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Comment by mike_esspe | Hacker News Reader

The law, that created internet block list in Russia, was promoted as a measure to stop child pornography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Restriction_Bill

UK is next. There's no doubt in my mind they will start blocking news sites, blogs and social media in the next mass protest (if there will be one anytime soon, since UK population seems almost as complacent and docile as the American one, which is just perfect for authoritarians).

We've discussed this in previous threads - but for those reading for the first time - there was no UK law, Cameron circumvented the legal process entirely to introduce these filters.

Terrifying.

Indeed - he basically just said to the ISPs 'do this or we'll make you do it'.

Thanks to the (abysmal) technical knowledge of our MPs, any site-blocking bill would have flown straight through as soon as the phrases 'cyber-bullying', 'think of the children' or 'illegal downloads' were mentioned. In that light, I think the ISPs probably chose the least bad option - comply, lie low and hope that they can sit it out until the government forgets about the whole thing.

At least UK has independent courts. Human rights activists should hire good lawyers, get them in touch with experts on networks and cryptography, and start example cases, adding nice proper focused coverage on top of it all to form a public opinion. The precedents should be set until it's too late.

UPD: I should probably have mentioned that I'm from Russia.

It's a good joke

Sorry but unless you live in R. as well, I know better. Internet users of the West have plenty of ways to fight back, and yet they don't really use any. They don't value the freedom they have — so they will soon lose even that. The strategy I suggest is completely valid. It worked in the past, and it would work now if executed properly.

I guess, if you live in an oppressive regime and have to use whatever means are available, you get a good training. Alternatively, if the society is comparably more free and you don't use your rights, you tend to forget about them - why, most of the time it works by default. But when suddenly something doesn't work - you don't know what to do.

Compare to approaches Russian opposition is taking. They have to know law, often know (much) better than judges which don't follow the law anyway - but at least the opposition reasoning and their logical constructions could be heard. I guess, not anymore - state-controlled media isn't going to provide objective coverage of "criminals" in courts.

This is true. There is a belorussian website charter97.org and it lived through offline and online closures, attacks, and all sorts of filtering by using numerous techniques. They should do online training.

> At least UK has independent courts

Sorry, we have secret, closed courts now, without juries. They were intended for terror cases, but are being used a lot more broadly than most think. A barrister friend who raised concerns about this had his career assassinated-by-media last year, and is now a hate-figure.

I'm afraid it's too late.

Edit: This piece demonstrates quite nicely how this variety of assassination happens - you know, writing things in such a way that they look like direct quotes, when they're not, and getting every paper to carry the same story - http://barristerblogger.com/2013/08/29/criticism-robert-colo...

> since UK population seems almost as complacent and docile as the American one

That is really quite offensive. We have a culture of protest and resistance. What we have at the moment is a paradise of easy living. Despite the depressing lie of what the media will give you with "food banks and poverty" the standard of living for most Britons is really quite good, much better than the 1980s which saw major public political unrest.

People won't take to the streets for internet privacy or other such soft battles you can think of. The political classes will chatter about whatever games they play with each other but people really don't care about such issues.

I wouldn't call dependence on food banks a "depressing lie" - demand for food banks across the UK has tripled in the past year: http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-numbers-triple

It also turns out some food banks were having to request international aid in order to cope over the winter. Our lovely Prime Minister, David Cameron, even complained about them not seeking his permission to do so. (He'd justified cutting welfare by arguing the food banks could cope.)

"really quite good"

This is that media control thing that's being spoken about here. Go north, my son, things aren't so rosy outside of London.

People won't take to the streets here, full stop. The British populace have no appetite for it.

I don't live in London, I'm in the East Midlands mining country. I spent years in campaign groups including street fund raising collection so I feel qualified to judge public feeling.

Aye - I agree with you re: the public feeling, but the thing is, the public feeling is out of whack with the reality.

There were huge protests before the Iraq war, it was invaded anyways.

"Won't you think of the children" indeed.

I think it's more "stop thinking of the children, you pervert".

Yeah. Stop being such pervs, independent news outlets!

The slippery slope.

Exactly. I hope this is taken as a learning experience by those who are quick to declare any concern about slippery slopes as "fallacious".

Sure, some assertions of slippery slopes are fallacious, but others could not be more real.

The problem with slippery-slope arguments is not that they are slippery, it's that you can't predict the future to know that the assertion will fall off of it. It's a post-hoc problem.

It's not even slippery. It's a high-powered conveyor-belt. The people in power _know_ this was always their ultimate goal. They don't care about you, or your child's, safety. It's all about amassing more power, more control, more influence.

That's not surprising at all - censorship is a major reason for these laws, but of course the government won't acknowledge that.

And UK has already put everything they need in place - next thing on the list, invade Ireland :-)

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