That insightful line from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri comes to mind, "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"
A very appropriate quote!
Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
31–40 of 195 posts
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#32It's the execution in particular of some of these things that annoys me as much as curbing freedom. All of the burden is typically put on companies, often without even understanding the challenges or considering their size. Anyone aware of the EU VAT rules for digital sales? The smallest of startups is tasked with herculean accounting and software requirements. To the point where some people just shut up shop. It's like some governments just want everyone to be poor and do nothing.
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#33> will work even harder to ensure there is no "safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online" Why just online? Isn't it about time we stop letting car-makers and construction companies get away with helping terrorists? I say all cars and rooms in houses should be fitted with mandatory listening devices, constantly transmitting to government servers. Encrypted, of course, with a court warrant required for…
As someone that was a child when Portugal was becoming used to what means to be a free country, beware what you wish for.
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious as to which "Chinese example" do you have in mind that doesn't work? Edit to reply to your wifi issue: you need to use that one website to login to access the "full" internet.
The Chinese example where they have tens of thousands of people monitoring internet content and spend millions per year on filtering and blocking technology - and it can all be circumvented with a VPN.
Interesting. So on one side people are bashing the the level of censorship by the government and how people are unable to exercise certain rights.
On the other side the same people are laughing at its ineffectiveness and how trivial it is to circumvent them and access information freely. One of them must surely be wrong?
Btw, censoring of keywords and blocking of websites are two different issues. VPN solves the latter, not the former.
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#35> will work even harder to ensure there is no "safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online" Why just online? Isn't it about time we stop letting car-makers and construction companies get away with helping terrorists? I say all cars and rooms in houses should be fitted with mandatory listening devices, constantly transmitting to government servers. Encrypted, of course, with a court warrant required for…
'1984' was not supposed to be a manual, but a warning...
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#36As much as I expect nanny-state behaviour from the Tory's this has blown me away. I thought the author may be exaggerating so I went and actually read the manifesto. It's only about one page near the end but it reads like something you'd expect from a dictatorial regime. It seems like after cutting us off from Europe via Brexit the government now wants to cut us off from the rest of the world. I just hope internet companies stand up the UK and refuse to do business here. I'm perfectly fine with losing access to the internet for a short period of time if it shows the government we won't let them interfere in this area. I perfectly understand prosecuting people for harassment online or requiring social media companies to work with the government to prevent that but regulating the entire internet and trying to get the rest of the world to do the same via an international treaty is terrifying. Particularly when the point of the regulation is controlling the people's access to information and enforcing Theresa May's backwards, old fashioned, morals.
If you care about this stuff you only have a few days left to register to vote. You can do it online in a few minutes I believe.
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#37Heh, of course it can't go without "terrorists" trump card: "the government will work even harder to ensure there is no "safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online"." It's very sad to see UK becoming closed, police state.
But think of the children!
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#38I wouldn't expect anything else from a backward society that still worships some old hag. The sad part is that if they succeed in implementing this, sooner or later it will be implemented everywhere.
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Great Firewall of China, of course.
It's working exactly as intended. You need a VPN to access certain websites, some keywords are censored properly. How is that an example of not working? So what do you exactly mean by not working?
Chinese government is unable to prevent people accessing prohibited content. Which part is unclear here?
Re: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet
#40I've been saying this for sometime, but to me UK's role model has seemed obvious since David Cameron took over: China.
UK wants to become the West's "China" in terms of surveillance and censorship. Cameron has been very friendly towards China, he liked what he saw was happening there and wanted to bring it over to the UK.
This would be similar to when Nicolae Ceausescu visited North Korea, and then wanted to install the same kind of dictatorship in Romania, because such level of obedience from the populace looked very appealing to him.
Remember when Western countries used to decry the "Chinese/Iranian/etc model" ? Whatever happened to that idea? I think the U.S. hasn't even accused China of human rights abuses in recent years (that includes Obama's last term, too).