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."

Comments

Gaining speed down that slope...

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:Gaining speed down that slope...

[RocketChild]

I'm very surprised that they moved so quick to do this so provocatively. It seems like that mission creep takes several years before it actually shows up. But that smoke screen of "think of the children" blew away quick. So...that leaves me wondering. What is "really" next?

Re:Gaining speed down that slope...

[symbolset]

The department shall be called "The Ministry of Truth" or MINITRU for short.

Re:Gaining speed down that slope...

[chilvence]

Well, I'm British, and I respect your concern for my feelings more than I worry about you insulting our cunt of a government.

I'm just glad we don't have yours... fuck me, that would be awful.

Well,

[Dartz-IRL]

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.

Re:Well,

[Gravis Zero]

When Terrorism is 'Any action that is intended to influence the government', what is extremism?

you misquoted.

(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government [or an international governmental organisation][2] or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and

just stating the fact, not it's implications.

Re:Well,

[Internetuser1248]

IRA, Hizbollah and Hamas are all nationalistic organisations in countries that are under intense external pressure, either politically, militarily or economically, to such an extent that the general population are suffering. The same was true of Germany in the 1930's. While I agree with the points you make I feel that most discussions on this topic miss the most important point of all. Yes democracy can throw up some problem leaders, but ignoring the circumstances that lead up to each of these cases is failing to learn lessons from history. While it is possible that removing the treaty of Versailles may not have prevented the nazis' rise to power, it seems almost certain that Hamas would never have been elected without the Israeli blockade and attacks. It also seems hard to imagine the IRA getting any power in a world where Ireland was not subject to brutal repression for a couple of centuries.

Democracy is not the problem, it is imperialism that is the problem. Desperate people act desperately, and voting is no exception.

Re:Well,

[femtobyte]

When requiring identification proof is absolutely known to disenfranchise tens of thousands of legitimate voters, overwhelmingly in minority and disadvantaged groups --- for the benefit of "preventing" approximately zero voter fraud cases --- then such requirements are unequivocally an opposition to the right to vote, for huge numbers of voters. Such "proof" may be required for lots of everyday things in your middle-class life, but it turns out that tens of thousands of of, e.g., elderly and poor people will be disenfranchised in the states that adopt such laws, because they get by in life without the requisite papers (and cannot spend tens to hundreds of dollars, and possibly multiple days off work during business hours, to scramble through the bureaucracy to obtain them).

Stopping tens of thousands of qualified voters from voting is opposing voting rights. Plain and simple. There is no factual justification for such moves --- in terms of documented evidence of voter fraud --- to be found by its most ardent supporters. In the end, there is simply no reason to perpetrate voter fraud (standing in line for hours, risking being thrown in federal prison, to cast one extra vote) on a large scale --- if you want more votes, it's far easier and more effective to do "get-out-the-vote" drives for the large pool of potential legit voters. Or, if you don't like the idea of legit voters having a voice, you disenfranchise them en-mass by every slimy trick in the book.

Nobody listens to science, sadly.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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.

Re:Nobody listens to science, sadly.

[0123456]

The world needs a hero.

The world needs to stop looking for heroes. The belief that an almighty hero will ride into town and save us all is the root cause of much human suffering, from Hitler to Stalin to Mao to David Cameron.

When humans finally accept that someone with the power to save them is also someone with the power to enslave them, we might actually be able to build a sensible society.

Re:Its almost like...

[pla]

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!

In the famous words of noted hacker Pr1nc3ss L3Ah

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Extremists?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The United States of America was founded by armed political extremists.

Re:Offshore hosting. Game, set, and match.

[Tackhead]

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.

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.