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No Porn From Public WiFi Hotspots In the UK Proposed
whoever57 writes "Prime Minister David Cameron is proposing that porn should not be available through WiFi hotspots in public areas. Exactly how this will be implemented has not been identified, even to the extent of whether the ISP or the hotspot operator should implement the blocking. From the article: '
The Prime Minister said: “We are promoting good, clean, WiFi in local cafes and elsewhere to make sure that people have confidence in public WiFi systems so that they are not going to see things they shouldn’t.”
His intervention comes after a long-running campaign from children’s charities to ensure a blanket ban on unacceptable sites on public WiFi networks.'"
Who exactly is paying/or promoting this? This seems to be a shady manoeuvre to put out free competitions to ISP.
In general, you shouldn't try to solve social problems with technical solutions.
And in this case, it's not even possible unless you also forbid encryped sessions, which would mean people can't access their VPNs. And nobody in his right mind would surf from a public hotspot without a VPN or at least an SSL/TLS encrpyted session.
And as if that's not enough proof for you: a determined person can still use steganography to embed an encrypted stream inside a regular port 80 HTTP session. Therefore you cannot prevent people from accessing porn over public wifi. All you can do is make it more inconvenient for everyone to browse securely.
Conclusion: You can't stop it, so don't even try.
There is really no other way he could claim something as stupid as this otherwise. Just your average clueless control-freak politician. I do not even find the strength to despise him, this has gotten far, far too common.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tried to censor the internet for their UK subscribers: Blocking of breast cancer awareness sites, Penistone council websites, and so on.
His intervention comes after a long-running campaign from children’s charities to ensure a blanket ban on unacceptable sites on public WiFi networks.
Because when I donate money to a children's charity, that's exactly what I'm hoping the money will be spent on. Think of all the children saved by these campaigns.
That's where the whole notion of sex/porn being "dirty" and "bad" comes from. Churches and mental illness.
Imagine they'd try the same for other basic human things like... for instance.. eating.
- I bet you like the smell of a freshly cooked meal... Perv!
- Of course food sites and cooking shows should be forbidden!
- A glass of milk being shown on national television? Moogate!!! Chaos!!
- You eat by yourself? Ewww, you perv! Don't you know you will go blind?
- You had dinner in public? Off to jail with you!
- A milk-drinking toddler saw you having lunch? Die you pedo!
This is the fucked-up world religious terrorism wants to enforce. I, for one, proclaim: NOT. WITH. ME!
Sex is not a sin.
Oppression is.
Most Europeans only know about the US what is spoon-fed by their government-friendly media and their state-run education systems. And those governments love to tell their people how evil the US is because it allows them to advance their own extreme left and extreme right agendas. That's not a new phenomenon: monarchs and dictators have been telling Europeans how lucky they are not to be in America for nearly 200 years (just as millions of Europeans were voting with their feet).
Here's a quote from a famous German "politician":
It's scary to think that a large fraction of German politicians think and say pretty much the same thing today.
If you think of the children that much, you are a pedo.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You will only ever see what you search for on a WiFi system. Forcing ISP's and/or individual establishments that provide free internet access to monitor and block specific traffic is tantamount to authoritarian governance. I see absolutely no difference between this concept and how Egypt or Israel or Iran are manipulating and controlling the information that their citizens have access to. Honestly, please explain the difference? if any?
This is about accessing material over public wi fi. I may be unusual here, but I prefer to view porn in the comfort of my own home, and I certainly don't want to watch people jizzing into their coffee in Starbucks.
And even if the UK government banned porn entirely (which is of course not technically possible without completely abandoning internet access) it still wouldn't amount to censorship like in Iran or China.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So you're saying that Bush's quote is wrong?
You're saying that Europeans are not using negotiation and consensus to resolve their differences? That beyond Europe's borders, the world is not violent and full of totalitarian governments? Really, I'm trying to understand what part of Bush's quote you find objectionable.
(The first part of your message just demonstrates your complete ignorance. "Billions of Europeans"? Corporate-run education systems?)
As apparent from 50+ years of foreign policy fail, I'd say it is about time to abandon the meme that everything can be solved with guns and enough boots on the ground. It didn't work in Korea, It didn't work in Vietnam, it didn't work in Iraq the first time, it didn't work in Iraq the second time, it didn't work in Afghanistan (not even for the Soviets). How is that not sinking in yet? How fucking stupid do you have to be to not get that?
... whatever
Someone in the UK aught to add that they want religious material blocked as well. After all if you're blocking "offensive" content you better make sure you block everything people find "offensive". You should block all "offensive" content or none of it. I personally find exposing children to religion is harmful, more so than pornography.
I don't really agree with that in modern day Europe. The media companies don't toe the government line more than you'd expect in any country with a free press. There are often concerns about the closeness of ties between politicians and media but I think that's pretty common in Western countries. Moreover, in the UK the government itself makes a big deal of how important our relationship with the US is. Besides that, I'd argue that you're underestimating the reach of both the Internet and US culture generally. The Internet makes it easy to get access to a wide range of news sources, at least for those who are motivated to do it.
Probably more importantly, I'd guess that easily half the popular TV and most of the movies in Europe (and probably much of the world) comes from the US - there's a lot of information about US culture, self-image, even simple turns of phrase that continuously percolates into everyone's minds from this alone. People continually get (arguably idealised, since this is Hollywood) images of what the US stands for, what it's like to be American, etc. In terms of the vast entertainment industry, I'd argue that Europeans are routinely shown the same image of the US that Americans themselves receive.
And, as the other poster pointed out, there is a difference between a public hotspot and being in a public place.
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Ban the "hacker tool" linux :-(
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Third world countries are generally third world countries because they are prone to uncivilized and backwards politics and agendas.
If you don't keep an eye on them, they not only will tend to strong arm tactics towards their people, but externalize the source of the problems to first world countries leading to aggression. Like North Korea did little more than a week ago, like Libya once was fond of doing, etc.
Enough guns and boots can overthrow any regime, but that doesn't solve the problem. Answering aggression with more aggression is going to cause even more aggression (insurgents for instance). If you really want to solve the problem in a third world country, not only do you have to dispose of the ruling class/despot, you also have to educate the majority so that the country as a whole does not relapse.
You cannot expect swift application of bullets to be able to deliver the same kind of social evolution that has taken hundreds of years for the western world. This is not some kind of recipe that you can just point to and say "hey look, that's how society is supposed to work, now implement it". Education, information and negotiation is key. Once people understand why change needs to happen, you can apply guns at will. The people might even help you.
... whatever
Seriously, this belongs in the "clueless idiots want to control something they have no right to control..." basket.
Sometimes I think that the world has a chance of evolving in the right direction when insightful or intelligent laws are passed, but for each of those moments, I seem to have at least a dozen facepalm or forehead-table moments.
If a cafe owner finds that many of his/her customers are turning away to other cafes because there are too many folks holding coffee in one hand and their other hand is under the table - shouldn't it be up to them to install some sort of blocklist/filtering software? Why the fuck does it have to be a government mandated, nay regulated, nay again, state policed offence to NOT have this set up?
I am all for libertarianism, but with a touch of ethics and morals thrown in - I want people to be able to do whatever they want, and sincerly hopethat they will do the right thing - but if they choose to have effectively a red-light-district cafe, then they should be able to - hopefully ina red light district part of town. There MUST be some point where common sense kicks in with capitalism surely. You have a cafe, in the center of three primary schools, politely ask folks watching porn to move on as they are disrupting your normal business of soccer moms. Oh, you don't want a dingey establishment in the first place, okay, ask anyone watching risque content to move on if anyone notices. And if no-one does, who the fuck is it harming?
I really want to beat some common sense into idiot meddling politicians trying to force their public policies down the throats of others with a really big hard, solid, heavy stick - with nails in the end of it. There is a difference between making laws that prohibit unsafe buildings, or fire hazzards or man-eating-star-wars-type-desert-creatures and trying to ban anything that the politician doesn't want to admit to or show that he/her is doing in public from being an offence.
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