Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov't Plans To Censor "Extremist" Websites Via Orders To ISPs
Not content with blacklisting certain kinds of pornography, writes an anonymous reader, according to this news from The Guardian, "The UK government is to order broadband companies to block extremist websites and empower a specialist unit to identify and report content deemed too dangerous for online publication. The crime and security minister, James Brokenshire, said on Wednesday that measures for censoring extremist content would be announced shortly. The initiative is likely to be controversial, with broadband companies already warning that freedom of speech could be compromised."
n/t
When Terrorism is 'Any action that is intended to influence the government', what is extremism? Any idea that the current sitting government doesn't like?
There was once another group of people that went out of their way to censor information their people received, to hide atrocities committed in their name and smash an idea that didn't fit the party line.
As I recall, at one stage, the UK did quite a bit to stop them.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
Historically, far and away the most dangerous information a web site can host is the idea it's good, necessary, and proper for a government to have the power to censor.
That's just based on a silly metric called megadeaths, though.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Maybe they should block the government's web site.
Its almost like they WANT an uprising on their hands...
Imagine the frustration of today's governments. They imprison us en masse, they torture us, they let the 1% rape the 90%, they basically piss away the rights we took back from the old-world monarchies as fast as they can...
And we just sit around and take it. "Oh well", we say, "at least they keep me safe from dying of something slightly less likely than choking to death on a goldfish".
Can you see how unsatisfied our leaders must feel at that level of rolling over by those they seek to oppress? "Stop hitting yourself in the face", the bully says, and here we stand around actually hitting ourselves in the face over, and over, and over. Takes all the fun out of it!
"The more you tighten your grip... the more bits will simply slip through your fingers."
Seriously though, censorship? "1984" was a warning, NOT A BLOODY GUIDEBOOK!
The UK Gov't has its head up its ass.
The United States of America was founded by armed political extremists.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I remember that there was great controversy about the Taliban, then in control of the country of Afghanistan. I would go to www.taliban.com and read what they had to say. It was in English. Then in July it was hacked and the front page was replaced by a picture of the American flag. A month or so later the United States invaded Afghanistan. A month after that www.taliban.com disappeared from the Internet.
The United States of America does not have to block web sites. If they don't like you, you just cease to exist. They control the top level domain names, right?
Oddly enough, I see that there is a site there now. I'll have to check it out.
It is true that exposure to truth tends to radicalize people. I say again that no government wants the population to have freedom in communications. People who think a lot can be difficult to control. Secrecy is a form of conspiracy in and of itself. Hiding truth tends to maintain social customs. And people can be manipulated simply by hiding the truth. Right now we have a lot of issues with terrorists from the Arab nations. Apparently they have some dream of bring back the caliphate. But how many of these Arabs are even aware that the caliphate was Ottoman and that Arabs were not particularly respected nor valued by the Turks who controlled the caliphate. For an Arab to dream of the joy of living under the caliphate is roughly equivalent to a German Jew dreaming of the good old days when the Reich was in total control of Germany.
er, that's why they are getting ISPs to block the routes to the sites, rather than taking the sites down.
They already forced ISPs to do it for child porn, then the courts enforced blocks on "pirate" sites because the child porn filters proved that it was technically possible, next step (previously announced, due to come in soon) they are forcing every UK ISP to implement porn (_legal_ porn) filters.
And now it's "block stuff that isn't porn/child-porn/illegal-under-copyright-law, but we don't like it anyway". No surprise.
Might be time stockpile some paper copies of the anarchists cookbook - could start to go up in value faster than bitcoins...
Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169254&cid=14107454
And the punchline is we're still surprised every time the ratchet turns tighter. Every. Fucking. Time.