UK Government Starts Internet Censorship

AtariLegend

Online porn: David Cameron declares war
The Prime Minister is to outline plans for every UK internet user to be asked whether they want access to pornography.

Every internet user in the country will be asked whether they want to have access to pornography, David Cameron will say, as he warns that hardcore images are “corroding childhood”.

A joint British and American “task force” will be created to tackle obscene websites, while Google and other search engine providers will be required to draw up a “blacklist” of the most depraved and illegal search terms, the Prime Minister will announce.
The initiatives will also include new measures to stop children accidentally stumbling across explicit but legal pornographic images in public places, according to well-placed sources. The six biggest companies providing access to wireless internet in cafés and railway stations have all signed a deal to block legal pornography where children could view it. The roll-out of “family friendly Wi-Fi” is expected to begin from the end of August.

The moves follow concern that hardcore and violent images are damaging children’s lives while access to illegal child pornography has been linked to high profile crimes.

Mark Bridger, who was convicted of murdering five-year-old April Jones, and Stuart Hazell, who murdered Tia Sharp, 12, were both found to have viewed child pornography online. Children’s watchdogs have also found that boys’ attitudes to women and girls were in danger of being shaped by their easy access to pornography online.

In a speech in London on Monday, the Prime Minister – who met the parents of April and Tia last week after they called on him to take action – will warn that the internet is putting the “innocence of our children” at risk. “Online pornography is corroding childhood,” he will say. “In the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out.
“I feel profoundly as a politician, and as a father, that the time for action has come.
“My argument is that the internet is not a side-line to 'real life’ or an escape from 'real life’; it is real life. It has an impact: on the children who view things that harm them, on the vile images of abuse that pollute minds and cause crime, on the very values that underpin our society.”
Mr Cameron will promise new powers for crime fighting agencies to tackle those “darkest corners of the internet”.
Other measures to be contained in the Prime Minister’s initiative are expected to include:

• A new national database of child abuse images for the police and child protection agents to use;

• Internet service providers being compelled to require customers to make an active choice about filtering adult content when they begin using services, with a requirement to un-tick a box which has been pre-set to enforce parental controls;

• A deterrent campaign against individuals who seek to download illegal content;

• More power for the police and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre to investigate the “hidden” parts of the internet where paedophiles share illegal images among themselves.

• Every householder with broadband internet will be asked to confirm whether they want to activate parental controls blocking adult content by the end of 2014, under the plan.

Mr Cameron will say that parents and the internet companies themselves must take more responsibility for the online world.
“We have got to be more active, more aware, more responsible about what happens online,” he will say. “I mean 'we’ collectively: government, parents, internet providers and platforms, educators, and charities.

“We’ve got to work together across both the challenges I have set out. This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence.”

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/i … s-war.html

Me_Wise_Magic

I mean..I see where this is a good well intention concept for the safety of the public of the UK and it's children. The problem is attempts like this usually spin out of control in terms of the level of security. I want the spread of child porn to cease throughout the world and not just parts of it. While the people responsible get brought to some form of justice.

monkeychow

I always feel two ways on censorship debates.

Speaking about Adult pron....On one hand there is no question that we live in a vastly more sexually explicit world these days than when I was young. I remember as a teen when I was of course interested in seeing nude women it was very hard to actually achieve. You either had to win over a willing girlfriend (not the easiest of tasks if you were young, shy, and a nerd like me!) or obtain something like a playboy or nude video (not so easy in my area...they used to check ID and so on)....and so I was left with glimpses of nudity from late night foreign films (but only as much as they'd tastefully show on TV in those days) or very very 'soft' images such as reading an underwear catalogue! If I contrast this situation to now - where 10 seconds on google could show you an image of anything at all you wanted to see and it's a very different world for kids to grow up in.

I sometimes wonder of the effect. Between the ease of access to porn on a whim, the sexualisation of marketing, the change in values on stuff like sex outside of relationships, I do wonder if people are becoming desensitised or of it's having some effect. Think about it. For the guys here: Think about how many vaginas you've seen in real life, then how many images of vagina you've seen on TV/internet/mags whatever else. Then consider how that number would relate to an adult of your age in say 1920 or 1950. Even sailors and people who were promiscuous back then wouldn't even be close to what you could see in 1/2 an hour here on the internet. I'm not saying that's good or bad...but i sometimes wonder if there is any effect to it.

There is also the curious effect of the slippery slope of porno. In that it seems once you get over exposed to images they need to become harder and harder to interest you. You know like pics are not enough when there's video. Or it's no longer enough to be nude unless there's specific detail. Or there must be a certain activity happening, or a certain number of people...and it seems that it just escalates and escalates. And eventually people wind up with rather extreme kinks and fetishes. I've talked about this with guys and girls it seems to happen to a lot of people. It's somewhat interesting too that it can usually be undone by long periods of under exposure and the brain eventually resets.

On the other hand, I do think that often times people get confused between the chicken and the egg. They always talk about how pedophiles had pedophilla at home as if it made them into pedophiles. When I suspect for whatever reason they were already inclined that way and that's what made them seek out such images in the first place.

Another curious thing is the tendency to fear sexuality while we are not so afraid of violence. I find this one really odd with the censorship choices here in australia. Like if a story line involves cutting out and eating your best female friend's eyes and they show that - it's probably going to get a horror rating needing you to be 15 to see it. If the story line involves your female friend showing people her vulva or too much penis in the movie and you see that - it's going to get an 18+ rating. Which is more harmful to a teen kid I wonder - exposure to images of procreation or extreme violence? Not that we want people having babies all the time, but it's sure more natural or preferable than graphic murders.

I also wonder if the fear of pedophiles is getting over exposed too. Like here in Australia if you have a job with children at all you need to apply for a license to prove you are not a pedophile. (Including me - I teach at a uni where occasionally a student will be 17 in the first year class so i have to have one because that person is technically a child). And people will not go help a lost child crying in the supermarket for fear of being accused of trying to abduct it. Why is the default assumption that people are sick unless they prove they arn't? What percentage of the population is really into that kind of thing that makes us assume it's the most likely outcome unless it's shown not to be? Seems odd to me.

Of course there is a real legit need to protect kids from child porn - both in the exposure to it and in making sure it's not produced in the first place - so I'm not against this per say - but I do think you have to be careful with censorship measures in general.

Communist China

Censorship of porn is almost never about porn itself. It's motivated by a desire to enforce societal conformity in thought and art. While I wouldn't argue that all porn is OK, I'm fiercely opposed to censoring it. It's just too big an avenue for government to attempt to legislate moral norms that should be allowed to arise naturally out of society. I'd also be willing to bet a fair sum that any attempts to ban certain forms of porn will be discriminatory and unfair - for example, gay porn will be much harder to access while violent heterosexual porn will likely still make its way to people. I have no faith in any government to be able to be a fair arbiter of what porn is acceptable or not. I think the best choice is to treat it as speech and leave it mostly free. The US Supreme Court's experience is informative here. They used to rule on a lot of obscenity cases relating to pornography and were so frustrated by the difficulty of establishing a coherent legal principle for them that they eventually just stopped granting cert to those kinds of cases and created the broad standard of obscenity we have today, which allows almost anything that can be reasonably argued to be of any merit, even artistic. And you certainly won't see SCOTUS ruling on what's art and what isn't when they can avoid doing so. It's simply too difficult, and flirts with very dangerous government power in an area of life (expression) that is recognized to be essential to functioning republics and democracies.

polluxlm

But think of the children!

Hitler would make a fine candidate for prime minister these days. Discrimination, foreign wars, fiat war economy, aggressive stance against extremism (ie. ideologies not the same as ours). Though his position on rule of law, privacy and personal property would probably make him far too moderate for the modern political climate.

So bizarre to think that this text has already been logged and processed with the NSA.

A Private Eye

Hmmm, having never tried to search for child porn I can't really comment on how difficult it is to find but I'd always assumed (perhaps wrongly) that you had to be a bit more creative than typing a few choice words in to google. That said I have no problem with a clamp down paedophilic content on the net if it's do-able. Like others have said though I don't know if that's the real problem. Are people turning into peadophiles by watching it on the net or are they paedophiles anyway and the net gives them an avenue for their desires?

polluxlm

Since seeing Pamela Andersons tits in 1997 I've been to a lot of porn sites, but never have I seen or come across anything with pedophilia in it. Not even fake versions where you dress up and claim 18 year olds to be 15 or something. Even countries like Germany, where you can show 16 year olds having sex, doesn't offer anything but 18+ on the net (so millions of foreigners won't get in trouble). But I happen to know where that kinda of stuff is being shared openly. The "free web" is basically everything linked to a computer outside the formal network. You'll need security applications like tor to access it. It's just a quick download and the cops admit they have no way of tracking people through the millions of nodes they use to share material. And even in that place you don't accidentally come over something you shouldn't see. You can see the links, just don't click them (apart from the abhorrent morality they can contain viruses or fbi trojans for all you know). Far as I know illegal porn on the "normal web" (which is what this law seeks to regulate) is extinct.

This law is nothing but a step and formalization of internet censorship. People today will have no problem circumventing the regulations, but what this sets up is an internet where you don't just automatically know what a vpn or tor is. Because just asking such a question in Google will make many people think they'll be caught or something. Simply by using a word like "bomb" these days I get a slight chill, since you know it has already been flagged in a database somewhere. I mean ok, as long as you're not a legit terrorist you're not going to jail (hopefully), but I don't think it takes much to become eligible for detainment, searches, seizures or interrogations. All a major hassle for basically doing nothing wrong. As a result people will start self censoring themselves on the web, and eventually that spills over to the daily life until we're all gaga looking work drones in perpetual fear of committing thought crimes.

The great irony in all of this is that this is the world the hippie generation and their children created.

AtariLegend

Should mention in the news reports that the letters wrote to internet users will contain the tick boxes

Suicide
Pornography
Violence
Child Abuse

Now yeah, obviously everything involving child abuse should be blocked, we can all agree with that right? Suicide websites, not going to argue to be honest.

Violence is where it gets more sketchy, that's just too vague a word and since we already know pornography covers everything, not just children... doesn't look too promising. Since in the UK the current system on phones for example block newspaper website amusingly that have the word porn wrote and BBC sex education pages ect.

More or less if they're going to take the same approach, don't be surprised if this site gets blocked for some users, because of the word "Guns".

Now for another thought, if you opt out and your name is taken down? Does this mean you'll go to court hypothetically one day for lets say anything and have the prosecution mention that your a registered internet porn user?

polluxlm

Does this mean you'll go to court hypothetically one day for lets say anything and have the prosecution mention that your a registered internet porn user?

Yes, and not just for the embarrassment factor. It will probably be used as supporting evidence in sexual crime cases too.

Lomax

polluxlm wrote:

Does this mean you'll go to court hypothetically one day for lets say anything and have the prosecution mention that your a registered internet porn user?
Yes, and not just for the embarrassment factor. It will probably be used as supporting evidence in sexual crime cases too.

Probably is a jump. What will actually happen is that labour will replace the tories in a few years and the whole thing will be reversed.

If someone wants to research suicide they should be allowed.
If someone wants to watch porn they should be allowed.
If someone wants to "watch violence" (if that's the correct term?) they should be allowed.

If someone is searching online for child abuse... they should be arrested.

It's weird to see violence porn and suicide equated with child abuse.

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