Tories research increased net censorship The activities, alleged activities, and destiny of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) are a constant source of controversy in these parts, so our interest was naturally piqued by a Parliamentary question from the shadow security minister Baroness Neville-Jones last week. In a written question, she asked her government …
Hands up if you don't understand the technical implementation and associated philosophy of the 'net? Oh, 99% of the Labour party I see, and 98% of the Tories.
Well let me tell you a story about a small website called Bing from a little-known software company called Microsoft, based up there in Washington state, U.S. of A.
Many corporations think they have pretty sophisticated firewall and censorship systems. On a much smaller scale to national ISPs they can afford to implement technology that just wouldn't scale to a network level.
But along came this crazy little software company with a search engine called Bing, and before you know it all the kids in the sales team were accessing hardcore porn on their lunch breaks, using Bing as a proxy. Could you even imagine it?
In a democracy, any censorship has to be open and transparent.
On the internet, it's nearly impossible to prevent circumvention without draconian clam-downs on freedom.
So there you have it, serious robust policy or cheap gimmicky headline-grabbing politics written by Meerkats. Simples.
Erm, neither Chris. Just the facts.
See Europol's recent report on the project to the Council of the EU here: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/jun/eu-europol-use-of-personal-data-in-the-check-the-web-project-9604-09.pdf
Sample quote: "The Check the Web project was born and Europol had the responsibility to develop a portal to facilitate the exchange of information on Islamist extremist propaganda on the Internet."
The cause is lack of education. Low intelligence / poor education mixed with a health dose of brainwashing by immoral fundamentalists (whether based on religion, race, or political affiliation) cause extremist behaviour.
Being the moral nanny of the population by filtering "objectionable" material isn't going to stop extremism, it's only going to force them into more subversive methods of dissemination of material. You will never beat the Sneakernet.
Take your £XXXm budget and spend it on educating the populace.
Hi,
We can "trust" the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit to provide a list going far beyond the Islamist "Make you own bomb" web sites.
But of course as they are a "private company" (founded by the Home Office (so by us) and deploying police officers) they are exempt from Freedom of Information act, so just another layer of surveillance and soon censorship....
Might be time to send "V for Vendetta" DVDs to our (shadow) government....
So ... we would go on the interwebs and see no evidence of violent extremism (aside from the state-sponsored military type, obvs.) and the government could tell us - OOH! All these violent jihadists with their blogs and BBSs and veilbook pages want to kill us all and eat our babies and we need to protect you by implementing martial law, and we'd be like "No Way!" And they'd be like "Totally way!" and we'd go, "OK, well if u says so". And the moral of the story would be to trust your government and don't think or find out for yourself and everything will be all right.
Never seen a violent extremist website in my life. Not looking for them, of course, but if I was, anything this* shower of shit put in place to block me would doubtless be trivial to bypass.
More authoritarianism from the authoritarians. Business as usual.
*incumbent oligarch duopoly
Yesh - they have to limit it to Islamic extremists otherwise they'd have to spy on El Reg comments pages...
I'll be the one stockpiling fertilizer, charcoal and buckets of my own wee in preparation for the revolution... although it would probably be easier to buy C4 and detonators over the web. More reliable too, I'm not 100% convinced of my skill as a chemist :)
"Ah, that's OK then. The document is only concerned with Islamist extremists so without facts on any other extremist group we have nothing to fear from anyone else. That's very reassuring."
Be extra reassured in the wonderful knowledge that you have very little-to-nothing to fear from Islamist nutcase websites either.
That said, real home-grown racist knuckle-draggers of all shades scare the living bejaysus out of me.
"Child protection charities counter that their research indicates merely stumbling across such sites can trigger a descent into perversion."
It's funny, I've been using the net for well over 10 years now and have never stumbled across such sites. Not even once. Me thinks they're talking bollocks.
The namby pamby anti-BNP liberals are the ones that threw eggs at the leader of a political party after it had one a democratic election for seats at the European parliament. Personally I think that is horrendous. If the Anti-BNP feel that strongly they should stand against the BNP in elections and let the public decide. That's what we do in a democracy, we do not attack the opposition with violence.
Personally I find Fascists and Anti-Fascists to be two sides of the same coin and neither one of them worth the shite on my shoes.
This is from the same party that's led by David Cameron, you know, the guy who refuses a change from first past the post because it means even with only 38% approval rating him and his party will have 100% of the power?
I don't know why everyone voted Conservatives after seeing what Labour have done to civil liberties, they're just as totalitarian and power hungry. Hell, they were even worse than the expenses scandal.
Personally I'll vote Lib Dems, still pretty awful but the best of a bad bunch, not that my vote matters being stuck in a Labour safe seat constituency. Even though the Lib dems have their head in the clouds on many issues, at least they're not run by a little Hitler like Labour and the Tories are and at least they have some respect for the citizen. They're also the only party that had any members that didn't claim MPs expenses at all.
Still, Tories have a guaranteed win, Brown has said he aint getting rid of first past the post and Cameron said the same, so I guess we're stuck in a minority elected dictatorship for at least another 6 years yet.
And so it begins....It all starts at blocking 'extremist jihadi' websites, then it moves on to 'undesirables' who speak out against the Government in order to promote 'social discontent'. Then its on to blocking anything which a government deems to be unsuitable for its citizens to see.
There is a very real difference between blocking plainly illegal and disgustingly explicit material like images of child abuse, and blocking websites belonging to groups who do not agree with your way of life.
Much like the 'extreme p0rn' law, this would be a law without defintion, where it's suitability to a particular situation is open to interpretation and can most likely be made to fit any situation a particular individual would like it to fit.
Paris, because she knows how to make herself visible on the internet.
Odd that you believe that anti-fascists are as bad as fascists when it was Britain that stood up to the fascists in Europe. Surely that makes this country anti-fascist does it not?
I find it difficult to equate egg-throwing with firebombing gay pubs and processing ricin. The BNP aren't the only political party to receive eggs - both Labour and Tory politicians have been on the receiving end of this sort of action.
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