UK's Filter

[Venixu]

This topic concerns community members living in UK (sadly, I have tried tying Germany to UK, no dice).

While reading about the whole deal over the UK's talk of this filter, I stumbled upon more things that are ever so relevant to the comprimise of safety for the citizens of the UK.

tl;dr -PETITION HERE and WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR MP (I have no idea how the government is structured over there and no copy/paste, they actually read the thing, so make it personal [Malcovent, you run the Forums, right? Give your stance])

This filter that is introduced by Cameron has flaws. Go do something about it.
The filter is broad. It blocks: dating, drugs, P2P networks, gambling, games, porn, social networking, self-harm, violence, and along with, terrorist content, smoking, web forums, filter circumnavigation tools, and esoteric material. The filter varies from which ISP you have. Good luck out there! Andrews and Arnolds is the only ISP that will not use the filter afaik.

Why is the government being involved in parenting? It would be more economical to issue parenting classes than attempting to block such broad subjects. Notice that the list goes beyond pornographic material and that the filter is opt-out than opt-in. Opt-out presumes every single child (or teen) can possibly be hurt by such content. I'm not too sure what media is banned in the UK, but I know for sure the UK government doesn't ban books that cover such topic (Hunger Games, anyone?). Besides, all parents know it is highly impossible to forever shield their children from dangerous material. After all, many adults are highly aware of the material? When? They were introduced to such material being teenagers or so. Yeah, I'm not too sure how the Internet is over there (video in article).

Besides that, what other issues should we talk about besides the obvious? How about Cameron's intentions with pushing this filter into Parliament in the first place. ISPs are already aware of the complaints they're going to get from families. Cameroon's stance on the filter is impractical for the government's forced action into parenting. What comes from such broad terms, one can expect the Internet to be practically filtered in the UK (with the exception of business Internet, more on that). A journalist attacked Claire Perry's website, then a journalist reported the news only to be attacked by Cameron. Even Tory ministers are trying to talk common sense into Cameron. Ummm, I'm still trying to find more things about outcry to the filter.

What if the filter is inevitably placed? You can attempt to bypass the filter... if you know how to do networking stuff that goes beyond my head. Can someone, that knows much about server administration, break this down for the average techie? Yeah, I have plenty of Reddit threads about many methods.

Spoiler: More into bypassing

regarding the blocking of anti-circumvention technology, the internet itself is anti-circumvention technology, want to browse the web unfiltered? get a business grade line from your ISP, by default business lines and services are unrestricted, share your uncensored line with your community via wifi (you can even charge for access using dd-wrt to set up a coffee shop like paid wifi access point).
other business services are available to help circumvent censorship, amazon cloud computing, allows you to set up a remote unrestricted computer hosted in Ireland, you can remotely connect to it using VNC and use an unrestricted browser. better still, you can set up a SSH proxy to the cloud server and allow you local unrestricted access.
the government can never block, business access to AWS or SSH as it would immediately break 90% of the business information systems in the country.
To folks in the UK, download Linux, learn a little about it's networking tools and the internet and you'll realise that censorship is literally impossible, there are a million undiscovered ways to bypass the blocks, the internet was invented to withstand a nuclear apocalypse, I think it can withstand a pissant like David Cameron.

Also, what is surprising to me is that the Chinese firm responsible for the Chinese firewall is also one of the largest telecommunication infrastructure. I mean, what can possibly go wrong for a country outsourcing another country's technology if it was targeted by the US? Oh hey, what gives? There is plausible deniability about Huawei's word on espionage. Hey, Huawei did blocking of the Tuananmen Square Massacre. So, yeah... Ironically, the US is still more free than UK. Did you know GCHQ of UK takes more information lying around in fucking practically the entire Internet, more than the NSA's consumption of parsed metadata? Umm, I don't read news daily about this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's no bigge. Remember how an MP attacked a journalist for reporting an attack? I also cannot confirm the validity of this statement about UK's libel laws. Um, that's a lot of links in one paragraph.

Hm... I suppose while we're talking about libel laws, we should discuss the other ones. Here's a sample blog I found about the future of UK and its status as a police state. Can we not discuss fucking Prince George? I get a new kid is born, but why in the world is a baby so important than protecting your fucking liberty UK? Yeah, the list doesn't end here, but hey, always look around news sites and blogs that isn't DailyMail.

Edit: wait, wait, wait! I now have more links for Australia's involvement in such discussion. Don't worry, it's recurring. Don't worry, some people in the UK are concerned too. After all, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, US, and UK are all buddies.

 

[Jivvi]

Hmm, while this could be an interesting discussion, I don't know if politics discussions are encouraged, 'specially as this is UK specific.

 

[Venixu]

Hmm, while this could be an interesting discussion, I don't know if politics discussions are encouraged, 'specially as this is UK specific.

Yup... I do recall politics was banned ingame. Soooooo... hopefully I don't get in trouble for speaking out. Ironic if it happens, since I'm advocating but get warned for getting involved...?

 

[Xfolo]

This topic concerns community members living in UK (sadly, I have tried tying Germany to UK, no dice).

While reading about the whole deal over the UK's talk of this filter, I stumbled upon more things that are ever so relevant to the comprimise of safety for the citizens of the UK.

tl;dr -PETITION HERE and WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR MP (I have no idea how the government is structured over there and no copy/paste, they actually read the thing, so make it personal [Malcovent, you run the Forums, right? Give your stance])

This filter that is introduced by Cameron has flaws. Go do something about it.
The filter is broad. It blocks: dating, drugs, P2P networks, gambling, games, porn, social networking, self-harm, violence, and along with, terrorist content, smoking, web forums, filter circumnavigation tools, and esoteric material. The filter varies from which ISP you have. Good luck out there! Andrews and Arnolds is the only ISP that will not use the filter afaik.

Why is the government being involved in parenting? It would be more economical to issue parenting classes than attempting to block such broad subjects. Notice that the list goes beyond pornographic material and that the filter is opt-out than opt-in. Opt-out presumes every single child (or teen) can possibly be hurt by such content. I'm not too sure what media is banned in the UK, but I know for sure the UK government doesn't ban books that cover such topic (Hunger Games, anyone?). Besides, all parents know it is highly impossible to forever shield their children from dangerous material. After all, many adults are highly aware of the material? When? They were introduced to such material being teenagers or so. Yeah, I'm not too sure how the Internet is over there (video in article).

Besides that, what other issues should we talk about besides the obvious? How about Cameron's intentions with pushing this filter into Parliament in the first place. ISPs are already aware of the complaints they're going to get from families. Cameroon's stance on the filter is impractical for the government's forced action into parenting. What comes from such broad terms, one can expect the Internet to be practically filtered in the UK (with the exception of business Internet, more on that). A journalist attacked Claire Perry's website, then a journalist reported the news only to be attacked by Cameron. Even Tory ministers are trying to talk common sense into Cameron. Ummm, I'm still trying to find more things about outcry to the filter.

What if the filter is inevitably placed? You can attempt to bypass the filter... if you know how to do networking stuff that goes beyond my head. Can someone, that knows much about server administration, break this down for the average techie? Yeah, I have plenty of Reddit threads about many methods.

Spoiler: More into bypassing

regarding the blocking of anti-circumvention technology, the internet itself is anti-circumvention technology, want to browse the web unfiltered? get a business grade line from your ISP, by default business lines and services are unrestricted, share your uncensored line with your community via wifi (you can even charge for access using dd-wrt to set up a coffee shop like paid wifi access point).
other business services are available to help circumvent censorship, amazon cloud computing, allows you to set up a remote unrestricted computer hosted in Ireland, you can remotely connect to it using VNC and use an unrestricted browser. better still, you can set up a SSH proxy to the cloud server and allow you local unrestricted access.
the government can never block, business access to AWS or SSH as it would immediately break 90% of the business information systems in the country.
To folks in the UK, download Linux, learn a little about it's networking tools and the internet and you'll realise that censorship is literally impossible, there are a million undiscovered ways to bypass the blocks, the internet was invented to withstand a nuclear apocalypse, I think it can withstand a pissant like David Cameron.

Also, what is surprising to me is that the Chinese firm responsible for the Chinese firewall is also one of the largest telecommunication infrastructure. I mean, what can possibly go wrong for a country outsourcing another country's technology if it was targeted by the US? Oh hey, what gives? There is plausible deniability about Huawei's word on espionage. Hey, Huawei did blocking of the Tuananmen Square Massacre. So, yeah... Ironically, the US is still more free than UK. Did you know GCHQ of UK takes more information lying around in fucking practically the entire Internet, more than the NSA's consumption of parsed metadata? Umm, I don't read news daily about this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's no bigge. Remember how an MP attacked a journalist for reporting an attack? I also cannot confirm the validity of this statement about UK's libel laws. Um, that's a lot of links in one paragraph.

Hm... I suppose while we're talking about libel laws, we should discuss the other ones. Here's a sample blog I found about the future of UK and its status as a police state. Can we not discuss fucking Prince George? I get a new kid is born, but why in the world is a baby so important than protecting your fucking liberty UK? Yeah, the list doesn't end here, but hey, always look around news sites and blogs that isn't DailyMail.

I is confused. What are you trying to say?

 

[Venixu]

da snips

Many, many things. Sorry if I was unorganized, but I'm fearing my life here in Blocktopia and rushed it because politics is banned ingame (I hope the forums aren't banning politics).

1) The filter is so broad, that it can be used as a weapon by authority.
2) Why is the govt involved for parenting?[1] Shouldn't UK use an alternative like parenting classes than using Internet filters similar to the Chinese (Huawei is involved in espionage over in China, and Huawei is going to be leading the effort for Cameron's filter)?[1] [2] [3; parenting (edited in)]
3)Outcry in response to the filters. Lacking in that area.
4) The many ways you can try to use to bypass the filter if it ever comes down to being used.
5) UK's international relations to US and China... sort of, but I was pointing out the danger of a police state.
6) Here's that blog about police state in UK! All the while DailyMail talks about Prince George (as an associate of mine from the UK says)

Edit: I seriously hope I don't need to write a full blown paper on international relations, UK's future as a police state, and things in between.

 

[Xfolo]

da snips

Many, many things. Sorry if I was unorganized, but I'm fearing my life here in Blocktopia and rushed it because politics is banned ingame (I hope the forums aren't banning politics).

1) The filter is so broad, that it can be used as a weapon by authority.
2) Why is the govt involved for parenting?[1] Shouldn't UK use an alternative like parenting classes than using Internet filters similar to the Chinese (Huawei is involved in espionage over in China, and Huawei is going to be leading the effort for Cameron's filter)?[1] [2] [3; parenting (edited in)]
3)Outcry in response to the filters. Lacking in that area.
4) The many ways you can try to use to bypass the filter if it ever comes down to being used.
5) UK's international relations to US and China... sort of, but I was pointing out the danger of a police state.
6) Here's that blog about police state in UK! All the while DailyMail talks about Prince George (as an associate of mine from the UK says)

Edit: I seriously hope I don't need to write a full blown paper on international relations, UK's future as a police state, and things in between.

Ah, ok. Well, i live in UK. And i agree with most of this. Especially 6.

 

[Ceres]

If I remember correctly, didn't the UK make a policy that ISP would contact their members to see if they want the restrictions turned off. What I don't get about this thread is how you're complaining about an issue that could be resolved with just a "I want it turned off" over the phone and possibly a 24 hour wait...

 

[Malcovent]

If I remember correctly, didn't the UK make a policy that ISP would contact their members to see if they want the restrictions turned off. What I don't get about this thread is how you're complaining about an issue that could be resolved with just a "I want it turned off" over the phone and possibly a 24 hour wait...

Argument below spoilered so i can vent my main point

Spoiler

Somewhat beside the point given that ISP's have already indicated they may look to be blocking things beyond porn, opt-out censorship is still at its best censorship. Doing that on a nation-wide scale is a very dangerous move.

A decent piece on the flaws of the system were talked about in this blog post.

With that said, i'll be outright surprised if this actually comes to fruit. Cameron must know its political suicide and he was banking on scotland gaining independence to whipe away the labour majority if he survived the next election, conservative are already lagging behind. If he manages to pull this off i can see conservative ratings plummeting even post-election until labour just gains a majority south of the scottish border. Beyond even that, if theres one thing that moves politics along like shit off a shovel its sex strikes and i would dare say this falls within the same category, there'll be a hell of a lot of infighting within the party if this comes to fruit.



Although i'll take a stubborn stance and pick out two points

Ironically, the US is still more free than UK.

You'd have to have ignored a lot of recent media revelations about the rights you've lost in america and the fates of individuals (read, whistleblowers) to think that you were above our level of freedom and not stuck on the same rung.

, but why in the world is a baby so important than protecting your fucking liberty UK?

we inevitably will, if this comes to fruit it'll probably be just about summer which is about the right time for a good old protest.

You can attempt to bypass the filter... if you know how to do networking stuff that goes beyond my head. Can someone, that knows much about server administration, break this down for the average techie?

Actually, this is a bit of a non-issue. Take for example my ISP, they try to block a few pirating sites (namely piratebay), i could

- Use a proxy site to access it (millions around)
- Use a proxy of piratebay (millions around)
- Just suck it up and rent a VPN to use.

Now amusingly, after the block it was reported that piratebay traffic went up ten-fold because of the media coverage.

As it is most kids i was around in secondary school learnt the values of scouring the web for unblocked proxies to play games, so im fairly sure the generation of today is well equipped to bypass these filters. At best its a waste of taxpayers money for something that wont work.

(this isn't aimed at you fox, sorry)

Can we possibly avoid the usual mind-numbing "sort out your country!" rhetoric like we are going to start rising up because someone else told us to. You can understand how hearing this can get really quite tiring. The issue is a non-issue that at its best, will end not only camerons career but severely impact conservative party backing, theres a reason why its already being nicknamed "hadrians firewall".

 

[Ceres]

If I remember correctly, didn't the UK make a policy that ISP would contact their members to see if they want the restrictions turned off. What I don't get about this thread is how you're complaining about an issue that could be resolved with just a "I want it turned off" over the phone and possibly a 24 hour wait...

Argument below spoilered so i can vent my main point

Spoiler

Somewhat beside the point given that ISP's have already indicated they may look to be blocking things beyond porn, opt-out censorship is still at its best censorship. Doing that on a nation-wide scale is a very dangerous move.

A decent piece on the flaws of the system were talked about in this blog post.

With that said, i'll be outright surprised if this actually comes to fruit. Cameron must know its political suicide and he was banking on scotland gaining independence to whipe away the labour majority if he survived the next election, conservative are already lagging behind. If he manages to pull this off i can see conservative ratings plummeting even post-election until labour just gains a majority south of the scottish border. Beyond even that, if theres one thing that moves politics along like shit off a shovel its sex strikes and i would dare say this falls within the same category, there'll be a hell of a lot of infighting within the party if this comes to fruit.



Although i'll take a stubborn stance and pick out two points

Ironically, the US is still more free than UK.

You'd have to have ignored a lot of recent media revelations about the rights you've lost in america and the fates of individuals (read, whistleblowers) to think that you were above our level of freedom and not stuck on the same rung.

, but why in the world is a baby so important than protecting your fucking liberty UK?

we inevitably will, if this comes to fruit it'll probably be just about summer which is about the right time for a good old protest.

You can attempt to bypass the filter... if you know how to do networking stuff that goes beyond my head. Can someone, that knows much about server administration, break this down for the average techie?

Actually, this is a bit of a non-issue. Take for example my ISP, they try to block a few pirating sites (namely piratebay), i could

- Use a proxy site to access it (millions around)
- Use a proxy of piratebay (millions around)
- Just suck it up and rent a VPN to use.

Now amusingly, after the block it was reported that piratebay traffic went up ten-fold because of the media coverage.

As it is most kids i was around in secondary school learnt the values of scouring the web for unblocked proxies to play games, so im fairly sure the generation of today is well equipped to bypass these filters. At best its a waste of taxpayers money for something that wont work.

(this isn't aimed at you fox, sorry)

Can we possibly avoid the usual mind-numbing "sort out your country!" rhetoric like we are going to start rising up because someone else told us to. You can understand how hearing this can get really quite tiring. The issue is a non-issue that at its best, will end not only camerons career but severely impact conservative party backing, theres a reason why its already being nicknamed "hadrians firewall".

Hate to sound dense, but are you agreeing or disagreeing with what I said?

 

[Superchops]

I initially had a wait, what? reaction when I read the first post, because I thought the filter was going to apply to absolutely everyone in the UK, regardless of age. You know, like a SOPA style thing. It's not entirely clear that that isn't the case. As I understand it, the first post is about a specific parental filter. Is that the case? It's not general censorship for every UK citizen, is it?

 

[Defiant_Blob]

I'm confused on who the filter is applying to.
If it's meant just for kids, wouldn't the parents have to be asked first in order to determine if there are kids in the house hold?
And wouldn't blocking the kids effectively block the parents as well?
This isn't making much sense tbh.

 

[cheatyface]

I'm confused on who the filter is applying to.
If it's meant just for kids, wouldn't the parents have to be asked first in order to determine if there are kids in the house hold?
And wouldn't blocking the kids effectively block the parents as well?
This isn't making much sense tbh.

Sopa didn't make much sense either. It wanted to put a dns block on sites. If you know literally anything about dns servers, you'll know how easy it would be to bypass.

Politicians who bring these bills to parliament don't know anything about the technologies involved, they just want to thump their chests and scream stealing/porn/whatever is wrong. Whether or not you agree with stealing/porn/whatever being wrong, you have to realize that the legislation is assuming guilt on behalf of the populace by proposing an automatic censorship. Idk about the UK, or anywhere else, but in Canada this breaks 2 of the principles of our rights.

So, yeah... Ironically, the US is still more free than UK.

I've been trying hard since this was posted, but I just haven't been able to hold it in. This made me lol, hard. I'm not making any statements on the freedom of either country, but I'm more than curious as to how you think you would measure it.