Stefan Mileschin

The British Government will be deciding what its citizens can see on the internet by the end of 2013 because some adults decided to breed and cannot take responsibly for what they spawned.

Under David Cameron's Britain, filters will be installed on every ISPs server which will forbid access to content deemed unfit for children.

If you want to see this material, you will have to ring up your ISP and tell them that you specifically want to see boobs, and explore sexuality on the internet and you do not see why the government should stop you.

Internet service providers will be expected to provide filtering technology to new and existing customers with an emphasis on opting out, rather than opting in.

This censorship is because David Cameron is listening to his barking "special advisor" on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood". That is Claire Perry MP, by the way.

Even if you think that porn somehow corrupts children, the logic that a parent has no responsibility to prevent their precious snowflake's exposure to it is an insult to everyone's intelligence.

The fact that some dippy parent cannot install porn filters on their own computer, means that the entire British web has to put up with the government deciding what sites are accessed.

This might be ok, if the government did not have such an appalling record when it came to deciding which sites were suitable. There is also nothing to stop the Government adding sites that it does not want good citizens to see to the list. Political sites and other "radical ideas" could be supressed by the government in the long term.

It is also a comparatively small step to remove the opt-in clause at a later date. After all who is going to take to the streets to defend their right to porn?

What is scary is that the government has managed to bring in its filtering plans without any debate, thanks to the fact it has managed to get the ISPs to sign up to the deal voluntarily.

For those who have been following the Edward Snowden leaks, this is exactly the same method used by the US spooks to get free email monitoring without a court order.

Companies like TalkTalk have forced new consumers to make a choice about parental filters since March 2012. It recently began doing the same with existing customers and 20,000 enabled filtering in the first week.

Speaking at an event, TalkTalk's Head of Public Affairs Alexandra Birtles said that a third of their customers have filtering enabled.

But Perry claimed that parents were "complacent" about the risks of online pornography, pointing out that only four in 10 parents use some kind of Internet filtering at home.

Of course is it is a foreign view to her that some parents do not care what their child watches and are not spending their time wrapping their off-spring in bubble wrap to protect them from the outside world.

However, even if this particular attitude was psychologically desirable, it is sending out a bad message to parents. It does not matter if you are a rubbish parent, the state will take your responsibility away from you.

If parents are that incompetent, then they should not be allowed to breed as it is not in the best interests of any child. However Perry can't do the unthinkable and take countless children into care. Instead she punishes those who make the sensible decision not to have kids, or are good parents.

Of course all this is technologically pointless. Any teen can work their way around such a filter and in many ways it gives parents a false sense of security. Perry, and her ilk, are whacking a nail in the coffin of freedom of speech for no good purpose.

http://news.techeye.net/security/bri...ds-bad-parents