We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
This is not about ‘child abuse’… it never was and never will be The governments of the world love to use crimes that produce an understandable emotional revulsion as justification for measure of vastly wider reach.
Child abuse is perhaps the most common of these.
The current moves to make unacceptable sites simply not show up on search engines is actually about getting the infrastructure in place to make whatever is deemed ‘unacceptable’ invisible with the flick of a switch.
I do not believe for a moment that the people pushing for this do not have as their ultimate goal giving the state the ability to control everything you can see online. And if you think the state, any state, can be trusted with that kind of power, then you are either a fool or a totalitarian.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Spot on Perry… And another example of where there’s absolutely no discernible difference between our “three” political parties…
Agreed – it is not about a sincere concern for children, it is about POWER.
In opposition Dave was very vocal in his condemnation of Blair & Brown’s authoritarian curtailment of civil liberties. Now he’s in power he see just how useful their old laws can be. Press freedom is as good as gone.
True words, succinctly spoken.
However, there’s also the matter that “it’ll never work”, for a whole variety of reasons.
Dave, it greatly depends on what one thinks of as ‘work’. Of course it will not stop pedophiles – that is not the real purpose anyway, as Perry pointed out. What this and similar measures are doing – slowly but surely – is making people nervous about things they are doing online, making them look over their shoulder, wondering whether the website they accidentally stumbled upon is legal or not, etc, etc. Plus, it acts as one more of those fence posts.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509393/Husbands-conversations-porn-home-Cameron-warns.html
Mr Cameron is reported as saying that a husband wishing to watch porn would have to ask his wife for permission when new filters come in.
Everything is an excuse for more Government powers! Wherever a problem occurs, that is an opportunity to gain votes. I don’t know if it is power-seeking, or just scrambling after uncommitted votes, but our problems become their opportunities. In reality, this is one of the dangers of democracies- unending bureaucratic growth.
These filters are already in place without you asking to opt in or out of them.
I use a Vodaphone pay as you go dongle for when I am at my mother’s house, she doesn’t have the internet. I tried to open a spam email from Ann Summers out of curiosity as to what over priced tat sex aids and titilation they were currently pushing. I got a message from Vodafone saying I had to ring them up and get permission to view the email. Ann Summers?? Like I said, over priced sexually titilative tat, but hardly child porn in any shape or form. I didn’t bother to ring the number and get it unblocked. A while later I decided to see what the Biased BBC site was currently running with. I got the same goddam message… WTF!!
Internet freedom has now gone. The Providers have gone belly up, supine to the wishes of the Protectorat. If Biased BBC is already blocked on Vodafone dongles, what guarantee do I have, if I have the balls to tell them to shove their filters, that they will do any such thing? How will I be able to tell if they have really given me total freedom of internet access or not?
One thing is for sure, I will be on a “Watched” list if I do, and this is just what our beloved Govt’s are counting on.
In fairness RAB, I used to get this at my mate Jon’s house. His ISP was talk talk and as you say they block some of the most inconsequential sites, including Tim Worstall’s, apparently because he is pro-smoking or at least believes that people should be free to smoke if they want to, which is the same thing in the mindset of our bansturbating rulers.
The easiest mechanism I’ve found to bypass this is to use a non-UK encrypted VPN for a couple of quid a year from a country that still believes that censorship is important.
Can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in speed when operating through the VPN and at least it allows me to view whatever sites I wish without obvious direct monitoring from GCHQ.
As I pay for my 3G Mobile dongle in cash each month, no-one knows who the owner of my IP address is anyway. I’m sure my service provider could track my location and/or block the SIM if they wished, but I’m sure that they find Cameramong’s petulant whining as annoying as I do.
The thought that any husband should have to ask his wife’s permission (or vice-versa) to view pornography is repulsive. I don’t think it would go down (fnarr fnarr) too well in my household, but then as I don’t live in the UK any more I don’t have to put up with their fascistic tendencies.
Be interesting to know where you’re operating from, Mr Galt. Much the same thoughts here but when I tried Tor on my dongle, even connecting to anything was hopeless & the data consumption would chew through a 1Gb/month allowance in no time. The ‘on the box’ speed of my provider’s 7mb/sec. For real, mid 800Kb’s the best it’s ever done, usually hovers around 300 & sometimes is in single digits. So adding Tor makes it unusable
Is there a better alternative? Like move country?
RAB,
Yes. This is going to get very nasty and it will need more than JG’s VPN to get around. It is interesting that “hacking” is not now stealing information but sharing it. This kinda started with the violent an obscene pornography act which is an enabling act if ever I saw one. As a legal point the powers are so sweeping that even the folks behind it admit it will require test cases to define. These include images (photos, CGI, drawings) that might look like kids. Note no under 18 had to be involved for it to be illegal. Considering that is 2 years over the age of consent in the UK and utterly subjective anyway it is a very scary law. I have more to say but not the time.
Paul,
Yes, it is power. The powers we have have always hated the web.
RAB again,
The Biased BBC thing is very interesting. It demonstrates the mission creep beyond Frankie Vaughn. It also demonstrates, of course, the defence of “legit” infomonger against us crazed loons.
Hear! Hear!
Well said Perry.
if this was about child abuse, there would be two far more obvious and useful things to do.
One would be to trace the producers through their IP addresses and site registrations, and bust them.
The other would be to use such sites as honeypots to identify potential or active molesters.
This suppression policy accomplishes neither of those things. And it is ineffective, because clever users and sourcers can bypass search engines or even DNS. Many child pronists have become clever for fear of being caught.
What this measure is good for is preventing average users from seeing stuff easily; it can prevent a meme from “going viral”.
The ultimate technical result will be to fracture DNS, and popularize systems to run multiple DNS search chains. That will be a great bother and upset a significant number of economic concerns that will suffer losses because of it. The crony capitalist bidding wars to follow will be great fun, if you have a certain low sense of humor.