We learned recently from Paris that the Western world is deeply and passionately committed to free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. That’s a really good thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the West — perpetrated not by The Terrorists but by the Western politicians claiming to fight them.
One of the most alarming examples comes, not at all surprisingly, from the U.K. government, which is currently agitating for new counterterrorism powers, “including plans for extremism disruption orders designed to restrict those trying to radicalize young people.” Here are the powers which the British Freedom Fighters and Democracy Protectors are seeking:
They would include a ban on broadcasting and a requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web and social media or in print. The bill will also contain plans for banning orders for extremist organisations which seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech in public places, but it will fall short of banning on the grounds of provoking hatred.
It will also contain new powers to close premises including mosques where extremists seek to influence others. The powers of the Charity Commission to root out charities that misappropriate funds towards extremism and terrorism will also be strengthened.
In essence, advocating any ideas or working for any political outcomes regarded by British politicians as “extremist” will not only be a crime, but can be physically banned in advance. Basking in his election victory, Prime Minister David Cameron unleashed this Orwellian decree to explain why new Thought Police powers are needed: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.’” It’s not enough for British subjects merely to “obey the law”; they must refrain from believing in or expressing ideas which Her Majesty’s Government dislikes.
Tag: UK
1000-Year-Old Village Told To Stop Using Name Because Of Trademark Claim From Hotel Chain Founded There
A residents’ association in the village of Copthorne was threatened with legal action by a multinational hotel chain founded there — for using the name Copthorne.
Brand protection officers acting on behalf of Copthorne Hotels, which has a large hotel in Plymouth, wrote to the small local group — saying it was infringing its trademark.
Hollywood Urged Cameron to Keep DVD Ripping Illegal
To most consumers it’s common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this was illegal until late last year.
After consulting various stakeholders the Government decided that it would be in the best interests of consumers to legalize copying for personal use.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, not all copyright holders were in favor of the legal changes. In fact, emails published from the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack reveal that Hollywood wanted to stop the plans by urging UK Prime Minister David Cameron to keep Hollywood’s interests in mind.
The first email mentioning the issue was sent January last year. Here, Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton was informed that MPAA boss Chris Dodd wanted him to give Cameron a call.
“Essentially, Dodd thinks (and we agree) it would be helpful for you to call Prime Minister Cameron if you are willing in order to ensure our position is fully considered,” the email from Sony’s Keith Weaver reads.
According to Weaver it was still uncertain whether Hollywood’s concerns would be properly heard in Parliament.
“This is because prior interactions with the U.K. government over the last few months have left us with no certainty that our concerns will be addressed in the proposal that will be presented to Parliament for an up or down vote in February,” he explained.
Court Orders UK ISPs to Block Popcorn Time Sites
Following a series of blocking orders issued by the High Court, UK Internet providers Sky, TalkTalk, Virgin, BT and EE are currently required to restrict access to many of the world’s largest torrent sites and streaming portals.
More than 100 websites have been blocked in recent years and today the court issued the first injunction against domains that offer no direct links, but only software.
The order, obtained today by Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association, targets five popular Popcorn Time forks: popcorntime.io, flixtor.me, popcorn-time.se, and isoplex.isohunt.to.
In his order Judge Birss notes that the Popcorm Time software has little to no legal use. Instead, he mentions that it’s mostly used to download and stream pirated movies and TV-shows.
“It is manifest that the Popcorn Time application is used in order to watch pirated content on the internet and indeed it is also manifest that that is its purpose. No-one really uses Popcorn Time in order to watch lawfully available content,” Judge Birss writes.
“The point of Popcorn Time is to infringe copyright. The Popcorn Time application has no legitimate purpose,” he adds.
Senior Police Officer Suggests Companies Allowing People To Use Strong Crypto Are ‘Friendly To Terrorists’
Last November, we ran through the list of senior law enforcement officers on both sides of the Atlantic who all came out with suspiciously similar whines about how strong crypto was turning the internet into a “dark and ungoverned” place. Judging by this story in Reuters, others want to join the choir:
Some technology and communication firms are helping militants avoid detection by developing systems that are “friendly to terrorists”, Britain’s top anti-terrorism police officer said on Tuesday.
That remark comes from Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, who is the UK’s National Policing Lead for Counter-Terrorism, replacing Cressida Dick. Here’s the problem according to Rowley:
“Some of the acceleration of technology, whether it’s communications or other spheres, can be set up in different ways,” Rowley told a conference in London.
“It can be set up in a way which is friendly to terrorists and helps them … and creates challenges for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Or it can be set up in a way which doesn’t do that.”
“Set up in a way which is friendly to terrorists and helps them” obviously means using strong crypto; “set up in a way which doesn’t do that” therefore means with compromised crypto. Like his colleagues, Rowley too blames the current mistrust between the intelligence agencies and computer companies on Edward Snowden:
“Snowden has created an environment where some technology companies are less comfortable working with law reinforcement and intelligence agencies and the bad guys are better informed,” Rowley told Reuters after his speech.
Well, no, actually. That “environment” has been created by the NSA and GCHQ working together to break into the main online services, and undermine key aspects of digital technology, with no thought for the collateral damage that ruining internet security might cause for the world. Rowley is also quoted as saying:
“We all love the benefit of the internet and all the rest of it, but we need [technology companies’] support in making sure that they’re doing everything possible to stop their technology being exploited by terrorists. I’m saying that needs to be front and centre of their thinking and for some it is and some it isn’t.”
The technology is not being “exploited” by terrorists, it’s being used by them, just as they use telephones or microwaves or washing machines. That’s what those devices are there for. The idea that trying to make broken internet technologies should be “front and center” of technology companies’ thinking bespeaks a complete contempt for their users.
This constant refrain about how awful strong crypto is, and how we must break it, is simply the intelligence services implicitly admitting that they find the idea of doing their job in a free society, where people are able to keep some messages private, too hard, so they would be really grateful if technology companies could just fall in line and make life easier by destroying privacy for everyone.
Pirate Bay Blockade Censors CloudFlare Customers
Like any form of censorship web blockades can sometime lead to overblocking, targeting perfectly legitimate websites by mistake.
This is also happening in the UK where Sky’s blocking technology is inadvertently blocking sites that have nothing to do with piracy.
In addition to blocking domain names, Sky also blocks IP-addresses. This allows the site to stop https connections to The Pirate Bay and its proxies, but when IP-addresses are shared with random other sites they’re blocked too.
This is happening to various customers of the CDN service CloudFlare, which is used by many sites on the UK blocklist. Every now and then this causes legitimate sites to be blocked, such as CloudFlare customers who shared an IP-address with Pirate Bay proxy ilikerainbows.co.uk.
Although the domain is merely a redirect to ilikerainbows.co, it’s listed in Sky’s blocking system along with several CloudFlare IP-addresses. Recently, the CDN service received complaints from users about the issue and alerted the proxy owner.
“It has come to our attention that your website — ilikerainbows.co.uk — is causing CloudFlare IPs to be blocked by SkyB, an ISP located in the UK. This is impacting other CloudFlare customers,” CloudFlare wrote.
The CDN service asked the proxy site to resolve the matter with Sky, or else it would remove the site from the network after 24 hours.
“If this issue does not get resolved with SkyB though we will need to route your domain off CloudFlare’s network as it is currently impacting other CloudFlare customers due to these blocked IP addresses.”
Who runs this world? Sony Pictures CEO jokes about getting UK culture minister fired
Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton mulled pulling strings to get UK culture minister Ed Vaizey fired to replace him with the grandson of former prime minister Harold MacMillan.
Vaizey, a democratically elected Tory moderniser, oversaw “digital industries” for Britain’s Coalition government – from broadband to copyright shakeups. He was comfortably reelected in 2010, and slotted into the Ministry of Fun by Prime Minister David Cameron.
The revelation that Sony’s powerful Lynton wanted shot of Vaizey emerged fresh from the mountain of emails and documents leaked from Sony Pictures by hackers, all of which were bunged into a searchable online database by WikiLeaks this week.
Brit-born Lynton was sharing breakfast with Bella Pollen – a UK socialite, journalist, and novelist – in Los Angeles in August last year when he fired off an email to her husband David MacMillan, publisher and grandson of former Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, that read:
I am sitting here with Bella and conspiring as to how to make you Minister of Culture and Sport. You are perfectly qualified. First step is to get Ed Vaizey fired. I will do this with George Osborne. Next step is to get you appointed. This requires you meeting Charles Dunstone and having him recommend you. I will make the introduction in September. The games afoot !!!
Dunstone – chairman of Carphone Warehouse – is a big contributor to the Conservative party.
Two hours later, MacMillan, in the UK at the time, responded:
Need to be elected to parliament or raised to the peerage to proceed further with your plan, but love the idea Like all being in Charles Dunston’s gift, Think Osborne will be fearful of Vaizey as he wishes to avoid the publication of various school time photos … or maybe he feels comfortable with his past.
Music Industry Wants Cross Border Pirate Site Blocks
In recent years blockades of “pirate” websites have spread across Europe and elsewhere. In the UK, for example, more than 100 websites are currently blocked by the major ISPs.
In recent weeks alone several new countries adopted similar measures, Australia, Spain and Portugal included.
Opponents of this censorship route often argue that the measures are ineffective, and that people simply move to other sites. However, in its latest Digital Music Report music industry group IFPI disagrees, pointing at research conducted in the UK.
“Website blocking has proved effective where applied,” IFPI writes, noting that the number of UK visits to “all BitTorrent” sites dropped from 20 million in April 2012 to 11 million two years later.
The key to an effective blocking strategy is to target not just one, but all leading pirate sites.
“While blocking an individual site does not have a significant impact on overall traffic to unlicensed services, once a number of leading sites are
blocked then there is a major impact,” IFPI argues.For now, however, courts have shown to be among the biggest hurdles. It can sometimes take years before these cases reach a conclusion, and the same requests have to be made in all countries.
To streamline the process, copyright holders now want blocking injunctions to apply across borders, starting in the European Union.
“The recording industry continues to call for website blocking legislation where it does not already exist. In countries where there is already a legal basis for blocking, procedures can be slow and burdensome,” IFPI writes.
Fighting Toddler ‘Porn Addiction,’ UK Lawmakers Demand Porn Sites Include Age Checks Or Face Closure
The UK’s attempts to filter the Internet of all of its naughty bits are nothing if not amusing, whether it’s the nation’s porn filter architect getting arrested for child porn, or the complete and total obliviousness when it comes to the slippery slope of expanding those filters to include a growing roster of ambiguously objectionable material. The idea of forcing some kind of overarching structure upon porn consumption in the UK is another idea that never seems to go away, whether it’s requiring a “porn license” (requiring users to clearly opt in if they want to view porn) or the latest push — mandatory age checks.
Seemingly unaware of the way the internet (or law, or the world itself) works, some UK lawmakers are now demanding that porn websites around the world include age verification systems, or face fines or closure. How exactly the UK government plans to enforce these restrictions upon a global pornography industry isn’t explained. The only thing the UK is sure of is that these restrictions are absolutely necessary for the welfare of the country’s tots:
“Providers who did not co-operate could also be fined. Mr Javid said: “If you want to buy a hardcore pornography DVD in a store you need to prove your age to the retailers. “With the shift to online, children can access adult content on websites without restriction, intentionally or otherwise. “That is why we need effective controls online that apply to UK and overseas. This is about giving children the best start in life.”
Well intentioned, perhaps, but it’s yet another example of people not realizing how the internet genie has left the bottle, and no amount of thrashing or cajoling is going to re-imprison the agitated djinn. The UK’s latest push is being propped up by a flood of recent scary headlines across the UK proclaiming that the country has a porn addiction problem among around a tenth of the nation’s 12- and 13-year-olds. In fairly typical media fashion, the storiesproclaiming this fact don’t really bother to dissect the claims or hunt down the survey’s origins.
If they had, they might discover that the survey in question was probably about as far from science as you can get without involving clowns and sacrificial altars:
“It turns out the study was conducted by a “creative market research” group called OnePoll. “Generate content and news angles with a OnePoll PR survey, and secure exposure for your brand,” reads the company’s blurb. “Our PR survey team can help draft questions, find news angles, design infographics, write and distribute your story.” The company is super popular on MoneySavingExpert.com, where users are encouraged to sign up and make a few quid. Here’s what that website says: “Mega-popular for its speedy surveys, OnePoll runs polls for the press, meaning fun questions about celebs and your love life.” So the company behind these stats about porn addiction are known for their quick and easy surveys and promise to generate headline-grabbing stats. An unusual choice, perhaps, for such a sensitive subject.”
While the group behind the effort (Childline) appears well intentioned, there are surely better ways to protect children than by scaring politicians into a global charade of internet booby whac-a-mole. Like, with actual parenting perhaps. Paying attention to what your kids do online, and intelligently explaining sexuality to them before they run into age-inappropriate content would be worlds more effective than demanding the globe’s pornography industry capitulate to the whims of the UK’s ludditical legislators.
Britain Used Spy Team to Shape Latin American Public Opinion on Falklands
Faced with mounting international pressure over the Falkland Islands territorial dispute, the British government enlisted its spy service, including a highly secretive unit known for using “dirty tricks,” to covertly launch offensive cyberoperations to prevent Argentina from taking the islands.
A shadowy unit of the British spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had been preparing a bold, covert plan called “Operation QUITO” since at least 2009. Documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, published in partnership with Argentine news site Todo Notícias, refer to the mission as a “long-running, large scale, pioneering effects operation.”
At the heart of this operation was the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group, known by the acronym JTRIG, a secretive unit that has been involved in spreading misinformation.
The British government, which has continuously administered the Falkland Islands — also known as the Malvinas — since 1833, has rejected Argentine and international calls to open negotiations on territorial sovereignty. Worried that Argentina, emboldened by international opinion, may attempt to retake the islands diplomatically or militarily, JTRIG and other GCHQ divisions were tasked “to support FCO’s [Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s] goals relating to Argentina and the Falkland Islands.” A subsequent document suggests the main FCO goal was to “[prevent] Argentina from taking over the Falkland Islands” and that new offensive cyberoperations were underway in 2011 to further that end.
Tensions between the two nations, which fought a war over the small archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean in 1982, reached a boil in 2010 with the British discovery of large, offshore oil and gas reserves potentially worth billions of dollars.
The British government frames the issue as one of residents’ self-determination. Prime Minister David Cameron maintains that the islands will remain British as long as that was the will of their inhabitants, “full stop, end of story.”
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, known for her provocative, left-leaning foreign policy since taking office in 2007, rallied regional and international leaders to pass resolutions in international bodies supportive of Argentina’s claim to the islands and stand against what she called the U.K.’s “downright colonialism.”
Even the United States, Britain’s closest ally, declined to support the U.K. position, instead offering to mediate a resolution between the two sides in 2010. Prime Minister Cameron rejected the proposal, calling it “disappointing.”
GCHQ’s efforts on Argentina and the Falklands between 2008 and 2011, the time period the documents cover, were broad and not limited solely to JTRIG. Surveillance of Argentine “military and Leadership” communications on various platforms was a “high priority” task. Despite the Obama administration’s unwillingness to publicly back their ally, NSA assistance was ongoing as of 2010. According to an NSA “Extended Enterprise Report” dated June 2008, based on NSA officials’ meetings with GCHQ representatives, Argentina was “GCHQ’s primary interest in the region.”