Slashdot Mirror
British Porn-Censoring MP Has Website Defaced With Porn
twoheadedboy writes "Claire Perry MP, who has been the main driver of the UK government's plans for default blocking of pornography, has had her website plastered in porn by hackers. But the story only just begins there. Notable blogger Guido Fawkes, otherwise known as Paul Staines, posted on the matter, only to later be accused of sponsoring the hacking himself. During some back and forth over Twitter, it appeared Perry was 'confused,' as she said Fawkes had posted a link to the defaced page, when he had only shown a screenshot of the site. Given the backlash against the government's plans to censor porn and its technical fallacies, the event could be particularly embarrassing for Perry. She is not commenting on the matter, whilst Staines has threatened to sue unless Perry offers a retraction of her claim he had anything to do with the hack."
The tweet: 'Apologies to anyone affected by the hacking of my website sponsored by @GuidoFawkes – proves so clearly what we are dealing with.' Someone needs a lesson about hypertext.
...haven't a fucking clue.
Film at 11.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I was just commenting to a Scottish friend of mine who is a firm supporter of anti-pornography pushes that no matter how good the intentions may be of the politicians who back this kind of thing, inevitably they show their technological incompetence by believing such efforts will not either fall so short as to be worthless or overreach to the point where they have to be disabled to perform even day-to-day tasks.
Ms. Perry has just demonstrated this same technical illiteracy to an extent I couldn't have hoped yesterday to be able to argue as a point without being accused of hyperbole.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
It is clear that Guido Fawkes sponsored the construction of a new, illicit series of tubes to connect the hackers to Claire's tubes. Remember, it's not a big truck we're dealing with here.
Soooo..
What exactly is the problem this legislation is trying to solve? I have seen all sorts of weird stuff on the internet in my years (plus had a few friends that *loved* to send me really wacky things) and yet, somehow, I ended up not being some sort of crazy deviant. But wait - One in a hundred thousand million will be! We must protect the children by censoring half of the internet for the entire nation's population!
Hacking is bad. Censoring the internet for the entire population of your country? Much, much, MUCH worse.
Reminding ourselves that they don't know what they're messing with may make us feel better, but I worry it makes threats like these seem less dangerous. They still can break things we hold dear. Moreso if they have no idea what they're doing. It's like telling yourself a kid doesn't know how to use your laptop: that's the problem, they can throw it on the floor and piss on it. Furthermore, the fact that they are ignorant isn't what's troubling. If they knew EXACTLY what they were doing with CISPA or ACTA, that doesn't really make much difference.
So lets not bother laughing about how they think of the internet as a series of tubes. The internet is not a god, it may route around censorship and damage, but that doesn't mean it's all going to be okay. And how dare they fucking think they have the right to censor anyway. Ignorance doesn't excuse it. You brits ought to bring back the stocks for politicians who try to trample on your rights. Throw porn and rotten tomatoes in their actual faces. And broken glass.
Claire Perrys comments may be libellous, as the UK has a more extensive libel law than the US. Fun, games and large legal fees may be forthcoming.....
A recent example can be found on Twitter remarks by Sally Bercow, which cost her lots of legal fees and a substantial settlement. The irony of Claire Perry getting whipped in court over a freedom of speech issue would cause a massive outbreak of schadenfreude across the UK.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
If they knew EXACTLY what they were doing with CISPA or ACTA
Politicians generally can't find their ass with both hands but they don't need to; you can be quite sure that their handlers know exactly what's going on.
"I do not mind that Claire Perry wants to protect children, and I give the benefit of the doubt to her on this and believe that she is sincere. However, it is grossly offensive for her to refuse to listen to technological experts over the very real technical and legal reasons for not proceeding with the ISP level filter. In short, Not only will it NOT work, it CANNOT work.
Kids will still see porn. The proposed filter levels are ridiculously easy to by-pass and fail to stop porn on social networks or direct messages or SMS media.
Additional harm will occure when legitimate safe non-porn sites will be blocked wrongly. When they tried this in Ireland, the rape crisis website was blocked. When sussex council fitted filters to their own networks, they ended up blocking their own website because Sussex contains the word âoesexâ.
Only a complete IT idiot would proceed with her plans. And in her response to mixing up a screenshot with a link? This only enforces the impression that she is utterly clueless and a rank embarrasment and a complete idiot.
Do not let Claire Perry near a computer. She is a classic example of a little knowlege being a very dangerous thing.
I do not think it possible to remain polite and be able to also express how incomprehensively idiotic, brainless and ignorant Claire Perry is on this issue.
I do not want to don a âoetin-foil hatâ over this but surely she cannot be so utterly thick as to ignore all the best evidence of the industry experts on this to pursue an utterly unworkable solution? Or are they going to go to ISP level filtering of porn to allow filtering and tracking and eventual control of all web-traffic?
Are they going to be restricting the self harm sites? then the anerexic sites, the climate change denial sites, anti-immigration sites? alternative news sites? and so on?
Are they going to be using this irrational fear of consensual adult porn, as an excuse to be tracking all our surfing and building a threat profile on each of us to use against us?
That is the only plausible reason for such a draconian measure, which ignores industry expert advice."
The problem is that the blind is leading the stupid. Or, in other words, the idiots voting her in ain't any smarter. Sadly, having a clue is neither a requirement for a political office nor one to vote in elections.
No matter how much I think it should be. For BOTH. Or at the very least the former. It's a kinda lopsided battle when dimwitted politicians are pitted against corporation negotiators hand picked for their swindling abilities. I can't help but it reminds me of the trades between the European settlers and the natives.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Only in terms of optics and messaging ... I expect their handlers to be as illiterate on the technology as the pols are.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I think the only repercussions proper to this situation is the sue the entire internet and then file a takedown notice to "the internet" and then put "the internet" in jail. That makes perfect sense to any british lawmaker working on this entire project.
Since TFS couldn't be bothered to include it, here 'tis: Guido's blog.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Actually, it's Member of Parliament - Ministers tend to be those who head up a department (or Ministry) and are part of the cabinet.
Of course, now that I've corrected somebody, I'll have made any number of mistakes.
probably did, did any one see what kind of porn she likes?
Agreed.
"Only cowards use censorship."
Unless the UK is prepared to start doing deep packet inspection and blocking VPNs, external proxies, anonymizing networks and the like, all this is going to be is either some pathetic cookie-based on/off flag or nearly as pathetic DNS block. It will be totally useless, fuck up other chunks of the Internet, and those with the capacity to read a two or three paragraph faq will happily be viewing their porn in a minute. Yes, it will inconvenience some, it will also create a false sense of security, and Cameron gets to go to his shrill and reactionary base and go "see, now the kiddies can't see the titties!"
Do you think anyone in Australia who wants to to view things the Australian government is afraid of can't get it running in a couple of minutes? These things are a joke, unless, as I said, Western governments want to start building China and Iran -like Great Firewalls.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The British ISPs have been telling the UK government for years now, through all the iterations of this "we must block x to save the children" nonsense that it is unworkable. The politicians by now are perfectly well aware how futile this is, but there are always a certain class of voters who will cast their ballot for Canute based upon the notion that he can stop the tides.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Start? LOL, I think you mean finish.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
This a thousand times this!
I can say sadly from experience within my own family if X is in the papers Y must be true because Z says so.
Example 1, "Oh that bitty coin thing, paypal is that bittycoin thing I refuse to use it" - Aunt who happily responded to a 419 email.
Example 2, "Well you used my computer last Christmas (this was last week) so that Virus must have been caused by you..." - 2nd Aunt who downloads and installs each an every tool bar attachment on the net, incandescently this was a attachment send by her Son who is a Maths PHD who remains blameless.
For those of us unaware of it, channel 4 has produced a dramatization of the meeting in which Claire Perry was first introduced to The Internet.
Cameron gets to go to his shrill and reactionary base and go "see, now the kiddies can't see the titties!"
Wait until he learns about breast feeding 8-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
When you don't understand how something works, you can't understand the difference between a fix that's easy and effective, and a fix that's very hard and won't be effective.
Example: Somebody who knows nothing about cars can say "Cars keep going above the speed limit. Can you make it so that cars made in future won't go over 70mph?" and be told "Sure, that's not hard, we can do that." They can then say "Cars get used as getaway vehicles in a lot of bank robberies. Can you make it so that cars made in future won't work when used by bank robberies?" and they'll get told "No, that would be impossible, and anything we tried would be either ineffective, prevent legitimate uses, or both."
Most everyone knows enough about cars to understand why you get a different answer to those two questions. But somebody who's completely ignorant doesn't see any difference.
So it goes with the internet. "Can you filter out emails that contain curse words?" gets a "Yes, easy", so the clueless think it should be no different when they ask "Can you filter out web content that has porn in it?"
I've said before and I'll say again: It should be made mandatory that no politician can pass laws on any subject until they've proved a reasonable level of understanding of it.
And if that makes life hard for them, good: It's about time they had to do something to justify their exhorbitantly high pay.
So.. it has come to this
Maybe they'll realise that a simple defacing hack can block someones website from the public. If the porn filter was already in place, Claire Perry's website would now be on the porn-list.
incandescently this was a attachment send by her Son who is a Maths PHD who remains blameless.
I see that your Aunt's son is very bright. (and also nephew)
Cameron gets to go to his shrill and reactionary base and go "see, now the kiddies can't see the titties!"
"... online. Which is much worse somehow than seeing them in the newspapers somehow." They still have that, right? Was it the Sun that had naked women on the second page?
Not the second page. They're on page 3, actually.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Politicians generally can't find their ass with both hands
That's because at one of their hands is always out asking for donations and the other one is behind their back with their fingers crossed or accepting a bribe.
What we need are politicians with at least four hands.
4 hands would just give them one to hold out for donations, one to cross fingers to make the lie "ok", one to shake hands with you while the fourth is stabbing you in the back.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
The public outcry is even sillier than it seems. Google already have a policy to block child porn in search results. The dialog goes something like this:
MPs: Google needs to block child porn!
Google: We are.
MPs: But... you need to block child porn!
Google: Really, we''re doing everything we can to block it.
MPs: But.. there's still child porn on the internet! You need to block it!
Google: If we donate a huge pile of cash to the IWF so you can feel better about cutting funding to CEOP and outsourcing policing of child porn to the private sector, will you stop saying that?
MPs: Maybe.