Techdirt. Stories filed under "firewall" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "firewall"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 15 Feb 2013 07:31:32 PST Iceland: Going From Protecting Free Speech Online... To Setting Up Their Own Great Firewall? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130214/02240921968/iceland-going-protecting-free-speech-online-to-setting-up-their-own-great-firewall.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130214/02240921968/iceland-going-protecting-free-speech-online-to-setting-up-their-own-great-firewall.shtml stories about Iceland really trying to position itself as a free-speech-supporting, internet-loving hub. There has been support from various government officials about more strongly keeping the internet open and allowing for innovation to bloom, hoping to encourage other countries to follow suit. However, it appears that not all politicians agree. Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland's interior minister, is apparently putting together legislation that would build a great censorship firewall in Iceland similar to China's. Of course, as is typical with attempts to censor the internet, they're saying it's all about blocking porn.
"At the moment, we are looking at the best technical ways to achieve this," an advisor to Jonasson told the Mail. "But surely if we can send a man to the moon, we must be able to tackle porn on the internet."
Last I checked, Iceland did not send a man to the moon. But, even ignoring that, this whole idea is silly. Any attempt to ban porn (or really access to porn) will fail in two important ways. First, it will not actually block access to porn. People can and will always find a way around the filters and will continue to access porn. Second, it will, undoubtedly, lead to non-porn information being falsely classified as being porn and blocked. Both of these are problematic.

But, more problematic is even opening the door to a government mandated censorship regime. Even if you believe that pornography is horrible and damaging and needs to be stopped, this is not the way to do this. You are only guaranteeing further censorship. It is inevitable. Providing tools for censorship always results in eventual mission creep, as someone who doesn't like some other kind of information points out that "if you can do it for porn, why not for..." It's a very dangerous slippery slope.

Furthermore, plans like this completely undermine all of the efforts that people in Iceland have put into promoting a free and open internet. Those claims of building an Iceland built around principles of a free and open internet look somewhat laughable when the government's interior minister is looking to craft a blatant internet censorship bill.

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]]> quite-a-shift http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130214/02240921968 Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:54:58 PST US Government Seeks 'Willful Denial' Software That Will Block Wikileaks Data From Federal Employees Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101221/04022512360/us-government-seeks-willful-denial-software-that-will-block-wikileaks-data-federal-employees.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101221/04022512360/us-government-seeks-willful-denial-software-that-will-block-wikileaks-data-federal-employees.shtml block access to Wikileaks' site, not realizing that the site was barely a part of how the documents were being distributed, while still frustrating Congressional Research Service analysts who needed to access the site as a part of their research. Then, we had reports of the Defense Department crudely blocking access to any website that had Wikileaks in the title, followed by the Air Force's decision to block access to news sites, such as the NY Times, that are discussing Wikileaks.

This is all downright bizarre. Basically, this is content that everyone else in the world can access and read about, except for government employees who don't look at it at home. The whole exercise seems like a complete waste of time and money by the US government, and it's about to get worse. According to some reports, the federal government is reaching out to security firms to see if they can build a system to block all access to Wikileaks content from within the federal government's computer system. One company asked about this notes that it's different than what they normally do, which is focused on keeping documents in a network (too late for that), rather than architecting a system to keep documents out.

At what point will the government finally admit that if a classified document is leaked and widely available, it's counterproductive to keep pretending that it's still classified. It doesn't help anyone, and it just makes the government look silly and in denial. I prefer my government to respond to reality, not pretend reality doesn't exist.

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