David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK and leader of the right-wing Conservative Party, has announced plans to require all UK internet service providers to introduce a “default-on” block on pornographic websites. He has told Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. that they have a “moral duty” to block searches for “corrosive images” as if they should become the gate-keepers of the internet and decide for you what you are or are not allowed to search for. This new legislation may have big consequences for the internet freedom of anyone residing in the UK.
Yes. His proposals, whether intended or not, will bring in a UK version of the Great Firewall of China and will be used to stop you from accessing material which the State considers unacceptable. Regrettably, such laws have always suffered from “function creep” and end up being used to harass innocent people for being different.
If you have children, the responsibility for protecting and bringing them up is yours. At the moment you are free to use filtering software or subscribe to clean-feed services and, of course, you can keep an eye on what your children do by keeping computers in family areas, but these proposals will end up treating everyone as children who need someone else’s permission to look at websites the State doesn’t approve of.
Putting it simply: no. There are many ways for you to bypass such restrictions without needing to go to your internet service provider and say, “Please may I look at the nasty websites”!
You will have to, or will be forced, to “confess” your interests to your partner because the filter will affect ALL internet connections to your household, so if you change the setting, your partner will soon find out.
One of the easiest things you can do to avoid being affected by these proposals is to sign up to a VPN service such as HideMyAss or StrongVPN which aim to allow you to freely access any websites you want without state interference by passing your Internet traffic across its own network and making your IP address look as if it is in another country. This gives you the freedom to use the Internet knowing your traffic is secure and anonymous.
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