Back in July David Cameron announced that he’d be ensuring that all ISPs within the United Kingdom would implement a mandatory filtering scheme. The initiative drew a lot of negative attention, including a post from yours truly, as the UK’s citizens were rightly outraged that the government felt the need to fiddle with their Internet connections. The parallels between Cameron’s policy and that of the Clean Feed here in Australia were shocking in their similarity and I, like many others, thought that it’d likely never see the light of day. Unfortunately though it appears that not only has Cameron managed to get the big 4 Internet providers on board he’s also managed to broaden the scope far beyond its original intentions, much to the chagrin of everyone.
The base principle behind this initiative appears to be the same as the Clean Feed: to protect children from the vast swaths of objectionable content that reside on the Internet. Probably the biggest difference between however stems from its implementation as the Clean Feed was going to be enforced through legislation (although that later changed when it couldn’t pass parliament) Cameron’s filter is instead a voluntary code of practice that ISPs can adhere to. If the same thing was introduced in Australia it would be likely that none would support it however in the UK nearly all of the major suppliers have agree to implement it. The problem with this informal system though is that the scope of what should and should not be blocked isn’t guarded by any kind of oversight and, predictably, the scope has started to creep far beyond it’s initial goals.
Among the vast list of things that are making their way onto the list of “objectionable” content are such legitimate sites including sex education sites and even the UK equivalents of sites like Kids Helpline. Back when Conroy first proposed the filter this kind of scope creep was one of the biggest issues that many of us had with the proposal as the process by which they made the list was secretive and the actual list itself, even though it was eventually made public, was also meant to be kept from the general public. Cameron’s initiative does the same and, just as everyone was worried about, the list of objectionable content has grown far beyond what the general public was told it would. It’s happened so quickly that many have said (and rightly so) that it was Cameron’s plan all along.
If you ever had any doubts about just how bad the Clean Feed would have been in Australia then the UK’s initiative should serve as a good example of what we could have expected. The rapid expansion from a simple idea of protecting children from online pornography has now morphed into a behemoth where all content either fits into someone’s idea of what’s proper and what’s not. It’s only a matter of time before some politically sensitive content makes it onto the objectionable list, turning the once innocent filter into a tool of Orwellian oppression. I’d love to be proved wrong on this but I can’t say I’m hopeful given that the slippery slope that many of us predicted came true.
Fight this, citizens of the UK.
