The Lie of Child Safe Filters

O2 have long had filters on their WAP/GPRS/3G networks to protect the children but as more attention is being focused on Internet filters and their ineffectiveness we’ve come to realise just how bad the situation is.

As the OpenRightsGroup aptly puts it;

O2’s under-12 whitelist includes mcdonalds.com but excludes childline.org.uk - showing that their aim of promoting child safety with this product really is not delivering very well.Jim Killock

Unfortunately as more and more people complained O2 started blaming 3rd party organisations;

@pseudomonas We use BBFC who review content that’s suitable for under 12s so we can offer our parental opt-in service.

— O2 in the UK (@O2) December 23, 2013

BT likewise tried shifting some of the blame for their disgusting blocking of material about “gay and lesbian lifestyles” as just being a mistake in the wording;

There has been an accidental mis-description of the way our parental controls operate. Some parents of very young children may wish to block sex education material.

One of our optional filters does just that. It does not discriminate between heterosexual and LGBT content. We apologise for any confusion that has been caused.

We shall review the way we describe the optional sex education filters available for parents of very young children. The filters in question are not turned on by default but must be activated only if chosen by parents.

BT Spokesperson

The OpenRightsGroup and TheRegister have more detailed articles on the subject.

Censor Pages Allow Injection Attacks & Arbitrary URLs

BT, Sky Broadband and Talk Talk have implemented opt-out Network level filtering for their customers.

The thing is, as well as overblocking websites that should not be filtered the ISPs have poorly implementated their block pages.

http://makeyourispblock.me/ was registered at 2am on the 22nd of December but due to the badly designed block pages it can be made to be shown as blocked.

Sky Broadband Block Page
BT Broadband Block Page
Talk Talk Broadband Block Page

GoAwayCameron Chrome Plugin Released

An enterprising Computer Student from Singapore going by the name @nubela on Twitter has released a Chrome plugin that allows people to evade some of the ISP filters.

On his websites goawaycameron.co.uk he has published a mini FAQ and a getting started guide;

Will this work outside of UK?

Yes! This will work anywhere, and with any websites that are blocked by firewall, universities, workplaces, nanny filters, or well, censorship.

What is “Go away Cameron”?

“Go away Cameron”, or GAC, is a chrome extension that automates a private and smart proxy service to route your access around censorship so you can regain your access to your favourite blocked sites in UK.

Is it legal?

GAC is essentially a smart proxy service. And I don’t believe a proxy service is illegal.

Are you harvesting info?

No, no logs are stored.

Can you trace who I am?

No, I can’t even do that. Other from your IP address, which isn’t logged as well. But how can you know for sure? See my answer to the last question.

Is it safe?

It is even safer than you using any unknown Hotspot Shield, or surfing websites through the random web proxy (which you already am and needs no setting up in case you don’t know, thats how they block you from the websites). In fact, it is even FASTER. Because the server uses better international routing than your homeline internet. And most of the blocked websites are international.

Why do you need the permission to “access data on all websites?”

Because blocked sites lie on arbitrary urls! And I don’t have, nor will I ever can have, an exhuastive list of UK banned sites. What I can do is to merely detect whether the website returns you an error message saying UK blocked it. (This is when the extension kicks in). I think I have an at most 10line code that checks for this. I welcome you to check the code for this.

Why do you need the permission to “access tabs and browsing activity?”

Because I apply a private proxy (not public, so even safer) to your browser temporarily for you to be able to view the banned website. But because it is private, it needs to enter the username and password to the proxy. Which I don’t want you to manually enter, so I hijack the process and manually enter it for you. So thats why I need this permission so I can make it seamless for you. I promise I do nothing more than that.

What is your intention for making this?

3 reasons. One, It was a holiday project as I was learning Twitter bootstrap. Two, I enjoy my internet freedom, and urge all of you to never give that up, let alone to any government agencies. Three, I did have some blind hopes for it going viral.

@nubela

Well here’s to hoping it, and the reasons for needing it, go viral!

Install Go Away Cameron for Chrome

Update:

Mainstream news have picked up on the story:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/23/go-away-cameron
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/10534618/Go-Away-Cameron-browser-extension-bypasses-UK-porn-filters.html
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/-go-away-cameron-chrome-extension-nullifies-pm-s-porn-blockade-1210457
http://metro.co.uk/2013/12/20/go-away-cameron-browser-extension-lets-users-bypass-uk-porn-filters-4238809/

BBC Newsnight exposes Filter Overblocking

As the four ISPs who are spearheading the ill-fated UK Internet filters are on the eve of rolling out their solutions the BBCs Newsnight program experimented the filters and unsurprisingly encountered distressing overblocking.

BT blocked sites including Sexual Health Scotland, Doncaster Domestic Abuse Helpline, and Reducing The Risk, a site which tackles domestic abuse.BBC

Let’s not forget that back in June Ms Perry dismissed concerns about overblocking as a “load of cock” and yet here is the BBC telling the world that at the behest of the UK Government our ISPs are preventing people from accessing help after being raped or having suffered from domestic abuse.

After being confronted by the errors the ISPs had the following to say for themselves;

Sadly there is no silver bullet when it comes to internet safety and we have always been clear that no solution can ever be 100%. We continue to develop HomeSafe and welcome feedback to help us continually improve the service.TalkTalk

We know that no one single technology currently provides all the answers. That’s why we have a quick and easy way for misclassified sites to be unblocked. Any Sky home has the ability to fully customise their filters.Sky

Categorisations are constantly updated to keep pace with changing content on the internet and we will investigate any concerns and make changes as necessary. BT Parental Controls can be customised to suit each individual family’s needs.BT

You can read the full article here.

#CensoredUK Day of Action

The Sex and Censorship campaign put out a call to arms earlier this week for December 12th to be a day of action for calling attention to UK Internet Censorship.

As one of the technical volunteers to the Open Rights Group Censorship Monitoring Project I decided to track how the campaign went on Twitter using the DataSift platform.

Tweets by Time of Day

Message Reach

Whenever someone sends a tweet it is seen by all their followers. Over the course of the day a minimum of 2,985,023 people saw the #CensoredUK hash tag.

If we allow for duplicate tweets (same hashtag but different content) then the #CensoredUK message was seen a minimum of 3,959,409 times by followers alone.

Everyone cares about Internet Filters

Not that it was a surprise but it was interesting to see the rich mix of people (and reasons) for opposing ISP Filters.

By using profile names one can extrapolate gender and see that a significant number of woman also took part in the discussion.

Campaign Differences

The Protecting our Children website has only inspired 1,391 tweets in the 5 months it has been online whereas the #CensoredUK Day of Action involved a minimum of 4079 people with only 1 day notice and 38,276 people have signed the petition to stop Internet Filtering

Common Themes

Worst ISPs?

83% of tweets about ISP censorship mentioned the ISP O2 with BSkyB, ThreeUK, BT, EE and Plusnet also getting mentioned negatively.

The only ISP to be mentioned in a positive light was Andrews and Arnold thanks to their strong stance against filtering.

Does this make O2 the worst ISP for over blocking the UK Internet? Well once the Censorship Monitoring Project Probes start rolling out we’ll find out!

Keep up the good fight everyone and if you want to know more about Internet Censorship or want to help fight it then look at donating / volunteering to the Open Rights Group.