This deserves a lot more of a response but for now I'll just leave this:
Liberty is about the ability of the individual to do things that others disapprove of. You don't need liberty if everyone else approves of your actions. As a corollary, the exercise of liberty does not require a justification, because it's a liberty, practicality or "usefulness" or what-have-you play no part in it. It's onerous to require someone to justify their right to look at porn. It's even more onerous to ask people to put their name on a list as someone who desires the ability to look at porn. And indeed this is how freedoms are eroded. Because once you put things on a different footing and you require people to justify their freedoms then it becomes ever more difficult to justify anything. Can you justify eating a cheap, greasy cheeseburger? Can you justify watching "Jersey Shore"? Are you willing to?
These are precisely the same sorts of tactics that have been used since the dawn of time for busybodies to rein in individual freedoms of others, and thereby to obtain greater authority over others.
People often dismiss out of hand the notion that tyranny could possibly take hold over the first world democracies of the west in the 21st century. And to that I can only sigh. Perhaps it will not be known as tyranny, perhaps someone will come up with a different, more apt name once (if) we are in the clutches of it, but it will be every bit as bad and every bit as difficult to throw off, if not more so.
>People often dismiss out of hand the notion that tyranny could possibly take hold over the first world democracies of the west in the 21st century
I think that the two most famous tyrannies, the Nazis and the USSR, have given us a very narrow impression of how tyranny can take hold. We think, as long as there isn't a charismatic Hitler/Lenin figure agitating for revolution and preaching a radical ideology, that we're safe.
We should be concerned the about the general erosion of the republican immune system - 1. Judiciary: Laws weakening judges in favor of prosecutors, vast unfilled judge vacancies, the FISA court. 2. The Legislature: The utter contempt shown for the people's branch by the military/executive, the troubling trend of the public echoing this. 3. Worshiping the guys with rows of medals and funny hats, giving them massive political power (Keith Alexander).
EDIT: I found two relevant James Madison quotes:
"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations"
"The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. "
>We think, as long as there isn't a charismatic Hitler/Lenin figure agitating for revolution and preaching a radical ideology, that we're safe.
i think this is exactly the delusion most suffer from, because there are many people consolidating power instead of just one the concept of tyranny seems farfetched and alien. there isn't a clear target beyond "the government" that is the source of the power creep and so people struggle to fight against it, much like a lion trying to catch a zebra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Stripes)
Also, it's the difference between people who are hungry for power on their own and people who seek to limit personal freedom and devolve power to the state for everyone's "own good". The Mussolini/Stalin route isn't the only way to destroy freedom, it can just as easily happen at the hands of less flamboyant folks believing their acting in everyone's best interests.
It's not the risk of Voldemort taking over, it's the risk of Dolores Umbridge doing so.
You make a number of excellent points, but the distinction you're drawing is actually more broad than just justification of liberty.
Anytime one makes a differentiation between two things, beauty and ugliness, skill and stupidity, light and dark, one is making a value judgement. The act of segregation, in and of itself, implies evaluation, weighing and judgement.
I believe that prejudgement (or prejudice) is antithetical to democracy. The idea that looking at porn should require justification is so wrong-headed I don't even know where to begin.
Sometimes I feel like in the 21st century, our industry (tech) is focused on making dreams come true, whereas our body politic is only interested in rehashing the same problems we've dealt with since the dawn of time. Why the hell are we even discussing a pornography filter when there are so many real, gigantic problems out there.
> The act of segregation, in and of itself, implies evaluation, weighing and judgement.
One of my favorite quotes:
> when you don't create things, you become defined by your
> tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow &
> exclude people. so create.
>
> - _why the lucky stiff
Because Cameron and Osbourne have trashed the economy, and are looking for a distraction? Wouldn't hurt to throw in a crackdown on violent video games - or maybe video nasties; New Zealand just banned Maniac, so there's a good one to put across the cover of The Sun.
The founders were hashing out how each state would be represented by Congress. They decided each state would have representation proportional to its population. The problem: some states had tons of slaves. Slaves weren't allowed to vote--that was never in question--but slave states still wanted them to be included in the population count to get more representation.
Giving slave-owners more votes by counting their slaves fully would have been much worse, not better, for the slaves.
(An irrelevant tangent, I know, but this historical event is always mentioned in the wrong context and I think the truth is more interesting.)
Interesting indeed. But as you noted, it is irrelevant to how people have been (and continued to be by some) treated according to he "original" law of the land, which is no less the "truth".
People can learn many lessons from an event in history.
But what if you transcend into something like modern day Britain? You let people start tweaking with some aspects, others will want to "modernize" its notion of free speech. It could be such a slippery slope.
If the people allow for something to happen and do nothing, then that is what will be (until otherwise confronted). The people who inhabited the world before us were no less immune to the philosophical issues that plague us today. Slippery slopes will always present themselves before us, as it has always been in our nature to create our own problems, but it matters more what will people do when the moment arises.
I'm not condoning the actions of our nation states (Britain in this case), but as we have seen people and companies are standing in opposition with the issues at hand, and if people continue to do so to a point where it is agreed upon by more members of the community, then it will become the law of the land. Even the ideals brought forth in the constitution we're hardly original to it and we're fought for with the blood of about 1% of the population in the colony at the time [0]. But by no means does that some how make them more moral then the people who came before and those afterwards.
And privacy being liberty's right hand, this is particularly frightening:
"Whether Huawei is linked to the government or not (they insist not), it’s hardly encouraging to discover that even when TalkTalk subscribers turn filtering completely off, their traffic is still routed through Huawei’s system."
Who needs PRISM when ISPs will just proxy all our network traffic through the Great Firewall!
> People often dismiss out of hand the notion that tyranny could possibly take hold over the first world democracies of the west in the 21st century. And to that I can only sigh. Perhaps it will not be known as tyranny, perhaps someone will come up with a different, more apt name once, if, we are in the clutches of it, but it will be every bit as bad and every bit as difficult to throw off, if not more so.
Jesus fucking christ you people should go look at what happens in real dictatorships sometime.
A voluntary filter is not tyranny and it's fucking disgusting to compare optional filtering of semi-random webcontent with governments who murder and torture their citizens.
This perfectly illustrates my point. Of course this is not full on tyranny. It's just baby steps toward something which could represent a diminution in individual liberty every bit as severe and oppressive as full-on tyranny. As I said, maybe when that day comes people will have come up with a better name for it. For now we either call it tyranny and risk people dismissing it, as you have done, or we dare not call it tyranny and risk people not seeing it as a serious threat.
P.S. At what level of infringement of individual liberty between "just a little" and "full on raging tyranny" is it acceptable to take notice and be seriously pissed off?
It will be. "Security" and "child protection" are two most effective weapons of the tyranny right now. You can pass nearly anything on a wave of moral panic in the name of security or child protection.
A voluntary filter is not tyranny and it's fucking disgusting to compare optional filtering of semi-random webcontent with governments who murder and torture their citizens.
You are the one that made the equivalence, not the person to which you replied. Nice straw man.
This UK porn filter is a step on a path. Yes, that current position is not tyranny, but it's a step on the path to it. Frogs can't be dropped into boiling water, but you can turn up the heat a little bit at a time until they boil. That's what's happening in the US and UK right now. The end result will be tyranny, and it will end with murder and torture of citizens.
Btw, in the US, we've already started murdering our citizens[1].
"but you can turn up the heat a little bit at a time until they boil."
This has been called "kettling" in police jargon regarding crowd-control. For an older example, look to Roman general Fabius Maximus (from which the Fabian Society took its name) who used a new tactic [1], consisting of attrition, to defeat his enemies. Also, might as well mention that Sung Tzu (correct me if I'm wrong) said the weakest and dumbest way to enact political change is via military action, preferring subversion instead.
The GP did not say we're living in a dictatorship right now, merely that such a possibility in the future should not be dismissed out of hand.
Oh and by the way, you are familiar with the fact that the American government has murdered its own citizens, and that a hundred of them have been detained (and I suppose it's safe to assume, tortured) in Guantanamo? Yes, I know they are most likely not random innocent people.
> governments who murder and torture their citizens.
What about governments that murder and torture citizens of other countries? The number of Iraqi and Afghani civilians killed by the US is pretty high - this fact alone is enough to make the US one of the worst human rights offenders in the world.
Sorry for the 19th century text wall, but this is so pertinent that it hurts.
"Next in importance to personal freedom is immunity from suspicions, and jealous observation. Men may be without restraints upon their liberty: they may pass to and fro at pleasure: but if their steps are tracked by spies and informers, their words noted down for crimination, their associates watched as conspirators, who shall say that they are free? Nothing is more revolting to Englishmen than the espionage which forms part of the administrative system of continental despotisms. It haunts men like an evil genius, chills their gaiety, restrains their wit, casts a shadow over their friendships, and blights their domestic hearth.
The freedom of a country may be measured by its immunity from this baleful agency. Rulers who distrust their own people, must govern in a spirit of absolutism; and suspected subjects will be ever sensible of their bondage."
The Constitutional History Of England Vol II (1863), pg. 288
In free governments, the government is the servant of the people. It's activities are transparent and public by default, though the people may allow some defined areas where some secrecy is temporarily allowed. The people's liberty and privacy are assumed by default - it may be violated only by specific, well-defined legal processes.
In a despotism these roles are reversed, in government, secrecy is assumed. For the people, there is no privacy. Government is not longer the servant but the master.
First they criticize the Great Firewall of China. Then they start building it themselves. And who better than a Chinese network operator to do it? After all:
"The Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry is an agreement between the Chinese internet industry regulator and companies that operate sites in China. In signing the agreement, web companies are pledging to identify and prevent the transmission of information that Chinese authorities deem objectionable, including information that “breaks laws or spreads superstition or obscenity”, or that “may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability”."
Some of the politicians like to say it'll be the same sort of system that's on mobile phones here. These have two characteristics -
1. The filter is full of holes
2. What's blocked is pretty arbitrary
For instance, I was at a music festival last year (Beautiful Days), and access to the online site map and festival schedule was blocked as 'adult' content. The festival itself was full of kids and teenagers (brought along by their parents) for whom the info would have been useful. To get around it, I installed Orbot (Tor for android), because they only care about censoring the web.
Wait, is there already a government-imposed web filter on mobile phones in the UK? And you can't opt out? When did this happen? What were the justifications given when it was put into place? Does it also apply to GSM tablets and devices tethered to your mobile?
Nah, it's not government imposed and you can opt out. I think all the operators have one though.
Opting out usually requires you to call the operator, though sometimes you can do it through their web portal if you have a credit card (they'll charge and then refund it). I assume it blocks stuff through tethered devices too. Dunno really.
Justifications? Most likely "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!".
It's been in place a while (but I'm not sure it's government imposed). I've moaned about it a bunch - I have no idea why O2 feel the need to block http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/ for instance. Is it because there's a 'fuck' in the URL? Ridiculous.
I'm not sure if it affects all carriers or not. But you can opt-out, you just have to go through an age-verification process - usually providing a credit card number to confirm you are over 18.
Does opt-in vs opt-out make a difference, though, once they have enough data? If oppression or data misuse is the goal, it seems like reversing the set selection criteria would be a trivial way of getting the list of people who like their ${badstuff}, even if they did not opt out of a filter":
# obviously not real sql
select * from citizens where (citizen.id not in opt_in_list)
Probably the fact that only a minority will actually opt in. Requiring positive action almost ensures that miniscule amounts of people will change from the default.
..regardless of how desirable the non default setting is.
This, for instance, is why Windows Update got a lot more forceful in its later incarnations. People will not update, even when it's good for them, unless you make it hard to not update.
I work as an engineer in a small ISP compaly, and for some time had very closely contacted with phone support (sometimes helping them) and heard many conversations with clients.
I'd say there are quite a few people who can't distinguish between Internet, browser and VKontakte (Russian analog for Facebook). Didn't counted them or did any real statistics, though.
Human behavior. If you've got a population and you tell them to do X or they'll be labeled a criminal, you'll still have huge swaths of people who won't do X because of laziness, apathy, and/or ignorance. That's why opt-in vs. opt-out makes a such a big difference. Making this opt-in by default makes it extremely easy to target those who opt-out (and make judgements based on that action), but impossible to say anything remotely accurate about those who took no action.
You have three groups, those who care strongly about seeing ${badstuff}, people who don't care enough to change the default, people who care strongly about not seeing the ${badstuff}.
By making it opt-out, you will get only those that feel strongly about seeing it. By making it opt-in, and following your query, you won't be able to separate those that really want to see it, from those that really don't care.
The group that doesn't care is big enough to make a difference.
But "they" can already put you on a list of people who like to look at $offensive_thing by using PRISM to notice when you look at $offensive_thing.
So given that they can build such a list regardless of the porn filtering settings, and given that people don't change default settings, and given that a porn filter can be somewhat effective at blocking offensive content, and given that we already agree to blocking offensive content in public space as a general behaviour, and given that a porn filter will be opt-out-able, why not make it opt-in?
Health education type material for teenagers springs to mind. I have seen issues in the past with 'walled garden' type software in schools/colleges blocking content of that nature unless specifically unblocked.
Suspect there will be backlash, then weakening of system to the point of uselessness once it gets going. Usual expensive UK government IT mess.
As I've been saying for years, the Great Firewall of China is -- or was -- the prototype.
Look at its early history: Built with "Western" technology and consulting.
Did you think all these firms were creating a one-off?
And, the following observation is perhaps stretching the interpretation a bit (or not), but I find it somewhat ironic that, after all this, it is a Chinese company that is pushing this implementation forward. Use domestic market access to acquire the knowledge (sometimes, by hook or by crook), and then use your control of your own labor market to undersell the competition.
A possible silver lining - if you're against the filters that currently exist (blocking child porn), someone might infer you're a paedophile, which would be bad for you. If you opt out of porn filters, you'll go down on a list of people who want porn. If you opt out of everything-filters, the only thing that can really be implied is that you want access to something, which is somewhat less easy to blackmail with.
Exactly. If I disable all all those filters, I can credibly argue that I'm against filtering on principle, not necessarily because I want to view any of those things.
I just wonder how long until they start using this infrastructure to compute a profile that determins things like your social security contributions or security clearance. They could also threaten to take the children away from people who disable the filters or force them into some kind of "re-education" program.
In my previous line of work, as a criminal lawyer, this is how this would be used:
Q: "Mr Smith, isn't it true that you willingly removed a filter on you Internet connection, places there for your safety, and the safety of your children, and now your connection allows you to watch hard core porn?"
A: "But... I did it because.."
Q: "Yes or no, Mr. Smith? Did you ask for the filters to be removed?"
A: "Yes, bu..."
Q: Thank you, Mr. Smitha
"I am not aware of any filters that are placed there for my safety. I asked to remove the filter that was placed there to ensure I have access only to the information approved by the government".
Three years ago, or so, I was thinking about[1] the idea that we may have been witnessing something akin to peak oil, or peak credit.
At that time I was discussing it in terms of network fragmentation and net neutrality ... but a collection of different censorship regimes around the world degrades it[2] just as well...
There was a debate in Finland when the child porn filter was introduced a few years back. One guy had a website where he kept database of sites which were blocked but did not contain any child porn. Aftermath was that the site was added to list and that raised even more questions about the whole censorship idea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info)
Unlike in Britain, the consumers did not have an option to opt out from the filter although it seems that majority of ISPs don't use it. Later on ISPs were forced to block piratebay.org and there have been discussions about blocking online poker sites etc, because Veikkaus enjoys monopoly in gambling and betting business in Finland.
Britain already has a mostly mandatory filter designed to save it from child pornography. Cleanfeed is run by the Internet Watch Foundation who look for images of abuse and put it on the blocklist. They're responsible for blocking Wikipedia due to an album cover.
The same filter is now used to action on high court demands to block torrent websites like The Pirate Bay.
Aha! Another great business opportunity reveals itself!
If you built a relationship with the filter provider, you could get companies to pay you to have their competitor's websites added to to the list of blocked websites!
There are two aspects to the current debate:
- The 'child porn keyword' web search filter mandated on all UK ISPs with no opt-in or opt-out
- The 'opt-out porn block' which will be applied to all internet connections, from which people can opt-out in order to receive unfiltered results.
The first part hasn't received as much attention because it's harder to write a punchy article about the malicious nature of a government-supplied permanent search filter blacklist, and it isn't as easy to attack as the blocking of legal content such as pornography but this is where the real danger lies.
Once the government add all their 'illegal search terms' to the blacklist and have the appartus for such wide-ranging censorship set up, what is to stop them from adding terms unchecked and unguided to filter any "unwanted" material from web searches? If this had existed in the US, for example, when the NSA Verizon/PRISM stories were leaked, how easy would it be for them to simply add "Edward Snowden" or "The Guardian" or "PRISM" or even "NSA" to the search term blacklist? They would easily justify it on the grounds that the material leaked was classified or damaging to national security.
At this stage a majority of people would in hindsight agree that this leak is hugely important and in the public interest, but if these terms were blocked by the government then what?
The terrifying reality of censorship, as told through the lens of that of China:
"I knew of some Chinese migrants to Australia who watched a Tiananmen 10-year anniversary documentary, and apparently tears just streamed down their faces.
I can also confirm from personal experience that many, many educated Chinese locals are not aware of this portion of their history.
Even those whom I suspect may be aware of it seem to confine it to a cultural blindspot approaching wilful ignorance. It is something you simply _do not talk about_ in China.
I know at least one person who moved to the US from China for graduate school and had no idea about Tiananmen. Mind you, it is not something I bring up, she just happened to bring it up during a conversation
It is pretty easy to find Chinese people talking about how few people (specially younger people) know about it too:
It was a crazy thought for me, too, but something to also consider is that there's some selection bias in the Chinese that you might talk to (i.e. Chinese people that talk to foreigners regularly) vs. ones that don't; the ones that do probably tend to know more, whereas the ones that don't probably fall into the "never heard of Tiananmen" category.
That's probably not down to a censorship 'lens' though.
A more apt US analogy might be how many people were aware of the scale of protests against the Iraq war -- especially the vast opposition to it in Europe. My impression is that US mass media self-censored and barely reported those protests. (I may be mistaken: I don't live in the US, but that's what I've heard from people who do.)
Of course it's a far cry from self-censorship by the mass media to state censorship of the Internet. But for many people it results in the same distorted view of the world.
Most of the people in the US are not very interested in what happens in Europe unless it is something extraordinary. So European protests against Iraq war may be scarcely reported by US media for the mere reason that the customers of US media don't care too much if people somewhere in Lissabon like their government or not. You don't need to censor something that nobody of your audience cares about. Protests against Iraq war in the US itself was very amply reported by the media.
I'd like to see some direct information on what was actually said by the ISPs and where it's come from. This article is a lot of speculation based on a statement that they've said something and then an existing service offered by one ISP. Clearly they're not going to block games and dating sites which this service does so it's not clear why we should assume that it's any sort of useful template for what's proposed.
ISPs have a stated objection to these proposals (if only because they understand what's really involved) and it feels to me a little like this could just be spin from their camp. Suggesting that this is the start of wider censorship would certainly be a way of pushing the public against it which would suit the ISPs cause.
None of which is to say that what they're saying is wrong or that it's good bad or indifferent, just that my reading of the article is that it doesn't really have much to support it's claims.
All that said we know for sure that the proposals will block things other than porn if only because it's almost impossible to accurately define porn or build a perfect filter for it based on whatever definition you have. There will be false positives and negatives both in terms of definition and implementation, meaning that stuff will absolutely be restricted which shouldn't be (and let through when it should). Good luck running an on-line site such as Ann Summers or Agent Provocateur, even when you're allowed shops in the high street.
> Clearly they're not going to block games and dating sites which this service does so it's not clear why we should assume that it's any sort of useful template for what's proposed.
Why won't they block games or dating sites?
That Talk-Talk product was put in place in response to earlier requests by MPs to "protect children", which is why mobile content tends to have filters now.
It seems that filter is as good a model as anything else for what the filter will be.
To me the Talk Talk product looks like they pulled it off the shelf - they're pretty standard categories for blocking software.
Obviously that's the likely implementation for the new system but it seems unlikely that they'd enable all that by default - that would absolutely open them up to claims of censorship and undermine what they actually want to do.
Which is, of course, an excellent reason such projects should never be tolerated in the first place. Government-mandated filters simply should not exist. Full stop. It's an easy question: Does the law in question require that access to publicly-available information be blocked in any way? If yes, then it is a bad law.
You're kidding yourself. It's fully possibly to establish complete control over the Internet. If these power hungry sociopaths have it their way, there will soon be no free network to run a VPS on.
I don't think they care about it enough to want to go even that far, unless VPNs become totally mainstream.
But you can tunnel encrypted data over anything that can carry a signal, and stuff IP datagrams inside it. This will only stop people that are "casually" looking for stuff and don't really care.
Latency might suck. But if the filters become a problem, you'll start seeing VPN applications with "UK filter modes" that use whatever the current simplest circumvention method is. Heck, I'm in the UK and I'd go into business selling VPN solutions like that myself if the filters get obnoxious enough for that (through suitable shell companies somewhere more favourable). The trouble with a business like that, of course, is that the market will be limited as long as the filters are not mandatory.
But just as an illustration of how ludicrously infeasible turning this into full censorship is: If they allow HTTP through at all, you could easily create a VPN were the packets are exchanged by ensuring every Xth character is lowercase for 0 and uppercase for 1, and serialise your packets by downloading / uploading hacker news comments to the VPN server, with the case changed. Or you could use a thesaurus on both ends, with an algorithm for assigning 0/1 to words, and rewrite the text by looking up the next word and deciding whether (and if so what) to rewrite it to.
Of course that'd also be ludicrously slow and waste tremendous amounts of bandwidth, but it's an example on the far extreme end. More likely if they ever try to make this mandatory and actively filter, it'd likely start out with just be a matter of changing port numbers. The next step up in escalation would likely be wrapping the data in something that looks like you're talking to a DNS or mail server or similarly slightly massaging the data.
It'd only be somewhat tricky if they get to the point of trying deep packet inspection and validating that the contents matches expectations from the protocol and doesn't look "too random" for every protocol people might use.
At the moment, it's sadly languishing at a mere 21,000 signatures. If it reaches 100,000 then that should trigger a parliamentary debate. I'm also going to send an email to my local MP. Does anyone have any other ideas for fighting this censorship?
The press could mention it, that would be a start. BBC news for instance barely mentioned the proposed blocking. The only stories to hit the front page (and then, right at the bottom in the Tech section) were the links to Huawei and the spat between the minister and the reporter. The actual proposed block has barely been mentioned. Apparently a baby being born warrants continuous headline coverage; loss of civil liberties gets a footnote.
Was a cleverly chosen publication day to be honest. I wouldn't be surprised if there's other bad news that we haven't even heard about that was completely blanked off the news by baby discussion.
When widespread Internet censorship started in Iran, they promised it will only be used for porn. Being a religious country, no one protested. I don't say everyone agreed, but because of all the stigma attached to porn, no one said a word or lifted an finger. What started as a porn-only filtering system expanded exponentially. Little by little, the number of unavailable websites grew. Nowadays, most of the internet is inaccessible from Iran. To name few instances:
YouTube, Vimeo and all other video-sharing websites
Flickr, imgur and all other photo-sharing websites
WordPress, Blogger and all other blogging platforms (and every blog on them)
Facebook, Google+ and all other social networks
BBC, CNN, NPR and almost all foreign news agencies
...
And also HTTPS rarely works. They have limited the HTTPS bandwidth so much it's impossible to use Gmail without a headache, in an effort to encourage everyone to disable it, thus making it easier for surveillance.
Dear British friends, it's a slippery slope. Don't let the same thing happen to you.
Absolutely no way they'll ship with social networking blocked by default, it'll be dead on arrival. Every household will want social networking, and will enable that if they just skip through and realise they can't get to Facebook. Once they do that the whole systems pointless unless people actually see some benefit.
Us hackers need to make a new "web" a web where censorship is not possible and everything is encrypted, a "web" with no single points of failure, a "web" where domains cant snatched or censored, a "web" like the web used to be :(
It's already there, developed by the US military no less. It's called Tor. If the installing and usability was improved it might catch on for normal people concerned about their privacy.
For what it's worth, it's actually as easy on Linux and Mac as well. There is a prevailing myth that Tor has this enormous learning curve and is only for neckbearded hacker masterminds, and it could not be any more wrong. This is by design - The Tor Project wants anonymity to be for everyone who desires it.
Running a relay to help could be a good start. It's pretty simple[0][1]. The risks associated with being a Tor exit node do not apply to all relay types and the network can be helped greatly by running a standard relay too (standard relays only pass encrypted traffic from A to B).
If I were to run an exit node or a relay node, how would I mitigate the rare-but-potentially-life-destroying risk that my machine is identified as trafficking in illegal bits, due to relaying/exiting traffic of that nature from the anonymized network? I would be happy to donate bandwidth, but that risk is something which I don't feel is acceptable.
A normal, non-exit relay node will not be identified as "trafficking in illegal bits" by any sane police force. A normal relay will trade from A to B in only encrypted traffic and will not touch websites on the behalf of users, only other relays.
It is rare that an exit node is raided but there has been no known occurrence in which a normal relay was raided.. nor would it make any sense for there to be. Many people run non-exit relays as they are uncomfortable with the risk of exiting for the Tor network, perhaps you should be one of them.
That isn't a risk for relay nodes, because you would be relaying encrypted traffic. It would just be noise.
For exit nodes, the issue of legal liability for routing other's traffic is less clear. You'd basically run the same risks as providing an open wireless network: https://openwireless.org/myths-legal
I'll throw in another anonymity network (I2P). Its design is similar to Tor, created in 2003 and is mostly interesting due to some of its properties (tunnel based/garlic routing, everybody-is-a-router, etc).
I can only interpret this as a power grab. This is not a sensible solution, it's an opportunistic solution.
I think many people in modern society don't understand the power of data. The NSA scandal has shown how much people underestimate the power companies can have when they own everyone's data. And similarly, they underestimate the power that a government can have when it owns everyone's data.
We need to do a better job of showing the lay person how much they're underestimating the value of their data, and how much power the data aggregators have.
This is probably a long shot but I was wondering if eventually this censoring functionality can be used to draw boundaries over the internet. Once you have the infrastructure in place to censor then there's very little needed to do extend the filters to censor other content.
For instance, nationalize the internet, perhaps block services from companies from other countries or tax such services to promote indigenous companies that provide similar services. The reasoning can be why not promote local businesses and provide them incentives by taxing or levying duties on services from other countries instead of letting a company from some other country making all the profits.
You know what would make a lot of sense? Install these filters on every new device sold in the UK. Make them configurable, and even uninstallable, but defaulting to "blocked". That way if and when people choose to unblock something, it's a private matter between them and their device.
This achieves both the stated goal of protecting people from malicious content, and the freedom of people to consume malicious content, if they want to, in private.
I am surprised that they haven't tried this as it would be much more affective. Network level filtering always fails because it can't see encrypted packets. To prevent circumvention you need something running on the machine, at which point you may as well just run the filter on the machine. The government could have promoted officially recommended browser plugins. If parents don't know how to protect their children why not help them?
SSL Inspection - Administrators can specify domains and URL categories for which SSL-encrypted traffic will be decrypted, scanned for malware and policy and then re-encrypted to the destination when deemed safe.
All you do is put a trusted SSL certificate on your office computers, and the proxy device will reencrypt the traffic as coming from your trusted certificate, and the end user will not notice the difference unless they study the names in the certificate chain.
You need root access on the machine to add an SSL cert, meaning that the network level filter fails without maintaining control of the users machine. At that point you may as well do filtering at the client level. I think we can all agree that breaking SSL is bad.
Why would installing them on only new devices make a lot of sense? It doesn't achieve the stated goal of "protecting the children" if they are using any one of the millions of devices currently in use.
Moreso, why default to blocked and not unblocked, allowing people to opt-in?
Ah but then we'd be back in the rational and current position of giving people the ability to install blocking software or filters if they so desire...
I'm extremely against censorship, however I can see the benefit of having a default filter that can be turned off in private. Conservatively safe defaults are never a bad idea.
Let's see which way the wind is blowing .... hmmm... I sense an opportunity for profit!
I think that I will create a business to develop technology that lets us block undesirable thoughts. We will use an EEG cap as the sensor, some machine learning to detect undesirable thoughts, then a bone-conduction speaker to play distracting and disorienting sounds whenever our detector is triggered.
Perfect.
Do you think I could get some government funding for this?
HN users in the UK should note: The default blocked items includes "web forums", potentially including HN.
You would have to opt-in to viewing such content as the default has you opted-out along with porn, violent material, extremist and terrorist related content.
If the concern is actually about enabling people to restrict what their children see, why not create and distribute a free, open-source software package that citizens can run on their own?
Obviously the question is rhetorical, but I'd like to see someone ask it.
They have asked it. the politicians said that people are stupid and don't want to learn how to use complicated software, they just wanted to be protected.
ISPs said they offer opt-in filters (and opt-out on mobile products) that people could use.
politicians now say those filters must all be opt-out.
At least to me, the big problem with porn is that it can rise your thresholds of excitement, make you insensitive, and you can even become an addict. But our kids will (hopefully) live in a world where porn is prevalent. We should teach them (at the appropriate age) that it is something that they can enjoy but should be careful not to abuse it.
Anyway, the idea of getting the government involved on blocking porn (or anything) is really bad. I rather live in a world where we have to teach our children to be responsable than in a world where the government decides what they can and what they cannot see.
The reason you're struggling is there has been no bill published yet. I'm fairly sure this is mostly political bluster, it'll be hard to know exactly what is required until they actually publish something real.
If the block itself is only a technical measure, it only boosts alternative access methods. But if they make it illegal to do things like watch port or download torrents without government permission, like they do now with the requirement to hand over private encryption keys to the officials require them, then GB will become worse than China in the freedom of information flow aspect.
I don't know how things are going to change but I ordered Talk Talk a couple of days ago and they only ask you if you want content filter and antivirus filter on; whatever you choose they say you can customise it later in your control panel.
So far I like what I have seen. I just don't want any filter, thanks, and I did't have to say why (ie. porn or anything else).
The internet filter at the café I'm connected to at the moment (Stofan in Reykjavík, I'm sure some of you know the place) actually blocked me [following this link](http://www.siminn.is/lokad-a-sidu/).
Anyone know if Tim Berners-Lee has come out to say anything about this?
I believe he's expressed views in favour of net neutrality and against censorship in the past. With his participation in the Olympic ceremony perhaps, if he were to get in the news, the public would pay some attention.
I don't understand one thing: how will this filter actually work?
Say I use Google or Bing or whatever over SSL. All traffic is encrypted end-to-end. How will the ISPs know I am searching for a forbidden term? Are they going to request a CA to issue certificates for google.com to ISPs?
This filter is for the coming austerity cuts Cameron is about to roll out. He saw what happened in other countries and took a preemptive measure to be able to filter Twitter and other online protest organizing during times of "national security".
The whole thing comes a bit unstuck when you realise that BT has had a system in place that allows parents to protect their children for years. The new approach doesn't seem to provide any benefits but succeeds in pissing off a great number of users.
Slightly tin-foil, but any thoughts on the timing of this story? The intersection between those talking about the NSA and those that will be angered by the introduction of internet censorship is pretty perfect.
Of course it will. Porn, terrorism, etc, etc, are always used as fronts for some other goal. History has shown that once a technology is in place it will be misused.
The internet as a transmission protocol is robust and redundant. And if it were used as a sort of replacement for the telephone system then that would be enough. But the architecture of the way the internet is today used in practice is far more centralized. If the web worked the way bittorrent does then perhaps your comment would be accurate, but it doesn't, so we have a "web" that is not strong due to its massive interconnectivity but rather weak because each part of it, content-wise, lives in comparative isolation and is easy to cut off (for now).
This legislation isn't about shutting down porn websites, it's about blocking their access at the ISP level. This censorship is circumventable by using a VPN or other such technology. Censorship -> damage, Internet -> routes around damage.
This has nothing to do with cutting off a website from being accessible by removing it from the Internet.
That's an illustration of just how difficult it can be to try to operate a website with the governments of the G8 out to get you. It's something that requires extraordinary efforts for TPB and only works because it's a meta site, if they had to seed every tracker they index they would have died long ago. Moreover, because of the nature of their site and the demographic it's used by it's trivial for them to slap ads on the site and make a lot of money, no matter what.
Compare that to, say, a reporter's personal blog and videos, for example. Especially if they have a family they are going to be much less able to pull the sorts of hijinx that TPB manages. When they're shut down once they will stay shut down and they will more than likely just keep their head down from then on.
Liberty is about the ability of the individual to do things that others disapprove of. You don't need liberty if everyone else approves of your actions. As a corollary, the exercise of liberty does not require a justification, because it's a liberty, practicality or "usefulness" or what-have-you play no part in it. It's onerous to require someone to justify their right to look at porn. It's even more onerous to ask people to put their name on a list as someone who desires the ability to look at porn. And indeed this is how freedoms are eroded. Because once you put things on a different footing and you require people to justify their freedoms then it becomes ever more difficult to justify anything. Can you justify eating a cheap, greasy cheeseburger? Can you justify watching "Jersey Shore"? Are you willing to?
These are precisely the same sorts of tactics that have been used since the dawn of time for busybodies to rein in individual freedoms of others, and thereby to obtain greater authority over others.
People often dismiss out of hand the notion that tyranny could possibly take hold over the first world democracies of the west in the 21st century. And to that I can only sigh. Perhaps it will not be known as tyranny, perhaps someone will come up with a different, more apt name once (if) we are in the clutches of it, but it will be every bit as bad and every bit as difficult to throw off, if not more so.