Big Brother's watching Your Internet

I've had enough of Sun, Sea, and Sand, I'm back from vacation; back to the dull, grey, humdrum of office life.

What a week it's been though, so much news, so much to talk about. I'd best get started really hadn't I.



Biggest thingin the news for me, being a Brit, isn't the new Prince, couldn't really care less about him to be honest and I'll blog about him seperately, it's the new internet securities that our government wants to impose on our ISPs to 'protect children from violent and pornographic images'.

In short the whole thing is, to borrow a phrase from one of my favourite TV show characters, 'Absolute Horse Hockey'.

By the end of the year broadband users in the UK will be required to go through a compulsory opt-out system which will decide what they can and cannot see on the Internet.

In essence it doesn't sound so bad; the default configuration will, as far as we've been told, will block the offending content (such content being defined by the powers that be as sites promoting porn, thinspiration, suicide, bullying etc), but that we as users can turn it all off. No problem there right?
Well, that simple act of turning off the filters will be recorded somewhere in a database, it  has to be for it to work, otherwise yo'll bet setting that filter every time you logon. This means that the government will have created a simplistic database of what could be seen as 'porn users'. That would be misleading though.

Picture a hospital, they use a lot of computers and have IT staff and everything that goes with it. I know from friends and colleagues in the healthcare industry that the IT Security Officers in these places are already fighting a constant battle with firewall softwares blocking sites that contain useful reference material used by the nurses and doctors in these hospitals.

I would imagine schools and other educational facilities would have similar issues in subjects such as Biology, Art, and English. Why English?  I hear you cry, well, a lot of literature contains harsh language and abusive scenes; The Twilight series and 50 Shades series are both handbooks on abusive relationships.

The best internet filter to protect our children from the evils of the internet are the parents, but in this nanny state no one's got the spinal fortitude to stand up and take the responsibility for that, so it falls to the government to try and be the parent.

What's motivating the 'war on porn' as our tabloids are calling it? (Oh and don't forget, despite the crackdown on porn, The Sun will retain it's Page 3 Girl). Well, it seems that the news agencies are tying it in to the fact that in the case of two recent child murders, those of April Jones and Tia Sharp, the perpetrators had both viewed child porn online.

Now, it was my understanding that Child Porn was illegal, so would these new internet filters have stopped these distressing crimes? Probably not, but it gives the government an easy way to ease in another level of control over its citizens and censorship.

On the news were played soundbytes of tearful relatives of April and Tia who were overjoyed at the new of these measures, but in reality it would have mnade no difference, neither girl had been watching porn or thinspiration or anything else covered by the filters online, and the perpetrators would likely have done this anyway.

 My feeling here is that the government is wheeling these poor people out to be the emotional trigger to encourage people to let this censorship pass unabated, making them victims for a second time.
There is also the possible stigma of anyone opposing this being a child-porn supporter. No one wants that, it's not even funny to consider it.

However once it's all in place, it would be easy for the government, especially in the light of the internet and phone snooping the US have been revealed to be doing, for our government to spy on our own internet habits based on this.

The internet habits of me and my family are my concern, until such time as someone breaks the law, but until that time I have a right to privacy over that, and as in other areas the government must go out of their way to even be allowed to investigate it. This new policy would make it all too easy to achieve this end by means of stealth. It needs to be to stopped.

Please go to this link and sign the petition.
https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746

Also this one for a wider catchment

http://www.change.org/petitions/eu-leaders-stop-mass-surveillance?utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

It does not just affect the UK, but Eurpoe and the rest of the world too.