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The Possibility of a Legislative ban on Internet Filtering!

Oliver Wright at the Independent has just broken the news that Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron is going to propose legislation that enshrines the “digital rights of the citizen” which would include stopping “any requirement for opt-ins, opt-outs, filters, lists or controls on legal material”.

DigitalRightsOfTheCitizen.co.uk has been registered and we’re about to start a campaign to get people to write to their MP to help define the Digital Rights we as citizens deserve.

In the meantime give Mr Farron a shout on Twitter to say thank you!

TorrentFreak Blocked

TorrentFreak.com the self described home of breaking news about File-sharing, copyright and privacy is the latest website to fall victim to UK Internet filter overblocking.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron wants all Internet providers to block porn by default, to protect the children. This filtering requirement is controversial for a number of reasons, not least due to ISPs’ filters targeting a wide range of other content too. Sky’s newly launched Broadband Shield, for example, blocks numerous legitimate file-sharing related sites including uTorrent and BitTorrent.com, download portals for Linux distributions, and even TorrentFreak.TorrentFreak.com

If you are able to reach the page you can read the full write up here, if you can’t reach the page maybe it’s time to start looking at ways to evade the filters?

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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;


 

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

    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

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    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.

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    #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.

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    Android Censorship Probe Project Launched

    Bowdlerize [verb] – To remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective

    Bowdlerize is the code name for an Android app based probe that is part of the Open Rights Group Censorship Monitoring Project, a crowd sourcing project to map the extent of censorship & filtering on the Internet

    URLs are gathered from social media or user submissions & then sent to Android devices with the Censor Census app installed (and other ORG probe types too).

    Upon receipt of a probe payload the app checks the URL via a HTTP HEAD request to test if it is censored or not.

    The results of these tests are then aggregated by the Open Rights Group and relayed on to the Open Observatory of Network Interference project.

    Anyone will be able to submit URLs to be checked via the app, this website & the Blocked.org.uk website.

    People will also be able to check if a link has been flagged as blocked via various mechanisms such as OONI Reports, the app & possibly an API.


    Get it on Google Play

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    Further Proof Claire Perry Doesn’t Understand What She Has Created

    Not content with accusing bloggers of sponsoring the hack of her website Claire Perry has further demonstrated her lack of understanding of how the Internet and indeed her own filters are going to work.

    Whether she is confused, isn’t concerned about the details or just hasn’t understood what it is she has done the fact remains that ISPs are interfering with your traffic after it has left your modem and entered into their transit network.

    They are mis-routing packets, spoofing DNS and who knows what else all in the name of filtering.

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    Jimmy Wales: David Cameron’s porn filter idea is ridiculous and will fail

    Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, one of David Cameron’s most high-profile technology advisers, has rubbished plans to introduce porn filters through the UK’s internet service providers, dismissing the proposals as “ridiculous” and saying money would be better spent on policing internet crime.

    He went on further to say

    We should be devoting a significant proportion of that to dealing with the real criminal issues online, stealing credit card numbers, hacking into sites … that is going to take an investment in real, solid police work.The Guardian

    The ISPs hate the idea, consumers hate the idea and even the Governments own celebrity advisors hate the idea.

    But they are going to go ahead, you know, for the children…