13 ms·

Cameron ‘Porn’ Advisor’s website ‘hacked’ – Threatens/Libels Blogger

195 points by anu_gupta 13y ago

MarcScott 13y ago
I find the technological incompetence of our political leaders and advisers very worrying. I doubt any of them could describe the difference between The Internet, The World Wide Web, a web browser and a search engine.
- user24 13y ago
  Indeed. Let alone the difference between hosting porn, distributing porn, and linking to porn, which this MP seems to be confused about: "That well known responsible campaigner @guidofawkes has been hosting a link that distributed porn via my website"[1] [1] https://twitter.com/claire4devizes/status/359718721138343936 https://twitter.com/claire4devizes/status/359718721138343936
- ishansharma 13y ago
  It's not only your leaders. Things are same everywhere. In India, one can say anything about government openly but say something on social media site and fool leaders will try to censor you. There have been multiple instances displaying how bad situation is. A movie company was able to get court orders to stop piracy of their movie and this ended in ban over 70+ sites. Not specific pages, blanket ban on whole sites. [1] Then we have had a girl arrested over liking a Facebook post criticizing a leader[2] I had high hopes with our generation but looks like most of the people in early twenties are not much better. [1]: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/singham-effect-file-sharing-sites-blocked-121249 http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/singham-effect-file-sharin... [2]: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/19/indian-woman-arrested-over-facebook-like/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/19/indian-woman-arrested-ov...
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    > I had high hopes with our generation but looks like most of the people in early twenties are not much better. I know a 12 years old who can't watch photos on a usb stick or a cd-rom if the windows dialog "what do you want to do ?" doesn't show up when inserting the disc or the stick on the computer. But he has mean fingers to send a gazillion sms per minute. I know adults who seem unable to grasp the concept of resolution as they keep adding 4000x4000 pixels images in their powerpoint. And they seem to forget as soon as I tell them where the "shrink images" function is. My outlook on this is that things haven't changed since the 90's (when I was a teen): some people want to know how computers work or make them work "better" and some just want stuff done. The first are more technologically literate (more like jack-of-all-trades) than the second but I am not convinced they are automatically better set for life as a result or that what they do with the computer is more appreciated.
    - mordae 13y ago
      Nah, the other half is just stupid or lazy. It's the same kind of people who will ignore screwdriver and will try to pry the bolt out with pliers unless they have been shown the benefits of using the proper tool in the past 15 minutes. I work at a large library and the smart, non-tech people are genuinely interested in improving their and their peers' effectiveness and are willing to learn. I frequently chat with a friend who can make shoes, design and construct electrical devices, build small buildings, survive in nature and anonymously watch things he's interested in on the Internet. He frequently asks about relevant things and gives advice from his fields of knowledge. Some people just are better than the rest.
- piqufoh 13y ago
  There's only one actual scientist in the house of commons (Julian Huppert, LibDem, Cambridge) and he is regularly heckled whenever he gets up to speak about anything. Shameful..
nakedrobot2 13y ago
There is pretty substancial technological gulf opening up between the "ruling class" and the "reasonably well educated folks" out there. This could be as disruptive and problematic as the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. Porn filters will be of no concern whatsoever to anyone under 40 with the most rudimentary technical chops (and appetite for porn). What else will be banned? It is getting to the point where fearmongering and shameless populism and shilling for votes by politicians result in useless laws being enacted only to incriminate anyone at all, when the opportunity presents itself to make an example of somebody. I suspect this technological gap is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it does get better at all. The types of people who participate in the game of politics have very little in common with the types of people who have an understanding of the technical world. But can that last forever? Kids now live online with few exceptions, and a technical understanding of the world will hopefully become second nature to most people, eventually.
- arethuza 13y ago
  I suspect that this has nothing do to with filtering content, protecting the vulnerable or anything else in the "real world" - it's all about politicians who have no fundamental convictions or principles desperately casting about for any subject that might increase their visibility to earn them a promotion up the slippery pole.
  - boothead 13y ago
    Although in this case they've pegged the problem as too much access to other kinds of slippery poles :-)
  - dspillett 13y ago
    It is more specific than that. Mr Cameron has recently upset quite a few very influential bigots over the gay marriage thing (something to be applauded IMO) and is now trying to sweeten them back up ready for the next time he needs their vote or party donation by tackling an issue that they care about but which won't overly irritate too many other people. The porn access issue is a gift to him in this respect. I'm sure he knows the measures are going to be ineffective, if he doesn't he needs to sack a few advisers, but it is important for him to be seen to be "thinking of the children" on this issue.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
A Paul Staines vs Claire Perry smutocalypse, oh boy this should be fun. I may need to stock up on beer and popcorn.
- oracuk 13y ago
  He is (apparently) considering sueing her: http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/should-guido-sue-claire-perry/ http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/should-guido-sue-claire-pe... I am conflicted. I never really liked Paul Staines' style but I am somewhat afraid of the impact of Claire Perry on the UK Internet regulations. I have to admit I would love to see him publicise the lack of understanding she has in the Internet that she is working so hard to regulate..
  - shdon 13y ago
    She deserves to have some sense sued into her. It is frightening how such thoroughly ignorant people seem utterly powercrazed, trying to control that which they don't understand, effectively becoming for more evil than the thing they want to fight. Her stupidity is staggering. Bring on the Streisand effect indeed...
    - scmurcott 13y ago
      Amazed at her lack of understanding... I think that incompetence at that level should be punished.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        Don't worry, she did just libel someone who is on the Rupert Murdoch News Corp dollar and who has decided to follow the outcome of his reader poll and sue. http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-say-sue-claire-perry-guido-has-instructed-lawyers-to-commence-proceedings/ http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-...
    - estebank 13y ago
      > It is frightening how such thoroughly ignorant people seem utterly powercrazed "We need to take control,” says Claire Perry, speaking as a parent. Far too many mums and dads are “ignoramuses” about technology, baffled by the smart phones and computers their children use, she says. “Parents say they want to be involved, but the children have overtaken them,” she says. “That’s awful. We must be like the first generation whose children learnt to read and write, and we’re all blundering about like illiterate ignoramuses.” (...) “I am not a minister. I have no portfolio. I am simply a thorn in the side of everybody,” she says. “This debate crosses so many departments that it is quite helpful to have one person who goes around making a nuisance of themselves.” Mrs Perry is chasing the internet service providers, search engine and social media companies to do more to keep children safe online, and says they are beginning to look “culpable” for allowing the likes of Mark Bridger and Stuart Hazell to view illegal child porn. (...) She praises the mobile phone companies for imposing filters blocking adult content on the internet, but they don’t apply when the images are being created by children themselves. “There will be technology that comes along to solve this, but I don’t want to wait. Who is paying for the phone of a 12-year‑old? It will be the parent. We somehow have to get parents, carers and those involved in children’s lives to say that this is not acceptable,” she says. “Who is keeping our children safe?” (...) “Frankly, if we need to, we will regulate,” she says. “We have made child porn illegal and it still gets in. That means we have to tighten up, as we do with drugs. We spend a lot of time in this country trying to track down the supply of illegal drugs. It’s similar with the internet.” (...) “Well, my children hate being discussed in anything to do with my job. My 16‑year-old says: 'I can get married and I could join the Army if I wanted to, so why do you think you can read my texts?’ I say: 'Because there might be a situation in which you are unsafe.’ ” This is not even funny. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/cole-moreton/10107771/Claire-Perry-MP-Parents-take-back-control.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/cole-moreton/10107771...
everyone 13y ago
Immature. Pointless. Counter-productive. But Goatse'd! hahahahaa! How wonderfully appropriate :)
iuguy 13y ago
There's several issues that are worth raising here, but I struggle to understand why the Parliamentary Private Secretary for the Secretary of State for Defence needs to attend a meeting with ISPs about unrelated civilian matters.
- ealexhudson 13y ago
  If it was a committee or some other 'public' meeting, then pretty much any MP or Lord can attend if they so wish. Her role as PPS is separate to her constituency role. From the sounds of the meeting, it wasn't a meeting with Government but with Parliamentarians.
nicholassmith 13y ago
It worries me that people that have absolutely no understanding of even the basics of how a system works have any ability to regulate it. The worst part is, there are MPs who do have a good technical understanding, but for the most part they're drown out by the shrill cries of 'save us from ourselves!'. I cannot imagine how much torture it must have been to try and explain the concepts to someone who just does not care. It's wilful stupidity.
- netcan 13y ago
  Yeah. Me too. The cookie legislation, with all its pompous righteous "debates" in EU & UK parliament is the perfect example. They basically legislated a nag screen that you need to 'X' on every site you visit. It gives shoddy "web consultants" a hook to bait clients with (you are required by law to have a cookie compliant website.). It creates extra nonsense work for developers. Stupid bikeshed meeting all around the country. And a very tiny annoyance occurring 10000 time per second to someone user somewhere. Lots of website owners that know they are breaking some law someplace and decide not to bother about it which is corrosive to rule of law. Naturally, it does absolutely nothing to achieve the goals it set out to achieve (tracking?). Nothing. It's pure incompetence.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Its not just technical, is all over government. Education ministers usually have no grounding in education, health ministers usually have no grounding in health, armed forces ministers usually have never serves, home secretaries usually have no grounding in law enforcement, and so on. All they know is what their supporters think and they apply that to garner votes. At best, such people only know how to manipulate parliament. This is democracy......
  - Luc 13y ago
    Government ministers don't even need to be elected MPs. For a UK example: Peter Mandelson in 2008. It's the parties who decide who becomes minister, and as such they _could_ pick and choose domain experts, if they wished.
netcan 13y ago
I've mentioned this before on one of these threads: I think any focus on the sexual morality of politicians, political point scoring and such is superfluous. Porn and other "offensive content" has been restricted or banned in pretty much every time and place by various means. Even if an outright ban does not exist in blanket legislation, there are restrictions, codes of practice, industry bodies, laws applying narrowly to certain media channels or something like that. Basically, porn gets regulated/restricted/banned always by whatever authority has the means to do so. Always. And some authority always has jurisdiction in some way over every mainstream media source. The difference on the internet is that no one could regulate it. There was no authority or industry body. No power that could be appealed to. Now the internet can be regulated, seemingly. That is the story here. Not "Cameron is a prude" or "Cameron is pro-censorship." The internet is regulatable now. That's the story. This probably means that the same restrictions that apply elsewhere (TV, radio, print) will apply online.
- belorn 13y ago
  That is false from a global perspective. Sex and nudity as "offensive content" is mostly an US-centric concept. Maybe they learned it from the UK, or UK from the US, but many European countries during the 1950-2000 did not share it. Sweden as an example, showed many movies on national paid TV that was deemed too sexual for movie theaters in the US. They had a teen age show called "bullen", broadcasting during family prime time, which included everything from nudity to instructions around masturbation. The movie Showgirls was shown not once but twice and both times the uncensored version. Nudity and sex was not discussed in censorship discussions as it was just not an issue in peoples mind. However, in contrast to US culture, Sweden had a heavy ban on violence. The cartoon show Darkwing Duck was deemed as "video nasty", and banned mid season. The move theaters had a state censure policy which got only as recent as 2001 got abolished.
- kolektiv 13y ago
  I'm not sure this is true. Oh, I don't argue with your point about the historical facts of restriction, but I do think that the internet is still far from regulatable. The story is still really that politicians believe it is - it isn't, but they don't have the expertise to comprehend why that's the case. The internet is a mass publishing medium, not just a mass consumption one. Legislation has historically successfully targeted only publishers, and you can do this when the number is fairly small, but not when that target is "everyone" because of the work required in monitoring (which is still not amenable to automation, despite what politicians may believe - it's still just too hard for the software technology we have).
belorn 13y ago
So now that we can see in real time the ways government tries to censure, control, and surveil the Internet. The speed in which they try to incorporate the Internet under their domain of control is one where we don't need to guess anymore about their intent. Its obvious, clear and show no sign of slowing down. Rather, they are increasing the speed in which censure, control, and surveillance are added. We can't even claim that this is the initial battle. That fight has already been fought. We had the discussion around common carrier principles when peoples talked about net neutrality. We had the discussion when people discussed piracy. We had them also when wikileaks and SOPA was in the news. Even some of our allies has turned. ICANN is now days dictating under what purpose people are to be privileged to do the simply act of buying a name. Allowing government to censure, control, and surveillance the Internet produce news article as this one. Expect to see more. Its that, or invent around it in such a way that the censure, control, and surveillance can't be used by the government from an technical standpoint.
- girvo 13y ago
  Call me naive, but I do feel that this is a significant subset of the government, but not all that feel this way. The person in question obviously has an agenda (and has posted blatantly incorrect statistics... I wish there was some way of punishing officials who publish lies. Any ideas, legally?) but to play devils advocate, does that mean everyone in office feels this way?
- alan_cx 13y ago
  To play devil's advocate....Why would government not seek to control the internet? They control everything else, and if something goes wrong the public slaughter government for it, saying they should have done something. In the end, doesn't an ignorant frightened government just represent an ignorant frightened electorate? Surely it has to be up to the tech savvy to educate the wider population, so that we end up with politicians who understand. Forget the politicians and focus on the general public.
Achshar 13y ago
I am not usually the one who laughs at technologically illiterate, but this is hilarious, not because she is blaming the blogger for hacking, but because her people are the ones who are deciding how the internet behaves, and yet they have no understanding of even basic stuff. So I find the idea of them making the decisions about something they are literally illiterate about amusing, and haunting.
- scholia 13y ago
  It's funny if a top politician is clueless about the web. Unfortunately, this particularly clueless politician is the UK's Secretary of State for Defence. She has nuclear submarines....
  - kolektiv 13y ago
    Thankfully she's only the PPS to the Secretary of State for Defense. The actual SSD is the far more capable Philip Hammond... (Hmmm.)
    - scholia 13y ago
      Ah, thanks for the correction. Speed-reading her Twitter header...
turbojerry 13y ago
Libel and blackmail from an MP, why am I not surprised. Does anyone know if Kickstarter allows funding of legal actions? I would be willing to donate some money into putting her in the dock for this.
- Heliosmaster 13y ago
  IIRC kickstarted doesn't, but there is plenty of places that do.
Stubbs 13y ago
Carl Sagan once famously said "We live in a society dependent on science & technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science & technology" Nowhere is this more true than in Parliament!
artumi-richard 13y ago
As a father of a young child I'm quite keen on being able to provide him with a clean connection to the internet. I want him to be able to explore without having to watch over him. We should have solutions to this problem, at the router level, where we can be in charge of the blacklist, and the times various items on it are ok or not ok. Politicians cannot be blamed for trying to do what is popular, and because we as a community have failed to solve the problem for less technical parents than I, an imperfect solution has been proposed. We should not be surprised. We are the ones best suited to find the optimal solutions to such problems, and carping on about politicians doing something when we have done far too little is pointless.
- anu_gupta 13y ago
  So, why not install one of the many filtering / blocking solutions that exist? A simple Google search will show you that this is a well explored space, with many different options.
  - artumi-richard 13y ago
    There is relatively easy https://www.opendns.com/home-solutions/parental-controls#family https://www.opendns.com/home-solutions/parental-controls#fam... But I don't have an easy way to say "No - that site is fine" - I am not in control. But actually it's easy only because I know what DNS is and can imagine how to setup my router to use their dns servers.
    - darkarmani 13y ago
      It says you can add whitelists.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  "We should have solutions to this problem, at the router level, where we can be in charge of the blacklist." We do have blacklists available at the router level. Blacklists at the router level compiled by parents don't work though, for the obvious reason that there are well over 4 billion pages to check. Is a bit like trying to guard what books your children read when they work out about the inter-library lending agreement. I used to cause havoc with that. The best thing to do is to go on the internet with your kids until you think they have reached a reasonable level of understanding about the world, rather than putting a machine in their bedroom and trusting a filter to work.
cstross 13y ago
Aaaaand ... the other shoe has just dropped: http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-say-sue-claire-perry-guido-has-instructed-lawyers-to-commence-proceedings/ http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-... Guido Fawkes is talking to his lawyers about Libel. (Which under English law -- the reforms haven't gone through yet -- places the burden of proving that she didn't damage his reputation squarely on Claire Petty's shoulders.) I'm just astonished that an MP appears to have been so ignorant of the law of her own land (and how it applies to twitter) that she left herself wide open to this.
- terabytest 13y ago
  I think this was the right thing to do on his part. Things like this are unacceptable.
- beseku 13y ago
  "I'm just astonished that an MP appears to have been so ignorant of the law of her own land ..." You don't know our MPs very well do you ...? I'd say this is pretty much par for the course. The only laws they know anything about are loopholes.
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  Excellent, after the whole furore with Bercow it'll be interesting to see whether the defamation laws will be used to the same effect. That High Court ruling set a very clear precedent about what can and can't be classed as libel, and given that there was less actual libel in her tweet compared to this then it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel. I still think the libel laws need gutting, but it'll be interesting to see them used to spectacular effect against someone who should know exactly how much trouble they'll get in.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    >> I still think the libel laws need gutting, but it'll be interesting to see them used to spectacular effect against someone who should know exactly how much trouble they'll get in. We can only hope that by actions like these people can scare the lawmakers into actually doing something about our stupid laws.... Or if not, at least we can watch and laugh as they're on the receiving end.
ryan14 13y ago
The porn filter could be debated in the House of Commons if this petition got 100,000 signatures > http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746 http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746
Eva_Peron 13y ago
Stating the obvious, but there are MAJOR first amendment problems with trying to get ISP's to block porn sites by default. I don't see how something like this could come to a vote without major controversy. There is still such a thing as freedom of expression, last time I checked.
- spiek 13y ago
  Well, the main thing here is that this is happening in England...
thirdsun 13y ago
Even if we ignore all the technical things she seems to be confused about, how can a government official think it is ok to publicly and childishly accuse and threaten this man on a social network. I'm not surprised by her technical ignorance at all, but the lack of professionalism and , well, manners is very worrying.

195 points by anu_gupta 13y ago

I find the technological incompetence of our political leaders and advisers very worrying. I doubt any of them could describe the difference between The Internet, The World Wide Web, a web browser and a search engine.

user24 13y ago
Indeed. Let alone the difference between hosting porn, distributing porn, and linking to porn, which this MP seems to be confused about: "That well known responsible campaigner @guidofawkes has been hosting a link that distributed porn via my website"[1] [1] https://twitter.com/claire4devizes/status/359718721138343936 https://twitter.com/claire4devizes/status/359718721138343936
ishansharma 13y ago
It's not only your leaders. Things are same everywhere. In India, one can say anything about government openly but say something on social media site and fool leaders will try to censor you. There have been multiple instances displaying how bad situation is. A movie company was able to get court orders to stop piracy of their movie and this ended in ban over 70+ sites. Not specific pages, blanket ban on whole sites. [1] Then we have had a girl arrested over liking a Facebook post criticizing a leader[2] I had high hopes with our generation but looks like most of the people in early twenties are not much better. [1]: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/singham-effect-file-sharing-sites-blocked-121249 http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/singham-effect-file-sharin... [2]: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/19/indian-woman-arrested-over-facebook-like/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/19/indian-woman-arrested-ov...
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  > I had high hopes with our generation but looks like most of the people in early twenties are not much better. I know a 12 years old who can't watch photos on a usb stick or a cd-rom if the windows dialog "what do you want to do ?" doesn't show up when inserting the disc or the stick on the computer. But he has mean fingers to send a gazillion sms per minute. I know adults who seem unable to grasp the concept of resolution as they keep adding 4000x4000 pixels images in their powerpoint. And they seem to forget as soon as I tell them where the "shrink images" function is. My outlook on this is that things haven't changed since the 90's (when I was a teen): some people want to know how computers work or make them work "better" and some just want stuff done. The first are more technologically literate (more like jack-of-all-trades) than the second but I am not convinced they are automatically better set for life as a result or that what they do with the computer is more appreciated.
  - mordae 13y ago
    Nah, the other half is just stupid or lazy. It's the same kind of people who will ignore screwdriver and will try to pry the bolt out with pliers unless they have been shown the benefits of using the proper tool in the past 15 minutes. I work at a large library and the smart, non-tech people are genuinely interested in improving their and their peers' effectiveness and are willing to learn. I frequently chat with a friend who can make shoes, design and construct electrical devices, build small buildings, survive in nature and anonymously watch things he's interested in on the Internet. He frequently asks about relevant things and gives advice from his fields of knowledge. Some people just are better than the rest.
piqufoh 13y ago
There's only one actual scientist in the house of commons (Julian Huppert, LibDem, Cambridge) and he is regularly heckled whenever he gets up to speak about anything. Shameful..

nakedrobot2 13y ago

There is pretty substancial technological gulf opening up between the "ruling class" and the "reasonably well educated folks" out there. This could be as disruptive and problematic as the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. Porn filters will be of no concern whatsoever to anyone under 40 with the most rudimentary technical chops (and appetite for porn). What else will be banned? It is getting to the point where fearmongering and shameless populism and shilling for votes by politicians result in useless laws being enacted only to incriminate anyone at all, when the opportunity presents itself to make an example of somebody. I suspect this technological gap is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it does get better at all. The types of people who participate in the game of politics have very little in common with the types of people who have an understanding of the technical world. But can that last forever? Kids now live online with few exceptions, and a technical understanding of the world will hopefully become second nature to most people, eventually.

arethuza 13y ago
I suspect that this has nothing do to with filtering content, protecting the vulnerable or anything else in the "real world" - it's all about politicians who have no fundamental convictions or principles desperately casting about for any subject that might increase their visibility to earn them a promotion up the slippery pole.
- boothead 13y ago
  Although in this case they've pegged the problem as too much access to other kinds of slippery poles :-)
- dspillett 13y ago
  It is more specific than that. Mr Cameron has recently upset quite a few very influential bigots over the gay marriage thing (something to be applauded IMO) and is now trying to sweeten them back up ready for the next time he needs their vote or party donation by tackling an issue that they care about but which won't overly irritate too many other people. The porn access issue is a gift to him in this respect. I'm sure he knows the measures are going to be ineffective, if he doesn't he needs to sack a few advisers, but it is important for him to be seen to be "thinking of the children" on this issue.

moocowduckquack 13y ago

A Paul Staines vs Claire Perry smutocalypse, oh boy this should be fun. I may need to stock up on beer and popcorn.

oracuk 13y ago
He is (apparently) considering sueing her: http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/should-guido-sue-claire-perry/ http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/should-guido-sue-claire-pe... I am conflicted. I never really liked Paul Staines' style but I am somewhat afraid of the impact of Claire Perry on the UK Internet regulations. I have to admit I would love to see him publicise the lack of understanding she has in the Internet that she is working so hard to regulate..
- shdon 13y ago
  She deserves to have some sense sued into her. It is frightening how such thoroughly ignorant people seem utterly powercrazed, trying to control that which they don't understand, effectively becoming for more evil than the thing they want to fight. Her stupidity is staggering. Bring on the Streisand effect indeed...
  - scmurcott 13y ago
    Amazed at her lack of understanding... I think that incompetence at that level should be punished.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      Don't worry, she did just libel someone who is on the Rupert Murdoch News Corp dollar and who has decided to follow the outcome of his reader poll and sue. http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-say-sue-claire-perry-guido-has-instructed-lawyers-to-commence-proceedings/ http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-...
  - estebank 13y ago
    > It is frightening how such thoroughly ignorant people seem utterly powercrazed "We need to take control,” says Claire Perry, speaking as a parent. Far too many mums and dads are “ignoramuses” about technology, baffled by the smart phones and computers their children use, she says. “Parents say they want to be involved, but the children have overtaken them,” she says. “That’s awful. We must be like the first generation whose children learnt to read and write, and we’re all blundering about like illiterate ignoramuses.” (...) “I am not a minister. I have no portfolio. I am simply a thorn in the side of everybody,” she says. “This debate crosses so many departments that it is quite helpful to have one person who goes around making a nuisance of themselves.” Mrs Perry is chasing the internet service providers, search engine and social media companies to do more to keep children safe online, and says they are beginning to look “culpable” for allowing the likes of Mark Bridger and Stuart Hazell to view illegal child porn. (...) She praises the mobile phone companies for imposing filters blocking adult content on the internet, but they don’t apply when the images are being created by children themselves. “There will be technology that comes along to solve this, but I don’t want to wait. Who is paying for the phone of a 12-year‑old? It will be the parent. We somehow have to get parents, carers and those involved in children’s lives to say that this is not acceptable,” she says. “Who is keeping our children safe?” (...) “Frankly, if we need to, we will regulate,” she says. “We have made child porn illegal and it still gets in. That means we have to tighten up, as we do with drugs. We spend a lot of time in this country trying to track down the supply of illegal drugs. It’s similar with the internet.” (...) “Well, my children hate being discussed in anything to do with my job. My 16‑year-old says: 'I can get married and I could join the Army if I wanted to, so why do you think you can read my texts?’ I say: 'Because there might be a situation in which you are unsafe.’ ” This is not even funny. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/cole-moreton/10107771/Claire-Perry-MP-Parents-take-back-control.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/cole-moreton/10107771...

everyone 13y ago

Immature. Pointless. Counter-productive. But Goatse'd! hahahahaa! How wonderfully appropriate :)

iuguy 13y ago

There's several issues that are worth raising here, but I struggle to understand why the Parliamentary Private Secretary for the Secretary of State for Defence needs to attend a meeting with ISPs about unrelated civilian matters.

ealexhudson 13y ago
If it was a committee or some other 'public' meeting, then pretty much any MP or Lord can attend if they so wish. Her role as PPS is separate to her constituency role. From the sounds of the meeting, it wasn't a meeting with Government but with Parliamentarians.

nicholassmith 13y ago

It worries me that people that have absolutely no understanding of even the basics of how a system works have any ability to regulate it. The worst part is, there are MPs who do have a good technical understanding, but for the most part they're drown out by the shrill cries of 'save us from ourselves!'. I cannot imagine how much torture it must have been to try and explain the concepts to someone who just does not care. It's wilful stupidity.

netcan 13y ago
Yeah. Me too. The cookie legislation, with all its pompous righteous "debates" in EU & UK parliament is the perfect example. They basically legislated a nag screen that you need to 'X' on every site you visit. It gives shoddy "web consultants" a hook to bait clients with (you are required by law to have a cookie compliant website.). It creates extra nonsense work for developers. Stupid bikeshed meeting all around the country. And a very tiny annoyance occurring 10000 time per second to someone user somewhere. Lots of website owners that know they are breaking some law someplace and decide not to bother about it which is corrosive to rule of law. Naturally, it does absolutely nothing to achieve the goals it set out to achieve (tracking?). Nothing. It's pure incompetence.
alan_cx 13y ago
Its not just technical, is all over government. Education ministers usually have no grounding in education, health ministers usually have no grounding in health, armed forces ministers usually have never serves, home secretaries usually have no grounding in law enforcement, and so on. All they know is what their supporters think and they apply that to garner votes. At best, such people only know how to manipulate parliament. This is democracy......
- Luc 13y ago
  Government ministers don't even need to be elected MPs. For a UK example: Peter Mandelson in 2008. It's the parties who decide who becomes minister, and as such they _could_ pick and choose domain experts, if they wished.

netcan 13y ago

I've mentioned this before on one of these threads: I think any focus on the sexual morality of politicians, political point scoring and such is superfluous. Porn and other "offensive content" has been restricted or banned in pretty much every time and place by various means. Even if an outright ban does not exist in blanket legislation, there are restrictions, codes of practice, industry bodies, laws applying narrowly to certain media channels or something like that. Basically, porn gets regulated/restricted/banned always by whatever authority has the means to do so. Always. And some authority always has jurisdiction in some way over every mainstream media source. The difference on the internet is that no one could regulate it. There was no authority or industry body. No power that could be appealed to. Now the internet can be regulated, seemingly. That is the story here. Not "Cameron is a prude" or "Cameron is pro-censorship." The internet is regulatable now. That's the story. This probably means that the same restrictions that apply elsewhere (TV, radio, print) will apply online.

belorn 13y ago
That is false from a global perspective. Sex and nudity as "offensive content" is mostly an US-centric concept. Maybe they learned it from the UK, or UK from the US, but many European countries during the 1950-2000 did not share it. Sweden as an example, showed many movies on national paid TV that was deemed too sexual for movie theaters in the US. They had a teen age show called "bullen", broadcasting during family prime time, which included everything from nudity to instructions around masturbation. The movie Showgirls was shown not once but twice and both times the uncensored version. Nudity and sex was not discussed in censorship discussions as it was just not an issue in peoples mind. However, in contrast to US culture, Sweden had a heavy ban on violence. The cartoon show Darkwing Duck was deemed as "video nasty", and banned mid season. The move theaters had a state censure policy which got only as recent as 2001 got abolished.
kolektiv 13y ago
I'm not sure this is true. Oh, I don't argue with your point about the historical facts of restriction, but I do think that the internet is still far from regulatable. The story is still really that politicians believe it is - it isn't, but they don't have the expertise to comprehend why that's the case. The internet is a mass publishing medium, not just a mass consumption one. Legislation has historically successfully targeted only publishers, and you can do this when the number is fairly small, but not when that target is "everyone" because of the work required in monitoring (which is still not amenable to automation, despite what politicians may believe - it's still just too hard for the software technology we have).

belorn 13y ago

So now that we can see in real time the ways government tries to censure, control, and surveil the Internet. The speed in which they try to incorporate the Internet under their domain of control is one where we don't need to guess anymore about their intent. Its obvious, clear and show no sign of slowing down. Rather, they are increasing the speed in which censure, control, and surveillance are added. We can't even claim that this is the initial battle. That fight has already been fought. We had the discussion around common carrier principles when peoples talked about net neutrality. We had the discussion when people discussed piracy. We had them also when wikileaks and SOPA was in the news. Even some of our allies has turned. ICANN is now days dictating under what purpose people are to be privileged to do the simply act of buying a name. Allowing government to censure, control, and surveillance the Internet produce news article as this one. Expect to see more. Its that, or invent around it in such a way that the censure, control, and surveillance can't be used by the government from an technical standpoint.

girvo 13y ago
Call me naive, but I do feel that this is a significant subset of the government, but not all that feel this way. The person in question obviously has an agenda (and has posted blatantly incorrect statistics... I wish there was some way of punishing officials who publish lies. Any ideas, legally?) but to play devils advocate, does that mean everyone in office feels this way?
alan_cx 13y ago
To play devil's advocate....Why would government not seek to control the internet? They control everything else, and if something goes wrong the public slaughter government for it, saying they should have done something. In the end, doesn't an ignorant frightened government just represent an ignorant frightened electorate? Surely it has to be up to the tech savvy to educate the wider population, so that we end up with politicians who understand. Forget the politicians and focus on the general public.

Achshar 13y ago

I am not usually the one who laughs at technologically illiterate, but this is hilarious, not because she is blaming the blogger for hacking, but because her people are the ones who are deciding how the internet behaves, and yet they have no understanding of even basic stuff. So I find the idea of them making the decisions about something they are literally illiterate about amusing, and haunting.

scholia 13y ago
It's funny if a top politician is clueless about the web. Unfortunately, this particularly clueless politician is the UK's Secretary of State for Defence. She has nuclear submarines....
- kolektiv 13y ago
  Thankfully she's only the PPS to the Secretary of State for Defense. The actual SSD is the far more capable Philip Hammond... (Hmmm.)
  - scholia 13y ago
    Ah, thanks for the correction. Speed-reading her Twitter header...

turbojerry 13y ago

Libel and blackmail from an MP, why am I not surprised. Does anyone know if Kickstarter allows funding of legal actions? I would be willing to donate some money into putting her in the dock for this.

Heliosmaster 13y ago
IIRC kickstarted doesn't, but there is plenty of places that do.

Stubbs 13y ago

Carl Sagan once famously said "We live in a society dependent on science & technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science & technology" Nowhere is this more true than in Parliament!

artumi-richard 13y ago

As a father of a young child I'm quite keen on being able to provide him with a clean connection to the internet. I want him to be able to explore without having to watch over him. We should have solutions to this problem, at the router level, where we can be in charge of the blacklist, and the times various items on it are ok or not ok. Politicians cannot be blamed for trying to do what is popular, and because we as a community have failed to solve the problem for less technical parents than I, an imperfect solution has been proposed. We should not be surprised. We are the ones best suited to find the optimal solutions to such problems, and carping on about politicians doing something when we have done far too little is pointless.

anu_gupta 13y ago
So, why not install one of the many filtering / blocking solutions that exist? A simple Google search will show you that this is a well explored space, with many different options.
- artumi-richard 13y ago
  There is relatively easy https://www.opendns.com/home-solutions/parental-controls#family https://www.opendns.com/home-solutions/parental-controls#fam... But I don't have an easy way to say "No - that site is fine" - I am not in control. But actually it's easy only because I know what DNS is and can imagine how to setup my router to use their dns servers.
  - darkarmani 13y ago
    It says you can add whitelists.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
"We should have solutions to this problem, at the router level, where we can be in charge of the blacklist." We do have blacklists available at the router level. Blacklists at the router level compiled by parents don't work though, for the obvious reason that there are well over 4 billion pages to check. Is a bit like trying to guard what books your children read when they work out about the inter-library lending agreement. I used to cause havoc with that. The best thing to do is to go on the internet with your kids until you think they have reached a reasonable level of understanding about the world, rather than putting a machine in their bedroom and trusting a filter to work.

cstross 13y ago

Aaaaand ... the other shoe has just dropped: http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-say-sue-claire-perry-guido-has-instructed-lawyers-to-commence-proceedings/ http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-... Guido Fawkes is talking to his lawyers about Libel. (Which under English law -- the reforms haven't gone through yet -- places the burden of proving that she didn't damage his reputation squarely on Claire Petty's shoulders.) I'm just astonished that an MP appears to have been so ignorant of the law of her own land (and how it applies to twitter) that she left herself wide open to this.

terabytest 13y ago
I think this was the right thing to do on his part. Things like this are unacceptable.
beseku 13y ago
"I'm just astonished that an MP appears to have been so ignorant of the law of her own land ..." You don't know our MPs very well do you ...? I'd say this is pretty much par for the course. The only laws they know anything about are loopholes.
nicholassmith 13y ago
Excellent, after the whole furore with Bercow it'll be interesting to see whether the defamation laws will be used to the same effect. That High Court ruling set a very clear precedent about what can and can't be classed as libel, and given that there was less actual libel in her tweet compared to this then it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel. I still think the libel laws need gutting, but it'll be interesting to see them used to spectacular effect against someone who should know exactly how much trouble they'll get in.
- Nursie 13y ago
  >> I still think the libel laws need gutting, but it'll be interesting to see them used to spectacular effect against someone who should know exactly how much trouble they'll get in. We can only hope that by actions like these people can scare the lawmakers into actually doing something about our stupid laws.... Or if not, at least we can watch and laugh as they're on the receiving end.

ryan14 13y ago

The porn filter could be debated in the House of Commons if this petition got 100,000 signatures > http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746 http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746

Eva_Peron 13y ago

Stating the obvious, but there are MAJOR first amendment problems with trying to get ISP's to block porn sites by default. I don't see how something like this could come to a vote without major controversy. There is still such a thing as freedom of expression, last time I checked.

spiek 13y ago
Well, the main thing here is that this is happening in England...

thirdsun 13y ago

Even if we ignore all the technical things she seems to be confused about, how can a government official think it is ok to publicly and childishly accuse and threaten this man on a social network. I'm not surprised by her technical ignorance at all, but the lack of professionalism and , well, manners is very worrying.