politics

David Cameron consorts with tax-dodgers to censor the web

Spread the love
Image of Jimmy Savile and Margaret Thatcher
Jimmy Savile and Margaret Thatcher

It is announced today that Downing Street is to work with massive search engine tax-dodgers Google to hugely censor the web. Under the guise of attempting to frustrate paedophiles, Downing St and Google intend to censor 100,000 search terms.

Cameron and the UK government are simply hugely censoring the internet. This measure will not affect paedophiles since they don’t use Google to search for paedophile material. Instead it will frustrate users legally searching for legitimate materials. It is quite simply huge censorship of the web. It will actually – and is quite possibly intended to – have the opposite effect of assisting internet paedophiles by posing difficulties to independent researchers.

It is a mistake to think that the internet is not already hugely censored. Do you think that search engines do not already censor paedophile and alternative political materials? This blog is hugely censored for political reasons: you won’t find this blog in a school or library. Try searching for some terms from this blog like “war of bullshit”. [Just realised that it works on Google]

There are not 100,000 paedophile search terms and paedophiles don’t use Google anyway. How can this be anything except a huge exercise in censorship?

We have already seen that UK Conservatives want to censor the web. Their lobbying bill is a huge attack on democracy attempting to neuter charities and unions. They are simply trying to take out their opposition in a very evil way totally opposed to democracy, freedom and liberty.

If it is accepted that there simply is not 100,000 search terms related to paedophilia then what is going to be censored? There are elite paedophile rings protected by the UK authorities. Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith were protected by UK authorities. I know of one paedo who was close to Tony Blair who is protected by UK authorities. When you censor the web, you are protecting these paedos.

8.30pm 18/11/13

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10457465/David-Cameron-Spies-tracking-internet-paedophiles-are-like-the-Enigma-code-breakers-of-World-War-II.html

Jim Gamble, former Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) chief executive, said that while Mr Cameron’s influence has “accelerated” the process of getting the search engines to ban 100,000 search terms.

However he said it was the peer-to-peer networks that need to be targeted if the Government wants to track down paedophiles.

He said: “Very few paedophiles in my experience use Google.”

“At the end of the day a pop up message is not going to inform, educated or scare a paedophile they know what they do is wrong, that’s why they are secretive about it that’s why they hide in the peer to peer of the dark web where they cant be found.”

  1. Confirmation that paedos do not use Google as I stated earlier in this post.
  2. There is a confused use of terms. The dark web is a reference to Tor, which is not a peer-to-peer network (like BitTorrent).
  3. The paedos are using Tor not peer-to-peer.

[19/11/13 This story seems to have died very suddenly – there are only a few mentions today of yesterday’s events.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/david-camerons-crackdown-on-child-porn-needs-some-work

… Cameron claimed the search queries targeted, which were drawn up by child protection experts, were “unambiguous,” but that seems quite frankly impossible. There are reportedly as many as 100,000 terms on the list—for comparison, the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 231,100 entries. There seems a real risk, then, of the algorithm overreaching and preventing web users from accessing perfectly legal content. …

[like (conservative or tory or lord or rich or falconer or blair) and (paedo or paedophile or nonce),

“straw rendition torture”,

“dodgy dossier”,

“misled parliament”,

“public inquiry”,

“conservative broken promises”,

etc. ]

Join the IWF to see child porn. This achieves nothing – police and intelligence services already have access.

[20/11/13 To clarify this.

Tor works by routing encrypted requests through a circuit of relays. The circuits change often. The Tor exit node is at the other end to the user and is unencrypted to the requested resource (on the open web, not if the target resource is on a Tor hidden service e.g. illegal paedo porn). The Tor user cannot be identified unless she has made a mistake e.g. identifying herself through an email address or has been infected as Anonymous did.

The confusion that spooks, ex-spooks, prime ministers and news reporters are showing between the Tor anonymity network and peer-to-peer networks is due to two issues.

  1. Prime Ministers and news reporters don’t understand it and are following the lead of spooks, ex-spooks and spooky advisors, and
  2. At the network level i.e. where spooks are intercepting traffic, they can’t distinguish Tor from peer-to-peer traffic so to them it is the same. {Later edit: 2 is based on intuition. It should not be taken as a statement of fact or knowledge.} ]

Confusion between Tor and peer-to-peer continues. Pursuing peer-to-peer seems a wasted effort.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/18/online-child-abuse-peer-to-peer

The Internet Watch Foundation does not at the moment pursue images and videos on so-called peer-to-peer networks because it lacks permission from the Home Office. But it was announced on Monday that the watchdog would begin a six-month pilot scheme in collaboration with Google, Microsoft and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency (Ceop), so that IWF can develop procedures to identify and blacklist links to child abuse material on P2P services.

Independent: Search engines take on child abuse: The ‘massive breakthrough’ where little has changed

This post subject to change.

Continue ReadingDavid Cameron consorts with tax-dodgers to censor the web

David Cameron orders inquiry into trade union tactics

Spread the love

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/17/david-cameron-inquiry-trade-union-tactics

Review condemned as ‘a Tory election stunt’ by Unite union, while coalition tensions emerge over remit

David Cameron has ordered an inquiry into the tactics of the trade unions in the wake of the bitter industrial dispute which almost led to the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland.

Downing Street said the wide-ranging review, headed by Bruce Carr QC, would investigate allegations of the use of “leverage tactics” by the unions as well as the impact of such disputes on the critical national infrastructure.

However, in a sign of renewed coalition tensions, the Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable made clear he had only agreed to the inquiry on the basis that it would also examine the practices of employers.

The review follows claims that Unite sought to intimidate executives from Ineos, the refinery’s owners, including sending demonstrators to protest outside their homes and at premises associated with Ineos chairman, Jim Ratcliffe.

A Unite spokesman said: “This review is a sorry attempt by the coalition to divert attention from the cost of living crisis. Vince Cable may not have noticed but the Grangemouth dispute has been settled. This review is nothing more than a Tory election stunt which no trade unionist will collaborate with.”

…

[Glad to see that Capitalists will be investigated re: their affect on critical national infrastructure.]

Continue ReadingDavid Cameron orders inquiry into trade union tactics

No more evasion and prevarication – Britain’s elite must be held to account

Spread the love

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/17/chilcot-inquiry-tony-blair-bush

The blocking of the Chilcot report underlines how the powerful shield their activities from the public

Henry Porter

Traitor Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George 'Dubya' Bush
Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George ‘Dubya’ Bush

 …

It is the greatest scandal of British public life in a generation, yet Blair and his allies, such as Jack Straw and Alastair Campbell, have never been properly held to account. More than a decade after we went to war, Sir John Chilcot’s report is stalled because Sir Jeremy Heywood, the current cabinet secretary, who was at Blair’s side as principle private secretary during the run-up to the invasion, is blocking crucial evidence to the inquiry.

It is an unbelievable state of affairs. As the former foreign secretary Lord Owen pointed out last week, you couldn’t have a more dubious arrangement. A man who was integral to the government that took us to war is now sitting on evidence of 200 relevant cabinet level discussions, 25 notes written by Blair to George Bush and records of 130 phone conversations between Blair, Bush and Gordon Brown. Heywood claims that he’s bound by the decision taken by his predecessor, Lord O’Donnell, to protect the confidentiality of Blair and Bush’s discussions. In effect, Heywood is claiming that he has no discretion and therefore his past as senior official in Blair’s Number 10 at the time has no relevance.

What is so dismal about this situation, quite apart from the naked self-interest that it represents, is that it underlines that while the British public is expected to put up with ever-increasing levels of intrusion by surveillance, in the name of transparency and security, those in power create for themselves an impregnable bunker where honour, accountability and public opinion count for nothing. They conceal their actions and shield themselves from entirely legitimate requests from an inquiry set up by the prime minister himself.

…

But in all this, there is a much bigger theme, which is seen in another sputtering inquiry into the behaviour of Blair-era politicians and officials – the Gibson inquiry into allegations that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects after 9/11 and that officials in the then foreign secretary Jack Straw’s office were aware. The inquiry’s investigations ended nearly two years ago and the report has been sat on by Number 10 for the past 14 months. After the NGOs and torture victims boycotted Sir Peter Gibson’s inquiry, because it lacked credibility, it probably won’t have the damning impact it should have when it is finally published this week.

As a result, Number 10 may get away without following up with examination of cases such as those of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who was rendered with his wife for torture to Gaddafi’s Libya in an operation involving Sir Mark Allen of MI6 during Jack Straw’s time at the Foreign Office.

…

Continue ReadingNo more evasion and prevarication – Britain’s elite must be held to account

Tory speeches back on internet archive

Spread the love

[Related to an earlier post about the Conservative Party disallowing access to historical material on its website.]

 The Conservatives have allowed access via an internet archive to a decade of speeches, after criticism over their removal from the party’s website.

The purge erased records of speeches and press releases from 2000 until May 2010, and a file on Conservatives.com instructed sites such as the Internet Archive and Google, which store copies of webpages for posterity, to remove the deleted pages from their databases.

Those instructions have now been amended, and 1,158 saved versions of Conservatives.com dating back to 1999 are available to view on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The purge was first reported in Computer Weekly, which noted that among the lost speeches were several where senior party members promised to use the internet to make politicians more accountable.

…

 

Continue ReadingTory speeches back on internet archive

Apathy? Alienation? How ‘disengaged’ four in ten voters reject ALL parties

Spread the love

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/apathy-alienation-how-disengaged-four-in-ten-voters-reject-all-parties-8940389.html

Four in 10 people are “alienated” from  Britain’s political parties and say they will not consider voting for any of them, according to new research.

Young adults are even more “disengaged”  from the party system, with 46 per cent of under-30s saying “none of the above” when presented with a list of the parties. Although the polling does not mean people are apathetic about politics,  the anti-sleaze watchdog which commissioned it believes the findings pose worrying questions about the future of democracy in Britain.

Surprisingly, the survey suggests public scepticism is not confined to the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats but extends  to the smaller parties likely to win “protest votes”. People were  given the option of choosing the three main parties; the UK Independence Party, the Green Party, the British National Party, Respect, another un-named party; no party or saying “don’t know.”  The survey of 1,900 people was carried out by TNS-BRMB for the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Lord (Paul) Bew, the crossbench peer who chairs the committee, told The Independent today: “One particular cause for concern from the research is the number of people, especially young people, who feel disconnected from the political system and political parties.”

He said the growth in the size of this group over the last 10 years represents a real challenge to politicians, parties, local organisations and community groups to provide the public with a sufficiently attractive and relevant set of options to choose from. However, Lord Bew added: ” Public perception is not static – it can improve in response to events in the public sphere. That requires public office holders to be seen to be demonstrating the seven principle of public life – selflessness, accountability, objectivity, integrity, honesty and leadership.” [7?]

In its summary of the findings, the committee, said that for the 40 per cent “disconnected” or “alienated” from party politics “hold sceptical or deeply sceptical perceptions of standards and do not trust those in public life.” It warned that  “an entrenched political disenchantment…appears to have acquired a growing foothold in the British public” and recommended further research into whether this “harbours the potential for rejection of the system of representative democracy and for democratic norms.”

…

[It’s clearly actual not potential. Politicos seem scared of revo but can’t bring themselves to admit it or that they’re at fault.]

12.50 This rejection of demockracy seems reasonable on reflection: their experience has shown them that democracy is a sham.

Involvement in Neo-Con invasions against the clearly stated wishes of the population, the expenses scandal, politicians lying to achieve power e.g. the NHS, student fees and the Education Support Allowance, VAT, etc. We have a government that has viciously attacked the NHS without a mandate, etc.

It would be unreasonable to expect support for so-called representative democracy.

1pm There is widespread support for nationalisation of national infrastructure e.g. trains and energy, while this is simply not on  the agenda of Neo-Liberal politicians of the indistinguishable Neo-Liberal parties. People are denied the opportunity to vote for a party that expresses their views and values.

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingApathy? Alienation? How ‘disengaged’ four in ten voters reject ALL parties