Phil Bradley's weblog

Cameron; it's about controlling the net, not blocking porn

Cameron has been shouting loudly from the rooftops that he wants to protect children and to limit access to pornographic material (while providing little or no help to the people who are actually doing this work), primarily by bullying ISPs into compliance. Well, now we're seeing exactly what's coming out of this; valuable websites providing good and helpful information being blocked. BT have launched their own filter, and it covers a much, much wider set of sites: those that show pornography (and we still don't have a legal definition of exactly what this is), refer to illegal drugs, those that promote self harm, the ability to block nudity, social networking and gaming for example. It's also possible to block access to sex education sites and search engines.

Now, you may well say that there's no real issue with that, but what's also getting blocked are sites such as bishUK, which provides sexual advice to teenagers, and Edinburgh Women's rape and sexual abuse centre which is blocked as 'pornographic'. Sexual Health Scotland, Doncaster Domestic Abuse Service, and Reducing the Risk of Domestic Violence are also blocked.   Now, we could write this off as collateral damage - mistakes do occur and they can always be put right. That's true, but it may be too late for some people who need information there and then; saying 'oops, sorry' to an abused person isn't terribly effective. But let's look further - the BT filters supported blocking "sites where the main purpose is to provide information on subjects such as respect for a partner, abortion, gay and lesbian lifestyle, contraceptive, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy." According to the New Statesman, BT has now removed the words 'gay and lesbian', which is rather too little, too late. Does this mean that filters have changed? The reference was gone overnight, and BT are using a third party to produce their filters, so I'm doubtful that much has changed, other than the wording.

Who created the list of 'gay and lesbian' lifestyle sites? Why? What control is there over such discriminatory organisations, and who thought it was a good idea to do it in the first place? This is not collateral damage - this is a deliberate attempt to block access to perfectly legal and acceptable material. Once there is a process in place to block access to material - of any sort - it's far too easy to extend its use into any subject area. Of course, if it's done by a private company that we can't control, the Government can wash its hands; 'nothing to do with us guv'.

However, there is a vague solution in the form of a Google Chrome extension called 'Go Away Cameron'. This doesn't keep a list of blocked sites, it can simply be activated if and when you run up against a blocked site. Clicking the bookmarklet unblocks the site, allowing you to view it.  The extension is a private proxy service, which isn't illegal to use, but it does require a level of trust with the person providing it, since the extension needs to access Chrome's tabs and browing activities, but since just about all of us don't have that many issues with people like Google and Bing watching what we're doing, that's not a real problem. The real problem is a Government that wants to set up an infrastructure that allows state censorship at any level, at any time through the backdoor method of unregulated service providers.

Why blocking pornography is an offense against all of us

I've just been interviewed on Radio 5 about the Prime Ministers idea on saving us all from pornography by making it an opt-in system. The insanity behind this idea leaves me entirely speechless, but I will do my best to overcome that and tell you why I think it's not only a bad idea, but it's an offense against all of us, regardless of if we do or don't look at pornography.

The idea is that that ISP's will have to contact people to ask if they want to opt into a system. I don't even understand what that means - does this mean that what we type is going to be filtered when it reaches the ISP? Does it mean that certain sites will be blacklisted? Does it mean that certain images are going to blocked from reaching us? Let's look at each possibility in turn. Who defines what a 'bad' word is? This is particularly important if you are a medical librarian for example - the chances are that perfectly acceptable terms are going to be blocked. If it's done on a word by word basis are we going to end up with - as we did in with AOL in the 90's - people in Scunthorpe being unable to search for their location. If we're having a banned word list, people will just make up new words. If sites are blacklisted, what about the 600 new sites that come online *every minute*. Who is going to be responsible for checking them? If certain images are blocked, this might be done on the basis of the amount of flesh available (it is possible to do this), which means the innocent shots of you and your partner on the beach might be blocked.

There are already filtering systems available - search engines have them by default. You can add filtering software yourself if you want to protect your children. The woman from the (I think) NSPCC was complaining that it was 'too difficult' for parents to do it. If parents are capable of buying a computer and setting it up, they're capable of installing software that is designed to be easy to do just that. How insulting - how insulting to assume that it's too complicated for people to do. And, if it is, then parents need to damn well step up to the plate and learn how to use the computer in their household. They either care enough about their children's safety to do something about it, or they don't. Why should your choice be taken away from you because of them? And it's not about watching porn at all - it's about having the *choice* to watch it. There's already another filtering system in place - you. If you don't want to look at porn, don't look for it; that's the opt-in system there already. And if you're concerned about seeing images that you don't want, put your own filters on, or use those provided by search engines.

The next problem - sites that are perfectly acceptable and widely used which have pornographic content, such as Flickr. Does opting out mean that you can't look at Flickr? If you can still look at Flickr, you're still going to be able to look at pornography without typing in any words that are going to be blocked. And if words are blocked - do you really want to have a system where an ISP is checking every single word that you write?

Extreme imagery will continue unabaited, despite all of these blocks, because they will come through bit torrent sites or via encryption or private bulletin boards. This ridiculous idea won't help with any of that. Cameron is also talking about 'images of rape'. Again, I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. If it's photographs of a real rape, this is going to be covered under existing laws. If it's images depicting rape scenarios, then we're going to find that we can't watch a lot of films - Straw Dogs comes to mind for example. Does this mean that a movie website can or will be coming under the blocked list? Even if you have no interest in looking at this type of material, but you want to watch movies, is that going to mean you have to opt in, just to watch the other films you want to see?

The really big screaming hypocrisy here of course is that it's apparently a bad thing to see two people physically loving each other, but it's perfectly acceptable to watch their heads being blown off. Not a word about violence at all! If we're going to be adversely affected by pornography, aren't we also going to be affected by violent imagery? You can't really go down one route without going down both. And this is another reason why this is an offence to all of us - are we really saying that we're so weak willed that watching porn or violent imagery is going to make us go out and do it ourselves? Actually, most of us have this thing called 'respect for other people'. Sure - child murderers have got child abuse images on their systems - anyone who is going to kill a child has issues that run a lot deeper than looking at images, and it can easily be argued that they'll use whatever material they can - including Mothercare catalogues - to justify to themselves that they're ok in doing what they do. Are we all to be tarred with the same brush? Apparently we are. Here's the thing - Cameron thinks you might abuse a child. He thinks, if you're a bloke, that you might rape someone because you've looked at porn. If that doesn't make you angry, it damn well should.

If Cameron is actually interested in reducing either instances of extreme pornography, or particularly child abuse images, why has the funding to CEOPS been cut? He's bleating on about how terrible this stuff is (and yes, he's absolutely right to), but he doesn't actually want to do anything about it himself. He's expecting Google et al to do the work for him. They're already doing a lot. He's expecting ISPs to do it - where do they get the money? That's right, they're going to get it off you and I by increasing subscriptions.

That's not what this is all about though. It's another attempt to get government controls onto the internet. The woman from the NSPCC was most enlightening here... Nicky Campbell said to her - and I'm paraphrasing - 'what about violent material?' She was very up for that too - she wanted to ban that as well. Where does this stop? I don't want to go all thin end of the wedge here, but if this is enacted, what could happen next? What if we get a government that doesn't like gays? It does happen; look at the Tory party. With a structure in place, it's going to be easy to force people to opt into anything a government doesn't like or wants to control.

So you see, it's not about if you watching pornography or not. It's about the right to chose to watch material that is at stake. It's about a government, under the usual 'we must protect the children' mantra to control the rest of us.  And I'll bet any money that you like that there will be a surreptitious linking of  the freedom to search for material and perverts looking for porn. I can see it already 'oh no, you're really interested in freedom of thought and expression, that's just a cover for the fact that you want to look at pornography.' Adults should be able to make adult decisions for themselves, and parents have to take responsibility for their children.

Staying private and protected online

Unless you live under a rock, you'll know all about PRISM, the NSA's global data surveillance program. Added to that is the ghost at the monitor of the Draft Communications Data Bill, which is refusing to die, and may well make a come back at any point in the not too distant future. I'm not going to go into details about exactly what these things are; I've linked to some Wikipedia data about them, but I do want to discuss some of the things that you need to take into account both now, and potentially into the future regarding the data that you're sharing and methods you can use to make sure that you don't.

When you do just about anything on the internet, it can be tracked by someone and stored. This includes your internet searches, the adverts you click on, the mail that you read and send, your Facebook data (even if you have privacy options all turned on), phone calls made using Skype, anything you do on other social networks, Twitter accounts (even protected accounts are not secure), chat room messaging, online games that you play and the interactions you have on them, internet access via a smart tv or games console. Online transactions using PayPal, searching and checking for places on maps, cloud based storage, instant messaging, video conferencing, photograph sharing, document collaboration and more. Concerned? Yes, you should be. Now, some people say that 'if you're innocent you've got nothing to fear' but that's an entirely bogus argument. This type of survellance implies that we are all potential suspects in criminal activities, terrorism or worse, and we should object to that.

So, what can you do about it? You can find out what the government or any public body knows about you by submitting a Freedom of Information request. You can hide or disable your location on a mobile phone, remove yourself from the Electoral roll or check to see if you've been caught on camera, under the terms of the Data Protection Act and request to see footage of yourself. You can obviously do a lot more, and the Living off the grid site (though US biased) is an interesting place to get ideas. However, I'm more interested in the computer side of things, so that's what I'll focus on.

Browsing. Every site that you visit leaves a trace behind you, and it is held byr your internet service provider. You can overcome this by using a proxy - your browsing then gets scrambled, letting you conduct your business privately. Hide My Ass is a proxy service that lets you do just that. It's worth visiting the site because it explains in some detail exactly what it is, and what it does in easy none technical terms. Furthermore, dump Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari, and start using Firefox or Tor. If that's not possible there are add-ons that you can install, such as HTTPS Everywhere, which is a  Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. You can find out more about how to fix tracking by taking a look at the very informative site put together by DuckDuckGo. It goes into great detail about scripts, cookies and so on, which I don't have the space or time to cover here. You could also use a 'Do not track' add-on and you can see what sites are tracking and can prevent it.

Searching. Forget the main stream engines, and head over to DuckDuckGo. Meanwhile traffic at the private search engines StartPage and Ixquick has dramatically increased this week as Internet users react to news of the PRISM data sharing program.

Emails. Use a tool called Mailvelope which is a browser add on for Chrome (Firefox shortly) that works with major email systems, and it lets you send encrypted email. You can also use a fake or temporary email address such as Trashmail which you can use to set up an email address which forwards mail to your real address, and can then delete itself. Alternatively use any of a number of temporary email addresses - I've got lists of them on my other blog which looks at tools and resources. Don't use Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo! Mail, but rather go for something like Bitmessage, or if you want something a bit simpler, Mozilla Thunderbird. You might also want to take a look at StartMail which is due to come onstream later this year.

Downloading. If you want to download material and ensure that both your privacy and location remain personal try out BTGuard (not related to BT) which gives you an anonymous IP address and encrypts your downloads. Alternatively, take a look at the OpenNIC project which works in a similar way.

Encryption. It's not as scary as it sounds since it's all automated for you, but it does allow you to store content safely and securely, if you're using things like Dropbox, Google Drive or Skydrive. BoxCryptor can keep your online files secure and Cryptocat encrypts any chats that you have in chatrooms. You could also use GNU privacy to encrypt and sign your data and communications.

Cloud storage. Speaking of cloud storage, try OwnCloud, or the strangely named Tahoe-lafs system.

Social networking. Forget all the big players such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and try Diaspora* instead.

That's just a few thoughts and ideas but it's just for starters. You can get more suggestions from Opt out of PRISM which illustrates what services you can trust and those that you can't. Also, the current issue (399) of ComputerActive magazine in the UK is another really good read, and I drew heavily on both sources to put this post together.

 

Related articles

Increasing your privacy in a non-private Internet

Staying Anonymous Online: Screw You CMS, PRISM

PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

DynaComm filtering is rubbish

Filtering systems - if they're going to work really do need to work properly. A friend of mine recently informed me that my site was banned at her place of work because it was deemed by their filtering software as a personals/dating site. Futuresoft, the producers of the i:filter software in question say of themselves "Managing and controlling corporate internet resources is fast and easy with DynaComm i:filter 8.0. The new graphical interface provides administrators quick access to real-time system information, as well as the ability to easily modify or create web filtering policies with a minimum of effort." I took a look for myself and sure enough:

The incompetence of these people is really worrying. I'll be interested in their response to me. If they can actually be bothered.

60+ Fake and spoof websites

I've updated the pages on my site that deal with science spoofs, commercial fake sites  and social, political, historical, news, religious, travel and educational spoof and fake sites. I know from the feedback that I get that these sites are well used, so I have deleted the few that no longer work and I have added some more in. There are now a total of 61 sites split between the two pages. It's not a complete listing, and it's just my personal choice, but you might be interested in them.

They're primarily designed as a teaching aid, but some of them are very amusing indeed, if you have that sort of a mind!

INFOdocket

Many of you will, I'm sure, know Gary Price - either through being fortunate enough to listen to one of his talks, or through the site 'ResourceShelf'. I've known Gary for rather too many years for either of us to comfortably remember, and he's one of a number of people who I will bow down in front of and say 'I'm not worthy!' Believe me, if Gary doesn't know something about the net, it's because it's not important.

I'm really pleased therefore to bring your attention to INFOdocket which is a new venture that he and his partner Shirl Kennedy are running. The subtitle of the site is 'Information Industry News + New Web Sites and Tools'. There's always something worth reading on the site and it comes complete with handy RSS feed as well. If you want to keep up to date with what's going on in the information/library world, this is a must read.

Internet precautions

This is just a quick post with a few quick thoughts and reminders on staying safe while you're online. I'm blogging this as a friend on Facebook had a concern that they had been asked to reset their password on Facebook and was having problems as a result.I thought I'd just pass on a few things to remember - hopefully you can just tick them off in your mind, but reminders are always a good thing.

1. If you get an email from someone like eBay or Facebook do not automatically assume that it's from them. It's very easy to spoof email addresses, and while Gmail is pretty good at picking this up and alerting users, not all email packages are as good. Ask yourself if this is common practice for this particular website to contact you in this fashion. If it's not, be doubly on your guard.

2. If there's a link embedded in the email, do NOT click on it. Again, it's really easy to fake this, and simply because you think the link will take you to the site that you expect, it's not necessarily the case. Hover your mouse over the link and check the bottom left hand corner of the browser (if you're using Firefox) and see what the URL actually is.

3. If you do click on a link, even if you think you've gone to eBay, Facebook, PayPal etc, check the URL of the site in the address bar at the top of the screen - if it's not what you're expecting, just close the window down. Scammers will do their level best to ensure that the page they create is as exact a match as possible to the original site, including linking to images from that site.

4. If you are asked for your password details or any other personal information it's unlikely in the extreme that this has come from a legitimate site. Do not provide this information.

5. Even if you are fairly sure that the communication is genuine, open up a new tab or window and type in the URL of the site yourself. It'll only take a few more seconds and is a safer way of working. If there's a problem with your account in any way you'll find out soon enough.

6. If you're going to a secure site such as your bank or PayPal, check the URL to see if it starts with https:// and if there is a padlock symbol that's displayed in the browser (usually bottom right corner).

7. Do not panic! Scammers are banking on the fact that you'll act in haste without thinking things through. However important the email seems to be, however dire the emergency, close the email, get a cup of coffee, talk to a colleague or friend and *think* about the email. Is it really likely that your bank will have contacted you like this? Have they ever done so before?

8. Take a copy of the email, open a new window, go to your bank site, PayPal etc, find the contact details and cut and paste the email you've received into the email and ask if it's genuine. They really won't mind you asking.

9. Do not worry about looking stupid or being an idiot. You'll look a lot more of an idiot if you lose money or your account is hacked.

10. If in doubt at all, change your password on the site. Then change it again a couple of minutes later, just to be sure. Go to the website directly each time. Sure, it's a pain, but it's a lot less of a pain than trying to get your account back.

11. Set up a shadow email account. Ensure that all the email you get sent to your main account is copied and sent onto the second account, though of course, this may not be possible with work emails. That way you'll still have copies of all emails sent to you in case you've deleted them by accident.

Hopefully those few pointers will help keep you safe when you're online. Most importantly, do not panic. Unlike spilling a cup of coffee, matters will not be improved if you act quickly - quite the opposite in fact.

Rockmelt social browser

I'm usually quite hard to impress when it comes to social media, browsers and so on. I'd seen the hype about Rockmelt and was quite keen to try it out. I have to say that from an initial 10 minute play, I think it's great, and Firefox is going to have to run in order to keep up. Having said that, let's take a bit of a look at it. 

It's called 'social' for a reason, as both sides of the browser are reserved for your friends and contacts, with the main part of the screen available for displaying pages. This does mean that more scrolling is required, but not a great deal (but I can close either side if necessary.) This is what the thing looks like:


On the left hand side of the screen are a listing of friends which it has taken (with permission) from Facebook. You can toggle this with a listing of all your friends who are online at the moment. Above we have the usual menu/tabbing system, and it quickly and effectively imported all my bookmarks from Firefox. Interestingly it didn't ask about Chrome or IE. On the right hand side of the screen are RSS feeds from favourite sites, which can very quickly be added with a mouse click. 

If I want to see what is happening in my social circle, I can just click on a feed: 

I can quickly share, retweet or reply without having to go to the website. If I want to share a link that I've found, it's as easy as clicking on the 'share' option at the top of the screen, and choosing the social media resource that I want to share it with - Facebook or Twitter. 

If I cant to catch up with specific friends, I can choose a friend and see what they've posted recently:

Chatting to someone within Rockmelt is also very easy. Click on their name, open up a dialogue box and then chat with them if they're online, send them a Facebook message or post to their wall:

I can't yet see a way of tweeting to them, and I'd like to have more ways of contacting that individual other than Facebook. While the see the obvious value of Facebook in being a primary resource, there are others out there which it would also be useful to integrate with; Twitter and LinkedIn being obvious examples. 

When you open a new tab Rockmelt displays a list of most visited sites, recently closed tabs and your history, which is really helpful. Search is really nice as well. Click on the search option, top right and get a list of results, which you can scroll through as necessary. 

However, we're not finished yet, since I can either open up the results into the main browser page, or I can simply click on each result as well, getting it to load. So much for Google's preview option that I mentioned yesterday. What you can't see from the screenshot though is just how lightening fast this is. I clicked, it displayed instantly, I clicked again and it changed pages instantly. This is really starting to impress me now, and I did promise myself that I wouldn't say 'Rockmelt rocks!' but y'know - it actually does. Another thing that I liked about search is that if I start typing my search Rockmelt also inserts the names of my friends as well, so I can quickly go to the profiles that Rockmelt displays for me on the screen. 

I have much more playing around to do with this browser, but I'm already starting to wonder about making it my default browser instead of Firefox. It's smart, effective, easy to use, simple to install, integrates nicely and is well thought out. Excellent so far!

YouTube: Really bad advertising

I've seen some bad and badly placed adverts in my time, but this one over at YouTube is the worst.

I was alerted to it by DigitalMaverick who expressed some surprise about it, and I can only agree. It doesn't look like an advert on first quick site - I think it's specifically designed to confuse people into thinking that YouTube is asking for their details - particularly since the Betfair advert appears below and to the right - it's only the tiny 'Close Ad' option top right of Mr Thug that gives it away. I wonder how many people have been conned into this. If you put your details in you're then invited to press play to hear Andy Gray's tips (the previously referred to Mr Thug - sorry Andy, but really!).

Very poor show YouTube, and as for Betfair - I won't be using your services thanks very much.

Yes, but what's your real name?

There was an interesting article on the BBC website recently called Blizzard backs down over gamers using real names.The basics of the story are that the World of Warcraft people (Blizzard) wanted gamers to use their real names on forums. After a hail of fury, during which there were 50,000 comments on 2,500 pages they've now changed their minds.

I really wonder what 'real name' actually means. Is it your birthname, name you were christened (in whatever religion) with, full name or first and last? What if you're known by a shortened version (like me?). What if your name is 'John Smith'? Why is 'Jane Brown' a better name than 'Aramanthe Wolfsbane'? Names are just identifiers, and they work within the specific confines of the environment. The problem occurs when you move that person from one arena to another, and I'm seeing this happen most often at the moment with Twitter, as people struggle to introduce themselves. There's certainly lots of people who I 'know' by their Twitter names, and that works perfectly well for me.

I first started doing stuff online back in the late 1980s and I didn't use my 'real name' - I used a name from a science fiction book, and for years, that's how plenty of people knew me - and even today there are many people who would struggle if they had to call me anything else. It never caused a problem, and even within a 'real live' world it was not an issue.

As long as someone can be identified in some way, within the confines of that social grouping, for me, that works. The problem comes when it becomes necessary to relate what's being said in an online forum to what happens elsewhere - if someone who can't be identified starts referring to their experiences and making claims about 'the real world' it's fairly meaningless. I'm also aware that terms like 'the real world' and 'the virtual world' have less and less credibility these days. Of course 'anon' is even worse, and I do wonder why anyone would assume that they'd be taken seriously when it's not possible to identify them at all.

I suspect that over time the whole name thing is going to be less important, and it's going to be one of the side effects of things like Twitter - since we can only ever have one 'Jane Brown' people will become more inventive, and I suspect that if you call yourself 'Aramanthe Wolfsbane' that could actually provide rather more information. (I should point out that's a name I plucked out of the air, and I don't personally known anyone who uses that name, but if it's yours, and you found this post via searching, I'd love to have your opinion on names!)