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.
Theres a lot of them in the States, but I don't suppose they count.
On both ends of the political spectrum
..if this kind of shit continues.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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!
Sites that disagree with the government line? But facebook beheadings are presumably not extremist enough..
Always the trend setters they are, except when it comes to rock 'n roll...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Who the fuck writes a text spamming bot in 2013 and then has a fixed size text buffer???
... whatever
One man's extremism is another man's passion for truth and the rights of the people.
What do the 9% remainder do? Watch? Bloody pervs!
Great, UK, one of great U.S. allies is following the Australia and Chinese models of censoring what the government doesn't like. We should send the IRS and Obama handles, err, Democratic operatives, over there to teach them how to violate the citizens freedom of speech rights in a more subtle manner.
We live in a "twitter" world. If you can't spam it in a limited number of characters you're just not with the times.
"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.
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...
freedom of speech is a total fiction anyway...there is a plethora of restrictions on free speech, not the least being having to be careful of what you say in social settings as to not alienate yourself from whatever group your are trying to gain favor in.
Congratulations, you just confused freedom of speech with freedom from consequences. Speech is an action, actions have reactions, we can call them consequences. Those consequences are limited by the same rules of society as all other consequences, that is, nobody is ever entitled to break the law because of something someone said and thus you are theoretically protected from violent reprisal for expression of your opinion. In practice, the state operates no enterprise engaged in your protection; it operates through reprisal, not ensurance of safety.
I will defend (perhaps to the death, perhaps not) your right to say whatever you want, but also my right to feel however I want about it. Indeed, I will defend my right to my own opinion more strenuously than your right to express yours.
Both rights are critical to a free society.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A comparison in six words:
"It's OK when we do it."
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
freedom of speech is a total fiction anyway...there is a plethora of restrictions on free speech, not the least being having to be careful of what you say in social settings as to not alienate yourself from whatever group your are trying to gain favor in.
Yes, it's this terrible human right called freedom of association which on the flip side says I don't have to associate with people I don't want to associate with. Now you're down to schoolyard level though, you can't force someone else to be friends with you. It doesn't exactly belong in the same discussion as actual censorship, harassment, imprisonment, discrimination or persecution based on your speech. It's only the freedom to hold and express an opinion, you can't by law make it a popular one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
To be fair, "freedom of speech" does not imply freedom from consequences of said speech, nor should it.
The Internet began as a freedom of speech thing the same way me standing in a park did. But that was in the '80s. Now, the Internet acts as a full publication and broadcast system, like me putting up a six-storey banner on the side of a skyscraper.
There have always been laws governing what you can say in a public arena.
Today, it's the norm for 3-year olds to use online systems, as well as educational institutions, and a whole host of real-world legitimate and vital purposes. It's no longer an optional activity at all in most circles.
So the question to ask yourself: is there anything that you wouldn't accept painted onto the side of a downtown building? You can always walk a different way to work and not see it. I'll bet there's something that you would call inappropriate as a public display. It may be something as simple as your grandparents kissing.
Whatever it is, that's what we've come to. And it's no surprise. For all the reasons that broadcasts have ever been appropriately restricted, so should the internet be.
Now, you can certainly complain with the way that it's done. You can be upset at the sheer number of false positives. You can be correct in saying that it may actually be impossible or unfeasible to enforce. But then that becomes the debate, not the need for the restriction in the first place.
There's "freedom of speech". Then there's "freedom after speech". Even China and the old USSR guaranteed the former.
So many have battled external enemies for our freedom. Fought and died for freedom. Yet, despite the fact that the majority of people agree that the average polititian is pretty much pond scum, we still allow them to take our freedom without even a whimper. What all outside fources have failed to do we do to ourselves. God help us all...
Much as I like the romantic idea of being an underground data-trader, covertly threading my way through government blocks an thwarting investigations to bring forbidden cargo to those with the bitcoin to pay, there is a vital flaw in that vision of the future: It depends on the censorship efforts being half-way effective. Trying to stop the spread of information today is like trying to order back the tide.
This is a slippery slope, and I've been assured here on many occasions that slippery slopes are a logical fallacy.
Heavy on the hyperbole are we? And "today's governments" is mostly the US government. Our incarceration rate is 1/10th of the US. We don't have a Gitmo. The 1% is getting richer but with the march of technology the TVs are getting bigger, the smartphones smarter so I can't see any real decline in living standard even though the gap is widening. As for rights, go back to the pre-Internet days and see how much they controlled the mass media back then. They're still trying to put Internet back in the bag, for all the attempts at trying I'd say in most ways we're freer in the 2010s than the 1980s, though there might have been a wild west gap in between. Granted, there's not much progress being made but the trend isn't horribly bad either.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In 1985 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American Bar Association in which she said "we must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend". This led to a ban on broadcast of utterances by republican politicians supportive of the Provisional IRA, which in turn led to the absurd situation of news programmes showing video of politicians such as Gerry Adams speaking but with the audio replaced by an actor's voice.
It only drew attention to the extremist's cause, as will be the case here.
pi = 2*|arg(God)|
...the name of the Minister, Mr. Brokenshire.
:-)
Since "shire" is a county in the UK (i.e., a political subdivision) that translates directly to Mr. "Broken" "Government."
Couldn't have named him much better, myself
Whether or not this becomes a freedom of speech issue depends upon many factors, one of which is the definition of free speech. Personally I draw the line at encouraging people to commit material crimes (e.g. murder) and at intentionally fabricating false information with the intent to harm others (e.g. accusing a person of rape when they did not commit that crime). Yet even if we all agreed upon that definition, there is the question of exactly what constitutes extremism and how that translates into law enforcement in practice.
For example: I am perfectly fine with a bunch of people with extreme views discussing how terrible the government is and how it should be changed, and I am fine with them spreading their message. It doesn't matter whether I agree with them or disagree with them. I am even fine with them discussing legal means of changing the government in order to reflect their perspective, even though I would be sure to oppose such changes if their views are actually that extreme. Yet I do have an issue with the promotion of violence and inciting terror in order to impose their views upon others. There are ample reasons for that, ranging from the intimidation tactics that people use in their everyday life to impose their will upon others to more extreme political movements that have resorted in anything from wholesale oppression to genocide.
There was a story at The Guardian some months ago about internal government documents that had labeled mainstream environmentalists as extremists.
Why not let them conduct this "experiment"?
The results will be useful as a negative example.
And just make sure the people responsible are not forgotten.
Some ministry of the UK government tried contacting us in regard to content filtering. But we had already blacklisted them as a member of an extremist totalitarian regime. So their communication was blocked.
Have gnu, will travel.
That will be the Great Firewall of Britain then. Based on a proven working model and it will keep more IT people employed, blocking not just 'Scunthorpe' but 'Bombay' as well.
Nonsense. The frog died sometime last century.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
So, Energy from Thorium (promoted, in part, by an international group, which just concluded its 2013 Conference, at CERN, in Geneva) could be deemed as a -commercially- extreme concept, eg, since - if/when Thorium-/LFTR-based nuclear power (cf the recently released eBook "Nuclear 2.0") begins to replace fossil-fueled & even Uranium-based powe plants - a number of well-endowed commercial interests may feel unduly threatened by EfT.
Could the info & organisations who would like to bring EfT -sooner- into pur energy markets be deemed "extremists" & see their web sites, etc. get blocked 8n the UK, etc.?
This could have been said truthfully most years in the last 250 or so. Certainly, it would have been true if said in 1865....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Love the ride down that slope.. ( it accelerates towards the end, so bring seat belts )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"This from the country that banned Michael Savage"
I don't understand this. You realise most countries deny entry every single day for various reasons including the US for the reason we banned Michael Savage?
The only reason it was news when the UK did it is precisely because it was a big deal and precisely because the UK has historically had one of the most liberal border crossings in the world.
Even supposedly liberal Canada I was very nearly refused entry into once simply because the customs officer did not believe I was not there to work for the simple fact I took a laptop with me when I really was just there for a holiday. Apparently he couldn't comprehend why someone would take a laptop on holiday. It was only when I asked for British consular advice that they said okay and stopped harassing me and let me get on with my holiday.
There is no inherent right to cross a nation's borders, and people get refused every single day for far less than hate speech. Just because the UK has started doing it too in a very small fringe amount of cases doesn't make it exceptional, though it did make it newsworthy precisely because we did used to let the likes of Abu Hamza et. al. in - in this respect we've always been much more tolerant of controversial speakers than even the US.
Michael Savage is a talk show host. Lumping him in with terrorist is ridiculous and only served the liberal wing who doesn't want to hear opposing views. So tell my why a Conservative speaker should be banned for any reason other than liberal censorship. That was when you crossed a line that you can't go back from. Israel is pretty much the best ally the U.S. has at this point although Obama and the Democrats have instituted more Socialism now than Canada and the U.K..
well, then, you seem to contradict yourself.
short of being locked up by the state ON THE POTENTIAL of you saying something "illegal", it's simply impossible for anyone to stop you from saying whatever you want wherever you want.
and of course, there could be consequences...but no one, in this case, took away your "freedom of speech"
so what is your point again??
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
They're not lumping him in with terrorists any more than Canada was lumping me in with terrorists because one customs officer couldn't believe I'd take a laptop on a private holiday.
"and only served the liberal wing who doesn't want to hear opposing views"
By definition, if they don't want to hear opposing views, then they're not liberal.
"liberal censorship."
Again, I don't think you know what liberalism is. "Liberal censorship"- I'll try and help you understand why that statement is stupid. It's a bit like saying "male women", or talking about the colour "black white". These things are diametrically opposed. The worst part of your whole argument is that your conservative speaker was banned by a home secretary with conservative views and the ban later upheld by the Conservative party. Where are these mystical liberals you talk of that were involved? Calling Jacqui Smith liberal is pretty comical given that she was the one who tried to push through some of the most illiberal laws the UK has seen in decades.
"That was when you crossed a line that you can't go back from."
A line that pretty much every other nation on earth already crossed years before us including the US? Oh no, we're damned!
"Israel is pretty much the best ally the U.S. has at this point"
Erm, you know Israel has denied entry to far more people for their political views than Britain ever has right? I mean, we're talking about Israel here, the country that built a wall to hold an entire fucking race of people from entering just for being that race. So what you're saying is it's okay for Israel to do that sort of thing - it makes them awesome, but if Britain does it once or twice with a handful of specific individuals it's a problem? Please explain how you justify your hypocrisy, I'm intrigued to know what kind of mental gymnastics you have to perform in your head for this to make any kind of sense.
"although Obama and the Democrats have instituted more Socialism now than Canada and the U.K.."
It doesn't look like you understand what socialism is either.
Tell me, why do you use terms you don't understand? You know it makes you look really really stupid right?
Wow, love the insults. Nice job. I can always tell a liberal then the insults have more substance than the content or when their lips are moving, you take your pick. Unfortunately, your definition of liberal no longer applies to the real world but please keep holding on to that. Liberals are about free speech, unless it disagrees with them. And your definition of Conservative in Great Britain died with Maggie Thatcher. Unfortunately, she was the last one with any gonads who have led your country. Your view on Israel is simply a denial of the maniacal radical fundamentalist terrorists that exist only to kill the Jewish race. Israel has every right to contain this disease and exterminate as necessary. Since Iran is funding these psychos, Israel has every right to do whatever they need to since nobody else will, including President Idiot Obama. What part of my explanation are you not going to twist with lies. I know exactly what a Socialist is and the failures of every single one of them. If you think insulting me makes you look better, I really don't care. You clearly have no moral or ethical foundation to stand on based on your positions. I know the Democratic party in the United States would gladly accept you if you decide to come here.
Thank you for answering my question about what mental gymnastics you need to perform to come up with the hypocritical nonsense you do - long story short it sounds like you just pretend reality isn't and referring terms incorrectly to sit you nonsense world view?
You're everything that makes America bad, you're the reason America is in decline. Congratulations on your failure to be a net benefit to the world, you must be proud.