The Home Office has admitted that it has been trying to force ISPs to subscribe to the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) blacklist, even though it doesn't know what the organisation does.
Speaking exclusively to Computer Shopper, a Home Office spokesman thought the IWF deletes illegal websites and doesn't look at the content they rate.
He also revealed that the government's measures to ensure that the IWF is blocking illegal content only consist of "meeting with the IWF fairly regularly for updates on how they're doing."
Against the background of countries like Australia secretly blocking Wikileaks, this use of unappointed censors that are never questioned or even checked by any kind of review body is really getting dire. When will these politicians come to their senses?
Rather curiously, on my work ADSL link (telewest) I can't get through to either of those links. As it's also on Slashdot maybe it is the slashdot effect. Otherwise, I wonder if telewest are blocking the links.
ReplyDelete"The question is not whether I'm paranoid, it's whether I'm paranoid enough." (anon)
Part of the problem, of course, is that we probably won't be sure until it's too late...
ReplyDeleteWikileaks fell over under the load earlier. (Mediawiki is a pig.) It's back now.
ReplyDelete