The PM told the minister to do it. The minister (who's reasonably tech savvy) told the department. The department told him it was a joke - it wouldn't work, and the government would get blamed every time a legitimate site was blocked, or a kid got caught bypassing it.
It's political suicide. They will be blamed every time a teenage boy figures out how to bypass the filter (hint - they all will). They will be blamed every time they block a non-porn site. Tech sites will publish "10 ways to bypass the government's joke of a filter" articles. Current affairs programs will have concerned parents shocked that their unsupervised 14yo boy filled their computer with smut (probably passed around on a USB). The next time an MP or celebrity gets arrested for really shady stuff, they'll say the filter failed. They will look like idiots, and waste millions doing it.
I know this is mainly the ISPs' decision, but I can't help but feel that government influence is a large factor in the filters.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/17/australia-int...
Once one thing is censored, you may as well consider everything else already censored as well not just as a slippery slope but as a fact, because anything else they want censored will just mysteriously get pushed into the same pile.
I have always thought that every encryption system must have constant transmission up/downstream rates no matter if you are sending or receiving any data. You connect and begin sending 1Mbit every second. And it will just filter the nonsense packets for when you send receive real data.
Also I don't think this was in the queen's speech.
There isn't even a draft bill yet. Also depending on the press, this could be silently dropped. The only people that really want this are the daily mail, and the rabbid anti porn lobby.
I quote the fifth line of the article: "As ISPs are voluntarily rolling out filtering technology, it will require no new legislation or regulations."
I'm curious how this works politically in the UK. My limited understanding of the issue is pr0n censoring is a purely protestant religion hot button mostly in the US, and the relationship between church and state in the UK is the opposite from the US, where we pretend they're separate and pretend not to let our clerics rule us, however with a nod and wink that our neocon party is pretty much the political wing of our evang church and they're pretty activist, in the UK they've got a state religion where the clerics directly rule them, but they take a much more hands off approach than the USA such that they meet the criteria for figurehead-hood. Or is their particular brand of church/state merger more like liberation theology which would be a bit more leftie explaining why .uk has a civilized healthcare system but the .us does not. All of this speculation could of course be wrong, which is why I ask any .uk folks (or people that understand .uk folks) how this all works politically in the .uk. For example is pr0n opposition a primarily evangelical religious issue like in the states, or how much teeth do your clerics have over your .gov, or is this manufactured news to get on TV as a stunt, or manufactured news to get the neocons in .us excited as the local population yawns/laughs... It sounds from the "no new legislation" line much like if the FCC declared a ruling in the USA, no legislation required or permitted, but that doesn't mean its not going to be vigorously enforced.
Often in the UK the first pass at regulation will be inviting the main companies in an industry to form a voluntary self-regulation body and come up with their own code of conduct. It's generally in the industry's interest to do this as legislation is certain to be heavier-handed and less flexible; and it's in the government's interests as it needs less time, procedure and public debate. On the other hand, there are fewer opportunities for politicians to grandstand on the issue, and companies don't have to join the voluntary self-regulation body.
Even if industry self-regulation fails, it can take several years before it's clear it's failed, so this is also a way to kick things into the long grass on issues like the under-representation of women on the boards of large corporations.
This issue stems from a campaign by the likes of the daily mail (a right wing by UK standards news paper dedicated to the middle class woman.) With the recent murder trails of child killers, certain charities have tried to link viewing of illegal images and yearning to kill children.
Other interested parties have jumped onboard to manipulate to their own ends. To start with, the Prime minister was very anti opt in filters. However a front page spread from the daily mail was enough to change his view.
As he is seen as weak and uncaring, some grand gesture to "save the children" is what he's looking for. (especially as his recent idea to make political capital from the murder of a serving solder is resulting in needless community unrest) he also doesn't have the time (to schedule the debate) or the political capital to back it. As there will be the inevitable "prove that this will help" argument.
We have bishops in the Lords (the upper house) however they are a tiny percentage of the total membership. The lords is a revising chamber, and ironically is much more progressive than the commons (the lower house where the PM officiates and the main political parties do most of the battling)
Also the Bishops are from the church of england, who by definition are significantly more liberal than any pastor in the US. They also generally do not vote with any political party.
Religion is almost never an issue in UK politics. The only time it really came into the national conscience is when Tony Blair converted to Catholicism. Even then he was treated with a suspicious eye. (mainly because the UK have never forgiven him for the Iraq war.)
to British eyes, having the specific religion of a candidate on TV is very unusual.
The advisor's statement is correct: this filtering does not depend on legislature. The proposal was to compel ISPs to filter porn by default. If all the ISPs sign up there's no need to create laws to force it. I don't get the impression that this legislation is religiously motivated beyond the puritanical underpinnings of the British public; it's based on "think of the children" rhetoric alone.
Do you think that's wrong? Reddit hosts and links pornography and probably a heap of other standard filter stuff, nazism, explosive making and such.
You can just ask for the filter to be dropped presumably. (Or like you said, vote with your feet).
It's certainly possible to opt out but only by providing ANOTHER set of personal information (a credit card number) which there's no good reason for them to have. More tracking possibilities, more data...
Of course, this is only true if the service is available on many networks and opt-in. Otherwise it becomes censorship by stealth which is hopefully not where this is going.
1. The blocking comes up with many false positives blocking many things that shouldn't be blocked (the John Graham-Cumming issue)
2. They don't catch everything, which is very likely, and the work required to get around blocking by teenagers is minimal.
He tries to make it sound like there some creepy dude in a trench coat going, hey kids wanna see some porn?
What are they going to do, block imgur.com?
A VPN would be a superior way of bypassing the filter - assuming teenagers too young to have a credit card can figure out how to pay for a VPN.
This comment makes me very sad. It was a huge upgrade to my quality of life when I got a debit card and was able to buy things over the internet. We almost went to a system of paying cash for prepaid credit cards, but somehow prepaid cards are generally not usable over the internet, which is a damn shame for children who have nothing but cash. I don't think the ability to attribute purchases is worth the (yes, minor in the grand scheme of things) immiseration of everyone too young to have a bank account.
i'm not sure how effective this will be..
