Chinese Firm Huawei In Control of UK Net Filters 148
AmiMoJo writes "The BBC reports that Huawei, one of the world's largest manufacturers of telecoms equipment, is controlling popular ISP TalkTalk's web censorship system. The system, known as Homesafe, was praised by Prime Minister David Cameron. Customers who do not want filtering still have their traffic routed through the system, but matches to Huawei's database are dismissed rather than acted upon. In other words there is no opt-out. Mr Cameron has demanded similar measures be adopted by all internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, to 'protect our children and their innocence.'"
Expert Advice (Score:5, Funny)
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I have a problem with this. The wall over here (Hadrian's Wall) is a pathetic and useless thing, more like a fence and while it fits with the effectiveness of this system its still rubbish so I propose we call it the Great Firewall of Cameron.
Re:Expert Advice (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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The main purpose wont be filtering, the main purpose would be giant data collection filters for the Chinese
Re:Expert Advice (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, what this is really about is not just protecting innocent children, - it's really about protecting our Freedom.
Freedom from the reds and the blacks and the criminals
Prostitutes, pansies and punks
Football hooligans, juvenile delinquents
Lesbians and left wing scum
Freedom from the niggers and the Pakis and the unions
Freedom from the gypsies and the Jews
Freedom from left wing layabouts and liberals
Freedom from the likes of you
To quote an old British song [songlyrics.com]
With something as important as the British populations Freedom at stake, no wonder they go for the best Freedom-enhancing technology in the World.
Mods, get a clue. (Score:1)
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Re:Expert Advice (Score:5, Insightful)
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These aren't routers as such. They are transparent HTTP proxies. All the router needs to do is check each packet against a list of suspect IPs, and pass the matching ones down a different interface to the box that does the real work.
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Thing is that HTTP dosn't need to be over TCP/80, nor does TCP/80 need to be HTTP.
Where things are more of a concern is that "transparent proxying" of HTTPS requires a Man In The Middle attack. Regular proxying, even using a "filtering proxy" does not.
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Can't MITM HTTPS without adding a certificate to the client's trust list. Presumably, if a site is found to be hosting child porn on HTTPS the ISP will simply blacklist the IP entirely, even if that might mean disrupting some legitimate sites that share the server.
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since some people say routers are moving towards Software defined Networks.
Yeah, insert buzzword here. Do you think the current networks are not defined by software? How do you think BGP works? Magical monkeys or a programmed algorithm?
metadata (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh look, another company to whom I've entered into a commercial agreement with that now has a right to my entire browsing history and "public metadata". Super.
Re:metadata (Score:5, Insightful)
Even worse. A company with which you have never, ever dealt now has a right to your entire browsing history and "public metadata", courtesy of your friendly ISP.
All non-technical issues aside (the existence of some sort of filter is a matter for another discussion), the fact that all data gets sent through "Huawei's databse" should set off a few alarms, even ignoring the fact that it's Huawei (which is too close to the chinese government/chinese armed forces for comfort).
Re:metadata (Score:5, Insightful)
Even worse, the politicians in the UK are giving decisions of UK political sovereignty to a foreign entity.
Allowing a foreign firm to have intel on domestic interests and people is called one thing: Espionage.
Whomever allowed Huawei [1] to run this needs to be charged.
[1]: Huawei by themselves are not doing anything wrong. If MI5 got hired to do firewalling for another country, it isn't their fault. However, it is a sworn duty of a politician to protect domestic interests. Same reason why Buckingham Palace hasn't been deeded or rented to another country.
MI5 is not for hire (Score:2)
The fault is certainly not with Huawei, however unlike MI5 it is for hire... They are a company closely affiliated with the chinese government and suspected as a tool to push it's agenda. You can't hire MI5 nor would any other country want to. Huawei is effectively a company that is controlled by an "MI5" That you could hire ignorantly... which is the case here.
Also factually speaking, it is known that Huawei networking hardware has come preloaded with backdoors in the past. That alone should be enough to d
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"Even worse, the politicians in the UK are giving decisions of UK political sovereignty to a foreign entity."
This.
What a bonehead thing to do. This is a stupid as it would be for the U.S. to contract out essential steps of its figher jet manufacturing to other countries.
Oh... wait...
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Sir Harry Pierce "so would you care to explain why you have the browsing habits of all the residents of chetenham on those hard disks we found hidden in your luggage before you tried to board a flight to hong kong".
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Re:metadata (Score:5, Insightful)
So Huawei has the power to effectively remove any content they dislike from the British peoples' internet and all the British government can do about it is file a bug report to a their helpdesk?
What could possibly go right?
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They can file a bug report... If they know about the content in the first place...
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Oh look, another company to whom I've entered into a commercial agreement with that now has a right to my entire browsing history and "public metadata". Super.
Maybe not just Huawei, but "China Ltd." as well.
Huawei has spied for Chinese government, ex-CIA boss says [guardian.co.uk]
I'm pretty sure GCHQ wouldn't "outsource."
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This sounds super safe and secure (Score:2)
I sure hope all countries adopt this system soon! I just can't seem to figure out why my bank converted all my currency to yuan...
Is filtered internet access really internet access (Score:5, Insightful)
The legal question, is filtered internet access really internet access. There is a technical definition of the internet defining packets DNS lookup and routability. I don't think a filtered internet access fully qualifies as internet access.
This could lead to legal challenges as the service providers are not selling true internet access. They are selling something else.
Re:Is filtered internet access really internet acc (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think what you think "internet access" is really matters.
They simply state your "access" is given as allowed by law, blah blah blah. Done.
Re:Is filtered internet access really internet acc (Score:5, Interesting)
And this is why "common carrier" status is a useful concept.
Give me the line, untampered? Then what I do on it is my responsibility.
Give me the line, supposedly filtered? Then what I do on it is your responsibility, since it's your job to save me from myself.
Re:Is filtered internet access really internet acc (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't understand why ISPs are supportive of this. Maybe they think they have to be or will face massive negative publicity from hate-mongering newspapers. Inevitably they will fail to make the filters watertight and circumvention methods will become common knowledge, resulting in bad publicity anyway. The government will threaten to crack down* on them, customers will sue for failure to babysit their children for them etc.
* unless cracking down is banned after it becomes a filter-dodging euphemism for face sitting.
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Big ISPs are just trying to avoid becoming the target of government ire, because they're worried about their stock prices. Some small ISPs will go along on a similar basis, but they're worried not about stock but about being legislated out of existence.
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At least in America (Score:3)
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So which is Booz Allen? Government or citizen?
According to SCOTUS, citizen. More of a citizen than you are, actually: they have all the rights (free speech, etc) and none of the responsibilities (cannot be made to serve jury duty/drafted, etc).
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or discovering some skeletons in the closet that could be used for extortion or whatever,
Discover? Our congresspersons tweet pictures of their junk all over the Interwebs on their own.
but, but... (Score:1)
... the internet is for pr0n!
Network diagram anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
So do the chinese get to filter before or after the americans intercept?
AG
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Re:Network diagram anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on, you know exactly what is happening. The chinese log that data and the NSA trades it for intelligence on folks the chinese want info on.
This very likely has nothing to do with filtering, since you can have that turned off, the logging is what they were really after the whole time.
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Exactly. The traffic itself (and not just the DNS) gets routed via China so the NSA gets to look at it on the way out AND on the way back.
Other ISPs I could mention don't have this kind of 'filter' yet because they know full well that if customers realise all their traffic goes via China they might Phorm a poor opinion of you.
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Obligatory (Score:3)
In British UK, the ISP access you!
Well, that's it then (Score:3)
VPNs for everyone.
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Until they're outlawed, at least.
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Already started. Visa and Mastercard are blacklisting VPN service providers at the behest of government(s).
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They can't stop Bitcoin.
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Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
'protect our children and their innocence.'"
Nonsense. Children are not innocent. Children are nasty, often cruel, little monsters in need of constant correction. "Innocent", in its original ( Latin ) sense, means "not (ob)noxious". Children are anything except "not (ob)noxious".
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in need of constant correction
Censorship works for that too. Imagine the most hated nasty/cruel/monstrous enemy: wouldn't you want to restrict his internet?
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in need of constant correction
Censorship works for that too. Imagine the most hated nasty/cruel/monstrous enemy: wouldn't you want to restrict his internet?
Actually, no. Well, maybe. As a form of punishment by deprivation. And possibly to keep him from getting info on various ways to attack me. LIke you need the Internet for that. Where there's a Will...
It isn't strictly true that the better-informed you are the more civilized you are, but at least if you have the information and are ignoring it, you're just being a jackass. Whereas if you're walled off from it, your ignorance is understandable.
It's why I maintain that People of Religion who forbid their child
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And possibly to keep him from getting info on various ways to attack me. LIke you need the Internet for that.
I'd argue that the internet actually makes it harder for terrorists to successfully attack us. The only ones who were successful didn't use the internet, they hooked up with terrorist organizations. The majority who failed pathetically got all their "know how" and ideas from the internet, aimed way beyond their meagre abilities and suffered from a severe lack of practical training and advice.
If the internet were not available those people may well have sought out links with organizations that would have hel
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'protect our children and their innocence.'
Probably misspelt "ignorance".
Who would want knowledgeable citizens ?
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Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I work with children. In my extensive experience, they are vile creatures indeed. Ill-mannered, inconsiderate, uneducated and ignorant. They lack the most basic common sense, and what they do have is overridden by their susceptibility to peer pressure and the forces of advertising. They have a compulsion to destroy all that they touch, leaving me to spend my working day endlessly repairing equipment which has been vandalized - past highlights include throwing a switch from a window, placing a power cable in a stapler and impaling a laptop keyboard on a pen. Through an informal concensus they work to perpetuate this youth culture by relentlessly bullying any child who shows signs of being different, until they cease these attempts and rejoin the mob. They are in no way innocent - and, while many are ignorant of more worthwhile fields, peer discussion ensures they mostly have an encyclopedic knowledge of sexual acts and insults, albeit one riddled with misconceptions and errors.
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Yeah, but none of that it the parent's fault or human nature, it's all due to video nasties and internet porn and advertising and paedophiles. You know, stuff the government can do something about rather than telling voter's it's their own fault or the nature of childhood.
To be fair it's not just the government line, the newspapers and other media won't tell parents to be responsible either.
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Sounds like a politician to me.
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So they're just like little adults.
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It's not just IT. Site Services are constantly addressing the same problems - blinds torn apart, chair legs or wheels broken, that sort of thing. Most often the doors - we have traffic control doors that lock (electromagnets) on a timer, part of an elaborate dance that ensures there is no deadly crush of students during lesson change. Students hate this though, and routinely throw themselves at the doors trying to force them open, or smash the locking device, or tear the draft-block strips from the doors so
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It's not made up. I do work with children.
IT technician at a school. The lowest position in the whole IT industry.
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Unless porn is illegal in the UK, which I'm fairly sure it isn't, looking at porn will then not make them 'guilty' of anything in a legal sense and they will retain their innocense anyway.
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Nope, but there has been a lot of research into it.
Young kids do not yet have the brain to emphasise, in fact they are clinically sociopaths. Most kids stay sociopaths well into puberty.
Neither have young kids any kind of moral sense, morals are thought initially by parents, until when they are adult they set their own moral values.
Have you ever seen what kids do to each other in schools, I think hollywood has made quite a few movies about this fact.
Also "Lord of the Flies".
Sensationalist bullshit title. (Score:2, Interesting)
I am no fan of Camerons prudy filter. I would rather he just fuck off to be frank.
But this article title is sensationalist crap.
What we have here is entirely the correct solution.
Some people want filtering for their connection, others don't. So, the free markey actually works here because one of the ISPs decides it can offer it as an opt-in option for the customers who want it. This is how the system is supposed to work. And for this ISP, they use Huawei.
Big woop. The system works as it is supposed to.
Oh an
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'Yeah good morning, I'd like the porn filter on my broadband turned off, please?' 'What, are you some kind of PERVERT?'
What do you mean you want to see your Facebook profile Mr Sexson [houseofnames.com]
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They key is to have everyone asking the ISPs for the filter to be off, ideally at the same time. And then to put up signs on their front door warning anyone passing by: "Porn-enabled wifi network in operation".
Re:Sensationalist bullshit title. (Score:5, Insightful)
'Yeah good morning, I'd like the porn filter on my broadband turned off, please?' 'What, are you some kind of PERVERT?'
And a year or three in the future...
"May it please the court, the state would like to introduce into evidence that the suspect did, in blatant disregard of the welfare of children everywhere, demand that his Internet service provider to remove all child-abuse protection filters from his account."
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I am no fan of Camerons prudy filter. I would rather he just fuck off to be frank.
But this article title is sensationalist crap.
What we have here is entirely the correct solution.
Some people want filtering for their connection, others don't. So, the free markey actually works here because one of the ISPs decides it can offer it as an opt-in option for the customers who want it. This is how the system is supposed to work. And for this ISP, they use Huawei.
Big woop. The system works as it is supposed to.
Oh and Cameron can still fuck off.
haven't you been following the news, it's the system that is on staging to be opt-out. not opt-in.
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haven't you been following the news, it's the system that is on staging to be opt-out. not opt-in.
RTFA.
This article is ACTUALLY about an opt-in system that already exists.
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Re:Sensationalist bullshit title. (Score:5, Insightful)
The filtering allegedly works by checking every URL that you visit for porn (I've no idea how); if porn is found, not only are you blocked from seeing the URL, but it is also added to a blacklist.
The point of the article is that this checking is being done for everyone, even if they don't want filtering. So the ISP is, in effect, compiling a list of the URLs visited by their customers who do not want to be filtered.
And that list is being compiled on hardware that is alleged to be under the control of a foreign, potentially hostile, government.
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Wrong. This system is the one Cameron wants rolled out to every ISP via legislation.
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Wrong.
Right. Read. The. Fucking. Article.
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Doesn't matter what the article says if it's wrong. Listen to what Cameron said himself. He wants to role this out via legislation to every ISP in the UK.
Re:Sensationalist bullshit title. (Score:4, Informative)
You missed the point. Cameron wants all ISPs to have this filtering, and will make it mandatory if they don't. The filtering will be outsourced to the lowest bidder, which in this case was Huawei. Chances are it will always be Huawei or some other foreign company.
The operators of the filter have full access to everything every subscriber does online. Everything has to pass through their filter, even if you ask for it to be turned off. All of your traffic is routed through equipment owned and run by Huawei, a company known to have strong ties with the Chinese government. Huawei set the content of the filters too, which is of course secret. You don't think they are going to publish a list of URLs for you to scrutinize do you?
Government mandated filtering outsourced to foreign low bidder companies that have access to all your traffic even if you turn the filter off. And by the way, you can't turn the filter off completely anyway.
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Protect our children and their innocence... (Score:2)
...from anyone who might criticize the government, its officials or its policies.
FTFY
The same Huawei the U.S. calls a security threat.. (Score:5, Informative)
... as they are basically a ministry of the Chinese government.
U.S. lawmakers seek to block China Huawei, ZTE U.S. inroads [reuters.com]
"Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, at a press conference to release the report, said companies that had used Huawei equipment had reported "numerous allegations" of unexpected behavior, including routers supposedly sending large data packs to China late at night."
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as comparted to routers supposedly sending large data packs to NSA
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.... that this Government are a bunch of complete fucking idiots.
Can you name one that is not?
Expect Huge Advancements in UK IT (Score:5, Interesting)
Optional (Score:3)
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It's not about race, it's about jurisdiction.
If your own government, or companies in your nation are taking information they shouldn't, then you have some chance of at least starting some sort of discussion about what to do about it.
If all of this is conceded to foreign powers (regardless of who they are), then there is no applicable jurisdiction to reign in their behavior if they start misusing that data.
Re:Optional (Score:4, Informative)
No the system is not opt-in, the filtering is opt-in, there's a difference.
The system is ALWAYS monitoring what sites you visit whether you opt-in or opt-out, it just depends on whether you want to be blocked from blacklisted sites as to whether it replaces the response to those web requests.
This means that even if I opt-out it's still monitoring every site I visit.
Great way to teach children (Score:2)
Cameron is just trying to motivate the young to learn technology. Tell a 12 year old boy his reward is porn and he'll learn how to bypass those filters in no time flat.
I've always thought about doing something similar with my own kid. Steadily increase the completeness of the filters until he has taught himself how to get around all of them. As of now, he's more interested in Elmo.
Stage 1 - Proxy Settings
Stage 2 - DNS filters
Stage 3 - Net Nanny
Stage 4 - Deep packet at the router level
Stage 5 - ?
Why Does, "Save the children!" (Score:2)
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make me want to vomit?
... You are probably a victim of uncensored information.
But now the nice nanny, called Government, is going to fix that for you. And then you will be safe from any disturbing matters, like reality.
'Think of the Children' strikes again (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously the real problem is with prudes who hope that no one will ever be able to look at porn or enjoy sex again, but I do really wish more people would think of the other side and realize that stripping rights away that our children would otherwise grow into is just not worth it.
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Obviously the real problem is with prudes who hope that no one will ever be able to look at porn or enjoy sex again, but I do really wish more people would think of the other side and realize that stripping rights away that our children would otherwise grow into is just not worth it.
You're assuming that's an unintended side-effect, rather than a goal.
The world's governments want to censor the Internet. They don't want anyone talking behind their back in secret. Pr0n is just a convenient excuse to get the censor filter in place so they can expand them in the future.
Oh, sorry, I forgot: this is Slashdot, so in about five minutes there'll be a mob along to inform us that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy, so this could never happen.
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I completely understand that the goal is thought control. However, the people genuinely pursuing that goal are getting inadvertent help from a cadre of slightly more innocent folks who believe they are merely "thinking of the children." It is those folks who give the cause enough numbers to actually accomplish anything, and it is those folks I wish would wake up and understand the real outcome. Many of those people would not agree to take rights away from adults if it were
David Cameron is Coming to your ISP (Score:1)
You better not shout
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
David Cameron is coming to your ISP
David Cameron: protecting your children and their innocence* since 2013. Yes, Virginia, there really is a David Cameron. And he's one creepy, mofo. He knows when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He know when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.
*May not be protecting your children. Innocence may be robbed by realization