Of course, it won't be long before producing or using software to circumvent the government approved filters will be made a criminal offence...
Click here to beat David Cameron's web porn ban
A programmer has designed a backdoor which will allow grumble movie lovers to get around UK prime Minister David Cameron's ban on filth. Anyone using Chrome can now employ a simple extension called Go Away Cameron to bypass the new network-level "safety" filters implemented by the UK's biggest ISPs: TalkTalk, Sky and this week …
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Monday 23rd December 2013 18:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Just like all Governments, they are only interested in crowd control, I bet they don't have restrictions placed on them.
So called leaders are pretty much interchangeable, Kim Jong Un, Cameron, Obama, All South American Presidents, all African Presidents to name but a few who want to restrict access for their own means.
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Monday 23rd December 2013 19:51 GMT Rodrigo Valenzuela
"South american presidents"
As a South American, I believe that you should be better informed before grouping us with the likes of Kim Jong Un or other kind of dictators.
Most of South America enjoys a healthy democracy, which has been very hard to get and that most of the citizens care deeply for.
Chile, my own small country, was the first country in the world to establish a "net neutrality" policy, three or four years ago.
R
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Thursday 26th December 2013 21:18 GMT Fatman
Re: "South american presidents"
Most of South America enjoys a healthy democracy, which has been very hard to get and that most of the citizens care deeply for.
Despite all of the meddling the CIA (Cunts In America) have done over the past 50+ years. It is a shame that most (US) Americans don't realize that!
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Monday 23rd December 2013 22:04 GMT Don Jefe
'Like All South American Presidents'.
What the fuck? You mean the US led and British supported dictatorships that were popular for a while? The US led dictatorships that disappeared my wife's Uncle under Bordaberry?
It really pisses me off when shitsocks like you go mouthing off about things you know absofuckinglutely nothing about. There hasn't been a Western government in over 100 years that was one fucking jot better than Bordaberry. Our governments just do shitty things to people in other countries so pantywaists like yourself can keep getting cheap chocolate, fruits and gas without having to worry yourself about anything other than the self righteous sniffing of your own farts.
You sanctimonious little garden gnome. I would be absolutely shocked if you could name even three of the people you are smearing. The rest of the world isn't what you think it is. By and large you could go anywhere in South America and find greater tolerance, better applications of Democracy and better preschool through undergraduate education systems than you'll find anywhere in the US or UK.
It's people like you who I have to defend against when I travel. People who degrade every person of class in their country by stumbling through the world making stupid statements like yours. Now go away and don't bother us anymore until you've actually gone out into the world and have valid experience.
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Monday 23rd December 2013 20:10 GMT John Smith 19
"Of course, it won't be long before producing or using software to circumvent the government approved filters will be made a criminal offence..."
True,
Or Call-me-Dave might finally realize his Daily Jailbait friendly campaign is going seriously pear shaped.
And perhaps time to consider the strategy.
Not a U turn you understand. No sir. Just a "re-consideration"
Right.
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Friday 27th December 2013 11:31 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Alister
"Of course, it won't be long before producing or using software to circumvent the government approved filters will be made a criminal offence..." Sorry if it hurts your tinfoil-wrapped head, but it is already possible to byepass the filters just by opting out of the filtering, so why would that be made illegal?
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Monday 23rd December 2013 16:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Getting round the filters was always going to be trivial (for the younger generation)
The idea was to try and keep it quiet so parents could more easily be nagged into letting little Timmay have a PC in his room on the 'new safe internet' to 'do his homework'
Timmay is currently putting all other machine in the household on the bandwidth limited guest network and peering the prawns at full throttle
The only people in the household that are filtered are mum and dad...
In my day the playground had a black market in soft porn mags
These days it's more likely to be little post-it's of router settings, plugins, proxies and vpns
But at least the Tories can stand up and say 'We made the UK a a safer place for the children' and only ~30% of the voting population realise that to be bullshit
Daily Mail and Mothers Union, what have you done...
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Monday 23rd December 2013 18:02 GMT Craigness
It's not only the Mail and Mothers, it's feminists too, who think women who do porn degrade women and men only use porn to fulfill their control fantasies. Feminists want to get more women into tech, but now they've created an environment where all boys will become network specialists by the age of 14 it will make it that much harder to get "equal representation" in the industry.
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Monday 23rd December 2013 19:23 GMT SMabille
Not all feminist
It's only a small part of feminists that want to block porn, the same feminists that believe that *all* prostitutes are trafficked and abused, while students working at McDonald's have done a career choice, clothing industry and house staffing exploitation of migrants doesn't exist/not worth fighting for.
Those people use feminism as an excuse to push their narrow minded view of society, along the average Daily Mail reader/voter.
If you look around the web there are plenty of feminists with a different point of view, I'm thinking about people like Brooke Magnanti (Belle de Jour), Zoe Margolis (Girl with one track mind) and plenty of others.
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Tuesday 24th December 2013 00:16 GMT Don Jefe
Re: Not all feminist
Like so many other movements, the insane minority steals the voice of the majority. You can no more not notice them than you would if you came home and found your house filled with squid or a battalion of narwhals drinking your whisky and raping a crate of lemons.
It's that way with politics, religion, social issues, just about any 'group' regardless of how nebulous. I've generally found that the loud sideshow people are suffering from far worse things than whatever it is they believe is oppressing them.
They're the types that must be heard and will wholeheartedly adopt the first cause that listens to them. The feminist radical could just as easily have been an envoirnmental, political, religious or animal rights radical, it was simply luck that brought them to the cause they're championing today.
What's unfortunate is that the loons in any group obfuscate the legitimate issues of others in the group. Radicals have no place within any group that not only wants to be heard, but listened to. The feminists really need to do some housekeeping.
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Monday 23rd December 2013 17:19 GMT Graham Marsden
Of course...
These filters will never be used improperly, will they...?
"mobile operator O2 has blocked a huge range of sites through its “Parental Controls” settings. If their parents have chosen this option, children using O2 phones will be unable to access almost all of the internet: police websites, the NHS, ChildLine, the NSPCC, the Samaritans, many schools and even the main government website, GOV.UK.[...] And sites like ChildLine and the Samaritans are there precisely to provide support to children in crisis who may have nowhere else to turn. [...] Children can have burgers marketed to them but they can’t get help if they’re being neglected or abused."
http://adrianshort.org/2013/12/22/some-websites-should-be-unblockable/
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Wednesday 25th December 2013 14:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: WTF
"Most of the hard filtering is based on IP addresses."
On that note, has anybody got any example sites which are *currently" being blocked by BT?
I got BT Infinity just days ago, and I did not see any proper option for opting out of parental control. Only one for configuring it (which implies enabling it). Cancelling the setup at that point seemed to be the only way around it. Internet is working, but whether the filter is now active or not, I have no way of telling. BT's FAQ also don't show the same pictures I am seeing in my account, most importantly there's no on/off toggle switch.
If anybody has got *any* sites/IPs which are guaranteed to be blocked at the moment, I'd be most grateful. Thanks!
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Tuesday 24th December 2013 20:38 GMT Vociferous
Re: WTF
> How long will that last with everyone streaming 1080p porn through it?
Well, depending on how they've done it, perhaps quite a long time... See the "Media Hint" plug-in for Firefox, it can handle the load of tens of thousands of europeans wanting access to all content available to US subscribers on sites like Hulu, Netflix and Youtube, because the content isn't streamed through the proxy server.
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Monday 23rd December 2013 20:38 GMT Ballyworkan
Doesn't bypass BT Parental Controls
Looks like goawaycameron site is categorised as a proxy by BT and blocked. Strange to me how people on one hand get excited by ISP making available parental controls as optional but then miss the obvious danger of users downloading some anonymous dude's proxy which does dear knows what ? Oh I know .. Let's start a conspiracy theory like all the others .. Maybe the workaround's team my not some grad in Singapore but is NSA ! What a crazy old world..
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Wednesday 25th December 2013 14:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Doesn't bypass BT Parental Controls
Indeed, and it does open a massively huge gate for phishing!
In order to bypass the filter, the DNS requests have to be tunneled and answered by non-BT DNS servers. These plugins will have to handle this process. This won't be the last plugin of this kind, and it won't take long until malicious ones will appear.
So then you type hsbc.co.uk into your browser, the plugin returns an IP address to your browser, and the browser displays the site. It could be any site, including malware sites. They may look like HSBC's site. But all they do is gather your details. It's just an example. I'm counting days until something like that is going to be reported, probably here on El Reg.
Some of El Reg's readers may be well aware of this risk. The normal user, especially the average Daily Mail reader, certainly hasn't got a clue.
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Monday 23rd December 2013 22:05 GMT chris 17
Will reduce online security
As unskilled consumers scramble to install some crap that their 'Mate' suggested or some google search suggested would circumvent the filter, they just open themselves up to all sorts of malware, virus, intentional man in the middle exploits, & other online nasties, all in the name of saving the children.
As the kids search for these circumventing strategies they risk coming into contact with the very people this measure is designed to safeguard them from, no doubt they'll be sharing all kinds of PII badies will use to exploit or hack them.
I hope I'm wrong.
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Tuesday 24th December 2013 09:17 GMT Haku
Re: Will reduce online security
I hope you're wrong, too.
A friend put his laptop online for just a short while through his phone (god knows how he figured out how to tether) just to get some printer drivers.
Cue me taking a good part of half an hour removing the half a dozen pieces of toolbar shite and other bags of shite that got installed during his attempt to simply getting a printer working because he wasn't paying attention during the installation processes (those bastards keep finding new ways to hide the 'FREE TOOLBAR' options from end users).
In a good way it means more work for those who make a living from fixing people's PCs, in a bad way it means computer hobbyists will spend more time being unpaid tech help to friends/family.
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Tuesday 24th December 2013 09:08 GMT Haku
There are too many who are ignorant of the porn filter
and the consequences it brings.
I talked to a friend about this going "So you've heard about the porn filter they're putting on the internet?" to which his reply was "no", and it was difficult trying to explain to him that the filter does more than (allegedly) 'protect the children' because it sets in place a tool for the government to filter so much more.
I still don't think he understands what the filter actually represents :(
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Wednesday 25th December 2013 22:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Parents, it's all your fault!
If any of you think this was about protecting children in any way, shape and/or form from the start then you're clearly deluded.
They've blocked the BNP website (I hate the BNP, but I don't condone political censorship), the Pirate Party, gay rights, sex education, certain news websites (Torrentfreak, The Guardian, etc.)
This is just about pure, unmitigated censorship. (Cameron's wet dream.)
And it's only going to get worse from here on out...
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Friday 27th December 2013 12:21 GMT Amorous Cowherder
Re: Parents, it's all your fault!
"Parents, it's all your fault!"
Whoa there Sonny, not all of us are Mumsnet freaks with a "Think of the Children!" fetish! Me and the Missus like a bit of light grumble action and access to adult toy-shops. Just 'cos you have kids doesn't mean you're instantly a prude, it just means you have a shit load more planning to do to be able to make time to appreciate each other's intimate company!
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Sunday 29th December 2013 14:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
At this rate
Its only a matter of time before "El Reg" is blocked.
Maybe its time to consider regime change in the UK, I am wholly in support of UKIP being given a chance.
The simplest solution would be to replace the current "elect your least favourite MP" form and have a simple choice. Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative, UKIP or Green.
Whoever gets in depends on who runs in the area, and the actual election of these devolves to local councils to decide.
I call it "Pure Democracy".
-Andre
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