
Cameron ‘Porn’ Advisor’s website ‘hacked’ – Threatens/Libels Blogger - anu_gupta
http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2013/07/24/cameron-porn-advisors-website-hacked-threatenslibels-blogger/
======
nakedrobot2
There is pretty substancial technological gulf opening up between the "ruling
class" and the "reasonably well educated folks" out there. This could be as
disruptive and problematic as the widening gap between the wealthy and the
poor.

Porn filters will be of no concern whatsoever to anyone under 40 with the most
rudimentary technical chops (and appetite for porn). What else will be banned?
It is getting to the point where fearmongering and shameless populism and
shilling for votes by politicians result in useless laws being enacted only to
incriminate anyone at all, when the opportunity presents itself to make an
example of somebody.

I suspect this technological gap is going to get much worse before it gets
better, if it does get better at all. The types of people who participate in
the game of politics have very little in common with the types of people who
have an understanding of the technical world. But can that last forever? Kids
now live online with few exceptions, and a technical understanding of the
world will hopefully become second nature to most people, eventually.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Like most techies, you're focusing on the effectiveness. This is both missing
the point and dangerously underestimating the intelligence of the people
behind such measures.

Just like most of the anti-terror security theater, it's not about being
effective in any way, it's about slowly getting the general population to
accept increasingly repressive measures and a tighter grip of the "ruling
class" on society in general.

Once filtering has been generally accepted, they can gradually start figuring
out how to censor the things they really don't want us to see (and guess what,
it isn't porn) without having to worry about further social or legislative
hurdles.

There is no technological gap between "us" and "them". There's a gap in
political savvy between "them" and "us", and we're on the wrong side of that
gap.

~~~
netcan
I think you're looking at this as too much of a conspiracy.

This is just attempting to gain the control they had before and have now over
every other media. They can prevent hard porn on TV or in the window displays
of high street video rental shops. Why not the internet?

From their perspective the internet is a loophole they are trying to shut
down.

Internet freedom happened incidentally as a side effect of how the technology
worked. It wasn't brought around by ideology like traditional "free press"
was.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I think you 're looking at this as too much of a conspiracy._

I agree, but I think that you might be looking at it a little bit too much as
of a conspiracy as well.

IMO it's not even about closing loopholes and stuff; it's about increasing
their popularity to make sure they get reelected / get more money. That's it.
I think short-sightedness of politicians explains pretty much all of it.

Current democracy as a system optimizes strongly for popularity, and optimizes
people with any kind of long-term agenda out of the system.

~~~
TDL
"Current democracy as a system optimizes strongly for popularity..."

This is what democracy has always done.

~~~
mtarnovan
I think you're mistaking the popularity of politicians, with the will of the
people and vox populi.

------
cstross
Aaaaand ... the other shoe has just dropped:

[http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-
readers-...](http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-say-
sue-claire-perry-guido-has-instructed-lawyers-to-commence-proceedings/)

Guido Fawkes is talking to his lawyers about Libel. (Which under English law
-- the reforms haven't gone through yet -- places the burden of proving that
she _didn 't_ damage his reputation squarely on Claire Petty's shoulders.)

I'm just astonished that an MP appears to have been so ignorant of the law of
her own land (and how it applies to twitter) that she left herself wide open
to this.

~~~
yesimahuman
Isn't this the same libel that that has been used to punish journalists who
write about inconvenient truths? It seems hypocritical to stoop to that level.

~~~
jlgreco
What she said could be grounds for a libel suit in the US as well. The real
difference is in the defense that she could mount.

Why should journalists abstain from defending themselves from libel in the UK
just because others abuse those laws to attack journalists? Suggesting that
journalists should not defend themselves from libel just because others abuse
libel laws to shut down journalists is damn near concern trolling.

------
netcan
I've mentioned this before on one of these threads: I think any focus on the
sexual morality of politicians, political point scoring and such is
superfluous.

Porn and other "offensive content" has been restricted or banned in pretty
much every time and place by various means. Even if an outright ban does not
exist in blanket legislation, there _are_ restrictions, codes of practice,
industry bodies, laws applying narrowly to certain media channels or something
like that.

Basically, porn gets regulated/restricted/banned always by whatever authority
has the means to do so. Always. And some authority always has jurisdiction in
some way over every mainstream media source. The difference on the internet is
that no one _could_ regulate it. There was no authority or industry body. No
power that could be appealed to. Now the internet can be regulated, seemingly.

That is the story here. Not "Cameron is a prude" or "Cameron is pro-
censorship."

The internet is regulatable now. _That 's_ the story. This probably means that
the same restrictions that apply elsewhere (TV, radio, print) will apply
online.

~~~
kolektiv
I'm not sure this is true. Oh, I don't argue with your point about the
historical facts of restriction, but I do think that the internet is still far
from regulatable. The story is still really that politicians believe it is -
it isn't, but they don't have the expertise to comprehend why that's the case.
The internet is a mass publishing medium, not just a mass consumption one.

Legislation has historically successfully targeted only publishers, and you
can do this when the number is fairly small, but not when that target is
"everyone" because of the work required in monitoring (which is still not
amenable to automation, despite what politicians may believe - it's still just
too hard for the software technology we have).

~~~
netcan
I'm not 100% sure I agree with me either. :)

I agree with your point. Being a mass publishing medium is what has kept the
internet in anarchy thus far. In some cases, I think it will be possible to
regulate publishers with some success. If you can get 10-20 companies to
comply, you're covering most of the web.

For porn, that's not going to work. But, a filter probably will.

Censorship and contend restrictions don't need to be airtight. They never are.
It's enough to just move things from mainstream to marginal. Seeing breasts,
arses & fleeting (preferably comical) glimpses of balls is normal and OK, but
unadvisable for young children. Genitalia in non sexual contexts is new, but
now OK too (thank you embarrassing bodies). You can watch that with your
friends or teenage kids. Genitalia in a sexual context is not OK. You look at
that alone with a laptop in shame. You have to buy it from licensed sex shops
with darkened windows.

Regulations & mainstream public opinion cross influence each other but actual
line is more or less defined by TV standards and practices.

All internet porn (or political opinion or any subject of cencorship)
filtering has to do is reclaim the control of that line. If you have to call
up and ask for porn access or use tor to get it, it might let them do that.

~~~
moocowduckquack
"Seeing breasts, arses & fleeting (preferably comical) glimpses of balls is
normal and OK, but unadvisable for young children. Genitalia in non sexual
contexts is new, but now OK too (thank you embarrassing bodies). You can watch
that with your friends or teenage kids. Genitalia in a sexual context is not
OK. You look at that alone with a laptop in shame."

Did you really just go and claim that seeing breasts is unadvisable for young
children?

You complete and utter fuckwit. Do you think breasts are just there for you to
leer over in your lonely cave of shame?

~~~
Sacho
He claimed that most societies(and at least the Western ones I've had contact
with match that pretty well) shun exposing sexual organs to children. I don't
see why the rage. This is not a controversial comment to make.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Given that breasts are primarily for small children to drink from, to suggest
it is damaging for small children to see them isn't just controversial, it is
the height of bewildering and crazy idiocy from someone who must be so
unconnected with reality that if they ever accidentally encountered a rational
train of thought, they'd probably try to throw themselves under it.

And it wasn't rage, it was accuracy.

~~~
netcan
Seeing breasts between the ages of 5-12 is highly likely to make your child a
forum troll.

Just sayin.

~~~
jlgreco
Speaking of trolls... you cannot honestly believe that.

~~~
netcan
'of" or 'for'?

~~~
jlgreco
"of".

Are you not aware of what a troll is? Because you are plainly one.

------
nicholassmith
It worries me that people that have absolutely no understanding of even the
basics of how a system works have any ability to regulate it. The worst part
is, there are MPs who do have a good technical understanding, but for the most
part they're drown out by the shrill cries of 'save us from ourselves!'.

I cannot imagine how much torture it must have been to try and explain the
concepts to someone who just does not care. It's wilful stupidity.

~~~
alan_cx
Its not just technical, is all over government. Education ministers usually
have no grounding in education, health ministers usually have no grounding in
health, armed forces ministers usually have never serves, home secretaries
usually have no grounding in law enforcement, and so on. All they know is what
their supporters think and they apply that to garner votes. At best, such
people only know how to manipulate parliament.

This is democracy......

~~~
Luc
Government ministers don't even need to be elected MPs. For a UK example:
Peter Mandelson in 2008. It's the parties who decide who becomes minister, and
as such they _could_ pick and choose domain experts, if they wished.

~~~
alan_cx
Well, currently we have this Tory media adviser, or what ever he is supposed
to be, who is said to have influenced this current government in to not
blanking cigarette packets as he is connected to a tobacco company. Dunno why
you picked an old example when we have a current one, which has more of an
obvious self serving connection. Mandelson can be argued to have been
"advising" from principle.

That said, I dont see how any one can be sure an adviser is advising and not
setting policy. And if they don't have influence, there is no point having
them, but then people would argue that ministers should have advice from
advisers, especially as most of them have no grounding what so ever in the
department they are supposed to be running.

~~~
Luc
> Dunno why you picked an old example when we have a current one

Sorry, I used to live in the UK but now live in Belgium, so my knowledge of UK
politics is somewhat outdated.

In Belgium we had a new minister of finance appointed in March, who as far as
I know has never even been up for election for anything:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koen_Geens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koen_Geens)

~~~
toyg
_> In Belgium we had a new minister of finance appointed in March, who as far
as I know has never even been up for election_

Amateurs :) Italy has had a wholly-unelected _Prime Minister_ for two years:
he was nominated Life Senator by the President and sworn in as PM a day later.
In every other parliamentary democracy, this would have been called a _coup d
'état_, but Italy works more like South-American banana republics.

And the best thing is, he was drafted exactly on the basis of _domain
knowledge_ (he was a banker and euro-bureaucrat) for a country still in the
grip of wide-scale economic crisis, and all his ministers were appointed on
the same basis: lots of academics, high-profile intellectuals, bankers and
industrialists. Results were underwhelming to say the least, and last Spring
voters basically disposed of this group in a general election. But the
President all but re-elected himself (to another 7-year term, which is
unprecedented) and again hand-picked a PM who's basically forced to follow the
same political platform of his "golpist" predecessor.

So yeah, domain knowledge won't save your ass. Political problems are always
_political_ , not technical, and require political solutions, i.e. people
shouting that this will not do, do that instead.

------
MarcScott
I find the technological incompetence of our political leaders and advisers
very worrying. I doubt any of them could describe the difference between The
Internet, The World Wide Web, a web browser and a search engine.

~~~
ishansharma
It's not only your leaders. Things are same everywhere. In India, one can say
anything about government openly but say something on social media site and
fool leaders will try to censor you.

There have been multiple instances displaying how bad situation is. A movie
company was able to get court orders to stop piracy of their movie and this
ended in ban over 70+ sites. Not specific pages, blanket ban on whole sites.
[1]

Then we have had a girl arrested over liking a Facebook post criticizing a
leader[2]

I had high hopes with our generation but looks like most of the people in
early twenties are not much better.

[1]: [http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/singham-effect-file-
sharin...](http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/singham-effect-file-sharing-
sites-blocked-121249) [2]: [http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/19/indian-woman-
arrested-ov...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/19/indian-woman-arrested-
over-facebook-like/)

~~~
johnchristopher
> I had high hopes with our generation but looks like most of the people in
> early twenties are not much better.

I know a 12 years old who can't watch photos on a usb stick or a cd-rom if the
windows dialog "what do you want to do ?" doesn't show up when inserting the
disc or the stick on the computer. But he has mean fingers to send a gazillion
sms per minute.

I know adults who seem unable to grasp the concept of resolution as they keep
adding 4000x4000 pixels images in their powerpoint. And they seem to forget as
soon as I tell them where the "shrink images" function is.

My outlook on this is that things haven't changed since the 90's (when I was a
teen): some people want to know how computers work or make them work "better"
and some just want stuff done. The first are more technologically literate
(more like jack-of-all-trades) than the second but I am not convinced they are
automatically better set for life as a result or that what they do with the
computer is more appreciated.

~~~
mordae
Nah, the other half is just stupid or lazy. It's the same kind of people who
will ignore screwdriver and will try to pry the bolt out with pliers unless
they have been shown the benefits of using the proper tool in the past 15
minutes.

I work at a large library and the smart, non-tech people are _genuinely_
interested in improving their and their peers' effectiveness and are willing
to learn. I frequently chat with a friend who can make shoes, design and
construct electrical devices, build small buildings, survive in nature and
anonymously watch things he's interested in on the Internet. He frequently
asks about relevant things and gives advice from his fields of knowledge.

Some people just _are_ better than the rest.

------
Achshar
I am not usually the one who laughs at technologically illiterate, but this is
hilarious, not because she is blaming the blogger for hacking, but because her
people are the ones who are deciding how the internet behaves, and yet they
have no understanding of even basic stuff. So I find the idea of them making
the decisions about something they are literally illiterate about amusing, and
haunting.

~~~
scholia
It's funny if a top politician is clueless about the web.

Unfortunately, this particularly clueless politician is the UK's Secretary of
State for Defence. She has nuclear submarines....

~~~
kolektiv
Thankfully she's only the PPS to the Secretary of State for Defense. The
actual SSD is the far more capable Philip Hammond... (Hmmm.)

~~~
scholia
Ah, thanks for the correction. Speed-reading her Twitter header...

------
Stubbs
Carl Sagan once famously said "We live in a society dependent on science &
technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science & technology"
Nowhere is this more true than in Parliament!

------
turbojerry
Libel and blackmail from an MP, why am I not surprised. Does anyone know if
Kickstarter allows funding of legal actions? I would be willing to donate some
money into putting her in the dock for this.

~~~
Heliosmaster
IIRC kickstarted doesn't, but there is plenty of places that do.

------
belorn
So now that we can see in real time the ways government tries to censure,
control, and surveil the Internet. The speed in which they try to incorporate
the Internet under their domain of control is one where we don't need to guess
anymore about their intent. Its obvious, clear and show no sign of slowing
down. Rather, they are increasing the speed in which censure, control, and
surveillance are added.

We can't even claim that this is the initial battle. That fight has already
been fought. We had the discussion around common carrier principles when
peoples talked about net neutrality. We had the discussion when people
discussed piracy. We had them also when wikileaks and SOPA was in the news.
Even some of our allies has turned. ICANN is now days dictating under what
purpose people are to be privileged to do the simply act of buying a name.

Allowing government to censure, control, and surveillance the Internet produce
news article as this one. Expect to see more. Its that, or invent around it in
such a way that the censure, control, and surveillance can't be used by the
government from an technical standpoint.

~~~
alan_cx
To play devil's advocate....Why would government not seek to control the
internet? They control everything else, and if something goes wrong the public
slaughter government for it, saying they should have done something. In the
end, doesn't an ignorant frightened government just represent an ignorant
frightened electorate?

Surely it has to be up to the tech savvy to educate the wider population, so
that we end up with politicians who understand. Forget the politicians and
focus on the general public.

------
artumi-richard
As a father of a young child I'm quite keen on being able to provide him with
a clean connection to the internet. I want him to be able to explore without
having to watch over him.

We should have solutions to this problem, at the router level, where we can be
in charge of the blacklist, and the times various items on it are ok or not
ok.

Politicians cannot be blamed for trying to do what is popular, and because we
as a community have failed to solve the problem for less technical parents
than I, an imperfect solution has been proposed. We should not be surprised.

We are the ones best suited to find the optimal solutions to such problems,
and carping on about politicians doing something when we have done far too
little is pointless.

~~~
anu_gupta
So, why not install one of the many filtering / blocking solutions that exist?

A simple Google search will show you that this is a well explored space, with
many different options.

~~~
artumi-richard
There is relatively easy

[https://www.opendns.com/home-solutions/parental-
controls#fam...](https://www.opendns.com/home-solutions/parental-
controls#family)

But I don't have an easy way to say "No - that site is fine" \- I am not in
control.

But actually it's easy only because I know what DNS is and can imagine how to
setup my router to use their dns servers.

~~~
darkarmani
It says you can add whitelists.

------
moocowduckquack
A Paul Staines vs Claire Perry smutocalypse, oh boy this should be fun. I may
need to stock up on beer and popcorn.

~~~
oracuk
He is (apparently) considering sueing her: [http://order-
order.com/2013/07/24/should-guido-sue-claire-pe...](http://order-
order.com/2013/07/24/should-guido-sue-claire-perry/)

I am conflicted. I never really liked Paul Staines' style but I am somewhat
afraid of the impact of Claire Perry on the UK Internet regulations. I have to
admit I would love to see him publicise the lack of understanding she has in
the Internet that she is working so hard to regulate..

~~~
shdon
She deserves to have some sense sued into her. It is frightening how such
thoroughly ignorant people seem utterly powercrazed, trying to control that
which they don't understand, effectively becoming for more evil than the thing
they want to fight. Her stupidity is staggering. Bring on the Streisand effect
indeed...

~~~
estebank
> It is frightening how such thoroughly ignorant people seem utterly
> powercrazed

 _" We need to take control,” says Claire Perry, speaking as a parent. Far too
many mums and dads are “ignoramuses” about technology, baffled by the smart
phones and computers their children use, she says._

 _“Parents say they want to be involved, but the children have overtaken
them,” she says. “That’s awful. We must be like the first generation whose
children learnt to read and write, and we’re all blundering about like
illiterate ignoramuses.”_

(...)

 _“I am not a minister. I have no portfolio. I am simply a thorn in the side
of everybody,” she says. “This debate crosses so many departments that it is
quite helpful to have one person who goes around making a nuisance of
themselves.”_

 _Mrs Perry is chasing the internet service providers, search engine and
social media companies to do more to keep children safe online, and says they
are beginning to look “culpable” for allowing the likes of Mark Bridger and
Stuart Hazell to view illegal child porn._

(...)

 _She praises the mobile phone companies for imposing filters blocking adult
content on the internet, but they don’t apply when the images are being
created by children themselves._

 _“There will be technology that comes along to solve this, but I don’t want
to wait. Who is paying for the phone of a 12-year‑old? It will be the parent.
We somehow have to get parents, carers and those involved in children’s lives
to say that this is not acceptable,” she says. “Who is keeping our children
safe?”_

(...)

 _“Frankly, if we need to, we will regulate,” she says. “We have made child
porn illegal and it still gets in. That means we have to tighten up, as we do
with drugs. We spend a lot of time in this country trying to track down the
supply of illegal drugs. It’s similar with the internet.”_

(...)

 _“Well, my children hate being discussed in anything to do with my job. My
16‑year-old says: 'I can get married and I could join the Army if I wanted to,
so why do you think you can read my texts?’ I say: 'Because there might be a
situation in which you are unsafe.’ ”_

This is not even funny.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/cole-
moreton/10107771...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/cole-
moreton/10107771/Claire-Perry-MP-Parents-take-back-control.html)

~~~
mikeash
> “Parents say they want to be involved, but the children have overtaken
> them,” she says. “That’s awful. We must be like the first generation whose
> children learnt to read and write, and we’re all blundering about like
> illiterate ignoramuses.”

I think this is a fascinating quote, because the analogy seems extremely apt
to me. Yet she somehow thinks this is a bad thing, as if the invention of
literacy was some kind of terrible event, rather than a blossoming of the
human intellect.

The younger generations are doing amazing things that the older generations
couldn't have even imagined, but her only reaction to this incredible
transformation is to say "That's awful."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That's an extremely prejudiced reading of that quote.

She clearly describes the [applying the metaphor] technologically illiterate
as akin to ignoramuses.

It's clearly not the benefits of technological literacy that is the motivator
to preventing young children from being exposed to hardcore pornography.

If some people were saying we shouldn't allow hardcore porn magazines to be
sold to children; your argument would be like saying those people are
advocating destroying all forms of printed media.

------
ryan14
The porn filter could be debated in the House of Commons if this petition got
100,000 signatures >
[http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746](http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746)

------
thirdsun
Even if we ignore all the technical things she seems to be confused about, how
can a government official think it is ok to publicly and childishly accuse and
threaten this man on a social network. I'm not surprised by her technical
ignorance at all, but the lack of professionalism and , well, manners is very
worrying.

------
everyone
Immature. Pointless. Counter-productive. But Goatse'd! hahahahaa! How
wonderfully appropriate :)

------
iuguy
There's several issues that are worth raising here, but I struggle to
understand why the Parliamentary Private Secretary for the Secretary of State
for Defence needs to attend a meeting with ISPs about unrelated civilian
matters.

~~~
ealexhudson
If it was a committee or some other 'public' meeting, then pretty much any MP
or Lord can attend if they so wish. Her role as PPS is separate to her
constituency role. From the sounds of the meeting, it wasn't a meeting with
Government but with Parliamentarians.

------
Eva_Peron
Stating the obvious, but there are MAJOR first amendment problems with trying
to get ISP's to block porn sites by default. I don't see how something like
this could come to a vote without major controversy. There is still such a
thing as freedom of expression, last time I checked.

~~~
spiek
Well, the main thing here is that this is happening in England...

