Quote Originally Posted by gagged_Louise View Post
Jimmy Wales, founder/head of Wikipedia called the proposed program "absolutely ridiculous". Now, WP has some silliness of its own to handle, but I think he's right on the money here. It *is* a horseshit move, and political grandstanding designed to take people's eyes off other things.
Wikipedia is an important example in itself, in fact - even the existing CleanFeed system (which has filtered out all known child pornography since 2003, and Cameron seems to have overlooked) managed to filter Wikipedia by mistake recently, due to a single image (the cover of an album, as it happens).

That's a system designed just to block specific images - rare* ones, which the relevant law enforcement body is actively searching for and cataloguing with millions of pounds of funding. Now try broadening that to block "adult" content, which is not rare and not catalogued by law enforcement.

Worse, Three (one of the four mobile networks in the UK) admitted their "adult content" filter blocks customer access to political content, not just pornographic. If you don't want the boobs, you can't have the blogs either. They aren't alone in this: at least one library filter blocked out articles disputing Cameron's agenda.

The whole crazy crusade was set in motion by an MP named Claire Perry, who claims she was inspired to do this by a Google Image search which turned up results she didn't like. She doesn't seem to have taken on board that (a) Google Image searches are already filtered by Google Safesearch by default (so, either the filters she advocate had failed, or she had turned them off anyway), (b) Google searches can go over HTTPS, which is not accessible to the network filters she advocates anyway - and (c) the search she describes doesn't turn up the results she describes, filters or no filters.

She did hold some "hearings" about this, but invited a tabloid agony aunt and the vendors of two filtering products to contribute. The preliminary research showed parents are perfectly well aware of filtering options and have made informed decisions if and how to use them, but apparently this isn't enough for her or her vendor friends.

(* - they find just over one image per week in the UK, from the figures the agency's boss posted recently. How many 'adult' images do you think the UK alone generates in a week?)