WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters

What about historical fine art?

So I earn my living as a metal artist. I am currently making some plaques that have naked children on them, yes there with the permission of the ~Thorwaldsen museum in copenhagen. The originals were made in 1830. they feature night and day . they have winged cherubs ie children!! in the images.

Am I also prevented from looking at the cherubs on the Sistine chapel ceiling painted by Michaelangelo?

Also I have a print that my father who bought it in Prague in 1930 of a classical photo by a famous artist of a naked lady..

And what about the pictures my mother and father took of me when I was 9 months old in a cot with no clothers on?

What about Rhodin's kiss? and the Rokeby venus? and all the other classical naked images male and female. The 3 graces by Canova?

So where is the line drawn to say beyond this is porn and before it its not?

If the gvmt want people to accept this censorship they will have to define it first. Accurately.

I dont think it can be done.

I will be opting out of this regulation as I need to look up classical art on the net for my vocation.

Just has not got a clue

Putting it bluntly, another bloody silly, grand-standing, technically-illiterate politician talking out of his arse! He obviously thinks that there is some magic switch that will instantaneously turn the net into a "good place". Well, it ain't gonna happen, brother! There will always be people using work-arounds to get so-called undesirable material from the "dark" net and does he seriously think that hot air and a load of blustering in the name of "think of the children" really diguises that fact that governments do not like the net's free speech aspect and they will do almost anything to control it? This is probably the first piece of an insidious creeping effort to censor the net - pure and simple...........I despair.

Even chunkymark has something to say about this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU_8GrIfOXo&feature=player_detailpage#t=253s

(Warning: Graphic language and more sense talked than all political parties put together.)

I don't think anyone really understands what this is for....

It's NOT to stop paedophiles or rapes - it's obvious even to Cameron that it won't do that.

In fact, it's not to STOP anyone. It's rather more for STARTING things.

The output from this will be long sets of lists of forbidden words (which will be generated by some organisation using taxpayers money), and long lists of people's names who have typed those words into search engines. These lists will be put on databases and filtered to produce statistics that show how all sorts of naughty things are increasing. And that's more work for the civil servants.

These stats will then be used as evidence to provide even closer scrutiny of everyone's activity. Which means even more work for the civil servants running the system. Perhaps they will bring in a penalty system like the 'driving points' one, and have a sliding scale of fines, so that they can become self-funding.

The technology will be readily swappable with the GCHQ spy system software - indeed, maybe Cameron is proposing this because the spooks see a chance to expand into this area and have been bending his ear. They have been really short of work since the Berlin Wall came down, and have been milking terrorism for all it was worth, but I'm sure they would prefer a regular reliable stream of work like the Cold War provided, and sex looks as if it's here to stay longer that the Russians were...

In short, this is NOT a proposal to diminish a real threat. It's a proposal to generate a new civil servant work/revenue stream, and one which can't be argued against.

"Give us the money".

"No"

"What, do you mean you're in favour of rape?!!"

Not Going To Happen

Cameron is just a prize bullshitter. You study how this government works, it makes announcements of the sort that are lapped up by the Daily Mail and many of the ignorant readers of it, but they don't change anything. Often, they just announce things that companies already do, or they just make "tough on XYZ" things that they simply can't or won't do, or are just plain lies, and the sort of morons that believed him will have forgotten by election time as a new moral panic takes over.

For instance: "public wifi will be child-friendly". Public wifi is already child-friendly, if you're talking about McDonalds and Starbucks. They already censor their wifi, in quite an extreme way. "cellphones will be child-friendly". Yes. They already are. "And, in a really big step forward, all the ISPs have rewired their technology so that once your filters are installed, they will cover any device connected to your home internet account." is just business as usual with filtering at ISP level. "the coalition will look at changing the law" is a commitment-free statement

I'll be surprised if any of it occurs.

Grr

Yet another attempt to censor the Internet, by filtering based on keywords and/or CRC32.

Here's what will happen shortly after it is introduced.

1) Those who actually make and sell "dodgy schitt" (tm) will find a way around it, probably involving a onetime pad sent via DVDR in the post to actually view the dodgy schitt on their site.

Of course, anyone without that keydisk will just get a site full of gardening products or just a 404 instead.

2) Companies innocently selling similar sounding products which use naughty words in their name will find their traffic getting restricted and lose revenue as a result. (use your imagination here, plenty of examples)

Guess who loses out most.

Interestingly, the keyword search is already routinely worked around by spammers, who used terms like V!ag4A to get around the blocks so this simply isn't going to work.

Filtering by image content again wouldn't work without an AI in the loop, and a lot of holiday pictures are going to get blocked because they show "too much flesh" or just have something that the filter "thinks" looks dodgy but any sane person would agree is in fact perfectly innocent in context.

so i'm a bloke A normal, red-blooded male. I'm over 50. I like women - its how God made us. Preferably nude. And preferably my wife. Women are beautiful creatures and should be highly valued. I like sex A lot. And, get this - I'm an IT pro. I don't have an issue as such with blocking porn - I have teenage kids and so block it at home anyway. what bothers me is - as others have said - is how far will this go? the thought police are out again telling me what to think and what to say. Where will it end? Whats next? Religion? Political party? Car insurance (you may laugh now, young man... )

Does anyone really watch porn for the hot tips on crime strategies?

forgive me for laughing out loud at that one

A successful ploy

Dave does it again!

A useless gesture for the Mail-reading, splutterers which also gives him points with "feminist groups" and carries the universal get out of jail free theme; "Think about the children".

If it weren't so obvious it would be brilliant. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see this is another silly season, column-filler designed to stop the papers talking about the economy, health, unemployment, etc.

Go After The Criminals, Not The Ordinary Guy!

Is Cameron clueless? He thought lol meant lots of love ! Cretin.

He's right when he says images of child abuse are crime scenes – so go after the criminals, not the ordinary guy!

Google et al are all about "search" and limiting what goes on there won't work. They are now all about money and offering you irrelevant stuff related to your location.

I notice nothing has been made linking GCHQ and NSA tapping and Google doing govts a favour when wi-fi sniffing during streetview work.

And teenage kids are too smart to prevent them looking at stuff - they won't be trading trainspotting numbers, it'll be lists of IP addresses, and transferring them directly between their smartphones. No search required!

And how long until

A list of politicians who have opted out of the pr0n filter is leaked online?

I can already see the Mail headlines now "Dirty Dave ditches own filter to fap frantically to dwarfsex.com"

The wrong analogy

Reading my postal mail is not good but it's very time consuming and possibly very boring and limited. Where do I go, talk to by phone or email, what is my current location and what interests me in a general sense, is much more , interesting.

Recording the websites I visit and the emails I write (which are basically letters), my location data my phone and more recently my viewing habits, games played, online conversations or posts such as this one is very easy, reading my postal mail is not.

It's time people started to use encryption not for hiding secrets but just to converse, although in the UK make sure you remember the password or face a secret trial that the media cannot report on, seriously.

It's a well-know fact

that pornography leads to sex, and sex is bad.

Wait, what? I don't even think that the first part holds water. Run that argument by me again, please?

As an adult UK citizen, I often of an evening slip into my gimp suit and enjoying a brutal sodomisation by several dominant females with large strap on dildos. I regularly film and post on-line my buggery video's for other like minded enthusiasts to enjoy. Forgive me, but being buggered into the middle of next week, by delectable femmes, whilst pretending that I'm being subjected to a humiliating rape, is just one of many of life's little pleasure for me. I enjoy the loss of control, feeling of powerlessness and humiliation. It's my thing and it's my choice.

Whilst as an experienced consenting adult I fully understand that my sex play is far and away a completely different experience from the horrific reality of real world rape that so many people in our society have had the terrible experience of being submitted to. I am at the same time left wondering weather the people sharing my consensual proclivity are going to be prosecuted for watching my videos due to the governments inability to differentiate between what is real and fake.

How are you going to differentiate between that David Cameron? Have you ever tried being pinned down, slapped about and ass fucked by a superior Woman, David Cameron? It's bloody brilliant! Or are you just going to treat all my videos as real rape and make me illegal?

The truth is this has nothing to do with preventing the evil of child abuse. It's just a foot through the door for Stazi like censorship. This is how it happens. Little by little, for your own good. People gladly capitulating to their own emolument.

Time travel

I always wanted to time travel. Now with David Cameron this is possible, I juste have to cross the channel to go back to victorian era

As an adult I'd much rather they simply ban kids on the internet.

Violent/child porn is clearly an exposure issue and people who are interested in this do need pulling up.

If 'normal' people want to watch porn it is a freedom that should not be monitored, I agree. But that is not what this legislation is about. It's about tackling sexual perpetrators before they commit crimes and harm real people. I am fully in support of that. However, having child safe filters by default at an ISP level. That could be seen as deprivation of human rights. (right to information) I guess the UK gov't can add that to their recent war crimes also on they dossier...

Just to note though, this will not work. People who browse illegal content and commit online crimes use ways of channeling data that ISP's cannot stop or log. It may stop a few (which I guess is better than none), but it will fail, badly.

Nothing to hide

So those evildoers decide not to opt out, switch on their VPN and carry on as normal. The finger of suspicion diverted away from them and if anyone comes asking "Not me guv. I have the porn filter enabled and thus cannot access such filth". Suspicion averted.

The evildoer easily sidesteps such a system and now less likely to be caught.

Re. @AC

What the Hector.. (goes to get Mind Bleach)

I am all for a bit of gentle humiliation and BDSM but this goes well beyond that.

Some things are best kept behind closed doors, starting with *that* post.

OTOH, if ol' Cameron starts thinking of filtering by written word, a lot of sites are going to get blocked.

Mine's the one with a copy of "Vladimir Losev's work" in the pocket, (deleted for reasons of filterage)

"If there are technical obstacles to acting, don't just stand by and say nothing can be done; use your great brains to help overcome them."

Actually the largest obstacle is moral. And as it happens nothing should be done. Great brains are better utilised to overcome idiotic politicians.

Any kind of censorship is very slippery slope.

clueless politicians

The Internet, unlike all other (government controlled) networks has been designed in such a way, that the network itself is "dumb" and the end-nodes are where all the smarts are. Trying to "smart" part of the network to filter traffic does not remove the smarts from the end-nodes...

What this proposes is to turn the Britain's Internet into walled garden intranet.

In a normal society, censure like this will result in customers switching ISPs. Or just moving to live in a country free freedom means something.

Since when

has censorship been proven an effective way of modifying human behavior. Fuck this shit.

Block the Daily Mail

The Daily Mail's sidebar is very worrying. Who compiles that stuff. It should be banned!

Abhorrent search terms

If they add the words "Ed milliband" and "Labour party membership" to the list that would sweeten the pill for me

family-friendly filters

Note that the vaccuous buffoon suggests that "the settings to install family-friendly filters will be automatically selected".

Not pedo filters, not rape filters, not even porn filters. Familiy-friendly ones. So, just like the default British PAYG internet service, all future British Internet will protected from sites that promote the drinking of beer, contain risque humour, discuss the occult or enable people to meet up to date one another. That will be the future of the Internet in Britiain unless you sign a piece of paper acknowledging that you are a filthy pervert and deserve to be subjugated by the rich in any depraved manner that they choose.

opt in -not- opt out

Aye total crap.

It should be an opt IN for the parents or haters of the dredded grott, not opt OUT for the entire country! You cant control your kids dont bundle EVERYONE in the country into your problems, seek help.

What next, PM dislikes bananas? bans bananas from the internet, opt in if you like them.

And what about "frapers" who abuse peoples facebook page..... can you imagine the damage/fun/questionable ramifications of that?! "i saw you left your laptop on, so i googled the most terrible nightmarish horror porn and now a gov mental health guy is coming round to take you away lololol" - no thanks.

A lone tumbleweed blows across the Interwebs

Is this in any way related to the delays in rolling out high-speed broadband across the UK???

Perhaps they think this will mean we can all go back to using 56k modems...

Did he make this announcement only a month after his secret Bilderberg meeting? my my. But no he wasn't plotting in there. No of course not. The Bilderbergers don't plot, and if you think they do, YOU are obscene and they will block you.

Doing this properly isn't cheap which is why some ISP's are using DNS which is cheap but very ineffective.

DNS suffers from a range of problems. Firstly it is easy to avoid, you can enter the actual IP address of the website into the browser avoiding DNS, configure the client to use another DNS service which is a simple 45 second job on IOS or use a proxy. The last two are widely used now to allow Netflix and Lovefilm users to access US content from the UK but can also be used to completely avoid a DNS based protection system.

But even if you don't deliberately try to avoid DNS it will still fail to block a significant amount of content due to the limitations of DNS itself.

DNS works at a site level, but many sites particularly ones containing user generated content have a mix of good and bad content all held under the same DNS address, in this case sites which contain a big majority of good content tend to get classified as good even though they also contain bad content.

Because of this DNS based blocking can be less than 50% effective.

The only way to resolve this is to classify at a much finer level and this is very difficult to do with DNS.

Finally whatever mechanism you use is only as good as the classified list of URL's that you use to generate your blacklists, many of the ISP's have tried to create these on the cheap when in reality having a list with anything like the coverage and accuracy required to be effective is neither simple nor cheap.

You wouldn't buy and use a condom if it claimed to have a less than 50% protection rate. So there is something morally ambiguous about an ISP with a DNS based service claiming to protect children etc from harm. Most parents will think that ticking the no bad content box will do what it says on the tin and will be unaware that protection offered is so ineffective that they still need to monitor their children's internet use.

I think GCHQ are in on this. All web proxy gateways of course log every single web page you visit, and opting out does not in any way turn off the logging function. Just when we thought the tide might be turning in the privacy war, the government tries to pull a fast one like this. Proxies are actually more powerful than passive listening because they can in many cases intercept HTTPS as well.

Basically this is their wet dream come true, they get us to pay for the hardware then get their snoopers charter as well.

What, you really think GCHQ wouldn't be able to access these boxes, through court order or a vulnerability?