British 'Porn Filter' Blocks Access To Chaos Computer Club

An anonymous reader tips news that the Chaos Computer Club's website was inaccessible for many internet users in the UK after being blocked by the filter set up to block porn sites. Additionally, Vodafone users are unable to access the ticket site to this year's Chaos Commuication Conference. In a post on its website, the CCC said, "Internet filters simply do not work, but leaving technical limitation aside, the CCC's example shows that unsolicited overblocking, meaning wrongly classified websites, is a common phenomenon in large censorship infrastructures. However, it may very well be that the CCC is considered 'extremist' judged by British standards of freedom of speech." CCC spokesperson Dirk Engling added, "We see this as proof that censorship infrastructure – no matter for which reasons it was set up, and no matter which country you are in – will always be abused for political reasons."

Comments

Re:Suprised *gasp*

[serviscope_minor]

When do we start adding UK to the list of unfree states.

You know that the filter is strictly optional, right?

Being opt-out is stupid pandering to the "think of the children" morons who are too lazy to opt in to an opt in system which was present before (surprise! companies offered this service!).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tech...

The proportions of people NOT opting out are:
* Virgin Media - 4%
* BT - 5%
* Sky - 8%
* TalkTalk - 36%

(Note: TalkTalk offered the service as an opt in feature before the government waded in).

The filter is a stupid and pointless thing to be mandated (as evidenced by the nubmers), but given the number of people opting out (almost all), chicken-littling over being like China is even more stupid than the filter itself.

Re:When will they block Slashdot?

[buckfeta2014]

games.slashdot.org is blocked by my work filter because "games". While slashdot does not contain any actual games, the word in the URL is enough to trigger the block. It also blocks gaming news websites as "games", despite being a news website. Add on top of that, randomly blocking electronic cigarette websites as "weapons". Filters are broken indeed.