Treblaine said:
What the UK does have the balls to go though is make BYPASSING the filter illegal. So it doesn't have to be impossible, just actual and even remotely traceable. Then the police can bump up their arrest targets with some easy non-violent suspects. After all, it's hard work going after really dangerous criminals, best bump up the numbers with some soft and easy targets.
First, I can't argue over the whole bumping up the numbers of arrests to look good by targeting non-violent 'criminals' with bullshit laws. I've bitched about prohibition too much and that is one of the biggest arguments I use, so I know it is all about looking good on paper regardless of how many innocent people get hurt in the process. The US is worse for this fact, as they get paid to have the numbers high and scratch the back of some of the largest corporate bodies by turning prison into slave labor camps that need a large flow of prisoners.
However, making something illegal and being able to enforce it are two different things. I can't see this law being effective as people could so easily bypass it. Twice so as the tools used to bypass it also doubling as the ones used to disguise your identity. All this is designed to do is add an extra layer of censorship and monitoring to a system already putting big brother to shame. The criminals are not the ones being targeted in these systems, that is the excuse, it is so they can monitor and hopefully better control the flow of information.
The internet is the biggest free-flow of information and even China, with a closed off and heavily monitored web, can not control the flow of information. These laws are all about trying to find ways to turn the internet into a political tool, something they can control and use as a weapon against the very people who use it to freely give information.
Australia fucked up and their list got leaked. Of all the sites on it the whole 'porn' they where fighting took up less then 5%! Banning most of the sites on that list had nothing to do with 'protecting children' but was all geared towards monitoring and controlling the flow of other information. From political 'inconvenient' news sites right through to historical research that would point to thinks the government did that are no longer acceptable in polite society. It was these sort of sights that took up the majority of the banned list.
But protecting kids, hell it is the oldest tool to use to distract people away from what you are really doing. Everyone wants to protect children, so they don't look close at something unless they are branded as 'child molesters' for even daring to look into the facts, let alone speak out against them. Happened too, those who did speak out against this censorship where branded as people wanting to harm or abuse children....
This is all about control of information, always has been, and the children don't matter to the politicians... protecting their own grasp of power is what they want.
