Slashdot Mirror
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."
Porn filters... Really? Well, what do you expect from a country that has CCTV on every corner in every town, and an internal security apparatus that shames the NSA? We're not talking about Russia here...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
CCC, XXX, what's the difference? The two keys are close to each other. Easy to confuse. Wait until WWW is added to the list.
Its like someone doesn't learn lessons, not just from history, but from the present
When do we start adding UK to the list of unfree states.
What was that quote again? Never attribute to politics that which is adequately explained by stupid perl scripts?
No, that caused the problem. "Save the children!" and other lemming stampede inducing sayings will always be abused by those in power.
Which side won the Cold War again? Oh yeah, "Ignorance is Strength". That side.
Why is Snark Required?
Just had the lamp-posts replaced around here- and there's a camera atop each (most people don't realise, because they think such a cameras sees 'around' the lamp-post itself , but each camera is designed to 'see' beneath a further lamp-post two posts down). People are informed, when they ask, that the visible camera mount is a 'radio aerial').
Lamp-post cameras in the UK were first introduced during the last IRA scare many years back- I remember seeing the contract of an Asian supplier that had provided millions of camera units to the British government in the 1990s- they were boasting about the order for commercial reasons online. More recently, Britain experienced political scandal when big city police forces were discovered placing such camera systems in Muslim areas. Now the camera lamp-posts are rolled out everywhere, using the excuse of a move to LED lighting systems. Camera lamp-posts have even been installed on semi-private access roads, where no lamp post had ever been installed before, flooding the front of people's homes with light at night, and positioning the camera where it can see right into many people's bedroom windows.
Brits have a daily clue as to the extent of GCHQ TOTAL SURVEILLANCE when their daily 'crime reports' show footage of crimes captured by these lap-post cameras, no matter where the crime occurs in the UK.
Years before it was even a thing, Britain installed comprehensive facial recognition systems at all main public transport hubs, to begin monitoring the movement of all individuals by train or by coach. Plate and driver recognition cameras are placed frequently on all roads and junctions (and few are designated 'speed' cameras), and under-surface RFID readers do an even more comprehensive job of tracking road traffic by the RFID 'fingerprint' of the tags present in every recent tire.
GCHQ dwarfs the NSA in domestic and international TOTAL SURVEILLANCE spying, although GCHQ depends just as much as NSA on the Google designed database systems that store and process the massive amount of data gathered. In reality, Google is the R+D division of the NSA. Google's voice recognition and machine translation algorithms are designed primarily to allow the NSA/GCHQ to better index and search the data it collects.
Today, of course, Google frontlines research into AUTONOMOUS KILLING MACHINES for use by the US Army in its future invasions (with Iran being of special interest to Google's controllers). Google's main owners see their research as directly comparable to that by those weapon experts that gave Hitler the ability to BLITZKRIEG his way to military success. Google want the USA to have a parallel ability, so it will no longer hesitate to 'take out' targets like Iran.
The TOTAL SURVEILLANCE society of Britain followed Blair's rise to power. Every single aspect of present day Britain is under the direct control of Blair loyalists.
Blair's interest in TOTAL SURVEILLANCE is the same as any dictator in the past
-to 'survey' the mindset of the 'chattering classes' so they can be better manipulated by government propaganda.
-to gather potential blackmail information on every person, so later every person in a position of power or influence can be easily coerced
-to identify emerging grass-roots leaders or movements, so they can be co-opted or exterminated before they reach the level of greater public awareness.
The difference is that Tony Blair operates in the Computer Age- where total surveillance can be literally perfected. Worse, the mass murdering monster Blair knows that Britain sets a perfectly evil example for every barbaric authority across the planet to copy. When Middle East depravities, like America's favourite partner Saudi Arabia, crack down on movements for democracy and freedom, these depravities QUOTE the actions of the UK government, and say TRUTHFULLY they are only doing the same sort of thing.
By indulging in VERY selective policing, the Orwellian nightmare implemented by Tony Blair seeming impacts on very few Brits- allo
I remember a time, before _everyone_ had a mobile phone and there were still phone booths with phones in them.
And every phone booth in London was plastered with ads for "escort" services. I could be wrong, but my impression at the time was these were really just thinly veiled ads for prostitutes.
I haven't really paid attention the last few years, I don't know where they're plastering the ads these days.
But yeah, filter the porn out.
I'd really expect technical sites like Slashdot, and CCC to actually have a clue about these filters. Instead users have latched on to a bandwagon.
The filters have usually been super-secret
In case it might be of interest, in the UK, on mobile networks at least, the existence of filters is not (and, as far as I know, has never been) secret, and the categories of content which are likely to render a site being blocked are published too. I appreciate that this is, of course, not the same as a "what's blocked and what's not list".)
The UK's infrastructure mobile operators published the "Code of practice for the self-regulation of new forms of content on mobiles" in January 2004, with the filters being implemented about a year later in early 2005. The code was updated in 2009, and is accessible here. The code still references the Independent Mobile Classification Body, but this is no longer the right place: the IMCB's role has been replaced by the British Board of Film Classification, which also administers the age ratings for films for the UK.
The BBFC documents its approach to mobile content classification on its website, here, including setting out the type of content which the BBFC considers suitable for "adults only", the details of mobile operator contact points in the event that a site operator considers that their site is incorrectly classified, and an appeals procedure against decisions taken by the BBFC.
Whilst there is no published "what's blocked and what's not" list, the mobile operators buy third party services for website classification; most, but not all, buy from Symantec. Symantec has a web interface for its "ratings tool" here, which (after a captcha) lets anyone see how Symantec has classified a particular URL. This is complemented by the Open Rights Group tool (here): the ORG tool does a real-time check of whether a site is blocked across mobile and fixed networks, and the Symantec tool indicates the classification given to the site by Symantec.
If you're thinking of the children all the time, chances are you're a pedo.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, from mainland Europe it looks more like the UK does its best to emulate the US.
Not that I generally disagree with you, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.