Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

As much as this is a brilliant idea (opting out could possibly be recorded)

I think the general consensus of the government right now needs to change, I seem to recall a hacker game from years ago (maybe 'Hacker Evolution') which described in it's prologue: "The world has been divided; governments censor and restrict access to the internet that was, hackers and technologists moved away from traditional means of communication and established the undernet..."

This kind of dystopian path is what we're on. We should not hide, we should not have to. if we do, then law enforcement will go unchecked and start penalizing us for simply hiding our tracks.

I can easily imagine a world in which using Tor becomes illegal, accessing the internet with a non-licensed browser, or having a method of tracing back to the point of origin (behind NAT) for ISP's.

ultimate accountability, ultimate censorship- possibly even having to get some form of license to even get access to the internet.

British people often forget the monopoly BT/Openreach have, it ties in closely to government (probably since they were state owned) it would be very easy for them to enforce these kinds of legislations, and of course, when they do, they'll be doing it under the banner of 'whats best for the public'

They've taken filesharing. They've taken sexual material. -and forced you to identify yourself- They will take more.

there are inherent problems with even identifying yourself like this; what if another extremist party got into power. "those people, those are the perverts, we'll incarcerate them", or, assuming a 21 year old guy grows up and becomes a candidate for prime minister, the current administration could accidentally leak that he bypassed porn filters.

no, hiding should not be the default, patching should not be the solution.

I will fight, I will not stop. and should I lose, I will simply leave this country and it's countrymen. the EU convention lists internet access as a human right.

I find it ironic that we have more censorship now than some known human rights violators.

How do we incentivize people to fight back against every single law that could potentially harm privacy or force censorship? The people making these laws have every bit of incentive to do so, while the regular people have limited willpower, limited resources and limited time.

Sure we can pull off another SOPA blackout, but I don't think we can do it consistently. They'll keep proposing harmful laws and we can't stop them all.

The solution is to make those that support these bill pay the price (as high as possible - in votes, revenue, public image,...) for it. One by one...

...Until we get tired or apathetic. Then we lose.

There are asymmetric levels of incentive here. Organizing large-scale political action against everyone in the first world who infringes on people's internet privacy rights is simply unsustainable.

You can't fight a problem that's essentially systemic by finding and painstakingly stamping out every instance of it happening. A systemic problem needs a systemic solution.

The problem with this thinking is that it's impractical to vote on the basis of single issues when we elect representatives at a local level.

When choosing from the ten or so candidates available we have to consider a broad spectrum of issues; who will manage the health service the best, who will be best for the economy etc. Whilst internet censorship is an important element, it's by no means the primary consideration even for us that work in the industry, let alone the wider electorate.

You can't. There was some guy on here yesterday arguing "your right to privacy is less important than protecting my children". Hello, parental responsibility? But something funny happens in the minds of (some, but not all) new parents and they want to see the world remade into a giant daycare centre. It doesn't occur to them that their kids will grow up and they'll find themselves in a world they don't want to live in.

I had a similar conversation with a friend recently. Turns out everyone with such opinions, most with good intentions I assume, seem to evaluate the merit of any such legislation based on its best case scenario of utilization; that is where no law makers or enforcer is corrupt and everyone is very responsible. But, no one seems to ever think about how the same legislation can be misused and abused. If you allow someone to setup infrastructure to censor, perhaps with good intentions now, but perhaps a successor might misuse it.

On somewhat related note, a probable idea of how such infrastructure could be misused is [1], I couldn't believe it when I saw that history was changed quite simply.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/north-korea-era...

That's crazy. I have two young children, and a mother who often borders, in my opinion, on overprotective. I grew up just fine with privacy and freedom and I would like my children to experience the same.

> these laws

What laws? Most people seem to be so horrendously misinformed it's a wonder they have the audacity to make such wide reaching claims.

What is the incentive for lawmakers to block pornography?

1. Once you have the infrastructure to block some websites set up, you can (ab)use it to block any arbitrary site that you want, including political dissent.

2. The "friends" of the legislators who will actually implement these on government contract stand to gain massively.

Censorship is an excellent demonstration of why network level blocking is a complete lost cause. You hardly need Tor, VPN, or a special browser when SSL is impossible to block in a non-destructive way. You can never effectively control what people do on their computer without controlling the computer itself.

It would be much more effective to make blocking the responsibility of web browsers. This would allow settings at the user level, and circumvention prevented by normal OS security. Parents could enable or disable as they please.

Blocking via web browsers is definitely not going to work. It would require that every browser on each PC, phone, TV and other internet enabled device all activate the filters, all of them have a facility to activate/deactivate the filters, all of them don't allow other web browsers to be installed and don't allow booting from alternative sources. Most parents don't know how to do this. They do know how to tick a box when they are signing up for a broadband service. There are millions of devices already out there.

SSL-enabled sites can already be "blocked" in the UK, they block the entire domain and the IP.

So you believe that the best way to help parents is to have network level blocks? People should use poorly designed technology because they are stupid?

But to prevent kids getting around network level filtering you still need to have all the anti-circumvention measures baked into the OS/browser/anti-virus. The UK government have created a network level filter that still needs client level changes to actually work. I understand that most parents would have a hard time doing this, but a government backed effort could have made a difference. I see this as similar to installing antivirus (which a lots of parents seem perfectly capable of).

I understand that it is possible to block SSL by IP address. However, it is also possible to send anything down the same tunnel; but you can't inspect the actual packets to see if they are clean. Some filters perform a MITM, but I think we can agree that is a terrible idea. Browser based filtering lets you filter any site based on its contents and also maintain the security of the data. It also avoids domain level blocks that block other sites by accident.

I think that network level filtering will make access to porn more difficult than browser level filtering at less effort to the public, which is the governments objective. I'm not saying it's a good thing.

This is pretty much what Peter Sunde was getting at with this talk I think [0].

I agree though, I ended up having an argument with my parents on this subject. My old man's been working with software for goodness knows how long and he still doesn't really see it, so I think maybe it's more that some people implicitly trust and support the status quo.

> and should I lose, I will simply leave this country and it's countrymen. the EU convention lists internet access as a human right.

This. I really believe that together we're stronger. For all its (many many) failings, the EU is just a political confluence in the same way as the internet at its best is a social confluence, and if the country of my birth lets me down then I'll move to the continent and leave the Little Englanders behind.

[0] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/18/peter-sunde-h...

> the EU convention lists internet access as a human right.

They're not stopping you from accessing the internet, they're essentially just giving people access to filtering software.

I think the dystopian worry isn't that they're giving individuals access to filtering software. That would be a worthy goal.

The real worry is that this system is Government controlled and built into everyone's internet connection.

Personally, I'm expecting it to soon have three settings, not two:

a) Family friendly browsing (opt-in)

b) Access to more adult sites (opt-out)

c) Blocking of whatever the government deems objectionable (no choice).

... and my guess is that they'll then make it illegal to bypass the filter or do anything other than use the official choice buttons.

This is why a lot of people don't like it: because we're building the machinery of censorship "for the sake of the children."

There are different filters. Some of them already have granularity.

> c) Blocking of whatever the government deems objectionable (no choice).

This already exists. The IWF provide sites that must be blocked and ISPs block those sites. It also happens when a company uses a court order to force and ISP to block a site.

The difference being that this is centrally controlled. Because of this, it's speed of censorship will be much quicker.

Places I expect this to block in future:

1. Discussions of how to bypass the filter (eg Tor)

2. News articles the Government doesn't like (eg discussions barred by injunction such as Ryan Giggs)

3. Information during times of disorder (eg the tweeting by people involved in the Arab Spring).

4. Whatever the government of the day deems extreme porn/extremist/dissident. The future internet won't come with optional DA notices. Any new discussion like Snowden simply won't appear.

Essentially, it's a selective kill-switch for the internet, and I think Edward Snowden said it best. This is about power, not safety. This is a mechanism for the establishment to protect itself.

This is not centrally controlled. The ISPs that have been pushed into this run their own filters, the government don't run the filters, don't have access to the filtering software and don't recommend a particular filtering product.

For how long? In United States every radiostation output it plugged to Government blackbox before its aired. Supposedly ut was for safety and emergency transmissions but of course they can cut you off transmitting at any point.

I think it's still fair to say it's centrally controlled because the government introduced it as part of policy and sets the rules on what needs to be blocked. The fact ISPs find their own ways of complying doesn't change the fact this is government-driven.

If this was ISP-led, you might find the market reflecting a plurality of option, with consumers having a choice. Instead, this is Government-led, with ISPs expected to fall into line:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

> Across the internet value chain, we expect industry – from retailers to device manufacturers – to ensure that all internet-enabled devices, whether a TV, games console or smart phone, are supplied with the tools to keep children safe as a standard feature

> We expect the smaller ISPs to follow the lead being set by the larger providers.

> And while Government looks to the industry to deliver, through the self-regulatory mechanisms already established under UKCCIS, we are clear that if momentum is not maintained, we will consider whether alternative regulatory powers can deliver a culture of universally-available, family-friendly internet access that is easy to use.

> The difference being that this is centrally controlled

No it isn't.

It's pointless having these discussions with people who are thoroughly ignorant of what's actually happening while they're spinning off into wing-nut territory.

What is really happening is already really fucking bad. You don't need to invent fanciful nonsense ("News articles the Government doesn't like (eg discussions barred by injunction such as Ryan Giggs)") because reality is bad enough.

I'm happy to be corrected. But my understanding is that this is a government programme introduced in their manifesto and applied by "voluntary" means by the big 4 ISPs, with a strong government understanding that the others will soon fall into line. That's what I mean by "central".

As for the "control" part, maybe I have misunderstood. Do you mean to say the ISPs have not included things like the IWF into their censorship mechanisms? Because that looks to me like a list of things to compulsorily ban.

Now, I may be putting two and two together, but to me this looks like:

a) The government at a minimum "influencing" ISPs to introduce variable-level filtering.

b) Mandatory filter lists.

c) An onward programme of debate about what should be in or out of the block.

As for the Ryan Giggs thing, that was simply my speculation. However, I'm currently finding a lot about the way that politicians see control measures goes beyond my wildest fancies - eg RIPA used for school catchment areas.

Or alternatively that it'll be used in court cases or job interviews. What happens when schools start demanding that all their teachers "opt-in"? At a recent obscenity trial in UK, a prosecutor claimed that people who attend sexual health clinics engage in more risky behaviour. What happens if you're asking in court if you've "opted in" to porn?

>>...we're building the machinery of censorship "for the sake of the children."<<

Good quote, thanks. We need simple phrases like that to get past the Daily Fail/Porno Perverts consensus in the UK.

Hear hear, it was very eloquent, and I'll be using it in a letter to my MP.

Seriously people, pester your MPs about this. They listen if people pester in volume because it literally takes up their (or their aides') time to go through your letters.

Use a service like https://www.writetothem.com/ and pester the heck out of your MPs until they start taking some sort of action.

You forgot setting

d) blacking out communication during civil unrest

e) political blackmail of opposition

> The real worry is that this system is Government controlled

No it isn't. It's done, individually, by the ISPs. They're not all using the same software either.

> and built into everyone's internet connection.

Not everyones.

> This is why a lot of people don't like it: because we're building the machinery of censorship "for the sake of the children."

I'm fully aware of that, I'm just tired of hearing the same incorrect arguments. It only hurts a side if they lie or don't know what they are talking about.

> No it isn't. It's done, individually, by the ISPs. They're not all using the same software either.

I take your point, but I don't think it invalidates the phrase "government controlled."

I agree they aren't all using the same software, and much is "voluntary." However, the UK web filter is:

a) In the 2010 Conservative Manifesto:

> establish a new online system that gives parents greater powers to take action against irresponsible commercial activities targeted at children;

http://media.conservatives.s3.amazonaws.com/manifesto/cpmani...

b) Announced by the government:

> all internet users will be contacted by their service providers and given an "unavoidable choice" on whether to use filters.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/david-came...

c) Implemented voluntarily by the main four ISPs (three down, one to go), but with the expectation all will obey it because it's policy:

> "Preselected" parental filters are now official policy, and should extend to small ISPs, according the the Department of Culture, Media and Sport's (DCMS) new strategy paper.

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/government-wants-d...

... So, yes, it's not on every connection at the moment. But this is a government programme instituted by direction from the Government. When you combine it with the IWF and mobile filtering, it's not a misrepresentation to say that the Government is drawing up censorship lists and is approximately half-way through the job of making them unavoidable.

They didn't have hosts files in the UK before?

I don't understand your point. Do you think I was claiming this was the first time people have had access to filtering software?

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