Wednesday 26 January 2011

THE HIDDEN CENSORS OF THE INTERNET

Journey with us to a state where an unaccountable panel of censors vets 95 per cent of citizens’ domestic internet connections. The content coming into each home is checked against a mysterious blacklist by a group overseen by nobody, which keeps secret the list of censored URLs not just from citizens, but from internet service providers themselves. And until recently, few in that country even knew the body existed. Are we in China? Iran? Saudi Arabia? No – the United Kingdom, in 2009. This month, we ask: Who watches the Internet Watch Foundation?

Read the rest of it - and while you are reading, think *IMPLICATIONS*. Ignore the porn excuses, because that's all they are - excuses. They want to control the internet, restrict access to information they don't want us to know, and porn is just the excuse they use to do exactly that. They couldn't care a toss about porn (or kids), but they are using those things to gradually tighten their grip on POLITICS. They wouldn't bother with all the secrecy if all they were interested in was the porn ... hell no, they'd be broadcasting the details of their achievements far and wide

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2009/06/features/the-hidden-censors-of-the-internet?page=all

Morg
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4 comments:

Andyj said...

We may have a body to censor British based websites but they have no legal redress stopping them from abroad. A waste of time that reduces our business potential as foreigners see this state as no better a place to trade than the likes of Burma.

The BBC is alive with the phone hacking scandal. No way did the "boobs of the world" hack phones. They paid bent coppers with their fingers in the police servers! The police bosses want this to go away, silently.

Brian Paddick is telling it openly enough on the Beelzebub on how and who abused his phone privacy.

A mobile phone is nothing more than a remotely accessible ID card with full geo-locatable facebook updates.

We know local mobiles were monitored before the police let out details to the thugs that attacked in Leigh that night.

The police motto: The unaccountable protecting the indefensible.

Sir Henry Morgan said...

If it's abroad they may not be able to get at them directly - but that's not what they're doing. They're doing their blocking directly at the ISPs HERE. You have to go through your British ISP no matter who you're calling. Personally, I use Virgin, and no matter where I call, if Virgin finds it's on their blacklist, then I'll just get a 'server not found' message up when I try and go to e.g. the BNP website WHEREVER it's hosted.

Read it again - more carefully.

Sir Henry Morgan said...

They don't touch the servers or the websites - they go directly to the ISPs. That way, the foreign based website is still working normally, and its associated servers are still working normally. But if the ISP you use can't find it because that's what's blocked where does that leave you when you see the 'server not found' message?

Andyj said...

I don't get "server not found" error 403 or 404's etc. - On modern links.

I'm on Virg too! Maybe I have inadvertently got a reason.

One can bypass blacklists by accessing via the ip#. Then its peer to peer.

They can remove sites off their DNS server so when you ask for it, theres no site found. I use a US based DNS server via my router.

Can you see the site via google cache?

yaz