End well, this won't: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs England's children's commissioner has urged the government to shut down one of the most obvious loopholes in its new age-blocking regime: kids firing up a VPN. malware attack UK govt dept website that campaigns against encryption hijacked to advertise ... payday loans READ MORE In a report published today [PDF], Dame Rachel …
The proble isn't kiddies using VPN, is people using VPN. The idea is to make ISP building infrastructure to block certain kind of traffic and then use it to block other unrelated kind of traffic.
By the way I remember when to connect to Internet I had to dial up to a VAX server and then launch ppp into the unix shell. And going back in the time I remember that as a teenager I got porn in pure analog form, on VHS tapes, and sometimes on TV. Either those politicians when they were teen, were too idiot to know how to get skin flicks, or they know their electors are so dumb that weren't capable to find porn, or they have an hidden agenda and fight terrorists excuse doesn't work very well nowadays.
The problem isn't VPN, the problem is people accepting the choices made by a select few people who have been given power. Power that can, and should, be revoked at this time but people are simply acquiescing to their decisions and sitting quietly instead of marching on the streets and asking for their [proverbial] heads.
The public doesn't have to accept this but they / you seemingly are fine with doing so. Make demands, such as either a demand for her resignation or an entirely new election, and maybe you'll get them to actually listen rather than dictate.
The petition to get this idiot law revoked suggests the people aren't as accepting as you think.
Okay, 450,000 signatures last I heard, but then I'd not heard of the petition until then, so.... signal boost?
Current feelings on this VPN move is it's more of the same government censorship and spying on the public. The more they normalise this 'age verification', the easier it'll be to introduce compliance audits: Have sites prove they're compliant by showing the verification results, to then show who is accessing the site.
How true any of this is: Can't really say, save this is more likely more government distraction so people aren't paying attention to other matters. Like: Where's all the money going now?
"on VHS tapes, and sometimes on TV."
For me, it was usually delivered on 3.5" disks (Yes, floppy in name). Long while ago now, but ISTR some of the GIF89a animated porn and some of the custom 'video' player programs hadn't accounted for CPU clock speed changes, meaning that toggling the PC's "Turbo" button to high speed, mid-watch, meant that the poor guy on screen started to work *really* hard and fast.
I was working nights early in my career, and some of my colleagues would occasionally bring in tapes and a camcorder. We'd hook the CV output of the camcorder to a CRT monitor that was part of a test rig and ...... discover that it's a bizarre experience to watch acrobatic shagging on a green-screen monitor with long phosphor persistence.
Fun times:-)
We had a security guard occasionally bring in tapes and play on one of the VHS players with monitors we had in our data center in the basement when he was on night shift. This might seem like a relatively harmless thing; if not for the fact that we were a cable TV provider and those VHS players were hooked into the override for our barker channel, so everything played on them went straight out to our customers. It wasn't until the third or fourth time that our customer service were met with comments about the amount of "adult content" we were putting broadcasting that they started investigating and found what was going on. This was Sweden in the late 1990s, so adult content on broadcast TV was usually limited to Friday and Saturday only, midnight until 2am, on two pretty expensive movie channels.
Decades ago there was a large Australian TV station where the people in Master Control decided to watch some of their porn late one night (as usual), except this time they made a switching error and it went out to the broadcast line. That lasted some minutes. Oops.
I remember one of my first jobs was interning at a video production company (TV commercials, corporate work, etc). I was amazed at the hardcore stuff they would put on the TV in the lunchroom while everyone was chowing down food. To my surprise, very few of the women turned away at the door when they saw what was showing.
These days we have HR departments.
Holy Shit, you mean I am not the only ancient on the Internet who remembers the amazing TURBO button. I once read that something line 90% of them were only hooked to power so the red LED would show when you pushed the button. Many many moons ago I started out on the help desk and had a collogue who when users would call in and complain about mainframe slowness would tell them to wait a minute while he pushed the "Overdrive" button on the mainframe and then would ask "does it seem faster now?" somehow it always did. ---Mule
I was talking to someone with children of their own who has had a talk with their children about what they see on the internet. I cannot imangine the utter horror of having a talk about Internet Pr0n with one (or both of your parents) whilst watching examples. She has explained that what they see in porn isn’t reality, that no one should be forced to do anything they don’t want to, and about safe sex.
She said if the kids weren’t aware of VPNs before as a way of getting round age verification, thanks to this idiot and her report they certainly will be now. She also said to her children, if you want to watch that stuff you can pay for a mobile contract and view it on your own phone don’t do it on the home internet connection please. If you need money to pay for a contract/phone, go and get a Saturday job etc.
Apple dropped the E2Ee feature altogether. That’s because the law required them to pretend to be secure while giving your data to the government without telling you. So the feature was dropped.
They always had and still have the less secure method where they had your keys, but the government needed a search warrant, Apple would tell you, and you could try to fight it in court. And importantly you are told.
Worldwide.
They demanded that Apple create a backdoor for every single Apple user in the entire world.
I don't think the Home Office realised that was what they were demanding though, because if they did they'd have known that they were also telling Tim Cook to do prison time in the US, and he'll never agree to that.
Which is why Apple withdrew the product and went to court instead.
Not true. Lawyers in the UK, for some tricky situations are by law, not allowed to defend their client fully. They are not allowed to question where the leak/hint came from. There have been non actioned cases of crown perjury, and break and enters into lawyers offices for privileged materials .
I’m sure 16-21 year olds are actually allowed to watch porn and spank the monkey/jill off. They just aren’t allowed to make any until 18.
Dame RDS needs to just fuck off and address controllables.like say the scandal of Unlicenced (and staggeringly expensive) Children’s homes epidemic or help accelerate the reintroduction of SureStart (with a new name).
The ProtectEU regulations are also still on the books and currently have a bit over 55% of the vote. We're going to get reamed one way or the other. And it's going to do absolutely fuck all for those who actually mean to do harm because they don't use the methods of communication that are getting broken by all these new laws and regulations (and it was also never the goal it seems)
I think the Encrochat bust (where criminals using encrypted handsets had all their chats intercepted by European law enforcement) has probably pushed some of the bad guys away from encrypted communications. I think other methods of swapping pron will be used (e.g. Bluetooth, USB drives, etc.)
'Without action, she warned, the government's long-awaited age verification rules risk being rendered "inadequate."'
Lol. The rules were always inadequate. They just didn't understand that. Even if the VPN thing somehow gets enacted (and ffs I really hope it won't), there will be ways round it that are accessible to any mildly savvy teenager (and therefore all of their friends).
There is only one solution: mandatory sex education for all, with no religious exemptions. And I don't mean just the "how to put a condom on a banana" sort. Discussions of (enthusiastic) consent, power imbalance/coercive control, porn, what is legal and illegal, risks (both physical and internet-based), and, yes, pleasure (shock!). All this must be included. Probably from about age 8 (although obvs. with age-appropriate adjustments of language and content). That's the only way to prepare kids for what they will, at some point, inevitably encounter.
meet the NHS nut.
There will only be one winner. IMHO, the Gov will ban VPN's and then cry as major businesses leave the country. Most large firms only allow remote access to their networks via a VPN. No access means bye-bye starmer.
Our current GOV and all those over the past ten years are/were full of useless twats who have no idea about the real world. Cocksuckers the lot of them.
Let's not pretend it's just the current Gov, because whoever is next in won't bin this nonsense and safe to say the last lot had a hand in crafting it too.
What they should have done was require ISPs to provide adult filters with a parental override available if required, because they might want to loom at adult sites themselves and that doesn't necessarily mean porn - gambling is a major issue for some but many people in the UK like an annual punt on the Grand National for example. That of course puts the responsibility on the parents, where IMO it should b, but some will still moan that it's the Gov's responsibility to avoid taking any of their own.
That also bakes the age verification of the person with access to turn the filters on or off with the ID verification of having the account in the first place, but that would make far too much sense.
That also bakes the age verification of the person with access to turn the filters on or off with the ID verification of having the account in the first place, but that would make far too much sense.
That would be the account holder who, by definition, is over 18 (there may be some wiggle room for 16-17 year olds to be the account holder, but het, what a couple of years between friends, eh?)
But they already have exactly that! https://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband/help/isp-web-blocking-filters
This adds to the farce!
I guess it was easier politically(?!) for them to try to get all the websites to check rather than extend the number of UK ISP's that had to use this.
Or probably, one side of government doesn't know what another side is doing.
Or even more probably, this older scheme doesn't provide enough tracking data on us.
"I guess it was easier politically(?!) for them to try to get all the websites to check rather than extend the number of UK ISP's that had to use this."
Blame culture on both sides. The parents are happy because the responsibility to deal with it isn't on them, and the government and the ISPs have shifted it to the nasty websites hosting the disgusting filth (you know, tractor websites for MPs to look at for example) so it's not their problem either. Then they can say they've done something about it and blame someone else when it's a shitshow. Which it is. And they are.
"What they should have done was require ISPs to provide adult filters with a parental override available if required"
I've been saying for a while now that money should have been spent on educating parents on how to use content filters and keeping a watchful eye on what their kids are doing online. I'm invariably shouted down on the socials by the "we must protect children online" mob who, for the most part, wouldn't have a clue about the technological aspects of this law and have wholesale bought into the government lie that if you're anti-OSA, you must be in favour of not protecting kids. It seems that many parents from non-tech professions would prefer the government to protect their kids, and everything that entails, than take responsibility themselves.
And not forgetting, of course, that most of the parents of these children who need protecting also themselves grew up using the Web and so should be at least partially familier with how it works, how blocks work and how to get around them. Many probably by-passed the filters themselves at school.
nah most of them being the ones who stopped going to school well before 16, picked on any kids deemed remotely "nerdy" and spent as much time smoking and disrupting lessons as possible and the ones to whom a book is near literal kryptonite unless its some dirge with small words
OpenVPN isn’t going to implement age verification. Tor isn’t going to implement age verification and it’s fast enough for 480p videos, more than enough pixels when it’s “forbidden” to look at in the first place. This means even if Tor stopped working tomorrow, children will simply spin up DigitalOcean droplets, IONOS VMs etc. using very simple how to guides, only powering them up as/when necessary…and when they do, they’ll be even less “safe” online than they were before. IONOS and DigitalOcean aren’t going to be gatekeeping their howtos for setting up Linux VMs with a dial-in OpenVPN server, and unrelated websites telling people to rent VMs to run one’s own VPN services to dodge age checks aren’t themselves VPN providers and thus aren’t subject to the OSA.
Age verification is obviously unworkable though. Am I going to be required to prove my age every time I connect to my work VPN? And presumably periodically to ensure nobody else is using it? Show my passport or driving license to the department of government inspection? If not, then all a child needs to do is get the adult to install the VPN for them. Given that a lot of VPN software works "silently", does this mean that UK.gov is going to make vendors of operating systems force "updates" onto everyone in the UK? That's mote than a little Orwellian.
thats the point - streeting sees the chance to line his pockets from the carve of the nhs (given he's a self confessed "working class tory" who only joined labour as the conservatives "stigmatised single parent families" so in other words you threw a strop and trounced off to labour determined to turn them into another tory party then?
Today: all users should age-verify to use a VPN (think of the children!). Legitimate businesses the length of Britain will have to comply if this became law and will certainly have to spend yet more money on red tape that gives them no discernable advantage in the marketplace.
Tomorrow: gubbermint realise proxy use goes up. By Friday, there'll be calls to age-verify all proxy use. By next Friday, they'll want to age-verify anyone wanting to connect to a VPC. Then someone figures out that pron and other dangerous things - say, ideas about injecting yourself with bleach - can be sent as email and ideas about age-verifying that will then get banded about.
Next up someone will say "Hold on: Think of the childrenTM: We really should age-verify every user who does anything on the internet" - and there we go. Welcome to the brave new world.
Funnel money to tax-shy multinational corporations, squeeze workers, crush SMEs. That's Labour.
They are so paranoid about consequences of asset stripping, they want to listen for any signs of dissent.
and that's fascism.
They have nothing to do with CCP, apart from desire to implement mass surveillance.
The label matters. Open fascists at least admit what they are. Labour wraps itself in the language of socialism while governing like a corporate enforcer. That deception is the real poison: workers still think Labour is on their side while their wages are siphoned to prop up monopolies. SMEs are bled dry, not by accident, but because their skilled people are more useful as cheap labour once their businesses collapse. It’s asset-stripping dressed up as 'progressive policy'.
Fascism and capitalism (the type where a tiny minority use their wealth to get everyone else's wealth) are two sides of the same coin. One of the defining features of the Third Reich was the integration of corporatism and government, the slave labour camps were used to provide unwilling labour to big industries, the best-known examples being I.G. Farben, Krupp, Siemens, Daimler-Benz, and Volkswagen (according to a very quick internet search). Don't be fooled by the name, neoliberalism is "liberal" only in the lack of regulation of its exploitation, as an economic model, it is entirely fascistic.
Correct, have a cigar.
I can see the future; "The People's Democratic Republic of Angles" where Prime Minister Elect (Keir Farage-Badenoch-Davey) got 100% of the vote. "Oi you, dissenter, that's you geo-fenced to within 1 mile of your home and try using your digital id to spend your CBDC in the corner shop now and you'll be dissappointed. You can rely on charity and scratching in the dirt".
https://www.flubu.com/comics/DilbertHo.906.gif
From Jan 23, 1996, before we knew what Scott Adams was really like.
ALT text:
It's a three panel comic.
First panel: Dilbert sits in front of a desktop PC, typing. Dogbert looks on. Dilbert proclaims, "I'm inventing a new technology to prevent kids from seeing smut on the Internet."
Second panel: Dogbert replies, "So, you're pitting your intelligence against the collective sex drive of all the teenagers who own computers?"
Third panel: Dilbert angrily retorts, "What is your point?" Dogbert, tail wagging, responds, "Did you know that if you put a little hat on a snowball it can last a long time in hell?"
This post has been deleted by its author
I was hopeful, when the Labour Party got in, that the kakistocracy would come to an end. Alas, Labour seem to be continuing where the Tories left off.
They haven’t even had the decency to reply to my emails about (amongst other things) the idiocy of breaking end to end encryption. Not so much as a pre-prepared response. No luck with paper letter follow up either.
They won’t listen to experts - but they will be persuaded by greasy orange turds in the states. That’s no way to run a government.
So you know what? F-em. Membership cancelled. They won’t be seeing any more of my money.
... and better still would more often than not agree with a sensible argument and get an answer from the correct minister (that's where the canned reply would come from). Then my MP got moved on to be a minister and had no time left for our constituency and so was dropped at the last election.
Now the interesting thing is what is used to frighten them, carrot and stick I expect. "Do as you're told and we'll ensure you become rich, don't and the skeletons in the cupboard will be made public, still holding onto your integrity - careful you don't want a sudden heart attack/stoke/cancer do you? Still not convinced, nice kids, be a real shame ..."
Sounds far fetched, one or two claim they have been threatened. Perhaps lies but power corrupts.
There's a room ... it has 101 on the door ..though of course it doesn't need to physically exist to be effective ..
But you're right, something definitely does happen to newly appointed Home Secretaries that changes them permanently
Governments come and go, the Civil Service stays. In this case the Home Office. Destroying privacy has been their policy for decades. Do not expect a change until we get a minister with technical nous prepared to resist their house training - and house training ministers is what they do best.
If you expected anything else you haven't been paying attention for the whole of the current century.
The problem is that Labour is still, as someone else pointed out elsewhere on t'Internet (might've been here), chasing the vote instead of getting on and governing. The shrill 'but the children' screams (and of course the glee with which the paper media are poking the bear) just serve to distract Labour from getting on with their previously decent socialist agenda. But - you now have to ask yourself whether the 'down the middle of the road' Labour that everyone hoped Starmer & Co would turn out to be has actually shifted right the way Momentum accused Labour of in the Tory years.
Chasing after the Reform vote (because that's what it's really about, trying to head off Reform from getting any more seats) is going to end in tears because those who voted Labour in to boot out the Tories will not forgive the 'treachery' (similar to the LibDem post-Coalition election bollocking) and go for parties that *will* pander to them. And Reform is already rubbing its hands because it's waiting for the disillusioned to come to Papa Fartrage (only to get shafted and again being disappointed).
I despair at the neverending repeats of history... just with different colours/flags on the mast.
It's very easy to say "they are all the same," or to fall into the trap this creates of attempting to forcing you to defend the indefensible actions of one person before you are allowed to criticise another. Thought-terminating clichés like this are not helpful at all in a rational discussion.
Yes, the problem with politics is that it is dominated by politicians, but some of them are way more dangerous than others, and attempting to point this out, and tackle the very real problem it creates should not be met with dismissal. If anything, it should be met instead with the response of "yes, this person is corrupt, and so is this other person, I'll tackle that problem, while you tackle this one". It is possible for there to be more than one problem, and for them to be dealt with independently and simultaneously.
Farage is a huge problem in terms of the basic fundamental rights enjoyed by you and me, his rhetoric (and those of the many like him) is straight out of the German 1930s playbook. We should be closely examine who is funding this, as well as countering the spittle-flecked hate-filled rhetoric with actual facts. This isn't to say that Starmer isn't also hopelessly pandering to the same interests, in a different way. Guess what? We should tackle that as well, but we should never use the existence of one problem to dismiss another. That is just pure abdication of responsibility as a human being.
SO who the hell is there left worth voting for?
I won't waste my vote but other than the LibDems I really can't think of anyone else worth while unless Lord Sutch and his Monster Raving Looney party put up a candidate. Sadly around here it is the majority vote always goes to Lab or Con....or at least it used to as Reform did far too well in the last locals...so maybe the LibDems DO stand a chance now!
The LDs have never stood much chance. They've typically collected the protest votes from Tory or Labour voters who couldn't bring themselves to go all the way to the other side, but now Tory and Labour are much the same, the LDs are to the left of Labour and Farage is collecting the populist protest vote because people really don't care anymore.
They are not the Labour Party you remember. Same for the Tories. All the parties have been infiltrated by this bloody psychopathic globalist anti-human agenda. All of them are pushing towards dystopia & absolute disaster for us, not them. It'll go wrong for them of course but not without unimaginable damage unless people wake up very quickly and scream NO.
"Similarweb reported that Pornhub saw a 47 per cent drop in British traffic after the law"
When people use VPN's to access it from another country you will see such a drop. How have viewing figures been affected at all?
This gov is malicious. No way is there enough stupidity to accidentally act against their own country as much as they are achieving.
Ok, so pornhub has age checks and sees a drop in traffic from an endpoint obviously in the UK. Is anyone (pornhub, for example) measuring a drop in total traffic or is there a mysterious rise in traffic from other countries that pretty much balances the UK drop?
Also, are all porn sites implementing age checks, or just the big ones? Perhaps the youth of the UK are busy swapping the names of sites that don't block.
It's not only pornographic video websites that have to implement age checks, also blogs with adult text content. And some (with creators based in the UK) just block the UK entirely, because the OSA is just a major headache for the smaller players. I followed some interesting discussions on Mastodon about that. Also the way age verification is done (just let a gaming company handle everything and amass even more PII) is a hot mess (though not "hot" in a sexual sense).
Pornhub traffic going down 47% doesn't tell you anything about overall porn consumption. I'm sure there are plenty of sites that aren't implementing any sort of age checks that have seen their traffic going up.
The UK doesn't have any way to force sites to do age checks, unless they sell memberships etc. and want to be able to process cards from UK residents. But there is so much free porn out there I've never understood why anyone pays a penny for it. If the grocery store had an entire aisle filled with beer you had to pay for, then 10 aisles filled with beer that was free, how many of you would walk by all the free aisles to grab beer you had to pay for?
"I'm sure there are plenty of sites that aren't implementing any sort of age checks that have seen their traffic going up."
And if I was running any of those sites, and I had no UK connection, I'd carry on that way.
What will the government do? Add the IP to the UK ISP priacy/gambling/cp blocklist?
Hmmmm... Now if only they did that instead anyway, this bullshit wouldn't be needed https://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband/help/isp-web-blocking-filters
And how exactly are you going to manage that ?
First of all, you'd have to have the means to determine that it's a child using the VPN (because guess what ? Adults have professional reasons to use VPNs. I know that because I have a Swiss customer that requires that I join its network from Switzerland. I'm not going to drive 300km every time I need to connect to their network).
Then, you'd have to determine that "the child" is doing something that you have decided is "unwholesome". Who are you to decide what is "wholesome" ?
It is simple. Computers will need mandatory AI agents observing what you do with the computer through cameras and speakers. Most likely delivered by usual suspects. Probably brown envelopes are already in flight.
Alternatively, you'll have council issued chaperone to watch you use internet.
Make unchecked VPN use illegal. Any ISP carrying unchecked encrypted content will be liable, so they will police it. Anyone providing an unchecked service will be prosecuted. Payment providers will be liable for infringement, so they will stop processing payments for offshore VPNs.
No State technical changes are needed. The risk of prosecution (and anyone prosecuted will do time, ask Mrs Connely) will chill any commercial involvement.
You say I'm paranoid? Remember the lawsuits by Big Content? Remember how paying for AllOfMP3 suddenly became impossible?
I'm not defending this latest round of bollocks (or indeed the previous round of bollocks) but it seems obvious to me that they mean commercial VPN companies that provide a hop onto the public internet, not VPN's used form employees to connect to internal networks.
Ah, the good old days, when you had to download your porn from alt.binaries.porn.insert-fetish-of-your-choice-here using a newsreader.
The entire development of the internet has been intimately entwined with pornography* since internet access became available to the general public. It's very unlikely that anything is going to change.
* And piracy. But mostly porn.
Sex is a driver for many many technical developments. Practical photography was invented in around 1842; 3-d images of naked women were made within a couple of years...
Governments don't seem to realise that each and every person on the planet is the direct descendant of many many humans, all of whom had a deep and abiding interest in sex. Like every other animal on the planet.
Surely if all boys are put into proper all-boys schools at the age of 5 where they can be subject to healthy outdoor sports and cold showers we can keep the horrors of boobies away from their poor fragile minds ?
ps. I'm not about to google it from work - but isn't the age-of-consent/marriage age int he UK still 16 ? Seems a bit odd that you have to keep your eyes closed on your wedding night
Surely if all boys are put into proper all-boys schools at the age of 5 where they can be subject to healthy outdoor sports and cold showers we can keep the horrors of boobies away from their poor fragile minds ?
So they can go up to Cambridge and become art historians, KGB operatives and Tory ministers.
"Surely if all boys are put into proper all-boys schools at the age of 5 where they can be subject to healthy outdoor sports and cold showers we can keep the horrors of boobies away from their poor fragile minds ?"
Isn't this why there is a higher than average proportion of homosexuals amongst public school attendees and hence parliament? All pretending to be happily married and ripe for blackmail?
"Governments don't seem to realise that..."
Oh they realise it all right. But I don't think there are any historical examples of human societies that didn't try to control the plebs' access to sex.
It might have happened in pre-history (probably did, IMO) and it might have happened within some small cult that lasted less than a generation. But real societies? Nah! They've always been about controlling resources.
Old gits like me remember the pursuit of magazines and VHS tapes when they came out. It's called puberty, you suddenly get very interested in girls and sex, some say it's natural ... unbelievable. Even before puberty I remember the; you show me yours and I'll show you mine game with girls. There is an inbuilt fascination. And ... not all sex in porn is "unnatural". The far reaches are it's true byt what you're seeing is raw market forces. A better question would be why is causing some to pursue unacceptable sexual practices.
The stupidity of the UK government does now seem to be boundless.
On the BBC news this afternoon, the person said she did not want kids on snapchat to accidentally be exposed to pron.
So how does banning VPN for adult use only stop this ?
If people (kids and adults) are using a VPN, then they are ACTIVELY seeking out pron.
No matter what the government does, they will always find a way.
What is never discussed, is the parents responsibility here.
I do sometimes wonder if the media goad the stupid politicians into these statements or paths.
There was someone on the BBC news who was a recovering porn addict, he suggested restrictions on porn were no bad thing, even not allowing "any porn" might be a good idea. By my reckoning that's an alcoholic asking for prohibition for all of us. Lordy Lord.
"If people (kids and adults) are using a VPN, then they are ACTIVELY seeking out pron."
No. Sorry to be offensive but you're thinking like a government minister.
If people are using a VPN they're seeking a private internet connection. That's what the 'P' stands for. What they're using it for is not known - that;s the whole point of a VPN. Given that an awful lot of day-to-day commerce depends on the use of VPNs assuming otherwise is going to deliver yet another hit to the British economy.
Apologies, i should have clarified.
The narrative is that younger generation by chance are exposed to porn through snapchat etc., and this must stop. The next statement is that they must now ban VPNs for everyone but adults.
Anyone accessing porn through a VPN is because they want to see porn - which includes younger people.
So banning VPNs has no effect as the younger generation want to see it, and will see it, no matter what the UK government do. No doubt there are many websites out there which display porn and are not bothered about the UK laws, so anyone of any age can access it.
This is a wack-a-mole issue that the UK government will never win.
"This is a wack-a-mole issue that the UK government will never win."
You think so? The inherent instinct of the completely fine fellows we always have for governments is that when a policy turns out of be a shit policy that delivers no benefits and has high costs and negative unintended consequences, rather than admit it was a shit idea, government will always double down on that policy, and at the same time fabricate the "evidence" for benefits. The technical term for this is "Policy based evidence making", and it's about 35% of everything the civil service do. Think about the winner we're all backing that is HS2, the climate and energy policy that have given us the most costly energy in the developed world, trade and industrial policies that have left us with an industrial base comprising largely coffee and vape shops and the drop-shipping of China-sourced tat, government procurement that routinely favours large foreign companies. Think individual project successes from BSE, through Horizon, the disastrous Intercity Express Project, Emergency Services Radio, Smart Meters, Ajax, Crossrail, just about anything involving IT, etc etc.
Moreover, anybody who thinks "they wouldn't dare" obviously has (like the British public) little idea how remarkably pervasive government control of the economy is, and how politicians do in fact like this micromismanagement of the whole country. Whether it's that irritating captive cap on a disposable bottle, that little "e" marking on the bulbs you fit to a car, the size of the garden or even width of roads on new housing developments, the mix of energy permitted on the energy system and its subsidy, the number of seats on your train, the increasingly rampant banning of this, that and the other chemical, the whole pantomime of the war on drugs, terror, or online scud. Often new rules get introduced on the quiet, either by delegating powers to barely accountable regulators, or by secondary legislation that intentionally reduces parliamentary scrutiny - as an example, there's somewhere around ten times as much in the way of mandatory energy industry codes and scheme rules as there is in actual energy related legislation. And a reasoned estimate is that each year, Parliament pass around 7,000 pages of new legislation - and that's before the regulators get their oar in.
I fully expect bunglement will double down on "online safety" and try and restrict or interfere with VPN usage. Look at the their remarkable stupidity in asking for a back door to Apple data. It is ***possible*** that Apple have managed to evade this, but we can be pretty sure all the other cloudy storage and email providers simply complied meekly.
What is equally ridiculous and has already been proved so many times is that many (most) parent's appear to:
Just give the "child" what it wants - mobile phone etc at age 5.
Turn a blind eye to what they are doing - signing up to Facebook, Instagram etc as an adult
Actively facilitate the activity by providing the means of age verification - a credit card.
Responsible parents are not the issue as they will already be monitoring what said oiks are doing. The ones that are already breaking the law will continue to do so with impunity.
That various politicians appear incapable of comprehending this rather sums up the situation we in.
You can't blame the parents, it's not as if they are responsible, that's the job of teachers, social workers, the man down the road - but don't say nssty things to them as it may hurt their feelings and then they'll complain
Surprised no child has rung childline to complain their secrets to porn is lost
Most of the problem is that parents (even after all these years of computers/internet devices being available), are not so savvy as fresh minded kids at finding ways around their devices and systems. Just make it loud and clear that parents are responsible for the rug-rats that they fucked into existence. Everyone seems to try and blame everyone but themselves as parents - just take some responsibility FFS.
Agree. As I've posted in relation to other government attempts to fix problems, legislation only affects those who abide by the law. Those same people rarely need legislation to guide them, either; their moral compass is usually pointing near enough the right direction already. Those for whom a new law is directed are most likely to either ignore it or find ways to bypass it. It's usually the law abiding that lose out as new laws just make law abiding that bit more complicated.
As others have said, an interest in sex is one of the prime drives of almost all living material ("almost" all as there are some that reproduce hermaphroditically). It comes close behind self-interest/survival (even surpassing it in some species). In the battle of nature vs nurture, the latter has to fight hard to tame the former, and never totally defeats it. Parenting is not easy, but that's no excuse for some parents not to try.
"The stupidity of the UK government does now seem to be boundless."
Keeping children safe is the cover story.
"What is never discussed, is the parents responsibility here."
Exactly, could more easily provide parents with the tools. They exist, just too complex currently.
Another vote for proxies - that coupled with some thought on your wpad.dat and your home network can be in the UK for iPlayer and Ireland(!) for the smut.
We all know this has nothing to do with kids and smut, it's a deliberate invasion of privacy.
Free VPNs aren't much up to streaming pr0n, so that leaves paid-for VPNs...they normally require you to be 18 for payment (there are workarounds to this), so why do they need policing if kids can't spend their vbucks on removing geoblocking?
Mercifully a lot of VPN providers are in locations that are a bit loose with pesky details like complying with UK law.
So that leaves the fairly draconian step of traffic shaping/blocking all VPN traffic which is obviously problematic given how it's embedded within business, banking, healthcare etc.
None of that is not going to stop someone googling and finding croxy proxy (or similar), but it does erode privacy and polices the population which is deeply concerning.
"This could be achieved by amending the Online Safety Act to bring in an additional provision which would require VPN providers in the UK to put in place Highly Effective Age Assurance..."
Surely for this idiotic idea to work we would require VPN providers *outside* the UK to implement checks. Those of us *in* the UK will not be able to use a UK VPN provider to circumvent the Cornwall.
So they'll apparently force age checking on VPN providers, and then what - the kids will use Tor instead, and by then you basically have the equivalent of Chinese / North Korean levels of censorship capability in place and you still won't stop the kids from accessing what they want.
And once you have the capability, watch the mission creep: want to scrutinise the green blob? - your sites are banned; want to point out that you can either have a green economy or wide-scale AI, but not both? - your sites are banned; want to protest small boats crossing the channel? - your sites are banned.- All for YOUR protection of course...
I suspect is more adults using VPN than children, since anyone with any thoughts of to their own privacy probably doesn't want to give over personal info to a random third party to verify their age before they can view some naughty pictures.
But tbh unless you're visiting pronhub or other such large site its not exactly hard avoid any age checks, type into a search engine what you are looking for and within a few clicks you find content based outside the UK who couldn't give a flying fsck about implementing some tiny island idea of 'protecting the children' age checks.
Sure Ofcom might tell UK ISP block these smaller sites eventually, but there are way more sites popping up everyday than Ofcom have the resources to block. And UK ISP block by DNS, so if you use DNS servers outside the UK then you can bypass any blocks quite easily. Eg The Pirate bay has been blocked by UK ISPs for a long time now, but because i use my own adguard DNS server not the ones of my ISP I can access TBP without any issue.
So this government is just as stupid as the last government, they've had a big smackdown from Apple and the US Government on trying to put a backdoor in encryption, because surprise surprise the UK doesn't rule the internet.
But they're clearly not done with outright stupidity decided by people who do not have a clue about what they're doing.
Gove's "had enough of experts" line still echoes through this government, it seems.
Whilst I don't disagree the US and associated corporations like Apple, Google, Meta etc also don't own the Internet.
They think they do because of the money, the user base and bankrolling of politicians.
This is becoming one of the stand-offs where their size and depth of their pockets (along with the current incumbent in the White House) mean they can do whatever they want. It is only when something is truly horrific they will consider taking content down, usually far too late.
Apple don't have a key at all, they cannot provide what they don't have.
What they demanded was that Yale keep a copy of every key they have ever made in the entire world, neatly labelled with the current location of the property it opens.
Then at some point in the future the UK spooks might ask for one of them.
In the meantime, every criminal in the world is trying to break into that warehouse.
HMG needs to appoint a minister for the internet who actually knows what they're doing with power of veto over every stupid idea. Given that there's not likely to be a suitable candidate in the HoC they would need to take the HoL route and offer somebody a life peerage to take it on. When I say somebody who knows what they're doing I mean starting at the top. I'd suggest asking TB-L and if he's not interested work down in very small steps until they find somebody who will.
I don't work in any IT related field. However, over the years, I think I have developed a reasonable level of understanding when it comes to online security. I was very careful about which VPN to use, then if necessary do TOR on top of the VPN. Also encrypted DNS. Script/Ad Blockers etc
What I'm more concerned about is phishing. These days, the internet is a swamp.
Advantages, I don't see adverts on YouTube, the only social media channel I use, and as long as I don't go to weird corners of the internet, I think I should be relatively safe as long as I don't accidentally click on a link of unknown origin.
"Lawmaker" is not the American equivalent to "MP"; that would be "congressperson", which is quite a bit less efficient for letter usage. Lawmaker just means legislator, and it is applicable to anyone with the ability to draft and pass legislation no matter where they have that power.
So they age-strict VPNs, they will then have to age-strict VPS servers, which someone could use to set up their own VPN. They will then have to age-restrict the use of debit cards as few VPN or VPS vendors with systems based outside of the UK are going to worry about any UK based laws.
Credit card Yes / Debit card No
Credit card requires a credit agreement between issuer and customer therefore customer has to be over 18
Debit card only accesses funds held in the customers bank account, I don't think there is any age restriction to hold a bank account (and therefore an associated debit card)
Edited to add..
Posting this as a person who couldn't prove to ebay I was over 18 as I don't use a credit card, apparently using a 23 year old account counts for nothing despite having to jump though all of the hoops for selling over the years (including passport copies).
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
-George Orwell
Is a all citizen WiFi mesh WAN, operating a Tor style linking system (or maybe just hosted Tor nodes), with either satellite or mobile microwave (or a long fiber cable to the mainland if someone has a rowboat, strong arms, and a spool) as up-links out of jurisdiction.
Maybe something that runs on a VM, bootable USB, Pi or WRT so that every home can have one.
This would work until they ban WiFi at least.
Other than the technology, this sounds like something that would have been whipped up by boffins in WWII to overcome an occupying enemy.
This is the macro version of web filtering and blocking at work. We get asked to block, monitor and lock down, but users still do stuff, because management won't create and enforce policy. Legislating against kids viewing porn is useless. the only effective thing is parents educating their children. Of course keeping kids from viewing porn is a great excuse to replicate the Great Firewall of China, as a means of imposing broad censorship. This appears perfectly on brand for a UK government that expends more police time on mean tweets than rapists
It has been discovered that kids can use something called "intelligence" to work around restrictions. To resolve this problem, today the government announces that all children, for their own protection, will be lobotomised at the age of 5 to remove all traces of intelligent thinking.
see this coming?
Maybe the dorks in government.... the people who drew up the laws, and the idiots who passed them.
Every time I've seen the on-line blocking/censorship laws discussed on the BBC, they've pointed out that the law could be by-passed by using a VPN(or a TOR browser)
And how the hell to you block encrypted traffic unless you make encryption illegal, which blows our whole on-line commerce internet out of the water, or be prepared to stick packet sniffers in and decide 'traffic to waitrose good, block all traffic to "$10 VPNs of new york state limited"
In which case we may as well say to the people "we are watching everything you say and do online" and say to China "thanks for the firewall tech"
Even if you make encryption illegal, that'd not solve the problem.
The server can only tell if a client is in the UK from the client's IP address. You don't need encryption to mask the IP address. A simple proxy server will do that, and that need not be encrypted. Of course, there usually would be https involved.
Ban children from:
• Using Bluetooth - stop them swapping porn in the playground
• Using memory sticks - as Bluetooth
• Visiting news agents - stealing from the top shelf
• Speaking to older friends - who might obtain porn on their behalf
Might it not be better to help parents understand and talk to their children ?
How much is that about protecting kids or killing privacy on the Internet ?
Unsurprisingly, The Register's readership is well aware of the necessity for VPN use as an agency for secure communication in a host of legitimate activities. A blanket ban of VPNs is untenable. Also impracticable, would be attempts to apply age-verification, and other means of authorisation, to VPN use. Accepting this, seemingly, leaves a genuine problem in need of resolution. It is widely believed that exposing children to pornography has deleterious effects upon their psychological development and subsequent behaviour. The discussion to follow doesn't seek to gainsay that assumption, but instead to explore its ramifications.
First, let's set aside one danger ensuing from exposure in certain contexts to pornography and related discussion fora. That is, children being drawn into participating as subjects/objects of pornographic portrayal and sexual activity; in other words, victimhood. This occurrence is documented, and efforts towards its prevention - a matter of policing - well established; whether some of this is 'over the top' and distracting application of resources from instances of very serious abuse is a matter for discussion elsewhere.
Here, consideration centres upon children being unidentified participants in voyeurism. The question begged concerns whether all flavours of sexual-context voyeurism are equally (potentially) damaging. Simple nudity, which need not have sexual connotation, differs from portrayal of copulation and, in turn, this differs from various actions, deemed pleasurable, but having no connection with procreation.
Next is the matter of the age/maturity of children engaging in voyeurism or stumbling across non-mainstream activities. Assuming prepubertal children as only mildly curious, and as being within the domain of parental control, we may posit that age-restriction measures are a peripheral issue. Adolescents are prone to considerable curiosity, and to experimentation. This varies with age. Eventually, they are deemed adult - not necessarily congruent with intellectual/emotional maturity - and can view whatever is available. Given that the passage of time places every adolescent (verging on adulthood) in a position to seek (or encounter) sexually explicit material, the concern should be with how able they will be to cope with 'the rich tapestry of mainstream pleasure and deviant variations'. Thus, it may be better for legislators to consider how to ease adolescents into the exciting/harsh realities of life around them than vainly to discourage haphazard stumbling across pornography.
Yup. Educate kids. And try to be comprehensive. It makes no sense to have no education in, well, sex, and what kind of safeguards exist (psychological things, and physical things, safety and health wise). Oh, and that sex is not a competition, so... well, porn is as much fiction as the Marvell movies.
Other things are important, too, but not the subject of this discussion. Different political systems come to mind, and how people have been censored (and still are), rights to your own personality and of course your own body (the Nazis had slogans like your body belongs to the country). Censorship and police state might be phrases flung around in these parts, but I had the chance to talk to a North Korean once in private, and the things he did say, and more the things he did not say, made a deep impression on me. For me, the GDR was, well, history, and the things we knew in the west about them were more hypothetical. Now they are no longer...
AFAIK Schools do not teach children about the horrors of Stalin, Mao or even North Korea, only a tiny bit about Nazis. So we have generations that do not understand how these regimes came into existence, how they exerted control, the tortures and horrors committed in the name of "freedom from oppression" and the resulting millions of deaths. I have a very bad feeling that our children may learn the hardest way possible.
Back before VPNs were free (Opera browser) or came bundled with other services (Proton email) it was pretty trivial to spin up a free-tier EC2 instance in a convenient region, turn on sshd, and tunnel all browser traffic through it to achieve the same result. Requires some very basic linux skills, but never underestimate the willingness of a teenager to bone up on something (sorry, not sorry) to allow access to pr0n.
Whilst some effort does need to be put in by the government, it seems to be in the wrong direction.
How about instead of blocking porn sites, age verification for VPNs etc, put the liability on the parents.
Fine and custodials for those that allow their kids to access this content should do the trick.
Its time parents step up on this one. My kids can't install any apps on their devices without my approval. So bypass options like VPNs aren't an option.
Not necessarily, there are some VPN options that don’t require any extra apps to be installed. And, of course, both iOS and Android include a VPN client as part of the OS, it’s already there!
I do hope you are not blindly trusting whatever parental control system you have put in place, because although they are better than nothing, none of them are foolproof. So just for argument‘s sake, despite what you have done, your kids are seeing porn - are you prepared for a fine and prison time, because that’s exactly what you are advocating!
It’s not a case of ‘allowing their kids to access this content’, as you put it, it’s more they don’t know how to prevent it. So should parents be punished for not being more technically literate than their children?
No I do not blindly trust the parental controls, I have additional controls like Always-on VPN enabled (to our private VPN, not a third party) which then also handles DNS filtering and stops them, if they tried to, from configuring another VPN manually.
None of them are allowed social media either, we have access to all their email too.
Yes they should be, ignorance is not an excuse for shitty parenting.
They don't know how to prevent it so instead do nothing? And then blame the government, who feel obliged to act, which then because they didn't act in the right way, causes flare ups with other groups of the population.
You're right, we should just allow kids to view whatever content they want online and the associated harm that comes with it.
Then criticise the government for trying to act, then criticise parents who get strict on it, whilst coming with no actual, meaningful solutions or alternatives.
I hope for their sakes you don't have any kids.
"You're right, we should just allow kids to view whatever content they want online and the associated harm that comes with it.”
No, no no, it’s not a case of ‘allowing kids to view....’, it’s more they are going to, they absolutely are going to, whatever technical ‘solution; you have put in place. nohow do you deal with that fact?
OK now I know I have posted this quite a few times, but I have two daughters, both now adults, but when younger and wanted, expected devices with internet access what I told them was this.
This tablet/phone gives you access to the entire sum of human knowledge, which includes some ‘bad’ stuff which might well confuse you or question if what you are seeing is ‘right’. And, if so you come to me or your Mum and ask us! And if you do, then you are absolutely not in any sort of trouble, in fact quite the reverse, and we will explain it all to you as best we can.
Now my eldest daughter would have been about 15 at the time and told me she had been sent a ‘dick-pic’, and told me yeh I got it Dad, people do this sort of stuff. She also said that she responded with a comment of ‘I’m not 100% sure what that is, but if it is what I think it is you might want to see a doctor. Because our cat has a bigger one!'
Oddly no further communication!
And from my perspective, yes my work here is done!
And that has done wonders for society hasn't it, a youth dying from a gang attack almost every other day in the news, violence on the rise for two years in a row and serious violence a far bigger problem than many realise: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/serious-youth-violence-more-far-reaching-than-many-realise
But hey, it's the government's problem to deal with.
We exert more control over our children than maybe 90% of the population from what I hear. They don't have smartphones, their "free" computer time is severely limited and seems to be spent on games so far. Yet! They still do silly things occasionally, some of which could go wrong and lead them into trouble. Are we to blame?
I do want to point out that the UK gov does say
"A government spokesperson said VPNs are legal tools for adults and there are no plans to ban them."
Instead the children's commissioner has recommendation age verification for VPNs, other then being unworkable it could lead to a de facto ban seeing no VPN provider would agree to this. tho it seems the UK gov and even big child safety campaigners do not want to go down this route yet and I think it's unlikely right now.
The focus on "let's ban VPNs" is nuts anyway. A VPN is simply an encrypted tunnel. So is HTTPS. The only difference is that a VPN allows you to access a server from an IP address that's not your own, and client IP address is what is used by the server to tell what country you're connecting from.
But a VPN is not the only way of masking one's IP address from a server. There's TOR. There's also proxy servers. And there's probably other ways too.
Yup..........no sign of "client side scanning"..........I wonder why!
Well.....no one wants to say that in order to implement "client side scanning", the STASI will need to implement NSO/Pegasus (or Paragon/Graphite).............
....on EVERY end point in the UK!
Ha!!.......Hubble Road (and Nova South) warriors will be able to read everything (...well....everything NOT mediated by a VPN).......
Is the UK alone in endeavouring to achieve censorship of this sort, or is there a grand coalition across the civilised world? The former, I suspect. I strongly suspect that quite a lot of European nations are quietly sniggering to themselves at the knots the UK Gov is tying itself in over this issue.
For example, I don't remember Denmark being very censorial over the availability and positioning of "top shelf" magazines when I went there as a kid on a school trip decades ago (very pre-Internet). The opposite in fact. I doubt much has changed, and I've never once heard of Denmark being worried about it or having severe social problems as a result (indeed, the BMJ seems to think Danes are a happy lot).
Are British schools now to be banned from organising school trips to Denmark lest a student enter a news agent and see material that - if it were on a website - would be illegal for them to see in the UK?
In fact, just how are school trips abroad supposed to work? Students will all have their own mobile phone, and good luck trying to confiscate them.
Another strange thing; it's still legal to marry at 16 without parental consent in Scotland and with parental consent in Northern Ireland. That seems to be pretty inconsistent with the OSA's "thou shalt be 18" edict... What are such newly-weds supposed to do - keep their eyes shut? Marriage law is devolved to those nations so it's up to them to decide what's fit and proper themselves, but for some reason Westminster decides how old they have to be to see certain things on their computer screens...
It's inconsistency that makes for terrible law, and this is just another inconsistent aspect of it.
The EU is pursuing this agenda as well - both down the line of age verification, and going another step further with their chat control proposal (scanning everyone's chats for CSAM, and suspicious behaviour, and flagging anything suspicious and sending it to authorities to investigate).
people make jokes about governments suddenly turning Fascist, but thats exactly what this government has done.
Licences to masturbate, now need a licence to securely work from home.
They've also introduced (and I wish this wasn't a joke), a licensing concept to ban people from 'leaving their local area without a valid reason and proper governemtn authorization'
basically going the same path as China and the dead soviet union.
Starmer is hilariously terrible. There is no way he can win the next election, and going by his current path he may try the South Korean way of declaring martial law to delay elections.
It's all UN Agenda 2030 stuff. This is really happening guys. The plan is to control & depopulate the planet, massively reduce population and then total control over the remainder of feudal serfs. All dressed up with big documents and marketing words. But just listen to the shit coming out of the WEF and places when some slip up.
Yes it is total madness, psychopathic insanity. But the nutters are not those of us warning. All the NetZero, pandemics, debt, ever increasing taxation, War BS is just that BS. Read 1984 and Brave New World, they saw it all coming back then. The food available is shit, there are drugs for everything but you don't get well, rising energy prices, flying is bad unless you have a private jet, councils don't fulfill their duties. ID online to save children while allowing drag queens story hour, promoting transgenderism in schools and rape gangs ignored for years and not properly investigated! It goes to the highest levels. All the two tier justice is a divide and conquer. Non radical christians and muslims should be working together not looking at each other in fear.
Please, please see it and stop following the psychological programming you're getting from TV.
Impossible, once you see it. Watch "They Live" by John Carpenter, once you have put on the glasses you can't unsee. And ... no I don't think it's aliens or lizard people. I think it's uncontrolled greed and desire for absolute power. Take a look at history and authoritarian regimes. It's not new, the difference is technology and reach. Many "elites" have publicly stated they think the earth is over populated. The most famous examples being Ted Turner and Gates.
But I will take a few deep breaths anyway.
There's no need for anyone to "mandate population reduction". If one looks at the demographics of advanced, or advancing populations such as Japan, Europe, China, the population is shrinking anyway. What everyone is actually worried about is "will there be enough of a birth rate to maintain humanity?". By the time we've got nuclear Fusion power generation going and everyone globally benefits from the fruits of a technological economy, we as a species could be getting into real trouble.
Because the very people who demand controls are among a demographic that has a high percentage obsessed with deviation and children. Why? Because they are those all about domination and control. They are the ones that can ignore rape gangs for votes, they are the ones that think of themselves above everything and lack any integrity. Of course not all but far more than in the general population. That is why they seek these positions.
This will not stop until they have ensured we know only what they want us to know. This is will end with us not knowing when they are offending or lying or committing heinous acts.
We have idiot politicians running the country and enough is enough.
Remind me. Exactly when was it that I woke up in 1984?
I no longer trust UK government, the police or the justice system. This country is corrupt with a state that lies to cover crimes perpetrated by a certain section of the population and sends to prison innocent people. The sub postmasters, quite possibly Lucy Letby and that's the tip of the iceberg..
“Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.” — Thurgood Marshall
Let me help you with that. They are no more the voice of reason than the man with the sandwich board is the voice of the future.
Reform's Brexit voting Richard Tice (who works from Dubai for his constituents after his slummy mummy girlfriend moved out there) is quoted in Private Eye this month:
"Boris & Parliament could stop online racism in its tracks by passing legislation forcing Twitter & FB in UK to have only named accounts, checking people's details & banning anonymous ones. Happens in betting etc so why not social media" - 12 July 2021.
How would one "check people's details"...how would one ensure that it was not possible to have an anonymous account? What tools could circumvent this brilliant master plan?
They'll say whatever they think the current reactionary headline dictates they say...if they get in they'll do fuck all and blame it all on "the deep state". It's just another cash spinner for Nigel Farage and his millionaire chums.
the government will be playing whack-o-mole with this for years and basically make the internet unusable for the majority of the public
kids are tech savvy and if they want to see or do something on the internet then there is very little the government can do with legislation, all it will do will be to make the UK as restrictive as china and we will end up with a "great firewall of UK"
having worked in education I.T. I have seen how devious and tech savvy kids are, I have seen them work out if as soon as they hit "enter" to logon to a school network the pull the network cable until the logon is complete none of the group policies get applied for up to 90 minutes, this was spread via the current social media / messaging app to the majority of the school
staff then tried to prevent the kids from downloading game emulators and game roms, the kids just renamed them until storage policies were put in place that prevented certain file extensions and several terabytes of game rooms deleted form home folders
its a constant cat and mouse game with kids, and because of the way policy is made and announced in the press before it becomes law the kids have the work around in place before the law is written
totally pointless, apart from handing scammers and hackers a mass of info for identity theft if they break into one of the ID verfication providers
and don't get me started on the fact that they all seem to be in the US so the government is handing all out ID's to companies that can be forced to hand the info over the US law enforcement
We allowed the idiots to get their foot in the door. Now they are prising their way in. Anyone who thinks our liberty and freedom isn't at risk, probably thinks they really are idiots. No, they just want us to think they are idiots.
What they have done is prised open an opportunity to undermine any hope anyone had of privacy.
Welcome to the New World.
If somebody took their family, with young teenagers, to Amsterdam for a weekend, maybe to see the Anne Frank museum amoungst others, who's responsibility is it to make sure those young teenagers don't get to the red light district and "see something that will damage them for life"? The Dutch police? The Amsterdam city council? Of course not, it's the parents job; same goes for porn on the internet. And if they don't understand how to do that then they need to damned well learn and stop expecting somebody else to do their parenting for them.
I've found several age related films on stream platforms (including BBC iplayer) .
I've been able to watch Schindlers List over the internet without getting my age verified. Sky Glass and Sky Stream are not requiring age verification checks.
Let's get Offcome onto these guys so it effects EVERYTHING and see how long this act survives.
No-one saw this coming. This absolutely wasn't an utterly transparent way to introduce the VPN ban they wanted.
Next prediction:
After the VPN ban some other party will wind back the controls on porn, quoting something about democracy and the like... but will keep the VPN-busting policy.
Look for when the friends of MPs and senior civil servants sell their shares in Yoti and the like, it'll be just after that.
This post has been deleted by its author
This article annoys me because it adopts de Souza's narrow viewpoint that the OSA is only about trying to stop teens looking at porn. Many commentards seem to have swallowed that lie as well, looking at the comments.
The real problem with the OSA is that it is an arbitrary and sweeping law which could define just about any speech as harmful and effectively mandates adults having to identify themselves to use the Internet by handing over sensitive personal information to inevitably leaky third parties. If you have just once proved your age, the cookies placed on your computer will follow you around everywhere, effectively de-anonymising anyone who doesn't possess the technical ability to protect themselves. Even if you do wipe these cookies to prevent this pervasive surveillance, then you face having to repeatedly present your personal data to every site which implements age verification unless you work around the law with a VPN or proxy.
It's a bad law which is too open to interpretation and creates risks for people who don't work around it which are likely to cause much more harm than the law is supposed to prevent. In the end, the law is just another part of the ongoing efforts by successive UK governments to make sure that nobody can be anonymous on the Internet. It's part of the police state that the UK has been implementing over the last two decades. Everything you say on the Internet, everything you read or watch, everyone you associate with and everywhere you go will be recorded in perpetuity and used against you should you decide to irritate a public servant or protest against the actions of the government.
Short of a revolution, the UK is now well and truly a police state. If you dare to express opinions that the government does not like, you will be punished for them. Welcome to your brave new world Englishmen.
I'm not quite as old as you (yet), but I, too, can recall the first time I saw pornography; it would have been at around the same age, and it occurred in the common room at school during break time, when another child removed a pornographic magazine from his bag and showed it around.
We do, however, have to acknowledge that there is a bit of a difference between a copy of a relatively soft-core porn mag (I think it was Penthouse) showing nothing more than a bit of bush, and the graphic and extreme porn that is on the internet.
It's not the state's job to parent people's kids for them though. On the flip side, it may be appropriate for the state to provide, or mandate the provision or availability of, adequate tools for parents to do that parenting themselves.
There is a genuine problem here of kids accessing the sort of material that might make you or I, as worldly adults wince, and it certainly isn't a healthy or realistic introduction to sex. The solution that the government has forced onto the population clearly isn't fit-for-purpose, but, by all accounts, the parent controls and filtering that ISPs provide isn't up to the job either. There needs to be a sensible middle ground, where parents can easily filter their children's internet access to limit their exposure to unsuitable material. It needs to be in the hands of the parents to decide what is or isn't suitable (as long as it's legal), and if little Johnny is finding ways around such restrictions without his parents knowing, then this is a problem of parenting and not one of state interference.
@Elongated Muskrat
"It's not the state's job to parent people's kids for them though. On the flip side, it may be appropriate for the state to provide, or mandate the provision or availability of, adequate tools for parents to do that parenting themselves."
Wouldnt that be called a dumb phone? So parents that really care only provide their kid a mobile dumb phone if for some reason they feel it is necessary for their kid to have a mobile? If schools are so bad then it falls back to making home schooling easier so kids dont interact with those misbehaving ones. Otherwise its probably another government sticking plaster to cover up the problems of the last government sticky plaster e.g.-
state schooling mandating computer education
oh no not like that
impose age verification to naughty sites (whatever that might be)
oh no dont get around our stupid rules with VPN
age verify VPN
oh no that dont work
BAN THE INTERNET! (but not for the gov who like to look at these naughty sites).
Kids be kids and if parenting sounds too hard use protection.
Wouldnt that be called a dumb phone?
I see that you only read every other word of my post as usual. Par for the course, I guess.
What I'm getting at is that, rather than mandating age verification, on all websites that may host some form of "age restricted content", which is obvious unworkable nonsense, as borne out by the evidence, and wholly predictable consequences of trying to enforce it, they *could* have mandated that, for instance, all websites in the UK that provide certain categories of "adult" content provide metadata in those sites to identify and categorise it, and then, alongside this, mandate that all UK ISPs provide tools to their users, which *can* be turned on, and can filter content based on that metadata, on a per-user, per-category basis. That metadata could be as broad or as fine-grained as you like.
It's down to parents to control what their little darlings see, not the state, but if ISPs and websites aren't providing the means to do so, it's not entirely unreasonable for the government to step in and require them to do a better job, as a condition of being available in the UK. Personally, I think there is a sensible balance to be struck between censorship of things TPTB don't like à la Mary Whitehouse, and exposing children to sexual material at an inappropriate age. The thing is, it should be down to the parents to decide where that line lies (within the law) not the Home Secretary of the day, or a committee in the House of Lords, or you, or me.
This is by no means a perfect solution, but it would be better than the one we have been forced into using, whether any minors have access to our devices or not. It would do nothing to tackle the many and myriad ways the kids will have of finding ways around it, such as passing around a USB stick in the schoolyard, but it does at least make it much less likley that young children will stumble across things that they are not yet equipped to deal with. I'd suggest that social media providers need to do a much better job of not only controlling what children see, in terms of adult material, and material promoting things like suicide and self harm, but regulating hate speech too.
@Elongated Muskrat
"I see that you only read every other word of my post as usual. Par for the course, I guess."
Sorry if it confuses you but I was addressing the specific point you made that I specifically quoted which was "On the flip side, it may be appropriate for the state to provide, or mandate the provision or availability of, adequate tools for parents to do that parenting themselves." where all I did was point out this is achieved without government (as you quote)- "Wouldnt that be called a dumb phone?".
Before reading this line further I want you to sit down and take a deep breath because it is gonna shock you- I more or less agree with the rest of your comment!!!
Sorry if my sarcastic tone didnt come across clearly to you but my comment was digging at the gov not you. Enjoy---->
*It seems your previous comment also got a downvote. Certainly not from me if that influenced your assumption
When I first read this from de Souza, I thought, "yeah, obvs this would be the 'solution' - a predictably stupid move". As other's have said a) it wont happen/ can't really be enforced, b) it's not effective anyway. Are kids really being 'bombarded' with p0rn? Yeah, more content is accessible than when I raided the back of my dad's cupboard for tapes and mags back in the day, maybe it's more graphic, but we should just teach the kids what p0rn is - and isn't. Prohibition never works - lessons learned folks!
Is Dame Rachel de Souza completely off her trolley, or just completely out of touch?
She wants to protect younglings online by preventing them from using software that protects them online? Seems to me that she's less interested in their safety than she is in enforcing her will. Never a good sign.
Archetypal petty and vindictive female manager on a power trip - totally incompetent, clueless, with a massive infallibility complex, anger management issues and utterly convinced that they know better than everyone else and anyone who disagrees is just jealous of their brilliance and finding problems just to find problems.
Where all those "fact finding missions" from the 90s and early 00s were to "study" the Great Firewall and figure outs its failing and how to build something even more dystopian.
Starmer clearly displays an authoritarian complex with absolutely zero tolerance for dissent or free thought, he leans towards hard right punitive solutions, clearly displaying his background as DPP where OBVIOUSLY everyone is guilty of *something* - I wonder if Felix Dzerzhinsky is one of his idols? or if old Felix was a bit too....soft for Keir's tastes?
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