British 'Porn Filter' Blocks Access To Chaos Computer Club 135
An anonymous reader tips news that the Chaos Computer Club's website was inaccessible for many internet users in the UK after being blocked by the filter set up to block porn sites. Additionally, Vodafone users are unable to access the ticket site to this year's Chaos Commuication Conference. In a post on its website, the CCC said, "Internet filters simply do not work, but leaving technical limitation aside, the CCC's example shows that unsolicited overblocking, meaning wrongly classified websites, is a common phenomenon in large censorship infrastructures. However, it may very well be that the CCC is considered 'extremist' judged by British standards of freedom of speech." CCC spokesperson Dirk Engling added, "We see this as proof that censorship infrastructure – no matter for which reasons it was set up, and no matter which country you are in – will always be abused for political reasons."
Good grief. (Score:5, Insightful)
Porn filters... Really? Well, what do you expect from a country that has CCTV on every corner in every town, and an internal security apparatus that shames the NSA? We're not talking about Russia here...
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the City of London* (which has a population of just 9,000**) has 619 cameras, which makes it the most densely CCTV'd population centre AND the most densely CCTV'd square mile in the world.
*definition: that area inside the Lion bollards between Temple and the Mall
**source: 2011 census
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The City of London has 9000 residents but about 500,000 people actually working there during the day.
9000 residents and 619 security cameras sounds like OMG BIG BROTHER TROLOLOLOLWTFBBQHAX.
The more realistic, 509,000 people and 619 cameras sounds much less dramatic.
The definition of the City of London being in this case the boundary of the City of London.
Re:Good grief. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. If you place those 619 cameras correctly (and I assume they did) in such a small area, I'll bet every single person who lives or works in that place gets their image recorded several times a day.
Remember, the 500,000 people who come to the City of London to work every day have a limited number of routes to take to get there. A relatively small number of bus stops, train stations, parking lots, bridges and streets makes for easy work for the guys who are upskirting their own citizens' lives.
I'm guessing it could be done with even fewer cameras.
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Except for the bankers and child molestation murder cults among the elite. Nobody's watching them, apparently.
Re:Good grief. (Score:5, Insightful)
And before you ask for a citation regarding those child molestation/murder cults among the elite:
http://www.theguardian.com/soc... [theguardian.com]
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u... [mirror.co.uk]
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Except for the bankers and child molestation murder cults among the elite. Nobody's watching them, apparently.
So the banker molestation murder cults get away with their crimes. Not sure if a good or bad thing.
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I bet if you had some quiet reflection and thought carefully about it, you could figure out whether or not child molestation & murder is a good or bad thing.
Unless you are somewhere down the sociopathy spectrum, in which case you might not.
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I bet if you had some quiet reflection and thought carefully about it, you could figure out whether or not child molestation & murder is a good or bad thing.
Unless you are somewhere down the sociopathy spectrum, in which case you might not.
Note I didn't include the part about children. Read what you comment on before commenting.
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Oh, sorry. I completely missed the molestation murder joke there.
You're right. I say, dress the bankers up in short pants and sailor suits and drop them in a room full of Jimmy Saviles.
Re:Good grief. (Score:4, Informative)
well, OK, how about London's 33 boroughs* controlling 7,000** cameras between them? Or the 500,000-800,000** privately owned/run CCTV cameras (not systems, individual cameras) operating in the same area?
The 11,000** cameras operating on the Tube network?
*combined population: 8.3 million (2013 ONS estimate)
**source: BSIA
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Remember, you only need cameras covering where the "little passages" enter and exit. You don't need 100% coverage to cover 100% the people.
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The City of London has 9000 residents but about 500,000 people actually working there during the day.
9000 residents and 619 security cameras sounds like OMG BIG BROTHER TROLOLOLOLWTFBBQHAX.
The more realistic, 509,000 people and 619 cameras sounds much less dramatic.
The definition of the City of London being in this case the boundary of the City of London.
Another way to look at is in terms of area.... The City of London covers about 1.12 square miles... If the cameras all cover ground level, them then the cameras could cover a grid with a camera spaced every 225 feet, or about one minute's walking distance.
Re:Good grief. (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, but they're not scattered remotely uniformly.
For instance there's a bunch in the big underpass system by the Monument, far more than one every 225 feet because it's an underpass with a few branches. They also tend to be scattered round the large, important buildings like the Gherkin. The ground plans are complex so to cover the area just around the building, many cameras are needed.
All the little streets like Change Alley and Pope's Head Alley and whatnot have none whatsoever.
Yes there are a lot but the chicken-little OMG BIG BROTHER ENGLAND IS WORSE THAN NORTH KOREA THE SKY IS FALLING types are basically spouting crap.
Disclaimer: I only walk through the city of London every day on the way into work.
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Holy crap London is a tiny little town. my small town has 100,000 population and the nearest mid sized town has a population of 500,000 I never realized that London was equivalent to a backwater small town in the USA. What's the population of the UK? I'm betting NYC has more residents than the entire UK has if London only has a population of 9000.
Or do you brits count people using the metric system?
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That's the "City of London".
It's not the city of London. It's a small, privately owned borough in the middle. It has it's own private police force (who are staunch advocates of strong copyright policing, surprise). It's the scene of many of the financial crimes of this and previous centuries, but curiously, these don't get too much attention from their own private police.
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*definition: that area inside the Lion bollards between Temple and the Mall
Er - that sounds more like Camden than The City. The City extends to the east of Temple; the Mall is to the west. Did you get your map of London from a Dan Brown book?
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We have experienced decades of people trying to - and often succeeding in - blowing up us workers. For a long time we had the IRA and now Islamic terrorists all wanting to inflict death and destruction on those of us going about our daily lives. This list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_London) gives some idea of the scale and number of attacks London (not just the City of London) has suffered. If
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"Abdul!"
"What, Samir?"
"We cannot do this thing."
"Why not?"
"Camera."
"Shit. Let us go home and reconsider our lives."
Yep. Totally see how that works.
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Totally see how that works.
Well clearly you don't totally see how the cameras would work.
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did cameras save Lee Rigby? NO.
did cameras save 52 London commuters on the 7 July 2005? NO.
did cameras prevent Jamie Bulger from being buggered and decapitated and left on a railway track? NO.
did cameras save Ian Tomlinson? NO.
did cameras prevent Dunblane? NO.
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BBC News [bbc.co.uk]
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opt in? I didn't opt in for filtering yet I find thepiratebay.se is blocked.
Who do I talk to to resolve this bullshit?
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One is the abhorrent court mandated (section 97A's) blocks which the ISP's just bend over and take
The other (re this article) is optional web filtering that parents etc can use to prevent access to a wide (stupidly wide) range of websites
They are both pointless in their own way but the section 97A's are the real concern (to me anyway)
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We don't. The report that said we did had really poor methodology and a lot of speculation.
Even then, the bulk of CCTV is in private shops. You have this in every country.
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Tweak what? This is precisely what is/was planned to occur. It was just marketed to the public as a "porn filter" to get it initially passed.
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Conspiracy? Doesn't matter.
Self-appointed censors having multiple back doors to enforcement, including government enforcement? That matters.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that caused the problem. "Save the children!" and other lemming stampede inducing sayings will always be abused by those in power.
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aka Lovejoy's Law
Libel Lawsuit by CCC would get them to do that (Score:2)
The filters have usually been super-secret because letting the public know what was being censored would let "the children" get around them, and would promote the worst kinds of pornography by telling perverts where it was. But English libel law is surprisingly broad, from the perspective of those of us in other countries, and allows people not from England to sue other people not from England if there's some English hook in the publication somewhere, so maybe the CCC can demonstrate that they've been cens
Re:Libel Lawsuit by CCC would get them to do that (Score:4, Informative)
The filters have usually been super-secret
In case it might be of interest, in the UK, on mobile networks at least, the existence of filters is not (and, as far as I know, has never been) secret, and the categories of content which are likely to render a site being blocked are published too. I appreciate that this is, of course, not the same as a "what's blocked and what's not list".)
The UK's infrastructure mobile operators published the "Code of practice for the self-regulation of new forms of content on mobiles" in January 2004, with the filters being implemented about a year later in early 2005. The code was updated in 2009, and is accessible here [mobilebroadbandgroup.com]. The code still references the Independent Mobile Classification Body, but this is no longer the right place: the IMCB's role has been replaced by the British Board of Film Classification, which also administers the age ratings for films for the UK.
The BBFC documents its approach to mobile content classification on its website, here [bbfc.co.uk], including setting out the type of content which the BBFC considers suitable for "adults only", the details of mobile operator contact points in the event that a site operator considers that their site is incorrectly classified, and an appeals procedure against decisions taken by the BBFC.
Whilst there is no published "what's blocked and what's not" list, the mobile operators buy third party services for website classification; most, but not all, buy from Symantec. Symantec has a web interface for its "ratings tool" here [rulespace.com], which (after a captcha) lets anyone see how Symantec has classified a particular URL. This is complemented by the Open Rights Group tool (here [blocked.org.uk]): the ORG tool does a real-time check of whether a site is blocked across mobile and fixed networks, and the Symantec tool indicates the classification given to the site by Symantec.
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You do like playing whack-a-mole, right? Because that's what tweaking a filter is. Oh, it blocks X, ok... let's fiddle with it, ok, we can get to X again. But wait, it still blocks Y. Ok... now. But now it doesn't block XXX anymore. Oh... ok, let's tinker with it... there. But now X is unreachable again!
Sure, it's job security, but at what price?
Please, its for the Children !!! (Score:1)
Will somebody please think of the children !!!
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unfortunately they do, which is precisely why there are six million* public-facing CCTV cameras in daily operation around the country. That's one for every eleven people. Or, one for every two children.
*that are known about/admitted to
Total Surveillance in the UK (Score:2, Interesting)
Just had the lamp-posts replaced around here- and there's a camera atop each (most people don't realise, because they think such a cameras sees 'around' the lamp-post itself , but each camera is designed to 'see' beneath a further lamp-post two posts down). People are informed, when they ask, that the visible camera mount is a 'radio aerial').
Lamp-post cameras in the UK were first introduced during the last IRA scare many years back- I remember seeing the contract of an Asian supplier that had provided mill
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Shooting paintballs at the lenses of cameras works great. Build yourself a PVC paintball thrower and solve the problem.
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If you're thinking of the children all the time, chances are you're a pedo.
some get windows update block and then the filters (Score:2)
someone get windows update block and then the filters will come down so fast your head will spin
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I'm fairly sure that Windows updates, Facebook, Youtube and everything else that "the general public" would notice if it was blocked is whitelisted. As long as only a small group of people is pestered, they don't matter.
You can only outlaw and censor something before the general population got used to it. Sadly I can't find the study for it anymore, but the general idea is that you cannot censor or ban something that everyone likes AND is not afraid to say so. So if you want something to be safe from censor
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Nah not really. Under 10% of internet subscribers have chosen to not opt out. Most people would never know if the filters went to crap.
CCC, XXX... (Score:5, Funny)
CCC, XXX, what's the difference? The two keys are close to each other. Easy to confuse. Wait until WWW is added to the list.
Suprised *gasp* (Score:5, Insightful)
Its like someone doesn't learn lessons, not just from history, but from the present
When do we start adding UK to the list of unfree states.
Re:Suprised *gasp* (Score:5, Informative)
When do we start adding UK to the list of unfree states.
You know that the filter is strictly optional, right?
Being opt-out is stupid pandering to the "think of the children" morons who are too lazy to opt in to an opt in system which was present before (surprise! companies offered this service!).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tech... [bbc.co.uk]
The proportions of people NOT opting out are:
* Virgin Media - 4%
* BT - 5%
* Sky - 8%
* TalkTalk - 36%
(Note: TalkTalk offered the service as an opt in feature before the government waded in).
The filter is a stupid and pointless thing to be mandated (as evidenced by the nubmers), but given the number of people opting out (almost all), chicken-littling over being like China is even more stupid than the filter itself.
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Optional for how long? You're gullible if you don't think they'll make this mandatory, because 'terrorism'.
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The fact that you have to actively opt-out is a problem all by itself.
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Yes it is, but that still doesn't make it like china.
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It's not even applied to all ISPs. I don't have any of this and haven't had to ever opt in or out of anything.
So sure you can go to one of the big 5 nanny state friendly ISPs and pay nothing for over-contended shit broadband with useless support when it goes wrong, or you can just go to one of the other 200 ISPs where none of this is even an issue.
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Yes, it's stupid, but it's optional and only exists for some ISPs. Hardly the great firewall of China.
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Don't worry, Cameron is doing his best to keep up. If we can just hold ISPs responsible and monitor a bit more, then we will have controll^H^H^H^H safety.
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Don't worry, Cameron is doing his best to keep up. ...
So you're saying he opted-out?
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Cameron opted out of sanity a while ago.
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Yet most people there act like complete loons, I read Clockwork Orange, It's a manual on how brits act in their daily lives.
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1972.
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The UK (along with the U.S) is already classified as an enemy of the Internet by the Reporters Sans Frontiers.
What more do you want?
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I did so long ago. Not to mention that Cameron is not far away from Kim when it comes to pure stupidity and idiocy. And he doesn't even have any excuse like Kim.
Hanlon? (Score:2)
What was that quote again? Never attribute to politics that which is adequately explained by stupid perl scripts?
When will they block Slashdot? (Score:5)
Which side won the Cold War again? Oh yeah, "Ignorance is Strength". That side.
Re:When will they block Slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
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sounds like the local college were they block steam's forums but not their game servers so you can't discuses games just play them.
The UK... (Score:1)
...land of freedom.
filter porn, but allow "escort" services? (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember a time, before _everyone_ had a mobile phone and there were still phone booths with phones in them.
And every phone booth in London was plastered with ads for "escort" services. I could be wrong, but my impression at the time was these were really just thinly veiled ads for prostitutes.
I haven't really paid attention the last few years, I don't know where they're plastering the ads these days.
But yeah, filter the porn out.
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I haven't really paid attention the last few years, I don't know where they're plastering the ads these days.
The Internet.
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Even in the UK growing up before the world wide web was a thing you'd just wander on down to the closest building site where the builders often left porn mags lying around or go round to the kids house whose dad creepily collected page 3 girl pictures to find it.
It's always been a nonsense and always will be, kids will find porn whatever you do. You can't legislate natural curiosity away.
Sol (Score:2)
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While you're still allowed to use one. What makes you think that you may use VPN, citizen?
British Porn Filter (Score:2)
In related news, access to pr0n continues unimpeded.
What about the old chestnuts... (Score:2)
I'm wondering how Scunthorpe Council is getting on. Did they get blocked, again?
A few facts (Score:2)
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So ... UK parents want to keep information about online security from their kids? What is this, a branch of the Southern Baptists?
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So yes. I'll concede that this is probably an overbroad interpretation of "hacking" which is why only 3 ISPs actually listed it as such, and one of them chenged their mind.
"3 private companies miscategorise CCC as 'hacking'" is hardly a major news story.
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It's a bit complicated. We've got multiple filters.
First, there's Cleanfeed. This is the most opaque of them - it's purpose is to filter out child pornography. Due to the sensitive nature of the filter, it's highly secretive - the list is secret, the methodology is secret, there's no appeals process, and no requirement to notify sites they have been classified as child porn. This is the one that made news a few years ago when someone classified a Wikipedia page as child pornography.
Secondly, there's the ant
Except... (Score:2)
Except ccc.de isn't actually blocked. I'm visiting a friend in the UK right now and have no problem reaching ccc.de through PlusNet nor do I have any trouble reaching it through an EE mobile internet connection.
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Maybe the selection algorithm is nondeterministic or its input includes user's location, history and some other personal shit.
Britain doesn't choose their battles wisely (Score:2)
Given the demand, there'll always be supply, one way or another.
And I hope it will not take the form of rape and harassment.
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Blocked from my own research (Score:2)
Told you so (Score:1)
Scunthorpe Problem (Score:2)
At least things aren't as bad as when the "Scunthorpe Problem" was rife! Those are days I'm glad to have behind me.
Running a school network and suddenly finding that you are unable to email colleagues or browse websites with Essex, Sussex, Wessex or Scunthorpe in their addresses was annoying... but having to explain this to the ISP who implemented the block was a challenge. Techs there just didn't seem to be able to get their heads around the concept of a SUB-string being a problem (they thought their filte
Re:The U.K. is a joke, but not a funny one. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, from mainland Europe it looks more like the UK does its best to emulate the US.
Not that I generally disagree with you, though.
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