You have to supply giffgaff with either your driving licence or passport no. Some providers ask you to make a trivially small transaction with your debit/credit cards which is then returned.
Itās a different shape.
Somebody just needs to patiently explain to them that VPN does not stand for Virtual Porn Networkā¦
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I wonder if it will be incorporated into a background check for jobs like teaching. You know, so employers can make the most informed choice. I mean sure, you could freely choose to opt out, but the government isnāt responsible for the damage that does to your employability, is it? Itās not like theyāre trying to shame you into submission or anything. Besides, itās really only the most extreme and esoteric content that will be blocked by the system, so you donāt have any reason to opt out unless youāre some kind of minor sex offender. Youāre not a sex offender, are you Tim?
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Ah, the freedom of poverty and serfdomā¦
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If we are dealing with BB, does this mean that the Proles will still have access to porn?
Iām not suggesting that they have exactly the same purpose or that they will evolve in the same way, but my experience of the Great Firewall in China is that porn is a very minor part of its purpose, apart from as a pretext. The two biggest reasons for it to be there are the obvious (control, stifling political criticism and protecting the powerful) and protectionism. The idea that significant amounts of Chinese money could be going to American companies is unthinkable, but Chinese software is generally horrible, adware ridden, ineffective crap that could never survive in a free market. It also makes a lot of money for government officials if itās successful. Iāve even heard that the government is allowing some porn to get through at this point to deflect some of the criticism and thereby keep the wall up. It seems to work most effectively by self-regulation, as you are constantly reminded of its presence if you stray too far from the approved content. Basically, itās far too effective a political tool to be limited to porn.
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Do they block VPN traffic, or do they block access to the website hosting the download of the VPN software? I use a VPN over my mobile phone at least once a week, so that I can book events on an internal company calendar from home. If I viewed porn over my work VPN I expect Iād get fired. I donāt need all VPNs to be blocked on the off chance that I am viewing porn.
Shit, I use electricity to run my computers. I therefore need the government to protect me from myself by turning off all electricity to my house, in case Iām about to āimminentlyā use that electricity to power a computer displaying porn.
Censorship is not the right approach or even a plausible argument in favour of wanting to block VPN traffic. The government simply wants to be able to inspect all web traffic and they are using āpr0nā as a pretext, so why not come out and say that the government wants the right to review all communications of all citizens, all the time, and have an honest debate about the merits and demerits of that proposal, using Parliament and elected representatives, like, you know, how a democracy is supposed to function?
Itās insulting to be treated as an idiot by the government. It annoys me that they are inventing some transparent bullshit about screening pornography from the eyes of minors as a pretext for their surveillance operations.
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A more nuanced approach is to:
- set up a VPN service company
- charge a nominal fee for access (Ā£1/year membership + cost price for data)
- make the service only open to adults
- make a precondition of signing up for the service that you agree to opt-out of any government āfilteringā scheme, (with the opt-in policy being that the customer takes his or her business elsewhere)
- make the VPN software operate using an inconvenient cypher such as TwoFish, which is specifically designed to be slow to brute-force due to the time taken to derive the round keys.
I swear to god, if they trot that out, Iām blaming you for encouraging them. Shhhhhh!
You all are missing the point.
This is great news, it gives everyone a valid excuse for turning the filter off: āI need to access my work VPN.ā
because they would loseā¦duh.
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Isnāt this just perfect for both the intelligence community AND the prudes who think that sex is dirty and that you should not see it.
Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, in various uniforms often in a bathing suit or pyjamas, sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper, would stamp it. On subsequent inspection the citizen was required to show the properly entered stamps of the last inspection. The Examiner, when he stopped a large group, would only examine and stamp the cards of a few. The others were then subject to arrest because their cards were not properly stamped. Arrest meant āprovisional detentionā; that is, the prisoner would be released if and when his Affidavit of Explanation, properly signed and stamped, was ap- proved by the Assistant Arbiter of Explanations. Since this official hardly ever came to his office, and the Affidavit of Explanation had to be presented in person, the explainers spent weeks and months waiting around in unheated offices with no chairs and no toilet facilities.
Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required. The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines.All benches were removed from the city, all fountains turned off, all flowers and trees destroyed. Huge electric buzzers on the top of every apartment house (everyone lived in apartments) rang the quarter hour. Often the vibrations would throw people out of bed. Search- lights played over the town all night (no one was permitted to use shades, curtains, shutters or blinds).
No one ever looked at anyone else because of the strict law against importuning, with or without verbal approach. anyone for any purpose, sexual or otherwise. All cafes and bars were closed. Liquor could only be obtained with a special permit, and the liquor so obtained could not be sold or given or in any way transferred to anyone else, and the presence of anyone else in the room was considered prima facie evidence of conspiracy to transfer liquor.
No one was permitted to bolt his door, and the police had pass keys to every room in the city. Accompanied by a mentalist they rush into someoneās quarters and start ālooking for it.ā
The mentalist guides them to whatever the man wishes to hide: a tube of vaseline, an enema, a handkerchief with come on it, a weapon, unlicensed alcohol. And they always submitted the suspect to the most humiliating search of his naked person on which they make sneering and derogatory comments. Many a latent homosexual was carried out in a straitjacket when they planted vaseline in his ass. Or they pounce on any object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree.
āAnd what is this supposed to be for?ā
āItās a pen wiper.ā
āA pen wiper, he says.ā
āIāve heard everything now.ā
āI guess this is all we need. Come on, you.āAfter a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats.
-William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
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Itās truly astonishing just what impact a weakened, uninfluential, untrusted and flaccid prime minister can have.
Iām sort of counting on this going bang before it starts.
Websense has just been implemented at my place of work, and thatās already driving me fucking nuts. Canāt see BB.
Why the fuck doesnāt government experiment with freedom?
I made your spacing of this Naked Lunch excerpt properly match the correct spacing in the book, per
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If they really were worried about ācorrupting peopleā then theyād ban politicians.
āAnd why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brotherās eye, but
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?ā - Jesus Christ
(a.k.a. āthe source they use to justify most of their actionsā)
Does my fascism look big in this?
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I hate to say it, but all the pro-libel law people are part of the same culture in Britain that seeks to restrain the most casually controversial of speech. The US sucks at free speech too, but at least we tend to limit it mostly to our asinine security theater.
Hereās the thing about free speech- it never pays to be anything less than an absolutist.
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And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch
of the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the
past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films,
textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novelsāwith every
conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a
statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatiseā¦ There was a whole chain of separate
departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and
entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers
containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology,
sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and
sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on
a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even
a whole sub-sectionāPornosec, it was called in Newspeakāengaged in
producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed
packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it,
was permitted to look at. - 1984
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