British Prime Minister David Cameron wants internet porn eradicated, and to accomplish that mission he has apparently jumped into bed with a Chinese company accused of spying.
Cameron has announced that smut connoisseurs will have to register for access to X-rated material. On Friday the BBC revealed that controversial telecom giant Huawei controls the filters used by British internet service provider TalkTalk to block online porn sites.
Huawei infiltrated the U.K. in 2010 with its Cyber Security Evaluation Center in Basingstoke to establish a global presence. The company invested $2 billion in Britain last year. But U.S. officials (notably former CIA director Michael Hayden) claim Huawei has worked as a cyber spy for the Chinese government, and the British parliament launched an investigation in June into the company’s activity in the country.
Huawei defiantly bats back spying charges, once saying, “Someone says they got some proof of some sort of threat? OK. Then put up. Or shut up.”
Cameron designed the anti-porn program to protect children (50 percent of whom surf the web without supervision) from unexpectedly stumbling upon adult content. Users will now need to “opt in,” or check off a box, in order to access pornographic sites. New clients looking to purchase internet from an ISP and clients who renew their contracts next year will not be able to see adult content on the web unless they choose to do so.
The so-called “perv list”—a potential registry of internet customers who register to see porn—has triggered alarm in the United Kingdom.
So who controls access to the #UK #porn opt-in list? Who will be able to view who has or hasn't opted in? ISPs? The government? Police?
— Anonymous (@blackplans) July 22, 2013
@Garossino @MPJoySmith I think it'd be a lot easier to sell the optional parental filter idea than/ w/o the mandatory porn consumer registry
— Fed Up (@ConBGone) July 26, 2013
is that the uk national porn registry #registry
— iestyn lloyd (@iestyn_lloyd) July 25, 2013
TalkTalk, which calls itself a “family operator,” has had this sort of opt-in program in place since 2011. It’s called Homesafe, and it’s designed for parents who want to protect their kids. But TalkTalk, as it turns out, doesn’t manage Homesafe all on its own. The ISP works with Huawei, using the company’s special Service Inspection Gateway technology, to properly determine which sites should be on its blacklist and monitor those sites. Homesafe was also built with the help of Symantec, but the U.S. firm cut ties with TalkTalk last year.
The British ISPs refute claims that they are collecting the names of porn-watchers. A spokeswoman in the British cabinet says that the government will not amass the names in a central database. And while some Brits think that the government might use the name pools to hunt down sex offenders, a media relations officer at Britain’s Goverment Communications Headquarters explains that the intelligence agency wants nothing to do with the names.
Cameron says he wants to “protect our children and their innocence,” but is it at the expense of free speech and, possibly, national security?
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