UK Porn Filter Blocks Porn Filter Advocate Claire Perry's Website [Updated]
from the inadvertent-perfection dept
The warnings were there from the very beginning. Installing any sort of internet filtering is doomed to fail. First, it's often easily circumvented. Second, it's never as accurate as its proponents claim it will be. Filtering overblocks, sealing off access to legitimate sites while simultaneously allowing targeted material to leak in around the edges.
The UK's national porn filter is already a failure, even before the mandatory 2014 implementation deadline. A single coder has created a Chrome extension that allows the blocked to circumvent the filter with ease by automating proxy access. The filter has also blocked off access to legitimate sex education sites as well as sites offering help to victims of rape and sexual abuse.
But the most fitting collateral damage has finally occurred. Tim Worstall at Forbes points out (via the Independent) that the overenthusiastic filter is sealing off access to the very people and entities who pushed so hard to make this catastrophe a reality.
"The opt-in filters also deny access to the Parliament and Government websites and the sites of politicians, including Claire Perry, the MP who has campaigned prominently for the introduction of filters."Claire Perry's site being blocked is perhaps the most desirable outcome of this entire debacle. Perry has been a tireless crusader for the government control of the internet and now that she's achieved her goal, her own constituents aren't allowed to access her site. We'll see if Perry finds someone else to blame for this comedy of errors. Her grasp on how the web works seems to have been cobbled together from PM Cameron's assertions that "Google=internet" and mass forwarded technopanic emails.
Given what they do with our money I suppose you can indeed decide that Parliament and the Government are forms of pornography. But it’s that blocking of Claire Perry’s site that is just so joyous. For of course the blocking has come as a result of her using that very same site to campaign in favour of the filtering. Leading to her site having a heavy usage of the words “porn”, “sex” and the like and thus being taken to be itself pornographic.
Back in July, Perry's site was hacked and filled with pornographic images. Perry's response was to accuse the blogger that covered the story of hacking the site himself, or at the very least, "sponsoring" the attack. As the blogger wryly noted then, "At least her website will be blocked when the new rules go into effect…" Eerily prescient, even considering the cleanup effort that followed the discovery of porn on Perry's site.
As has been noted before, filters don't remove content. All they do is erect flimsy, indiscriminate walls that see legitimate and "illegitimate" content as virtually indistinguishable. If filters succeed in blocking unwanted content, it's only because they're equally as "willing" to block content that shouldn't be blocked. No filtering system can do the impossible, and yet do-gooding politicians get a lot of mileage out of claiming they can -- and that society will somehow be bettered by allowing the government to decide what it can and can't have access to.
UPDATE: Techdirt reader Duke points out that the filter blocking Perry's site isn't the mandatory "porn filters" that are being deployed by UK ISPs, but rather a "whitelist" filter crafted by O2.
This is a whitelist filter, unlike the new blacklist ones, so blocks every site apart from a few "approved" ones. Thus it is no surprise that it blocks any particular site as it blocks nearly all of them. This is a distinction that has been missed by most of the reporting in this area, including in both the Forbes article linked, and the Independent one it cites.
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Filed Under: censorship, claire perry, filter, porn filter, uk
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"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
— Comissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights" (Accompanies completion of the Secret Project "The Planetary Datalinks")
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*nostalgia bomb!*
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Live by the censorship, get silenced by the censorship
And after all, as those that champion these kinds of things always claim, 'legitimate sites won't be blocked', so if the politicians find their own sites blocked, obviously they must be havens of the worst of the worst kinds of content, and so deserve to be not only blocked, but have a hugely visible page telling people that. /s
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Next they came... oh, wait.
The End.
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This is a different filter...
This is a whitelist filter, unlike the new blacklist ones, so blocks every site apart from a few "approved" ones. Thus it is no surprise that it blocks any particular site as it blocks nearly all of them. This is a distinction that has been missed by most of the reporting in this area, including in both the Forbes article linked, and the Independent one it cites.
Which isn't to say that the new Cameron Filters are good; they are slightly better, but as the Independent article noted:
They're still blocking stuff they shouldn't be, but not as much.
What's interesting about O2's filter isn't what it blocked, but the categories things were blocked under, and the distinctions between services. Google was allowed, but Bing wasn't, most newspapers were classified as "news", but the Daily Mail counted as "entertainment", most political parties were in the "politics" category, apart from the BNP website which was blocked as a "hate" site.
At least, from what I could tell before O2 removed their filter-checking tool.
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Re: This is a different filter...
Indeed, I wouldn't even call it a real Internet provider, since the real Internet is growing and open-ended. Would you consider access to a few very old, "optimized for NCSA Mosaic!" web sites to be real Internet access? Because that's where this O2 thing will be by 2020. Except that by 2020 O2 will be dead if it doesn't get its head out of its arse.
Also: Why would they bother whitelisting Google, when their filter makes all search engines useless anyway? Their own directory of only the approved sites would be more useful. Of course, real Internet access would be more useful still. And that means obeying the end-to-end principle and the dumb-pipe principle.
My own access is completely unfiltered and uncensored. I can go to any site I want to that has a functioning computer with an assigned IP address, without any mess, fuss, "opt-out"s, or circumventions. Everyone should have that ability. The UN should declare it a human right to have that ability.
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Now that mobile Internet is much faster, cheaper and more widespread, this policy sounds slightly more crazy... but in the context it sort of made sense.
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In this case the UK government goes way beyond the law in requiring third party blocking of moral objectionable content, which is more of a political overreach than a simple question of moderation.
Sure the age-old moderation debacle will always be relevant for the specific blocking, but this is problematic on another level.
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The things that you list are all things that other people are trying to push on you. All suffer from false positives, which can cause problems for people, especially when a spam block-list blocks valid emails, and anti-virus kills your operating system. Further the ISP filter is prone to filter what you are searching for, and can be abused much more than the other blocks. The objective of censorship is to control what you see, so that the censor can control what you think or do.
Having had experience of an ISP filter, T-Mobile UK, the most likely result of the filter is that most people will end up opting out, or bypassing the filter by using proxies because it will filter out one or two sites that they visit regularly.
Anybody who thinks that the filter will not be used for silencing political dissent, if it becomes an accepted part of the Internet experience, has not been following the news.
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In contrast, an ISP-filter is moderating before reaching the destination site. Moderation at ISP-level is a troubling perspective for site owners since it is a N/A solution to much more complex problems. If you as a siteowner ends up on the list, the rentability of your site could tank, which is a very scary perspective...
The specific problem is a political cause with no strong technical arguments for it and loads of examples of how random the specific solutions enforce the intentions. Unfortunately politics trumps experience and reason every time.
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That is the governments self appointed job...
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Re: That is the governments self appointed job...
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Re: That is the governments self appointed job...
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Plausible Deniability
Conveniently, the second issue helps a lot in a way. Specifically, it gives you plausible deniability as to why you circumvented a filter.
"Oh, I didn't circumvent the filter to surf porn. It was erroneously blocking this breast cancer research site I needed to access. My restored ability to surf porn is just a happy side effect." :)
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Not to be picky but...
Makes it easier to note the update before reading it and can help with potential misconceptions.
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Re: Not to be picky but...
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Time for the Old C s Lewis quote
― C.S. Lewis
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LOL!
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Plus you don't need to speak to anyone much less ask for porn. It's a simple page on your account asking if you want to access filtered material. Don't get me wrong I disagree with the whole thing on so many levels but lets stick the facts.
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They have been (or are being) implemented voluntarily by only 4 UK ISPs, but cover a wide range of topics. Far from just porn. Calling up your ISP to say "I want access to information on alcohol, or bullying, or, in the case of the O2-filter, Government websites" should be far less awkward.
However, with most of these filters (including at least the TalkTalk one) account holders can remove the filters online, through their account menu. No need to call someone up.
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Justice Stings
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Look at it this way, if it worked perfectly then this argument would be moot, would that suddenly make it a good idea?
I would rather show why its actually a bad idea, not use its sloppy implementation as justification for dissolving it because in theory that can be fixed while ignoring the underlying reason why it should be in use.
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