
UK Government proposes porn-viewing ID - wjh_
https://boingboing.net/2016/10/18/uk-government-proposes-issuing.html
======
pmlnr
> "all the porn sites operating in Britain"

So... only .co.uk, or full 3/4 of the internet, including Tumblr?

This is, of course, is a question for what counts as "operating in Britain". A
site that is running on servers in Britain? A site that is owned by a British
company? A site that happens to be available on the greater internet?

Gosh, countries and borders became relics when the internet got spread wide
enough.

~~~
Bartweiss
In this case, every site they can identify.

Broadly, UK law is restricted to UK companies for material which is illegal to
_post_. So libelous sites hosted outside the country aren't censored, because
the libel isn't 'located' in the UK (yes, this is a tortured analysis).

But the UK has more recently established a China-style firewall that restricts
access to sites hosted anywhere, based on where you _view_ from. Originally,
it was implemented to block access to torrent sites. And of course, at the
time everyone swore "it's just the torrent sites, there will never be a
slippery slope!"

But now it would age-gate pornography viewed from any UK IP address. Well, the
content they can _find_ anyway - they'll have to either run a blacklist
(catching only large, paid sites) or a blocking filter with a whitelist
(blocking all kinds of legitimate content - usually this ends up blocking
sexual health sites). And yes, Tumblr is hopeless, there's really no way to
know what a given page will have on it.

So it's the authoritarian, cut-off-access bit, but it still won't work.

~~~
EvilTerran
Point of fact: the UK's internet filter was originally implemented about a
decade ago, to block child pornography. And (to borrow your turn of phrase) at
the time, everyone swore "it's just the child pornography, there will never be
a slippery slope!"

... then, as of a couple of years ago, they started using it to block torrent
sites. So it goes.

~~~
toyg
It's really sad to see a country famous for its liberal traditions, sleepwalk
back into the sort of draconian censorship that we thought was a relic from
darker times.

------
Red_Tarsius
Government's entitlement over human life is staggering. It's patently obvious
they are going to use the data to shame, blackmail and accuse dissidents at
will. ' _Think of the children_ ' is not going to suffice.

If past behaviour is any predictor of future behaviour, your data is going to
be exploited by private citizens as well. What could go wrong?

 _«The case exposed inadequate safeguards against abuse, including warnings to
staff not to use the databases created to house these vast collections of data
to search for and /or access information ‘about other members of staff,
neighbours, friends, acquaintances, family members and public figures’.
Internal oversight failed, with highly sensitive databases treated like
Facebook to check on birthdays, and very worryingly on family members for
‘personal reasons’.»_ – [https://medium.com/privacy-international/press-
release-new-c...](https://medium.com/privacy-international/press-release-new-
court-judgment-finds-uk-surveillance-agencies-collected-
everyones-e3f037a0b901#.bh5cibx3u)

------
mobiuscog
<dons flameproof suit>

Something has to be done. It's not just about porn or violence of NSFL etc...
but there is a serious problem on the internet, that is always lambasted with
the "Won't somebody think of the children" memes.

When society has reached a point that anybody with internet access can, simply
by 'accidentally' going to the wrong website, be exposed to imagery that
really is not going to help them be well-adjusted in life, without any
safeguards in place, there is something wrong.

Whilst there are privacy concerns regarding any ID situation, nobody seems to
be trying to solve the problem in other ways, short of limiting internet
access (which causes other outcries).

I'm all for a better solution, but nobody seems to be proposing one.

(For the moment, as a parent, my young daughter doesn't get any unaccompanied
internet access - I am thinking of my child)

How _do_ we solve this problem ?

Edit: It's interesting to note diminishing points for a post that asks how to
solve a problem. Obviously some people feel very strongly that even
questioning the situation is wrong.

~~~
viraptor
> simply by 'accidentally' going to the wrong website, be exposed to imagery

Is that a real problem though? You did quote the accidentally after all. Both
kids and adults have access to things they seek - whether that's going to be
internet, magazine brought to school, or some other means. If they don't seek
such content, they won't see much more than what's already available to
everyone in the daily mail. I think the internet just made people aware of
what's already been going on.

My questions would be "does porn prohibition create more good than the very
likely government/school punishment for kids who will seek it regardless".
(Once it's tracked and officially acted on, it's going to be a sex offender
case like sexting became, right?)

(Also from my experience, things other kids did/said at school was likely more
damaging and plain evil than anything I've seen on the internet so far. Kids
have unrestricted imagination and are brutal. And I get the impression lots of
parents forget what really happened.)

If you want to block porn at home, there are thousands of solutions for that.
And they do work pretty well. If you're thinking of a global solution, I think
it's just too dangerous.

~~~
DanBC
> Is that a real problem though?

Yes. I search for children's content on Youtube. Youtube returns children's
content. We click to play, and I get a pre-roll ad for a horror film, or
alcohol, or gambling.

An iOS app advertises itself as suitable for ages 4+. It contains ads. Those
ads are sometimes for gambling, or alcohol services. I'd say that app isn't
suitable for children, and the uk regulator is looking at that.

~~~
darklajid
Wait, but is that related to the proposal? Not my native language and all, but
I thought this is basically age-gating .. porn sites.

If you have a random app (unrelated, not a porn site) showing ads (unrelated
unless a porn site) of alcohol services (not sure what that is, but ..
unrelated/not porn), how does this apply?

How would you age-gate ads? Wouldn't that require a new X-KID-PRESENT: 1 http
header so that each and every ad network can suppress ~questionable~ content?
In fact: That's a great thought experiment: Is a site that serves ads that
might contain 'adult' ads at times a porn site according to the British
government and would need to verify that the visitor is of age?

~~~
DanBC
> How would you age-gate ads?

They currently are age-gated. The age gating clearly isn't working.
Advertisers in the UK are not allowed to target children with alcohol or
gambling ads.

I don't care how it happens, but showing alcohol ads to children in apps for
children because the parent has a credit card and owns the phone is sub-
optimal.

~~~
darklajid
Maybe, yeah. But is it neglect on the part of the developer (What are the
consequences? You installed the app, no?), on the part of the parent not
supervising (I'm kinda defending this position in this thread) or a reason to
fix this with a generic law?

I'm not trying to be difficult, I really think that it's the parents'
responsibility. And if ads are considered harmful in your household, don't use
ad based apps / use an ad blocker? That should solve the problem on a local
level.

Edit: It just came to my mind that ad supported apps are often/usually free..
Is that the case here? Because I seriously dislike the idea of blaming a
developer of a free application for different ideas about morality or a bad
choice ('copy/paste some ad integration code' \- stupidity vs malice?) in
implementing a way to make some money.

------
p333347
Not sure of the (technical) feasibility of this, but I have some social
observations.

It seems the motivating factor, ostensibly, is to protect children. However,
the primary concern of those who don't like this seems to be with leaks and
possible ensuing shaming. So, if the stigma attached to watching (non illegal)
porn is done away with, the fear of leak becomes irrelevant. If protecting
children is paramount then society must do away with silly witch hunts and
being so anal (no pun intended).

While we are at it, why restrict to porn and why not extend to all things
abusive to kids, including violence, racism, stupid stunts and pranks etc
referenced by many other posters? Seems porn gets targeted almost always!
imagine if porn were a person in the west, they would have sued the heck out
of everyone.

~~~
MrSourz
The telecoms already have that type of data that could be leaked to an extent.
In 2013 British Telecom enabled porn filtering [1] that was on by default, so
when setting up your account you'd have to opt out.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-
security/1052...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-
security/10520537/BT-forces-porn-filter-choice.html)

~~~
pmlnr
This was present on mobile networks for a long while. The honest and real
reason I had it disabled was when it listed the ThinkPad knowledge collector
[http://thinkwiki.org/](http://thinkwiki.org/) as adult site... ( I'm not
joking. ) - this is probably also a prime example lists like this are complete
and utter jokes.

~~~
hfsktr
But do they have a record of the reason you disabled it or did they just
change a flag and lump you in with everyone else?

A bit more paranoid. If they do this tracking for porn, maybe in the future
they add other types of content they want to track. I know it sounds silly but
it's not like the data is going to go away and likely will only ever increase
the amount of tracking. Sadly I know many people who see no issue with this.

~~~
pmlnr
It's not silly and it's not paranoid, the Great Firewall of the UK is a
troublesome thing already.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kingdom)

At that time, I was probably listed as requested access to mature content;
reasons were not required but a few years ago they were already asking for
identification, eg. passports.

What's frightening is how silent everyone is about this.

------
pmlnr
The more I think about it the more I'm starting to think that this is how you
make an army of generic hackers. Want $X? Learn to circumvent the system!

------
throw2016
The puritans are back. Here is a better idea, implement a vote-id so
responsible adults can dismiss such inane ideas and recall offending MPs
without delay so matters of the state can be attended to.

There only way we can realistically rehash the debate on pornography and
entertain the idea that sufficient controls don't exist and are in some cases
not practical or reasonable is by being intentionally obtuse and disingenious.

The idea that we can even consider implementing an adult-id for an entire
population before considering its use for more effective democracy is telling
of our current priorities and the complete reduction of the enlightenment of
western democracy to a crude form of corporatocracy and control systems.

------
dintech
Government, this is VPN. VPN, meet government. You guys aren't going to get
along but I thought you should know about each other.

~~~
nightspirit
VPN hosting country, these are drones. Drones, meet the VPN host country...

Or heck, just strong-arm them into adopting think-of-the-children laws one way
or another.

~~~
godDLL
So, drones meet China?

How many would you send?

~~~
nightspirit
The Great Firewall blocks porn so China probably isn't the country parent
would use.

------
ascendantlogic
Every time I think about the insanity going on here in the US, I just remind
myself that the insanity in the UK is worse.

~~~
kraftman
Really depends which insanity you're referring to.

------
abdias
Why don't UK government leave that responsibility to the _parents_ which are
to decide what their children are allowed to watch or not. In the old Soviet
the communists very much wanted government to replace both parents and God -
seems like that idea has gotten new fuel in the UK.

~~~
Zenst
Indeed the move to remove accountability from parents and burden everybody
else is lamentable. Be that the sugar tax on soft drinks coming about just as
a way to cut obese children as well as many other measures. Perish the thought
they made the parents accountable.

But certainly a trend and perhaps an excuse to tax and track people more.
Still without such laws we would not of got a beer like this:
[https://www.brewdog.com/item/61/BrewDog/Nanny-
State.html](https://www.brewdog.com/item/61/BrewDog/Nanny-State.html)

Which sums things up about as well as any.

~~~
zerognowl
+1 for the Nanny State reference. In typical UK surveillance state fashion
they pander to base fears and unforgivably overlook how bad censorship is in
places like China. Where it not for censorship I think the thrill of surfing
the Open Web would be dampened, just like when drugs instantly become more
exciting when they are outlawed and regulated.

I am certain outlawing base primal urges, like the right to ingest what one
desires into one's own body makes such primal urges even more favorable, often
to the point of detriment to the State who then have to feverishly invent
something inverse to people's actual needs like Alcohol, or bromides like
Sugar to pacify their citizenry.

------
jonnys1
This is quite disturbing to say the least. Seems like everyone learns from
china and starts build great internet walls!

------
the_mitsuhiko
I find it impressive that the UK people trust their government so much even to
the point where they are happy to leave the EU to give it more power. That
seems questionable.

~~~
mobiuscog
That's more about mistrust of the EU 'government'.

~~~
topspin
It's not about 'trust' at all. The typical brexit supporter doesn't 'trust'
any of these people any farther than they can throw some ministry building.
The brexit supporters are convinced they'll have more influence over a
sovereign UK government that answers to UK votes, whereas they have learned
through long experience that they have next to no influence over Brussels, by
design.

This straw man the_mitsuhiko setup with brexit dunderheads that "trust their
[UK] government so much" is a fiction that exists inside his/her head; a sad
self-delusion people indulge to demean things they don't like.

------
retox
Parents are not responsible?

~~~
mobiuscog
They should be. As should everybody else, in a society.

------
another_account
First they came for the Socialists...

------
dajohnson89
Does anyone have any ideas how likely this will actually become law? Crazy
laws get proposed here in America all the time. From what I've seen by
watching the Prime Minister's questions every now and then, lots of far-
fetched proposals are made across the pond as well. But they never get far,
and not worth getting bothered about.

~~~
marcoperaza
"The government" in a parliamentary system, in this context, refers to what we
would call "the administration" in the US, i.e. the Prime Minister and his
ministers. And almost by definition, the government controls a majority in
parliament ("almost" because it is possible to have a minority government) and
has a high likelihood of passing its agenda. But the proposed laws do change a
lot as they go through consultations and committees, and intra-party
negotiations. There is a sizable libertarian wing of the Conservative Party.

~~~
mobiuscog
And we have the House of Lords, which ... well, let's just say it's not really
like anything else.

~~~
marcoperaza
As archaic as it sounds on paper, it's the best functioning upper house in the
world. It provides actual substantive research into government policy, and a
temporary restraint on changing long-time status quo, being able to delay
legislation but not stop it altogether. I really hope you guys don't change it
any more.

------
BrentOzar
Suddenly, 007 takes on a whole new meaning.

------
akerro
Will it replace driving licences or passports?

~~~
martin-adams
I have to watch porn to drive or travel abroad?!

------
eonw
this didnt work for germany, wont work for the UK either. most of the "porn"
companies in the UK are only there to make use of tax advantages and billing,
they are just shells that allow the parent company to move money through the
UK to tax havens and mitigate risks. very very few porn companies are truly
based in the UK, which means none will follow the rules.

------
jlebrech
way to criminalise porn and make it go underground.

~~~
mobiuscog
I believe it's already there - that's often a very different problem though.

------
amelius
Shouldn't we restrict/control the consumption of violent movies and video
games first?

~~~
Zenst
Well Religious books have yielded more violent actions than all the movies and
video games ever, if you want to take that approach.

Certainly puts things into context don't you think.

------
akerro
New and modern instant messengers download and show preview of websites
automatically. Any ideas if this can be somehow abused?

[https://theantisocialengineer.com/imessage-preview-
problems/](https://theantisocialengineer.com/imessage-preview-problems/)

------
titzer
Download as much as you can now and put it on an encrypted harddisk. Or move.

------
lostforest
I have long thought it would be a great idea to force all pornographic
material into a porn TLD, say .xxx

To access .xxx, you would submit your name, address, proof of age to whomever
runs the regime and be given access. Sharing pornography should be a crime,
especially if shared with minors. In a perfect world... Since we don't live in
a perf3ct world, I'd be happy to see a forced TLD. Violators lose rights to
any and all domains in perpetuity and are forbidden to start new ones. A 1M
fine should suffice.

It's a proven fact pornography harms everyone involved. Men who are chronic
users suffer impotence issues with real women. Pornography demeans women and
lowers them to the status of sex machines, there only for the enjoyment of
men. Women that are lured into the industry suffer horrendous self-esteem
issues, die young, suffer from diseases, some fatal, and are reviled if/when
they escape the industry. Not a good scene no matter how you slice it.

~~~
chronolitus
Or maybe people could get off their high horse and not impose their moral
values on everyone else?

I'm all for regulating the industry if and when practices get distorted, same
as any other industry dealing with humans. But if we ban porn for being
generally harmful to its actors we should also ban:

-American football

-Boxing

-Extreme Sports

-..

And feel free to eventually add in everything someone doesn't like, as
anything can be shown to be harmful in some extent.

