Leaked Letter Shows UK ISPs and Government At War Over Default Filters

An anonymous reader writes, quoting the BBC: "A letter sent to the UK's four leading ISPs from the government has made them very cross indeed. The letter comes from the Department for Education but it sets out a list of demands from Downing Street, with the stated aim of allowing the prime minister to make an announcement shortly. The companies are asked, among other things, for a commitment to fund an 'awareness campaign' for parents. They're not particularly happy about promising cash for what the letter concedes is an 'unknown campaign' but it's the next item on the menu which is the source of most of their anger." That next item is making and marketing Internet censorship filters as "default-on" rather than "active choice": "'It sounds like a good idea until you think it through,' said one industry source. 'There are three reasons why it doesn't work. First it may be illegal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers. Then there's the fact that no filter is perfect, and finally kids are smart enough to find their way around them.'" From the sound of it, it might just be newspeak vs newspeak. The entire letter is included in the article.

Re:Summed up in verse

[girlintraining]

Just wait for the tech support calls where people complain they can't watch porn anymore... they're setting themselves up for the swiftest kick in the ass ever by the general public. That's the problem with filtering that runs on the connection instead of the computer. But hey, at least some ISPs will benefit: Namely the ones selling VPN accounts. Oh, and Tor looks to boost its numbers some more. Ever since the NSA took a big shit in the information super pool, Tor's seen an explosion of exit nodes and bridges... I gotta say, it's almost reasonably fast now for regular internet, with a few tweaks to your browser to pipeline requests...

Thanks Britain! You're unwittingly supporting terrorism, organized crime, software and multimedia piracy, citizens' right to privacy and managing to piss off over half the internet population by messing with their porn. Bravo! By weeks' end you'll be less popular than the Americans with their NSA surveillance program.