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

Good grief.

[Frosty Piss]

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...

Re:Good grief.

[norriefc]

The vast vast majority of CCTV cameras are privately owned, 1 in 70 are state owned (approx 800,000 which is still too many in my book) And as for porn filters, they are optional that the vast majority haven't opted into, the whole thing is bullshit, the only people it will be blocked for is people who opted into filters and I'd wager 99.999% of those who did opt in wouldn't be visiting CCC.de anyway.

Re:Good grief.

[PopeRatzo]

The more realistic, 509,000 people and 619 cameras sounds much less dramatic.

Not really. If you place those 619 cameras correctly (and I assume they did) in such a small area, I'll bet every single person who lives or works in that place gets their image recorded several times a day.

Remember, the 500,000 people who come to the City of London to work every day have a limited number of routes to take to get there. A relatively small number of bus stops, train stations, parking lots, bridges and streets makes for easy work for the guys who are upskirting their own citizens' lives.

I'm guessing it could be done with even fewer cameras.

Re:Good grief.

[PopeRatzo]

And before you ask for a citation regarding those child molestation/murder cults among the elite:

http://www.theguardian.com/soc...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u...

Re:Good grief.

[ihtoit]

well, OK, how about London's 33 boroughs* controlling 7,000** cameras between them? Or the 500,000-800,000** privately owned/run CCTV cameras (not systems, individual cameras) operating in the same area?
The 11,000** cameras operating on the Tube network?

*combined population: 8.3 million (2013 ONS estimate)
**source: BSIA

Re:Good grief.

[serviscope_minor]

Yep, but they're not scattered remotely uniformly.

For instance there's a bunch in the big underpass system by the Monument, far more than one every 225 feet because it's an underpass with a few branches. They also tend to be scattered round the large, important buildings like the Gherkin. The ground plans are complex so to cover the area just around the building, many cameras are needed.

All the little streets like Change Alley and Pope's Head Alley and whatnot have none whatsoever.

Yes there are a lot but the chicken-little OMG BIG BROTHER ENGLAND IS WORSE THAN NORTH KOREA THE SKY IS FALLING types are basically spouting crap.

Disclaimer: I only walk through the city of London every day on the way into work.

CCC, XXX...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Suprised *gasp*

[davydagger]

In china, the official reason for goverment filters is to block porn and malacious content.

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.

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:So?

[knightghost]

No, that caused the problem. "Save the children!" and other lemming stampede inducing sayings will always be abused by those in power.

When will they block Slashdot?

[Required Snark]

There are plenty of examples of "bad behavior" on Slashdot. I've been accused of this myself, for not being "polite". So it seems obvious that it's only a matter of time until someone in London figures out that collectively Slashdot is a "bad influence" and it gets banned.

Which side won the Cold War again? Oh yeah, "Ignorance is Strength". That side.

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.

filter porn, but allow "escort" services?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Libel Lawsuit by CCC would get them to do that

[Neil_Brown]

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.

Re:The U.K. is a joke, but not a funny one.

[Opportunist]

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.