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Leaked Letter Shows UK ISPs and Government At War Over Default Filters
An anonymous reader writes, quoting the BBC: "A letter sent to the UK's four leading ISPs from the government has made them very cross indeed. The letter comes from the Department for Education but it sets out a list of demands from Downing Street, with the stated aim of allowing the prime minister to make an announcement shortly. The companies are asked, among other things, for a commitment to fund an 'awareness campaign' for parents. They're not particularly happy about promising cash for what the letter concedes is an 'unknown campaign' but it's the next item on the menu which is the source of most of their anger."
That next item is making and marketing Internet censorship filters as "default-on" rather than "active choice": "'It sounds like a good idea until you think it through,' said one industry source. 'There are three reasons why it doesn't work. First it may be illegal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers. Then there's the fact that no filter is perfect, and finally kids are smart enough to find their way around them.'" From the sound of it, it might just be newspeak vs newspeak. The entire letter is included in the article.
Rude Britannia!
Britannia on the net!
Children might still find bad things yet!
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
That brings back memories. 14 or 15 years ago, when I was still living in the dial up age, my father decided to implement a 1 hour/day limit on my Internet access (AOL parental controls, I believe.) he worked until the evening so I could do whatever I wanted without supervision for the 4 or 5 hours between the end of school and him returning home. One of the very first things I did was search for a free dial up ISP that displayed ads, and I found one! All was great for a month or so until the phone bill for $900 came in... Turned out it was dialing some ISP in the Ukraine... Oops!
This is what you got when a nation-wide filtering system is created in the first place. Not satisfied with merely blocking the pedo-porn they went after the pirates and now they want to go after everything not whitelisted. It only gets worse from here guys, kill the national filter system dead before it grows, kill it before it grows.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Let me guess: all good and dandy until some parents will sue the ISP for "having their kids accidentally exposed by a hole the filter" (as in "letting the kid find a way to bypass the filter and try get some money from the ISP").
Then the idea of "default-on filter" will be busted for good (or, alternatively, the Internet as seen by UK will look like a puny list of white listed sites, all the others censored).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The country that wants to block porn by default?
Sounds like a dream country for this guy!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It'll start out banning porn, or so they'll claim, but pretty soon things like Wikileaks will be included on the blacklist with the general public never noticing.
No automatic filter works better than actual parenting...
First it may be illegal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers. Then there's the fact that no filter is perfect, and finally kids are smart enough to find their way around them.
Of these three points only the first one is of any substance, potentially. The rest is just a re-hash of the old 'we don't want it because it isn't perfect' - ie. just empty rhetorics. Nothing is perfect, we already knew that; the real question is, does it make things better - and how much? And what do we understand by better?
As far as I can see, this scheme essentially means that there will be some filter and you teach people how to turn it off if they want to. That makes a lot of sense to me - many (probably most) people don't want to get into contact with what they see as filth, and they don't want to have to learn something they find difficult. And this scheme doesn't affect the freedom of those who want it - they just have to make a bit more of an effort. What's not to like about it?
In fact, it's quite an interesting read, and an insight into 'modern' politico thinking...
Behind the politeness...
"ask for some specific"
" I would be grateful if you could consider this request as a matter of urgency
They're actually 'asking' (i.e. trying to direct) the ISPs specific actions...
"Will the other three ISPs consider making a commitment to adopting this approach [experimental browser intercept] - even before it has been trialled"
Who in their right mind would commit to that? What if it totally bombs; they're still going to implement it?
"The prime minister expects customers to be required to prove their age/identity before any changes to the filters are made"
Why? Is he an internet security expert now?
"The prime minister would like to be able to announce a collective financial commitment from industry to fund this campaign."
Yeah, I bet he would. "Look voters, I screwed some of your cash out of your ISPs in the name of the children!"
"The prime minister believes that there is much more that we can all do to improve how we communicate the current position on parental internet controls and that there is a need for a simplified message to reassure parents and the public more generally. Without changing what you will be offering (ie active-choice +), the prime minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions are "default-on" as people will have to make a choice not to have the filters (by unticking the box). "
Pure spin. The whole thing reeks of micromanagement and backroom arm-twisting.
Plus of course, if the entire thing goes wrong, the Gov gets to blame the ISPs!
So set up a TLD for kids.uk already!
Then set up a registrar that instead of putting domains in .uk, put them in .kids.uk, and be done with it.
Force all "kid safe" browsers to ALWAYS appeand .kids.uk, and police the subdelegation registrar.
Damn problem solved already, with dumbass legislation that mandates industry to develop technology that it's impossible to make foolproof -- and which most technologists capable of implementing it, think is a stupid idea that shouldn't be implemented in the first place (like DRM, which is why DRM is never implemented in a foolproof way).
To make it clear, anyone who believes this filter will stop at porn or to protect children is on cloud 7.
This push is not about that. It is to apply a filter to content that the government can not control. The filter is here the goal. And any means is just to get popular opinion to support it.
Once this filter is in place the scope will increase incrementally, with every new legislation round. Copyright holders will push to include sites like ThePirateBay, never mind TPB is listing a lot of legal torrents; it will include radio streams that somehow slipped paying the PPL;
Later of course the filter will include "terrorists sites". And more later any critics and articles on the government politics and programs, that are deemed crucial "national security", like the Snowden leaks.
The press like the Guardian have rights like freedom of the press. But the Internet does not have any rights. There is no right to Twitter or to Blog.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Of course they're at war. This is one of the most incompetent and scientifically illiterate governments in living memory. It's packed full of lunatic ideologues like Ian Duncan Smith and Teresa May who sideline professional academic advice time and time again in favour of their own prejudices stupidity and ignorance. I just wish their misguided, harmful and plain unworkable policies wouldn't wreck this countries social and political fabric for generations to come. It would be funny if the human cost wasn't so high
And you know what? In spite of this, the main opposition is still unable to differentiate itself as a better alternative than this shower of charlatans, bigots and liars.
I despair at this country. I really do.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity