TalkTalk (British ISP) rolls out porn filter | Hacker News Reader

TalkTalk (British ISP) rolls out porn filter

channel4.com

22 pointshanbam36 comments

Open articleView on HN

These is completely a political move. The history of this is that for many years, the UK ISPs told the Government that implementing filters was too difficult and expensive. Last year TalkTalk broke ranks and launched their HuaweiSymantec-based filtering product for all their customers for free. Since then, they've been very cozy with the 2 main MPs who've been pushing this, Claire Perry and Lynne Featherstone. These MPs wanted "Active Choice" whereby everyone should decide on sign-up whether they wanted automatic porn filters.

At some point, they decided that most people do not change often enough so would not be forced to make this Active Choice. TalkTalk again leap to the rescue by making all current customers do it.

So this is completely a political move to keep ahead of the other ISPs and on the best side of the Government and media.

For those who are a little interested in how good the TalkTalk filter is - it's terrible. They only block HTTP so bypassing is as easy as adding an "s" into your URL bar. Also, they don't block any VPNs or other proxies.

To make it even more useless, it doesn't even block a lot of the HTTP versions of some major porn sites. Reddit NSFW section is one example.

TL;DR: Talktalk are riding a political wave. Their product sucks.

Yes, and such moves just keep coming because all governments dearly wish to establish firm internet censorship under their own control. (I would love to be proven wrong on this, of course)

The discussions about 'the choice being with the user' and the effectiveness of filtering out sex (insert anything else here that you might be led by the media to morally abhor) are red herrings. These 'moral outrages' are not the real targets but the means to justify putting in place mechanisms to attack the real targets, such as the likes of the Wikileaks.

This is why their poor effectiveness does not matter and the choice is initially suggested to belong to the user. It won't last.

This is a dangerous precedent to set. I have a (very bad) feeling that once TalkTalk has done this, other ISPs will start to. Soon it will become 'the norm'. This sort of system, once in place, will end up being abused and used for blocking other things. I know it's trivial for those who know to bypass, but that's not the point.

It's being pushed not by ISPs, but by out-of-touch-with-technology politicians (the absolutely useless Conservative MP Claire Perry and others), the Daily Mail and other tabloids, and useless parents who don't want to parent and don't understand that you can block things with software on a computer.

It sounds like TalkTalk is actually one of the last ISPs to do this, not the first:

In October, major internet suppliers including BT and Virgin said they have decided to change procedures to that when new customers sign up they will not be able to progress with accessing content until they decide whether to activate parental control over content. Previously the decision about whether to control adult content was made at any point after the sign up, when adult content may have already been accessed.

It's totally backwards thinking. "We must save the children from porn and bad things!" say the politicians and tabloid rags like the Daily Mail (while at the same time publishing pictures of scantily clad women). "We must block it so they cannot be accessed!"

The correct way of thinking is, "what can we do to educate parents about the internet, and the responsible usage of it?" If their kids start downloading porn in their teens, so be it. Kids always find ways to look at that sort of stuff when they hit puberty.

And while sensational, this sort of info (account has porn enabled) can easily be used by the UK's dreadful tabloid press quite to your disadvantage. Like the spy Gareth Williams, who had his S&M proclivities (discovered through looking at the sites he visited) used to discredit him as some crazy bondage afficionado. Imagine being accused of paedophilia and having an ISP confirm that, yes, this guy does have porn enabled on his account.

This a terrible move. It's been a long time coming but what surprised me reading the article is that they are also blocking gambling and violent images. So they've already crossed the line.

How do they determine what is a violent image? What if I'm reading a news story that includes an image of a crime? Will the filter block me from playing poker games with free 'pretend' chips?

The worst part is that the media is branding it as a porn filter. What if a person wants to gamble but has no intention of using porn? They might feel uncomfortable asking for the content filter to be turned off and as a result end up with a restricted, censored internet service.

Edit:

Why can't ISP's/or the government partner with a software company that provides filtering software (or develop their own), and give that out for free to all new customers? Seems like that would completely solve the problem. It would also enable parents to only activate the software when their children are accessing the internet, allowing the parent full, unregulated access.

It's the start of a very slippery slope. Where is the line drawn?

The irony, of course - it's incredibly easy to find porn on Twitter (and I suspect Facebook) - but they're never going to be blocked.

Parents could, of course, put the children's computer in a communal room...

I remember when filters first appeared and UK secondary schools were forced to employ them. The filters work(ed) by filtering out anything on the www that contains so called offensive words, such as sex in particular.

Following this, the universities of Essex and Sussex suffered a mysterious but nevertheless catastrophic drop in applications, as their websites became invisible to secondary school applicants and nobody knew what happened.

[citation needed]

I don't cite anyone because I myself was doing the admissions at Essex at the time and I saw the figures and I had put 1+1 together. However, it is difficult to quantify how many didn't apply because of what they had not seen and so my colleagues preferred to bury their heads in the sand about this. One also gets the feeling that people are getting afraid to speak up against such 'morally and politically correct measures'.

More generally, it is hard to prove that/how someone didn't achieve something important because censorship denied them the crucial information. It is a very real negative effect nevertheless that was clearly demonstrated by the gradual stagnation of the Soviet Block and should not need repeating. This is precisely why censorship is a lot more pernicious than most people seem to realise.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VAa-AouAHxoC&lpg=PA61...

Also known as the Scunthorpe problem

Or entrance to Prat's Bottom (School in Kent)

Pratt's Bottom

Why does this have to be done at the ISP level, why can they not just add some software to the free router they send out that adds this functionality?

The only way to bypass that would either be via proxy sites (which could be blocked also) or by changing the router around (which could be done via a voluntary MAC address lock on the modem).

I find that often porn filters cause more problems than they solve. For example I went to do some IT support for a small company in their office, they companied that they were having trouble accessing a whole bunch of sites that they needed for work because they were being blocked.

In the end I just asked the office manager if he though that his staff would be likely to sit around watching porn in the office if I turned it off. Of course that was not a real problem that actually was likely to exist so I just turned it off and improved their IT experience in one go.

This is awful, but mobile broadband have had filters on for ages. T-Mobile has something called content lock. O2 has another adults-only lock. You have to go into a shop with proof of age to get them turned off.

There's no granularity - it's either on or off and a bunch of stuff gets blocked that shouldn't and a bunch of stuff gets through that (if the filters were working) shouldn't.

I didn't try a proxy, but I guess that's a trivial way to defeat the filters. Looks like boom time for those bittorrent vpn providers.

I was gearing up for a rant about how this hurts the open internet, but after watching the video, it seems fairly well reasoned.

I guess it all pivots around how effective the review panel is at unblocking access to sites that have been miscategorised and how easy it is to enable and disable the filtering.

except you cannot unblock sites you never get to see in the first place, and thus remain ingnorant about their very existence

True, but the option to disable filtering remains with the customer, which is pretty important. And, from what I gather from the video, unblocking is between the content owner and TalkTalk, not the user. That said, it'd be a good idea to build some kind of request portal for users to request a website be unblocked too.

The option to enable filtering should be with the customer. I can not see any rational argument for any other system.

Sorry, yes, thats what I meant. My bad!

You keep saying this - and it's nonsense.

If you don't know about a site you don't care if it's blocked or not. If you do know about a site you'll find out if it's blocked as soon as you try to visit it.

Explain the difference between website discovery pre-block and post-block? How would someone before the block discover a website, and why wont that work after the block?

It is not just me saying this. Can you guarantee that the notice of something being blocked will always be shown and the option to override it given? Is there a law giving you that right? Is it valid in all countries where your trafic may be routed through and potentially blocked? No, I thought not.

I may see an interesting reference with a link to a page which will just not work. Firstly, people will not know if it is because the page in fact ceased to exist or the server is down or it has been blocked and by whom exactly and where? If it keeps happening, most people will just not have the patient perserverance and/or the know-how to keep unblocking such sites. You have to admit that at the very least it is bound to drastically reduce their hit rates. It may well be done to your website, perhaps because of some trivial filter 'mistake'. Are you going to get redress? Will you get your customers ever back?

Mission accomplished, browsing experience essentially destroyed and www turned into another dumbed down TV.

> I may see an interesting reference with a link to a page which will just not work. Firstly, people will not know if it is because the page in fact ceased to exist or the server is down or it has been blocked and by whom exactly and where?

A site that has been blocked will return a fucking huge spalsh page saying it has been blocked, with instructions for removing the block. The customer does not have to unblock each individual site. They call, once, and have the filter removed. It's removed for all sites (except those already on the IWS lists - and they've been blocked for years.)

> perhaps because of some trivial filter 'mistake'. Are you going to get redress?

I've already said it's a bad idea. The difference between me and you is that I'm basing my arguments on fact and I'm not spouting hyperbole based on inaccuracies.

It may sound like spouting hyperbolae based on inaccuracies to you but to many it is a genuine concern. You avoided answering my questions about the delivery of your 'fucking huge splash page' being in any way a protected right, so it is less of a fact and more of an act of faith on your part. The very existence of the IWS lists already denies that right by precedent.

What I have been trying to say, perhaps clumsily, is that accepting the precedent of censorship on the basis of something offending someone seems like a very bad idea to me. Anyone can, and will, claim to be offended by almost anything, especially if it offers them an easy opportunity of hampering a competitor. The polititians too are only human, after all, and get easily offended by effective criticism.

I am glad you said somewhere that you think it is a bad idea because all I can see coming from you is that it is just fine because it can be turned off.

So censorship will finally be officially enacted in the UK.

Today it's porn or gambling - tomorrow it is the "wrong" political opinion, the wrong colour of skin, the wrong religion or facts the government (or some of its members) want to bury.

Looks like they soon will party like it's 1984...

This sounds a little hyperbolic , if the UK govt decided to block competing political parties websites I'm sure they would fall foul of some law or court decision somewhere. Not to mention that it would be far harder to justify than porn.

Also you can opt-out of the filtering.

> if the UK govt decided to block competing political parties websites I'm sure they would fall foul of some law or court decision somewhere

Maybe. But the German government was recently found to be blocking the website of an opposition political party -- http://falkvinge.net/2012/05/10/three-days-before-elections-...

Germany is a country rather like Britain. If they can do it, it can happen in the UK too.

> Also you can opt-out of the filtering.

For now.

I find it very difficult to believe that they would say that nobody in the UK is allowed to look at porn or gambling online. Even in they could get that past the european court of human rights, what would be in it for them to do so?

> what would be in it for them to do so?

There are a lot of prudes in the UK, partilularly amoung older people (who are more likely to vote) and Tory supporters (and Cameron needs to give something to his critics in his own party right now, as his position is weak).

I still think that is far fetched, if Cameron & co actually did that, I think Labour could make their next campaign slogal "We will bring back the porn" and win by a landslide.

You realise it's optional, right? And that the subscriber can ask to have it turned off?

First they came for the pedofiles and I said nothing because I was not one. Then they came for the pornographers and I said nothing because I was not one. Then they came for the gamblers and I said nothing because I was not one. Then they came for the muslims and I said nothing because I was not one. Then they came for the pirates and I said nothing because I was not one. Then they came for Assange and I said nothing because I am not him. Then they came for me and there was no one left to hear me scream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came

And in the first step - a classic dilemma - how do you know what you can't see when you are blindfolded.

Remember the police man in Denmark earlier this year that "by mistake" blocked the half internet to his country when fiddling with such "blacklists".

Expect lots of "collateral damages" once this will have become mandatory (the next step)

> And in the first step - a classic dilemma - how do you know what you can't see when you are blindfolded.

Because there are so many sites blocked, and it comes with a fucking huge page saying something like "CONTENT LOCK CONTACT YOUR PROVIDER TO HAVE THIS TURNED OFF".

> Remember the police man in Denmark earlier this year that "by mistake" blocked the half internet to his country when fiddling with such "blacklists".

These are voluntary optional blacklists.

This is a bad day.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com