back to article Police moot pop-up social network warnings

Police chiefs have privately proposed that social networking sites hosted overseas should carry pop-up government health warnings, as part of measures to increase surveillance of the internet. In a submission to the Home Office, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) said senior judges or Ministers could decide which …

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  1. seanj
    Flame

    ACPO - Actively Co-opting Political Office.

    This lot need to be given a pop-up message of their own - pack it in or you'll find an unwelcome return of the gallows.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One Nation under PCCTV

    Creepy.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Ehh?

    Wait a minute....

    MY browser has "blacklists" built into it... most of them do nowadays. AntiVirus suites also have similar features.

    So why the hell do the Cops think they need to stick their noses into this area?

    Oh that's right, I forgot, we live in a police state now. As I've said before Stalin would be proud of what we've got in place in the UK now.

  4. Nigel Callaghan
    FAIL

    Bye-bye DVLA

    "...that allowing the public access or use of specific communications services could make them vulnerable to fraud, the theft of personal information or other attack" - so given that DVLA flog the details to anyone, or give them to dodgy Bulgarians for nothing, presumably DVLA online will include one of these wonderful pop-ups? - which IE and all the pop-up blockers will presumably block anyway as it's coming from a different address? And if it isn't will be ignored by everyone anyway.

    Don't they have ANYONE in ACPO who knows how real people actually use the interwebs?

    What a total waste of time and our money!

  5. lukewarmdog
    Stop

    warning

    You are about to share drunken photos of sexual exploits that could ruin your future job prospects.

    Maybe that warning every time you think about going on to Facebook et al. wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Much More To Come...

    Reverend Jim just can't leave things alone for long. Probably still smarting from the complete 'dissing he got from Facebook after his hissy fit on radio 4's Today programme a few weeks back, lambasting the social networking site for not taking him and his 'panic button' seriously enough to build it into their web pages. Still, you can't keep a determined moral censor down for long and Jim and his cohorts at CEOP have been busy making plans.

    They announced quite a while ago, to some fanfare (following the largely unreported death of 'commercial child pr0n' online here in the UK - and with very little to be found elsewhere in the big, bad world - which makes one wonder how CEOP's police service chums stay in gainful employment over at the IWF these days) that CEOP - a public/private organisation - would be targeting P2P and social networks, looking for CP and for suspected paedophiles using such sites to 'groom' youngsters.

    I wonder how that's all been going, then? Unsurprisingly, since that initial flurry of media hype there's been not a peep from Jim about just how successful he and his officers have been. There now seem, reportedly, to be so many undercover cops online fishing for paedos whilst posing as 14 year-old girls, that one imagines they must be bumping into one another in chatrooms on an almost daily (or nightly) basis. It's a social networking phenomenon in and of itself, LOL.

    Still, this latest outburst from the good Reverend and his accommodating chums in ACPO represents merely the next in what promises to be a never-ending, progressive erosion of personal freedoms online. Jim isn't ever going to stop; he's at war with online freedoms, after all, in a nation where everyone over the age of 16 is now legally a suspected paedophile. With his ever-dependable, totally bulletproof (and critic-proof) 'Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children?' flag raised high, he knows he's all but unstoppable.

    And it's worth remembering that Jim gets what Jim wants. Recents laws criminalising so-called 'extreme' pornography (involving consenting adults in simulated sexual acts) and new laws criminalising 'indecent images' featuring wholly fictional drawings and cartoons of children (including comics) can all be traced back to CEOP.

    And for CEOP, there is still so much work to be done.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Jimbo has Pedo Power

      Indeed unstopable. The problem with Gamble is he's got pedo super power. He can infer that critics are kiddy diddlers and that politicians aren't protecting vulnerable kiddies if they refuse his demands. And he's very media savvy, knows how to pitch to the tabloids, so, especially at election time, he can easily manipulate politicians.

      As usual the most damaging people are always the ones that believe they are SO RIGHT AND TRUE that their opinion should prevail even when they can't win in reasoned argument or show results in proper research.

      But he's ultimately just one part of a much bigger picture, the police powers are already way beyond the level where people dare speak out.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAs4gZY1bro

      Everyone of them thinks they're right, and can't see the damage they're doing to Britain.

  7. adnim

    What's in a list?

    "...suggesting a parallel list of social networks, forums and real time messaging sites judged to be risky could be created."

    Seeing as anyone can pretend to be anyone, that'll be all of 'em then.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Because teh intarwebz are SCARY! I'M TELLING YOU, THEY'RE SCARY!!!!!!oneone!!

    This is why censorship ``for your own good'' is such a great idea: Once we've done that, we can now warn you of the next perceived danger. And soon we'll block it. Or maybe we'll rub out ``offensive terms''. Or report you to the authorities right away. Or all of the above. Naughty person!

  9. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    In the name of sanity NOT popups

    Someone already said that many current browsers warn you that you're going somewhere bad. So does Google. Their definition of "bad", however, may not coincide with any given police state's, referring instead to web sites that do funny things to your computer when you get there... such as... make pop-ups.

    We can of course use either many Internet security software products that further restrict our ownlonline activities - harmless enoughgif we have the keys ourselves - or of course pass everything through the government's own proxy server.

  10. Disco-Legend-Zeke

    Scrambled?

    If you have nothing to hide... Bla Bla..

    I have been encrypting my chat rooms for a little while now. No big announcements, it just "is."

    The additional machine load is insignificant.

  11. LinkOfHyrule
    FAIL

    LOL Pop-Ups

    Pop-Ups? Really? That's so 1999!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Welcome to China

    http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2006/04/meet_chinas_net.html

    These things have been around in China for years - floating police cartoons which wander over your browser reminding you that everything you do is being watched. Good to know that we can learn from the masters in Beijing.

    Seriously, our police deserve a good kicking (out), shortly after Brown and his Communist-aspiring Government.

    But it is all for the Kids, so thats OK. I think these people like kids a little too much, they are always thinking about them.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ban them

    Answer, ban the kids from using the internet. Why not, seriously, I mean why not?

    When I were a lad, there was no such thing as the internet. I used books in the school and town centre libraries. I got myself a degree and a decent career.

    If the internet is proving to be so dangerous and harmful to our kids, then get them off it!

    We must resist this constant interference by the government in attempting to police and control the internet. Look at what's now been announced today in Australia.

    I'm all for the protection of kids but not at the expense at stopping law abiding adults from doing perfectly law abiding things on the internet.

    I don't play with the BobTheBuilder play set, so why should the kids play with my internet....

    Some tools and toys are for adults...and some are for children.

    1. Bod

      When I were a lad...

      we got our fix from the top shelves instead ;)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Seconded

      Even though I liked to use it when I was a minor, I would kill to have a kid-free internet. The quality of everything would improve. Wouldn't really be fair though..

  14. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Free advertising

    Today police officers proposed adverting which sites have effective privacy technology with pop-ups.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    The end of free thought is near or here already

    It is time that the techies of the world united to shut down the big scary internet and in it's place, show John and Jane Q. Public exactly what these Net Nannies Stalinists want to do.

    Just imagine floating browser popups warning you that you're about to do something "dangerous" when you are filling out your comments to El'Reg.

    These popups would require you to fill in all your personal info, including your "Internet License Number" to be able to continue. Sara Bee wouldn't stand for it and neither would I.

  16. JaitcH
    Grenade

    The Home Office and ACPO ...

    might think they rule the world nut their particular bit of the world comes to a screeching halt a few miles off the Blighty coast.

    The U.S.A. is the domain of choice as their Constitution protects free speech, which is an anathema to the Blair, now Brown, Gestapo.

    I reside in VietNam and we have more freedom than that place that once had a saying: "A mans home is his castle". No more.

  17. A B 3
    Thumb Down

    Kid friendly internet

    X-rated material is perfectly legal in the privacy of your own home, in western countries at least.

    I could suggest that parents become tech savvy enough to police their own childrens computers. The biggest complaint by the parents is... they don't understand how that computer 'thingy' works. They then expect the government to sanitize the internet with tv like ratings restrictions. One big Net Nanny internet.

    The internet is not a tv for keeping the kids entertained, it is a communications tool. If you want safety buy some cd-roms and let them play offline.

    It's just some (insert expletive) politicians trying to score points with voters. Plus all politicians nowadays seem to have their own private agendas. Those religious types don't seem to understand that a most of the population is not interested in their sanitized world.

    I'm offended by parents who take photos or video of their children/babies in the bath or public breastfeeding (in this day and age you don't just pull 'em out wherever you feel like it), but I can simply avert my eyes, change the channel or move to another location and the distress is removed.

    Brainless reality tv also causes me distress can I have a warning that says, "Watching the following program may lower your IQ."

    I don't have kids myself, but I have younger brothers and younger cousins so I got to see their morals develop thanks to the parents. Nurturing parents who spend time with their kids seem to make well balanced young adults.

    1. Bod

      legal?

      "X-rated material is perfectly legal in the privacy of your own home, in western countries at least."

      That depends. It is so long as it doesn't break any laws. A lot of what's on the net does (and not just talking about Kiddy pr0n).

      What you do in the privacy of your own home in the UK is of interest to the authorities.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This Country is now run by......

    the ACPO Stasi and helped along by the incompetent and thieving Labour Govt. This Country ,and Labour, STINK.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Tell Big Brother To Get Bent!

    "...but ACPO suggests that if the Interception Modernisation Programme cannot harvest communications data from some services, then discouraging their use is a reasonable alternative."

    In other words, the UK would prefer its slaves...err...citizens not to use social networking sites they can't spy on. I keep wondering when Britons will finally develop a backbone and tell Big Brother to get bent?

  20. Winkypop Silver badge
    Joke

    I already get a 'pop-up' when I...

    ...visit certain adult-orientated web sites!

  21. Fluffykins Silver badge

    Of course........

    If the popupa cpome from a seprate URL (wwhich they probably will) then it would be a simple expedient for anyone with the slightest idea of how to actuallty use a computer wil be able to block those (hosts file etc.).

    That leaves those who would be too thick or unwilling to practice security. Job Done

  22. Chris Parsons
    Grenade

    All that is not compulsory

    is forbidden. God, I hate this country with its crackpot 'government' and its neo-nazi police force. We really could do with a revolution here.

  23. Elmer Phud
    IT Angle

    What's the problem?

    Unwanted pop-up?

    Copy address, bung address in Ad-Block.

    Sorted.

  24. asiaseen

    Next up fom ACPO et al

    Pop-up blockers to be made illegal

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Move Along

    "... communications services within the online environment where there is evidence, presented to a Circuit Judge or Secretary of State, that allowing the public access or use of specific communications services could make them vulnerable to fraud ..."

    I know only one thing on the Internet that fits that description. It's the one where packets of arbitrary data can be routed between any two hosts.

  26. Sceptical Bastard
    Flame

    @ Chris Parsons

    Yeah, and come that revolution, Gamble and his CEOP Stasi will be the first ones against the wall.

    Oh, sorry, I forgot -they'll be behind the 650-odd MPs and as many Peers at the front of the queue (behind Blair, of course).

    If zealots like Gamble had spent a bit more time looking into the murky reaches of the Catholic church instead of obsessing about the internet, dozens - probably hundreds - of children could've been spared from a priestly fiddling. Not to mention all those Uncle Ernies who like to keep it in the family.

    When Thatcher ruled the roost, many of us naively thought things couldn't get any worse - how wrong we were!

  27. Ted 3

    Overseas only?

    "Police chiefs have privately proposed that social networking sites hosted overseas should carry pop-up government health warnings"

    So that means that it is only dirty foreigner websites which pose a security risk? Because, I suppose, it could never be conceived a website hosted in England could ever be involved in anything fraudulent or illegal?

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