Cameron’s Phoney ‘War on Porn’ is Actually a War on Privacy

David Cameron has today announced a ‘war on porn’ – asking Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to automatically filter people’s internet usage, with anything classed as ‘porn’ inaccessible without the user specifically requesting access to it.  Not only is this idea unworkable, but it is entirely cynical.  David Cameron is attempting a bloodless coup of the free internet, inside a paper mache Trojan Horse of Daily Mail headlines.

The War on Porn

 

This hideous idea was put together by Claire Perry MP, Cameron’s special advisor on ‘preventing the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood’.  This moral crusade was in response to a campaign by the Daily Mail, which today announced victory in its war on porn.  On the same page The Mail featured pictures of 17 year old model Kendall Jenner urging readers to check out her ‘model figure in an aqua bikini’.  Readers were also treated to the cleavage of Kourtney Kardashian alongside the headline ‘No Sudden Movements! Kourtney Kardashian shows her body confidence in daring low cut Swimsuit – she knows how to show off her assets’. Cute.

Nevertheless, the government seized on the Mail campaign and began to pressure Internet Service Providers to operate a ‘default on’ porn filter.  This means that in future, anyone setting up their Broadband connection will have to actively request access to porn, as the filter will be the default.

There were a couple of embarrassing hiccups along the way as a letter from government to the Internet Service Providers was leaked.  It turns out the Internet Service Providers were marketing the new filters around customer choice, but the glory hungry government requested the language of the ISP announcements changed to appear more punitive, allowing them to claim victory in their phoney war.

Until now, the Obscene Publications Act has governed what it is legal and illegal to publish.  However, Cameron has declared that those images which are not currently illegal, yet are considered beyond the pale by the moral majority, become prosecutable.  For example, images of simulated rape, where consent has been given in advance, will now become illegal to possess, or share.

Excellent. All very noble.

The War on All of Us

 

There are a number of issues which make this policy somewhere between a joke, and a terrifying regressive step for civil liberties. Speaking to the BBC, one source at an ISP gave his reasons:

“It sounds like a good idea until you think it through…There are three reasons why it doesn’t work. First it may be illegal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers. Then there’s the fact that no filter is perfect, and finally kids are smart enough to find their way around them.”

A source at another company saw another reason why “default on” might be a bad idea: “It makes parents complacent – if you tell them the filter is switched on by default, they get a false sense of security. We want parents to make informed choices about the way their children use the internet.”

These reasons focus around workability.  But there are other reasons besides workability that need to be addressed.

Firstly, there is the case against the nanny state.  The government has cut the budget for Legal Aid, is forcing disabled, sick and mentally ill people off their social security and selling off our schools and hospitals to private interests at a gallop.

If the government argues that the state has no role in these core elements of our society – why on earth would they think the state has a role in telling people whether they can watch porn or not, or in deciding what is and is not porn?  It just doesn’t make sense.

Secondly, privacy and freedom.  How will data on who requests porn or not be stored and used?  Does anyone requesting no porn filter become somehow suspect?  Will it become lawful for someone to be have their internet usage monitored where they have requested the filter removed, the act itself becoming a red flag?

Worse than all this, the move sets a precedent.  The state is now telling people what they can and cannot view on the internet – outside the confines of the law.  It might well be legal, but it is not state sanctioned.

It will mean a permissive relationship between government and ISP – government asks, ISP does.

It also leads to some technical infrastructure changes that will mean internet usage being more easily controlled and monitored in future.

Newsflash: David Cameron doesn’t care about protecting children from online predators.  If he did, his government would not have cut the budget for the very section of the police force dedicated to doing just this – by a whole 10% last year.  No.  This is about control.  But many will remain silent on the matter – who can argue against ending child abuse photos online?

Wake Up and Smell the Censorship

Just a few short years ago, the idea that repressive countries across the world restricted the internet access of their citizens was the scorn of the ‘civilised west’. But those days are gone.  The revelations of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden reveal just how closely and arbitrarily our internet communications are being monitored – and how feeble our protections from such abuses of power truly are.

But even in this status quo, the government has to do the watching.  With this new model, the government can set up the state sanctioned ‘safe’ internet – and focus its time on those apparently breaking out into the longer grass.

This might seem like an overreaction – but given employers are already hiring and firing based on a person’s social media activity – with some even making employment contingent upon surrendering passwords to personal social media accounts for monitoring – one suspects it is little more than the thin end of the wedge.

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