’s political engagement with an important international treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
  The block was removed shortly after we publicised the blocking.

    3. Shelfappeal.com was reported blocked on 15th February 2012 on Orange. This is a blog that features items that can be placed on a shelf.

    4. Septicisle.info was reported on 7th February, and was blocked on Vodafone, Orange, and T-Mobile. This is a personal blog featuring political opinion pieces. It does not contain any adult content.

    5. The Vault Bar (www.thevaultbar.co.uk) in London. We established that the home page of this bar was blocked on Vodafone, Orange, and T-Mobile on 6th February.

    6. St Margarets Community Website (www.stmgrts.org.uk), is a community information site ‘created by a group of local residents of St Margarets, Middlesex.’ Their ‘mission is simple - help foster a stronger community identity.’ We established it was blocked on Orange and T-Mobile on 8th March.

    7. eHow.com is an advice and educational site. It provides tutorials on a wide range of everyday issues, from ‘navigating after-school care’ to ‘small space garden tips’. We established it was blocked on Orange on 9th March.

    8. Biased-BBC (www.biased-bbc.blogspot.co.uk) is a site that challenges the BBC’s impartiality. We established it was blocked on
O2 and T-Mobile on 5th March. It is classified as a ‘hate site’ by O2’s URL checker

    9. Yomaraugusto.com is the home page of a graphic designer, offering a portfolio of his art and design work. This was found to be
blocked on Three and Orange on 6th February.

    10. Exquisitetweets.com allows users to create one-page threads to save or share from conversations on Twitter. This site was
blocked on Vodafone, Orange, and T-Mobile on 15th February.

(Posting anon to avoid karma-whoring)

Re:The 10 blocked sites

[discord5]

Shelfappeal.com was reported blocked on 15th February 2012 on Orange. This is a blog that features items that can be placed on a shelf.

While at first this may seem innocuous, the truth behind this website is that it is a vipers nest of Al Qaeda militants, making money off of selling miniatures of the British flag burning and pictures of the queen with a bullseye painted on her. The proceeds of these shelf-items then go to an Al Qaeda trainingcamp hidden deep in the wastelands of Sussex where they are trained in operating micro-UAVs (preferably capable of resting on a shelf while not in use) aimed at miniature Big Bens (also preferably shelf sized).

Yes, laugh now, but you'll rue the day when someone told you about this vile plot to collapse British society as we know it and it actually happens.

Exquisitetweets.com

And nothing of value was lost.

Re:Some of the most popular sites...

[Zero__Kelvin]

He didn't specify at what age he read the story, but from your post I think we can reasonably conclude that you still believe that The Cat in the Hat is a true story.