more on "Cleanfeed" - British Telecom to ban child porn site connections

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: June 6, 2004 10:38:41 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Re: [IP] "Cleanfeed" - British Telecom to ban child porn site 
connections

>    British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all
>    illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online.
>    ...
>    Blocking websites is highly controversial and until now has been
>    associated only with oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and
>    China, which have censored sites associated with dissidents.

Dave,

Ironically, such moves are likely to have the effect of making such
materials -- which we all abhor -- even harder for authorities to 
detect.

Rather than operating via relatively easy to find Web sites, the
participants in such communications will accelerate their moves
toward more heavily cloaked and obscured distributed environments,
that can very quickly morph and evolve.

The example of China is instructive, since even in that country with 
their
long history of governmentally-directed information control, efforts to
censor Internet access by their citizens have been and continue to be
relatively ineffective.

There may be some positive short-term purely political benefit to 
efforts
like that of BT.  But in the long run such an approach is likely to have
exactly the opposite of the desired effect on the underlying problem.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () privacyforum org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - 
http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, Fact Squad - http://www.factsquad.org
Co-Founder, URIICA - Union for Representative International Internet
                     Cooperation and Analysis - http://www.uriica.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://www.vortex.com/lauren-blog

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