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Chinese Firm Huawei In Control of UK Net Filters
AmiMoJo writes "The BBC reports that Huawei, one of the world's largest manufacturers of telecoms equipment, is controlling popular ISP TalkTalk's web censorship system. The system, known as Homesafe, was praised by Prime Minister David Cameron. Customers who do not want filtering still have their traffic routed through the system, but matches to Huawei's database are dismissed rather than acted upon. In other words there is no opt-out. Mr Cameron has demanded similar measures be adopted by all internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, to 'protect our children and their innocence.'"
If anyone knows how to filter internet traffic, it's the Chinese.
The legal question, is filtered internet access really internet access. There is a technical definition of the internet defining packets DNS lookup and routability. I don't think a filtered internet access fully qualifies as internet access.
This could lead to legal challenges as the service providers are not selling true internet access. They are selling something else.
So do the chinese get to filter before or after the americans intercept?
AG
Even worse, the politicians in the UK are giving decisions of UK political sovereignty to a foreign entity.
Allowing a foreign firm to have intel on domestic interests and people is called one thing: Espionage.
Whomever allowed Huawei [1] to run this needs to be charged.
[1]: Huawei by themselves are not doing anything wrong. If MI5 got hired to do firewalling for another country, it isn't their fault. However, it is a sworn duty of a politician to protect domestic interests. Same reason why Buckingham Palace hasn't been deeded or rented to another country.
And this is why "common carrier" status is a useful concept.
Give me the line, untampered? Then what I do on it is my responsibility.
Give me the line, supposedly filtered? Then what I do on it is your responsibility, since it's your job to save me from myself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So Huawei has the power to effectively remove any content they dislike from the British peoples' internet and all the British government can do about it is file a bug report to a their helpdesk?
What could possibly go right?
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I work with children. In my extensive experience, they are vile creatures indeed. Ill-mannered, inconsiderate, uneducated and ignorant. They lack the most basic common sense, and what they do have is overridden by their susceptibility to peer pressure and the forces of advertising. They have a compulsion to destroy all that they touch, leaving me to spend my working day endlessly repairing equipment which has been vandalized - past highlights include throwing a switch from a window, placing a power cable in a stapler and impaling a laptop keyboard on a pen. Through an informal concensus they work to perpetuate this youth culture by relentlessly bullying any child who shows signs of being different, until they cease these attempts and rejoin the mob. They are in no way innocent - and, while many are ignorant of more worthwhile fields, peer discussion ensures they mostly have an encyclopedic knowledge of sexual acts and insults, albeit one riddled with misconceptions and errors.
Because nothing motivates a young boy to learn how to defeat technological filters than the promise of a nearly limitless supply of porn on the other side of those filters.