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UK Porn filters block sex education websites
- x0054 13y agoIs this an opt in or an opt out filter? Does any one, even for a moment, think that this is going to stop any kid from looking at porn? The techsavy kids are going to brake the system by using free or paid VPNs or TOR, and then tell their friends. Hell, if I was a kid in UK right now, I would make money selling preconfigured FireFox instances with VPN credentials to my peers. Hmm... maybe really it David Cameron's roundabout way of getting teenagers interested in hacking and computers?!?
- rpedroso 13y agoThe article itself actually discusses this. All new internet customers are greeted with a prompt asking them whether or not they want parental controls [1]. The design of the choice menu seems to encourage choosing the porn filter. As for existing customers, I'm not sure. The article says that "BBC's Newsnight has discovered all the major ISPs that have launched full default filters", which could mean that these filters have been turned on by default for existing customers, but the wording is fairly unclear. Edit: It get's even more confusing. According to this[2] BBC article, the filter is automatically set to "on" for new users. This contradicts their claim that new users are offered a choice, though admittedly the choice is skewed in one direction. I think I'll wait for someone from the UK to chime in... [1] http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/71795000/jpg/_71795679_71795678.jpg http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/71795000/jpg/_71795679... [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25400009 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25400009
- diminoten 13y agoWait, you can opt out of this?? What's the big deal, then? If you want porn, you get porn! Life is as it's always been, and to all you people who say that there are those who can't figure it out, show me a man who wants to see boobs, and I'll show you a man who can solve any problem presented to him if said problem prevents him from seeing boobs.
- Larrikin 13y agoIt should be opt in so most people get it by default. When it's opt out you're one database leak away from being able to out out all those awful people who like boobs. If a law like this was passed I'm sure the climate is such that a list like that would be useful for black mail
- vidarh 13y agoThere's no law backing this filter: It's pushed through via the UK governments favourite backdoor way of getting unaccountable censorship through, namely the threat of legislation unless the private companies involved act on their own accord. The private companies avoid pesky government involvements, and the government can wash their hand of it if/when something goes wrong. See also how UK ISPs delegate child porn filtering to a totally unaccountable organisation called the Internet Watch Foundation.
- user24 13y ago> I'll show you a man who can solve any problem presented to him if said problem prevents him from seeing boobs. And if the person is a 14 year old boy who can't opt out because he's not the account holder, what'll he do? I'll tell you: He'll find the long tail porn sites that aren't blocked. You know, the non-mainstream ones, the ones which go out of their way to evade detection. The ones where anything goes. And what if the list of politicians who've opted in to porn is leaked? And now the filtering technology is in place, it seems foolish not to block extremist, terrorist websites too. And communist ones. And protestors. And non government-santioned news.
- bergie 13y agoIn Finland when they launched the "child porn filters" a few years back, they also filtered out the website criticizing the way the filtering was implemented. And to my knowledge this has never been lifted.
- rainforest 13y agoThe big deal is that the filter is beyond your control, and the cost is transferred to the customers regardless of their use of the filter or lack thereof. This is clear evidence that filtering is a terrible way to block "objectionable" content, that it won't make anyone safer; any confidence in it is baseless so the whole thing is just a waste of customers' money.
- DanBC 13y agoNew users are opted in by default, but can opt out. Existing users get the menu option choice.
- psionski 13y agoOr just sell and swap CDs like we did before the (broadband) Internet? This could be more lucrative as you're not giving out the source.
- throwwit 13y agoFahrenheit 451: Digital Edition
- NAFV_P 13y ago... Where each one of us has to memorise a web page in html format.
- fakeanon 13y agoYou get to choose if you parental controls on or not Maybe there is something like that in the book, but the point is, company are now choosing to, by default, have sexually explicit content blocked, and it can be opted out of. Do you believe this is bad? The UK government forcing ISPs to block stuff may not be the best way to do it, but it looks like David Cameron is just recommending it and that the ISPs have agreed.) Have I misunderstood the situation?
- sb057 13y ago"Hello, Internet Service Provider? I would like to have access to porn sites." Also, it blocks a number of other stuff, including "extremist" views. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131023/debtext/131023-0001.htm http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/c...
- fakeanon 13y agoMaybe that sounding awkward is a hint to the nature of what you are requesting. And you think that is how you will request it when the box on computers for existing customers says "I don't want Parental Controls"? I believe that _____ is wrong, but am reconsidering my opinion on the filter due to to this part: "Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab): Two weeks ago, the head of the Security Service warned about the extent of Islamist extremism. This week, two individuals have been charged with serious terrorist offences. What is the Prime Minister going to do in January when, as a result of his Government’s legislation, some of those whom the Home Secretary has judged to pose the greatest threat to our security are released from the provisions of their terrorism prevention and investigation measures? The Prime Minister: We have put in place some of the toughest controls that one can possibly have within a democratic Government, and the TPIMs are obviously one part of that. We have had repeated meetings of the extremism task force—it met again yesterday—setting out a whole series of steps that we will take to counter the extremist narrative, including by blocking online sites. Now that I have the opportunity, let me praise Facebook for yesterday reversing the decision it took about the showing of beheading videos online. We will take all these steps and many more to keep our country safe.". But now that I think about it, is this part of the parental controls filter or something else? Now, take a look at the assertion in "Tackling extremism in the UK"[1]: "1.4 This is a distinct ideology which should not be confused with traditional religious practice. It is an ideology which is based on a distorted interpretation of Islam, which betrays Islam’s peaceful principles, and draws on the teachings of the likes of Sayyid Qutb. Islamist extremists deem Western intervention in Muslim-majority countries as a ‘war on Islam’, creating a narrative of ‘them’ and ‘us’. They seek to impose a global Islamic state governed" I have doubts that Islam is peaceful, but also about censoring websites about even advocating terrorism, and this is at the government level, not a recommendation, but I do not see a problem with an ISP doing it. It seems the article is referring to the government blocking terrorist sites, which I think is a different thing and not the best idea, rather than ISP parental controls, which the article was about. Am I misunderstanding, are these connected more, is the government forcing the blockage of a. immoral but legal sites in the filter or just b. child _____[2], or also c. terrorist sites? Government should only block b, ISP should block b and may provide parental controls to block a and c if they want. But I don't quite understand what is going on. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-extremism-in-the-uk-report-by-the-extremism-taskforce https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-extremis... [2] Seems what the _parental_ filter is implicated for here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25067051 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25067051
- lvturner 13y agoMission accomplished.
- hobs 13y agoAnyone here surprised? No? I didn't think so. Reposting because I know someone else is about to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- greglindahl 13y agoIt's not too hard to mostly fix the Scunthorpe problem by generating word lists: shitake, oshita, acunto... and don't forget that Dikshitar and Dikshit are (high caste) Indian names.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoThe problem is that it's far more trivial to bypass the filters than it is to make the filters work well and not have false positives. Consider: sh1t, cu|\|7, a55, f00ker, and so on and so on. Plus you have to constantly update to take into account new slang which can have double meaning. Some kid might say "she's just a thirsty ratchet" and there's no way in hell that a simplistic automated system is going to be able to flag that as being a use of expletives or filthy and derogatory language.
- greglindahl 13y agoI wasn't proposing fixing any of those problems, just the Scunthorpe problem! You are correct that there are more problems out there.
- vacri 13y agoI find it humourous looking at some oldschool grep commands that grep for 'username' and 'password'... but the first letter might be capitalised, so you grep for 'sername' and... 'ssword'. Because 'assword' is too rude for code, apparently...
- Datsundere 13y agoyou forgot "the N-word" they say in the media. It's white people getting away with saying the n-word.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoI thought Europe was less conservative than the US.
- pantalaimon 13y agothe UK is not the entirety of Europe. Actually there is even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_withdrawal_from_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_withdrawal_from_...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lewispollard 13y agoWell, the party in power who introduced the filter is called the Conservative party, you can see why.
- adamors 13y agoEurope has almost 50 countries. The UK is one of them. I thought this was common knowledge.
- loceng 13y agoWait, what? That news about planning to block all Porn in UK actually happened?!
- vixen99 13y agoI try not to do it myself and sometimes fail but please read the news item properly before commenting.
- Pitarou 13y agoOh for heaven's sake. Isn't it enough just to install a blacklist system that blocks, say, the top 99% of porn sites? No. Apparently not. Some wiseguy with a smooth line in "meeting legal obligations" sold the ISPs an "intelligent" porn blocker, with all-too-predictable consequences.
- yourad_io 13y agoFrom the article seems like each ISP is rolling their own: "TalkTalk's filter is endorsed by Mr Cameron but it failed to block 7% of the 68 pornographic websites tested by Newsnight." "Sky's filter fared much better, blocking 99% of sites, but it did block six porn-addiction sites." Anyone else still waiting for someone to jump out of the bushes and "April fools!" this whole thing away?
- Pitarou 13y agoI stand corrected.
- justincormack 13y agoOne of the "porn" sites Newsnight tested as Reddit.
- DanBC 13y agoThere is a lot of porn available on Reddit. The filter is a stupid idea. But including Reddit on an opt-out porn filter is reasonable.
- jiggy2011 13y agoAll of reddit? There is also a lot of educational stuff on there. If the filter works by blocking entire domains then this is clearly unworkable when you consider how much of the internet's content is hosted on a small number of sites.
- 13y ago
- yourad_io 13y agoHooray! Common sense prevailed. Oh wait - wrong thread.
- booruguru 13y agoFreedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!
- Houshalter 13y agoI disagree with the law, but why be upset over this specifically? Of course there are going to be false-positives and false-negatives. A half-hearted approach to manually blacklist sites would be trivial to get around, thus defeating the purpose.
- beedogs 13y agoTypical ham-fisted conservative/authoritarian approach to something which isn't even a real problem.
- warfangle 13y agoPlease defer to Hanlon's Razor.
- makomk 13y agoThe current Conservative government defies the assumption behind Hanlon's razer; their malice and stupidity are one and the same, because so much of the harm they've done is the result of maliciously-held views that cause them to do really stupid things.
- arethuza 13y agoI think you are being rather generous thinking that any of the main UK parties does anything on the basis of principle - even malicious principle. All they seem to do is conjure up a stream of policies to target particular target segments of voters based on what the relevant media organizations and/or minor parties are creating a fuss about that week.
- warfangle 13y agoObviously the stupidity I'm referring to is the hubris in thinking anyone could build a filter for such a thing and _not_ have disastrous false positives.
- goggles99 13y agoThey are blocked because they didn't file for (or were denied) an exemption. Everyone was told for some time now about this. If they were denied, it is because a three year old could access adult material there (no verification of any type). Where are these facts in the article? It is likely they didn't comply to generate a reaction like many of the comments in this thread.
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoI'm not sure why you think any of that is relevant. Educational sites should not require Big Brother's approval, even if they involve biology you'd rather not think about.
- goggles99 13y agoWhat determines an Educational Site as you have stated that they should not require big brother's approval? Anyone can say their site is "Educational". Calling BishUK an educational site is how this story even broke daylight. The term Educational site is very misleading in this context IMO. I suppose that you can call hardcore porn educational as well though (if you learn something from watching it then you were educated right?). Traditional "Sex Education" in school is all about discussing the basics of how anatomy works and the responsibilities and consequences that come along with sexual activity. BishUK appears to go much further. Discussing in detail sexual positions, techniques ETC. Hardly what most people think of when they hear the term "Education" and hardly appropriate for kids.
- pfraze 13y agoThe point is that we don't want anybody's approval, and no definition you suggest (however reasonable) will change that. The policy is cheap politics.
- rpedroso 13y agoDo you have a source for this? How did it work -- the individual ISPs contacted websites they intended to blacklist and gave them the opportunity to appeal? I find this hard to believe since Justin Hancock, who runs BishUK, claims to not have been aware that his website was being blocked until Newsnight alerted him. If you are right, then perhaps he got some kind of form email alerting him of this possibility and assumed it was not relevant to his business?
- notastartup 13y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcVkYD3o910 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcVkYD3o910
- jds375 13y agoThis whole filter is an entirely ridiculous idea. Blocking people from watching sex? It is absolutely asanine that we are so controlling and "scared" of one of the most important aspects of life. Sex shouldn't be something that we hide and don't talk about outside closed doors. It should be openly embraced as a beautiful thing, not some dark pleasure.
- vixen99 13y agoReminder: You can argue about the pros and cons but no one is blocking anyone. It's merely a default device (which many parents have requested) which you can choose to have lifted.
- acallaghan 13y agoAlso a reminder: Families with these porn filters deployed will also not have access to LGBT advice websites, sexual health websites (other than probably the NHS's), and porn addiction websites. If I were a 13/14 year old now, and had these filters, I'd see it as a challenge to find a way to overcome.
- girvo 13y agoI find that way of thinking about it terribly close minded, and ignores anything that doesn't fit the standard "nuclear family" situation.
- BlackDeath3 13y agoUntil it's opt-in, it is a blocking device. It is censorship. Even then, the whole thing is fucking stupid. Our species is dangerously idiotic.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoQuestion: some species of animals are happy to have sex while being watched by their own kind, or humans. Some are more private. How much effort should we expend training modest animals to have sex in front of humans? Is it a problem that they don't like to?
- lazyjones 13y agoCan this censorship infrastructure be tested from the outside, i.e. non-UK-ISPs? We'd like to know whether any of our sites are affected (since we don't patrol them much for naughty content ...).
- mogrim 13y agoNot sure about external testing, but it's not a single "censorship infrastructure", all the operators have their own, proprietary filters. (Which is, of course, worse: your website may be visible to BT clients, but not to O2 users...)
- andygates 13y agoAnd the list is secret. Don't forget that bit: it's "commercial confidential" to the private companies contracted to do the filtering. I don't like to use the f-word, but private companies acting as sanctioned departments of censorship stinketh strongly of that corporatism bordering on fascism.
- sgt 13y agoThis may be an obvious question on HN.. but.. how.. HOW can British people stand for this?
- vixen99 13y agoAppalling that folk have to make a choice about whether to make it possible to view pornography or not? Parents certainly stand for it though you can argue whether the default should be the other way round. It's amazing how one's views on the subject of access to pornography can change once one is a parent.
- retube 13y agoYes absolutely. Most on HN are not parents. They will feel differently when their 9 year-old daughter clicks on a redtube link that someone posted somewhere.
- vidarh 13y agoI am a parent, and if anything it has made me much more vehemently opposed to filters like this, because I believe strongly that parents are using it as a poor excuse for not teaching their kids to deal with the internet properly, and also as when he is old enough to use the internet without active monitoring, he is also old enough to make a decision on what to view and read and will do so whether or not I try to filter. If I try to filter, though, I have every expectation he will come across much nastier stuff than what he'd otherwise likely seek out by his volition.
- finnw 13y agoMore likely they will never know that she clicked it
- darklajid 13y ago"Most on HN are not parents" Do you have numbers? I was very much surprised reading about family support/progressing in ones job aged 35+ etc. on this very board. Unless old readers drop out/don't return I'd guess that the number of parents here should statistically increase - and I don't think the number's insignificant. Start a poll? This parent here considers the idea of filtering content utterly wrong, but what really upsets me are your statements along these lines here: "Whiilst I may be a responsible parent and will turn on filters; many will not." K, not my native language and all. I'm certainly misparsing the sentence and you don't actually claim that being a reasonable parent and turning the filters on is connected, people NOT turning that thing on aren't reasonable parents? Because that's what I get out of that statement..
- el_shayan 13y agoAn attempt doomed to fail. Iranian government has been trying this type of filtering from the day one, people still manage to go and find whatever they want... and believe me Iran is more aggressive than David Cameron the last time I checked.
- DougBTX 13y agoEE blocks news.ycombinator.com as adult content too.
- seanhandley 13y agoThere's a big problem with them blocking gay, lesbian and transgender content as well. Basically labelling any content along those lines as censorworthy, whether it's pornographic or not.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoIIRC email inboxes of some state's legislature blocked emails about same-sex marriage due to the word "lesbian"
- vidarh 13y agoClearly we need to do as they did with Rick Santorum, and effectively "redefine" all of their names as something highly offensive.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoWhere are the violence filters? I'm betting these filters don't block beheading videos etc. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).
- alan_cx 13y agoBT have bought rights to football, where racism, sexism, homophobia and violence are rife, despite what apologists try to have us believe. But that's fine. And thats just the UK. In Europe, football is too often associated with far right fascism. The other bit I don't get is how come its fine for my kids to be encouraged to watch the news, which is often horrific, and real. This has nothing what so ever to do with protecting kids and so on. This current UK government is driving more and more kids further below the poverty line, and that far far more negative consequences than kids seeing naked bodies and sex.
- DanBC 13y agoUK broadcasts normally replace the crowd noises if there are racist / homophobic / etc chants.
- likeclockwork 13y agoDoesn't censoring stuff like this rather than broadcasting intact along with disapproving commentary actually work against any positive social change taking place? I mean that's creating a venue where mobs of people can be as openy racist / homophobic / etc as they want and it will be quietly hushed up. Sweeping the truth under the rug doesn't solve anything, it just festers in the dark.
- scrrr 13y agoOh the stupidity..
- salient 13y agoWait for them to sell this as some sort of "collateral damage that we just have to accept", like the US gov is selling drone strikes, and NSA is trying to sell their "errors" when collecting data on Americans.
- slashdotaccount 13y agoAre these filters implemented as real-time DPI filtering by keywords (then it can be circumvented by using SSL/TLS?) or it's some kind of blacklist?
- kefka 13y agoI'm not shocked. The idea that "pornography" is bad is purely a christian idea. If they block legitimate sources of information, well too bad. Its the tragedy of evils of immorality. If the UK wants the Christians to run their internet policy, so be it. That just made them similar to China and their firewall.
- awjr 13y agoI have to say this stuff is a complete joke. If you want to find porn, you can find it on twitter, here's a tame search https://twitter.com/search?q=boobs&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=boobs&src=typd (SFW) Please feel free to experiment with 'harder' search terms. The problem is that a medium most politicians use to interact with the public with, is also a medium through which anyone can search and view hard core porn. Will the UK ban twitter?
- Chromozon 13y agoDid anyone else see that the purpose of all this was to stop children from accidentally stumbling across hardcore porn? Because, yes, that happens frequently with kids.