http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/29/censorship-surveillance
"Governments must not use cyber-security as an excuse for
censorship or to deny people their opportunities that the internet
represents".
So said David Cameron in 2011, criticizing internet censorship and
monitoring carried out by other countries around the world.
In 2013, this is the same man who wants to see internet filters installed in homes across the country and
whose government collects huge quantities of data from the transatlantic cables that form
the internet's backbone.
Our Prime Minister is not only undermining our ability to argue
for digital freedom in other countries, but also reshaping the
nature of our internet. Cameron's internet is a place where free
access to legal content is an optional extra to be requested,
rather than the default; it is a place where the ability to
communicate privately is an illusion.
"It is the sheer scale of the interference with our
collective rights that is quite shocking"
In the last month or two, we have discovered, thanks to
reporting by the Guardian, that the data you hold with any
US internet company, be it Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple or
Yahoo, is easily accessible by the US government under a National Security Agency (NSA) programme called Prism. In the
UK, we appear to simply indiscriminately siphon data from the
cables that carry the internet, under a programme called Tempora.
By gathering data for each other, governments are able to dodge the
legal protections that their own citizens have from domestic
spying.
"How can [our government] argue for that crucial digital freedom
[in other countries] if they're going for monitoring at least as
much, if not more," said Kirsty Hughes, chief executive of the
Index on Censorship, speaking on 25 July as the Index launched a petition calling on EU leaders to help end mass
surveillance.
"The harm on any normal law abiding person is not
enormous," said Stephen Cragg QC, the human rights lawyer who has
fought the proposed national DNA database in the UK, speaking at
the same event. "But it is the sheer scale of the interference with
our collective rights that is quite shocking".
The argument trotted out by supporters is that Western spying
programmes prevent terrorist attacks. They probably do, but have
also been used in ways that chill the freedom of speech. Case in
point: the NSA appear to have gathered phone metadata on New Zealand journalist Jon
Stephenson on behalf of the New Zealand government, in order to
help identify his sources.
To suggest that the vast internet spying and data collection
programmes have been built with our interests in mind is a stretch,
to say the least. A recently defeated bill in the US Congress
sought to curb NSA spying by putting stricter controls on its
funding. Those who voted it down receive on average 122
percent more in defence and intelligence funding than those who
supported the bill, our overseas colleagues at Wired.com found.
In the UK, we are now combining this machinery for internet
surveillance with restrictions on what content you can and can't
view online. By 2014, David Cameron will have ensured that internet
service providers (ISPs) install parental filters on home broadband by default, with
consumers having to opt-out to access the internet properly.
Though described as a "porn filter", this will actually cover
a range of material, including "web forums", "esoteric
material", and "web blocking circumvention tools" (just in case you
were getting any smart ideas).
Turning off the filters will be a matter of a few clicks, but
the principle here is less about porn being entirely inaccessible
in the UK, and instead that it's a challenge to the idea that an
individual should be able to be private if they are acting within
the law.
You want to access a full and free internet? Register with your
ISP, declare yourself, says David Cameron.
Cameron also only wants age-verification systems for turning
filters on and off. If mobile phone filters are anything to go by, this would mean
that if you're 16 or 17, you face the strange situation where you
are allowed to have sex with other people, but not watch other
people having sex online.
Control of what sites the filters block currently lies
with Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications that has, rightly or
wrongly, been accused of having close links to the Chinese
government. Whether that makes the idea any better or worse is
missing the point -- one suspects there would be a similar
disinterest in my civil rights if it was run by a Western firm --
but the link to China is an interesting one. The Great Firewall of
China is a vast infrastructure for monitoring and censoring content
on the internet in China.
Surveillance programmes in the West almost certainly match it in
terms of monitoring, but when it comes to web filters in the UK,
the censoring part, Cameron's proposition is slightly
different.
It is not exactly top-down government censorship -- that would
be easier to fight. Instead we are being invited to dig the grave
for a free and open internet ourselves -- and Cameron's web filters
are the shovels.
My Analysis
There are negative and positive points for censoring the internet, on one hand it may prevent terrorist attacks but on the other it is a huge invasion om our freedom of speech and rights. By cencoring parts of the internet I feel we are having privileged information taken away. I can see how blocking certain aspects of the web might be beneficial but at the end of the day it is up to us to be responsible and make our own decisions. Blocking the web will do more damage than good. China's internet laws are extreme and this is how we could end up in Britain if the laws go ahead. We are not been told the full picture there is obviously an alternate agenda going on that we are not fully aware of. The government are invading are privacy the information we look at online is at risk of being monitored and I feel this is against our rights.
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