Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

goawaycameron.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 166 posts

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#61

Post by [deleted] »

IanCal wrote: post #58
dijit wrote: post #30

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 commu…

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#62

Post by summerdown2 »

IanCal wrote: post #58
dijit wrote: post #30

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 commu…

> 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."

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#63

Post by rmc »

I don't like the name. It's too tied to the current leader of the Conservative Party. If internet censorship is tied to David Cameron, then a party could pretend to be anti-censorship by changing leader (happens often).

Maybe "Go Away, Mary Whitehouse" might be better?

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#64

Post by MisterWebz »

dijit wrote: post #30

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 commu…

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.

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#65

Post by conformal »

first, i'd like to say i quite enjoy the UK, both as a country and its people. however, politicians in the UK have a history of doing some very extreme and very stupid things. since i am not a citizen of the UK, i cannot vote to try to change the current censorship regime, but i can say that (1) i will not be visiting the UK unless absolutely necessary until these rules change and (2) i think this is a further reason for Scotland to secede from the UK.

this is a great plugin and i commend the author's defiance of these draconian internet filtering rules. while i agree that, fundamentally, this is a political problem and not a technological one, a technological solution is needed to prevent smart people from being drowned in an ocean of stupidity. if you're a UK citizen, don't forget that you need to mobilize politically to truly fix this. talk to your friends, develop a consensus.

cameron (and everyone who supported this censorship crap) needs to go, he is a muppet of the highest degree and a disgrace to the legacy of the UK. keep jerking off and carry on.

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#66

Post by 7952 »

dijit wrote: post #30

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 commu…

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.

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#67

Post by madaxe_again »

For what it's worth, we bought the lease for our office from a firm who's business it was to provide filtering solutions to schools.

Upon moving in, we decided to take a look at what was on the stacks of hardware that had just been left in piles here.

To our complete lack of surprise, they were full of the personal details of children, their browsing histories, and even poorly configured squid caches full of things like views of hotmail accounts.

Needless to say, disks were removed and turned into appropriate bits of broken metal. Were we bad actors, we could have run a magnificent identity theft and child-stalking ring.

Censorship in and of itself is a problem.

Censorship by incompetent buffoons is an even greater problem.

Re: Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

#70

Post by DanBC »

summerdown2 wrote: post #62
IanCal wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Post reply on HN