Report Highlights 10 Sites Unfairly Blocked By UK Mobile Internet Censorship 94
Mark.JUK writes "The Open Rights Group (ORG), which works to raise awareness of digital rights and civil liberties issues, has published a new report that examines the impact of internet censorship on UK mobile networks and lists an example of 10 legitimate websites that often get unfairly blocked (PDF) by adult content filters (over-blocking). The study is important because similar measures could soon be forced upon fixed-line broadband ISP subscribers by the UK government. Some of the allegedly unfair blocks include censorship of the 'Tor' system, a privacy tool used by activists and campaigners across the globe, and the website of French 'digital rights' advocacy group 'La Quadrature du Net.'"
"unfairly blocked" (Score:3, Insightful)
On the contrary, those in favour of the censorship plans consider the blocking of these sites to be quite fair.
Only an idiot would think these measures are about protecting children.
Britain leads the way yet again... (Score:5, Insightful)
False positives are a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any sort of selection or filtration system is going to have TWO very different forms of error: false negatives and false positives. Missed badguys and caught goodguys. Most of the testing is done to reduce false negatives, so that you're not embarrassed by a glaring badguy getting though. As a result, lots of false positives are generated because they are less unacceptable. Do not expect rationality from censors -- that is not their objective.
The real customer's objective is to minimize the total cost both of false negatives and false positives. It doesn't help until people realise the [often high] cost of a false positive -- a large sales order that was missed & lost by a spam filter.
Some areas like police, do not have any notion of a false positive -- "It's all good -- they needed a warning".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Horrendous Typesetting (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, what were they thinking on the 10 legitimate websites that often get unfairly blocked [openrightsgroup.org] pdf? It's horrible trying to read it on a screen, and I'm using a desktop. Good luck to anyone on a smartphone...
Seems painfully ironic that they're excluding mobile users in this way.
We use HTML for a reason, ORG...
Re:Britain leads the way yet again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Britain leads the way yet again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than do it via DNS or IP blocking they commanded banks and payment processors to block financial transaction to those sites instead.
Later on, they seized domains too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/16/feds_online_poker/ [theregister.co.uk]
Re:Tor... (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Tor is a network allowing for file exchange which makes it impossible or very difficult to tell the identity of the file sharers
What the fuck is wrong with that?
Well for one it's a wildly inaccurate description of the tor network. File sharing has grown more accepted on the network but it still discouraged as it strains network resources. It's mainly a way to access (exit nodes) and share (.onion sites) information in an anonymous manner.
Re:The 10 blocked sites (Score:2, Insightful)
8. Biased-BBC (www.biased-bbc.blogspot.co.uk) is a site that challenges the BBC’s impartiality. We established it was blocked on
O2 and T-Mobile on 5th March. It is classified as a ‘hate site’ by O2’s URL checker
"After Jihad, the premier evil that threatens [the UK] is homosexual fascism."
Yep, seems like the filter was pretty much spot on. This site does not challenge the BBC's impartiality, it simply catalogues every time the BBC runs a story about homosexuals or Muslims and doesn't mention that the prophet Mohammed and a "disproportionate amount" of homosexuals are pedophiles.
Re:The 10 blocked sites (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear leaders (Score:4, Insightful)