Britons! Tell the UK government that the compulsory porn-viewing logs need compulsory privacy standards

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/12/age-verification.html

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I don’t see how that is workable. They can’t force a porn site based outside of the UK to do such a thing, to make it easier on them I can see many just geo-blocking UK IP addresses… which means the determined self-fulfilment aficionado will just use a VPN to connect to them.

Will google image searches also require age verification? How about Reddit? Or the near infinite other sites which carry similar content?

It’s like they’ve never used the internet.

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Once you have the database, just cross reference with members of parliament and publish the result. The law will be gone before the week is over.

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Last week I had a spam e-mail claiming to be from China, and wanting a ransom or they would give my porn viewing list to my employers and mailing list. I ignored it, of course. There is no way they could look me up this way.

The masterminds that bought us Brexit are actually going to make this possible. They are proposing a database which can be searched by sites outside the UK (so they can find our actual age) but without any guarantee of privacy. So you will have to have some verifiable ID that is linked to your provable age, and can be correlated with your viewing habits.

Maybe some posh twit thinks it is like ordering a lap dance at his club to round off the evening. I dunno. I can’t get into the heads of these people at all.

I can’t get the ORG message page to work right now. I hope this is because others are pounding the bejasus out of it.

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Sadly unbelievable idiocy is the norm when it comes to this government and the internet (and many, many other things). It really wouldn’t surprise me at all if many of the MPs coming up with things like this or voting for them do not really understand it at all.

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Viz. the then Home Secretary Amber Rudd proclaiming that tech companies could force extremist content off the Internet by using hashtags.

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So how will they key this database? By IP address? Because I piggybacked off a neighbor for over a year, and I visited some pretty naughty sites. And if porn is streaming into my router, will they have a way to determine if my son was using it? Activate the webcam, maybe?

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There’s something deeply sad and pathetic about a nation having a greater sense of moral panic than America over pornography.

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Yes™

Step 1: announce policy
Step 2: ???
Step 3: policy is magically working

Simple things like reality don’t get a look in…

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  1. Something must be done!
  2. I have done something!
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It’s a niche concern to a key Tory voter demographic (The Daily Mail reading post 60 voter).

Whilst broadcast regulations have been allowed to liberalise to almost anything goes, even on terrestrial services (Naked Attraction/Embarrassing Bodies etc) with no panic, moral or otherwise.

Like the laughable anti-piracy measures they introduced (letters and DNS based blocking) this too will fade to obscurity.

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I’ve been waiting for these folks to show up in my inbox. I love messing with scammers, just to see what they will do. Not quite sure how I’m going to try and play them yet, though. Any thoughts welcome.

I have a VM prepared for the next time the tech support scammers call.

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It seems to be a Rule Of The Internet (what number are we up to now?) that anyone allowed to pass legislation re the internet must not have ever sullied themselves by actually using it.

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