Cory Doctorow at 10:50 am Fri, Jul 26, 2013
UK PM David Cameron and Claire Perry say that they plan on forcing Britain's ISPs to have a "default-on" censorship app for every connection in the UK. But the UK Open Rights Group have been talking with whistleblowers from the ISPs that have met with the government's censorship grandees, and they report that the censorware will come equipped to block an enormous swath of legal Internet content, and unless you untick the boxes, this will all be censored for your Internet connection:
Do you want to block☑
pornography☑
violent material☑
extremist and terrorist related content
☑anorexia and eating disorder websites☑
suicide related websites☑
alcohol☑
smoking☑
web forums☑
esoteric material☑
web blocking circumvention tools
You may be saying to yourself, hell, how are they going to be able to sort out which websites are unacceptably pornographic, let alone which sites are "smoking" related? That's a damned good question, and the answer is "with the broadest brush possible." Huge chunks of the Internet will be effectively unreachable, and which sites go into the censorship bucket will be decided upon in secret, by unelected employees of big corporations, like China's Huawei. Sure, you can untick the box if you want, but as David Cameron's advisors will tell you, defaults are powerful and most users never change them.
UK PM David Cameron and Claire Perry say that they plan on forcing Britain's ISPs to have a "default-on" censorship app for every connection in the UK. But the UK Open Rights Group have been talking with whistleblowers from the ISPs that have met with the government's censorship grandees, and they report that the censorware will come equipped to block an enormous swath of legal Internet content, and unless you untick the boxes, this will all be censored for your Internet connection:
Do you want to block☑
pornography☑
violent material☑
extremist and terrorist related content
☑anorexia and eating disorder websites☑
suicide related websites☑
alcohol☑
smoking☑
web forums☑
esoteric material☑
web blocking circumvention tools
You may be saying to yourself, hell, how are they going to be able to sort out which websites are unacceptably pornographic, let alone which sites are "smoking" related? That's a damned good question, and the answer is "with the broadest brush possible." Huge chunks of the Internet will be effectively unreachable, and which sites go into the censorship bucket will be decided upon in secret, by unelected employees of big corporations, like China's Huawei. Sure, you can untick the box if you want, but as David Cameron's advisors will tell you, defaults are powerful and most users never change them.
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