Do you want porn with that sir?

So kind of as predicted earlier on this blog there's a growing head of steam around this "Opt in for porn" thing with your ISP. The Daily Fail has got its panties in a bunch and started a campaign and Labour, always quick to spot a rolling bandwagon particularly when it comes to nanny stateism, have jumped on board

"Block online porn!" screams the banner, which without a trace of irony is placed right next to a photo link about someone called Kim Kardashian "Vehemently denying nude photos whilst stepping out in very tight trousers" because that right, isn't porn yeah and doesn't objectify women, right?

You would have a better chance of blocking the tide coming in Canute style. The majority of internet innovations were driven by or became mainstream because of porn. Grumble, I read somewhere, accounts for the majority of the web's traffic. Hell back in the day the video recorder war was won by the technologically inferior VHS system mainly because all the "adult titles" were released on that format.

And you are up against one of the most powerful forces in the universe, the raging hormones of a 14 year old boy. It cannot be bargained with, it cannot be reasoned with and it absolutely will not stop until it's found a way into wobblybigjugs.com and had one off the wrist. I know, I was one once; of course back then it was the magazines passed furtively around your mates and on one memorable occasion we managed to hire Ai No Korida from the video shop and it wasn't out of any desire to explore and critique Japanese cinema I can tell you. And have you met kids lately? They grew up with computers and probably have forgotten more about configuring anonymous proxies than I've ever known and will probably end up helping their dad's bypass the filters.

Its all utterly pointless gesture politics of the "something must be done" type as per usual. It's surely up to parents to bring their kids up, police their internet use and yes, accept that their teenage sons and daughters are a seething cauldron of hormones and talk to them about it, explain what porn is and about the difference between what's depicted in  porn and what real relationships are about.

What's that Mr Government? Ordinary people taking responsibility for their lives and children? That'll never do will it, after all, we're not qualified.

Shush, don't tell the government

For various reasons I found myself in the market for a 3G broadband dongle last week to replace the ancient Vodafone PCMCIA card version I have been using for years* and a look at the coverage maps showed my best bet was Three and a pay as you go would work out fine instead of a contract.

So off I flapped down to the Three shop and just out of curiosity I wondered if in out surveillance society you could still buy communications equipment anonymously. And it turns out that, yes, you can. Picked up a dongle pre-loaded with a 1Gb allowance for 20 or so quid cash, no names, no registration, nothing. You can buy top-up allowances at a tenner a time again for cash in plenty of places so I have an anonymous internet connection, and it's pretty fast too.

This got me thinking what would you have to do to be virtually undetectable using this, and its not that hard. There are location services, you might have seen these advertised as "find where your kids are" services that use data from mobile phone masts and triangulation to identify the location of a mobile device and the networks will of course give this information to the police but a bit of research indicates that they are not that accurate. Plod would have you believe that they could go "Yep, Dragon's on his 3G searching for ocelot porn again, he's at his house behind the water pipes, in the back bedroom" but they can't. Even in a city with a dense collection of masts it's only accurate to 100 meters at best, in rural areas that drops to kilometers.

Traffic analysis would be a way to work out its you of course. If anyone really was interested in finding me they would be able to work out the dongle gets used most mornings on a particular train into London just by watching what masts it connects to so you would probably need to use it in one space or adapt a usage pattern that makes no sense and can't be attributed to you.  Dumping the dongle every 3 or 4 months as well and getting a new one, ideally on a different network, would probably be prudent as well.

Combine this with strong encryption and the use of proxies like TOR and darknets and you're as undetectable as an undetectable thing.

I'm amazed we can still get away with this, really amazed. I would have thought that our lords and masters would have pointed at those modern horsemen of the apocalypse, Terrorist and Peedofils, and gone "waaaah! all communication equipment must be registered for your own protection citizens".

Of course all the information presented above is just a thought experiment, if you choose to act on any of this I take no responsibility. But here's a link so you can find your nearest Three store...



* "Tiamat" - my lovely old T60 is laid up awaiting repairs and the Compaq 6720 (named Voliatus as it's not the smartest lappy in the world) I've borrowed doesn't like the old card it seems.

Thinking of the chiiiildren, again.

Ah yes, the Tories. Just like Labour always ready with their ban-hammer when it comes to the thought that someone out there is having a good time. Following on from a report from that bastion of all things blue rinse and prudery the Mother's Union (whose leader appears to be a bloke called "Reg" for some unfathomable reason) your lovely nanny state will insist that the main broadband providers will offer a block on "adult content" to all subscribers.

Of course there's no detail on this but I would imagine it'll be some sort of BT Cleanfeed and so easily subvertable by any moderately tech savvy twelve year old (and they all are) who can configure a proxy.  In  other words this is a fig leaf, a sop to those members of the party faithful bluenoses who wander around with a disapproving expression and looking for all the world like someone has just rammed a pine cone up their arse.

And how is this going to work in terms of opt in or opt out? The Daily Fail is saying "opt in" whereas everyone else reporting the story is non-commital on that point.  Mind you opt in is going to make for some amusing conversations in PC World.

"Do you want porn with your new Dell laptop?"
"Er, yes please."
(Turns on tannoy) "Mr Verity to the checkout please. Can you bring a porn opt-in form. Gentleman wants internet filth on his PC. Now sir, what sort of porn do you want? Straight, gay, midgets, horses, horses with midgets..."

And who, exactly, is going to administer this list of what is "adult material"? Sure so it's a fair bet that a website with a name like "HotSexyDragonsDoingItWithAnythingThatMoves.com" will end up on the list¹ but how about some gay advocacy sites that offer advice to to teenagers struggling with their sexuality? What about stuff that's not actually sexual or illegal in any way but maybe you really would not want your kids looking at such as these "pro anorexia" sites?  What about "dangerous" political sites that you find distasteful such as those from extreme right and left wing parties or Muslim extremists?

See where as it's nice an easy to block something obvious that we can pretty much all agree on a definition of such as child porn² it starts to end up like a quagmire of The Dead Marshes proportions as soon as you try to categorise what's "adult" and what isn't.

And as ever, with politicians in charge, they are bound to monumentally fuck this up.

¹ memo to self: register that domain name ASAP.
² and even there, if the spam I get in my mailbox inviting me to come to sites with names like "hot-teens.grubbysmut.org" is to be believed, where I am sure the models are of legal age but are pretending not to be so, where do we stand with the ban-hammer on this one?

No they haven't

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Scribbles on the bog door

On my travels back from the land of sheepshagging and close harmony singing recently (I think the two are related) I stopped off at a motorway service station to the south of Birmingham in order to top up the caffiene levels and take a dump. I don't know if you recall this but going to the lav in a service station 20 or so years ago was a journey into some Stygian abyss where you were met at the door to the bogs by a ferryman who would carry you in his coracle across the River Styx of urine that spread from a blocked loo across the floor.

Not so these loos which were, generally speaking, clean and reasonably pleasant, the hand driers worked and my cubicle was secured by a proper lock with a handle rather than a 2 inch screw hammered into what remained of the locking mechanism.

Now back in those dark and distinctly malodourous days the back of public bog doors seemed to be used as a general bulletin board. I am surmising that back in the days before the Intertubes came along people used to nip to the netty in order to post a message on topics of the day, mainly the status of their favourite football team or lack of form of a rival, politics - usually concentrating on the subject of The Troubles (such as "Fuck the Queen and the UDA", to which the considered political response was usually "Fuck off you Feinian bogtrotting cunt") and of course what everyone else uses the intertubes for, sex.

Specifically soliciting sexual encounters, normally between members of the male gender as, I assumed, that women of the heterosexual persuasion didn't tend to frequent the male loos, not even when there was a queue (and there would be) for the ladies.* I was never entirely sure what to make of these: I mean it seems a pretty odd way to advertise and I often wondered if they were all practical jokes truckers used to play on their mates - you know so Steve who had just got back from hauling a shitload of steel from Newcastle to Bristol was just bedding down for the night and gets a call asking to meet up at Forton services tomorrow evening for "Hot botty action".

Anyway back to 2008 and the interweb has triumphed; there isn't a scribble, no crude drawings of willies, no political slanging matches, no invites for participants in anal intercourse when, tucked up a corner, I spot this...



Not the best picture in the world but I didn't exactly want to turn the flash on did I! It was actually scratched into the veneer of the door and reads "Sicko wants to be bitch for large dogs"

Now I'm leaning towards "prank" for this one given the use of the word "sicko" but, even though there must be dozens of websites and forums for people whose interests encompass "being a bitch for large dogs" it is nice to see that even in this wired age there is still a place for the scribbes on the bog door.



* incidentally the one time I saw a queue for the mens bog and not the ladies was at the geekfest that is Microsoft TechEd.

Bet that's a fun read

Seen today as I logged on to Blogger...




Like I'm going to click on that link on the 7:20 from Cambridge.

Burn the Witch!

Ah, nothing like a good paedophile panic in the morning to set you up for the day, good old paedophiles, the witches of the 21st century, moral panic, guilt-free hatred and a bit of tittilation thrown in for good measure. Where would we be without them - hating someone else presumably.

Today's panic has been running all day on Sky news (which my employer thoughtfully lets us all watch on giant fucking plasma screens suspended on the walls) and it's even got the internet in it - yay we got the whole cunting package here boys!

Online paedophiles are cruising a virtual world to act out their sexual fantasies with young children. Sky News reporter Jason Farrell has been investigating the darker side to the virtual world Second Life - and found an area called "Wonderland" that is being used by child abusers.

Oh Noes! Poor online children innocently going online and being targeted by nasty, evil peedofils! Shut down Second Life now. No shut down the whole of the InterWeb just to be sure.

Only...

Wonderland is a virtual children's playground where paedophiles cruise and kids are solicited," said Farrell. ... "After talking to one child I was offered a range of sordid and sick sexual acts.

Errr... well let me spell this out for you Mr Farrel - YOU WERE NOT SPEAKING TO A CHILD! What you were talking to was some sad sack in ill-fitting polyester trousers and round glasses called Raymond who is 32 and still lives at home with his mother. If you went round to Club Fur in Second Life do you think that the six foot tall raccoons and foxes you are chatting to have fluffy tails and paws in real life you fucking moron.

Look I hold no brief for people who get their jollies for fantasizing about sex with minors but surely it's better for them all to be in here where they are doing imaginary things to each other with badly animated pixels than actually out in the real world actually doing anything physical to an actual child. And no I don't buy this "oh it feeds their fantasies and they'll go and act them out." arse the NSPCC comes out with. I don't go out and deliberately drive my car into pedestrians and gun down policemen after I've played a bit of Grand Theft Auto. If anything this might just keep the lid on a few people and actually keep them from really doing real. But what if you were to innocently stroll into "wonderland" get into something there (or any online environment) that freaks you out or someone starts doing something you don't like?

You see that power lead going to your computer? Give that a good hard tug at the end that's plugged into the wall and the problem will immediately go away.

This was just bone fucking idle tabloid journalism at its worst, sloppier than a bag full of raccoon puke. Mr Farrell, for this piece of bullshit you deserve strapping to a table and raping with elephant dildos.

And not in a virtual way either.


(Disclaimer: I have never once been on Second Life, my first life is too busy to permit it and if my internet connection sucked any harder than it does I'd probably enjoy it)

The Government - Fucking up an InterWeb near you soon

There there little person, you can't look after yourself, you see you're not clever enough, just let your big brother the state look after you.

The government must do more to protect internet users from the threat of e-crime... "You can't just rely on individuals to take responsibility for their own security. They will always be out-foxed by the bad guys."

Just fuck off will you. Look if I go out and leave all my doors and windows wide open and some scrote makes off with my TV then I'm culpable. I'm responsible for the security of my computer in the same way.

The Lords Science and Technology Committee said the internet was now "the playground of criminals". The report criticised the government's current "Wild West" approach of leaving internet security up to the individual as "inefficient and unrealistic".

This is the government whose statist policies of disempowering the individual to act against criminals and emasculating the guardians of law and order have made the whole fucking country the playground of every sort of thug and criminal; don't believe me - go down to any town or city centre of a Saturday night if you dare. What the fuck makes you think that the government could do a better job of protecting individuals on the net that the individuals themselves? You can't protect us in our homes and on the streets, why is cyberspace any different.

Incidentally if we did have a bit more "wild west" citizens empowerment to protect their lives and property, say I could wrap a pickaxe handle round the head of anyone robbing my house, then we'd have a bit less fucking crime let me tell you.

The committee suggested that a kite-mark should be set up that would identify internet service providers that guaranteed a secure service.

How the hell do you "guarantee a secure service" if you're an ISP? That's like saying "My telephone company guarantees that I'll only ever hear good news on my phone when someone rings me up." This is the level of utter misunderstanding these wankers have and they have the temerity to tell me they are going to protect me on the net. Mind you I bet to get a "kite mark" you'll have to install government approved filtering and snooping systems; won't make you safer but the Department of Citizen Surveillance will be happy.

This was important in cases, such as happened in March this year, when hackers stole the credit card details of 45 million TK Maxx customers. "Potentially any one of these cards, belonging to innocent individuals, could be used online for illegal purposes in transactions relating to terrorism, or to purchase child abuse images," the committee said.

Yep, I was wondering when "terrorism" and "child porn" were going to be wheeled out. You say those words and you become immune from any form of criticism; you're against our reccomendations? Ah you must be in favour of terrorism and kiddy fiddling then. Ihr papieren ist nicht in ordnung, commen Sie bitte mit uns. You can guarantee that anything that invokes those two modern demons to scare people into compliance is morally bankrupt and its authors candidates for a good dragon ass roasting.

Look you cunts, it works like this. I work for a bank and all we have is our reputation and a half way decent savings rate. If people lose confidence in our reputation for keeping their pennies safe online then they'll take their custom elsewhere to someone who can. It is this which drives internet security forwards, not this...

It also said that steps should be taken to establish legal liability for damage resulting from security flaws found in hardware or software.

... which just stops software development in its tracks as we're all petrified of getting sued to Christmas and back.

You've fucked up my country now leave my fucking internet alone you wankstains, you'll break it.

Another roll of cotton wool to wrap your sprog in

Well it would seem that today is "Internet Safety Day" which is meant to raise awareness of the dangers kids face on the InterWeb and how to protect them against it. Your humble green scaly friend is of course happy to take part and would caution anyone under the age of 18 to stop reading right now because I'm about to say "fuck".

The Cyberspace Research Unit (CRU) at the University of Central Lancashire is the UK co-ordinator for Internet Safety Day

That would be that venerable centre of learning that used to be Preston College of Further Education then. Jesus Christ these morons were't even a polytechnic and now they are telling us how to run the fucking internet.

The scheme is being launched as research in the journal Pediatrics reports that 42% of young people aged 10-17 questioned for the study had seen sexually explicit material online. Two-thirds of those who reported seeing this material said their viewing of it was accidental.

"Although there is evidence that most youth are not particularly upset when they encounter unwanted pornography on the internet [it] could have a greater impact on some youth than voluntary encounters with pornography," said the study.

First up what's "sexually explicit" because there's a bit of a world of difference between a piccie of Janet Jackson's boob flash during the superbowl and the movies made by the late Bodil Joensen (for the Love of Fafnir do NOT click on that link if you are at work!). And can we play "spot the weasel words" here - we have "evidence" that young people are not upset or harmed or pretty much anything really when thy stumble of a bit of flesh on the web but it "could" have a greater impact. In other words the data shows it doesn't make a flying fucks worth of difference to the mental, physical or emotional wellbeing of little Johnny if he thinks he's pirated "Happy Feet" but in reality he's accidentally downloaded "Hot Penguin Lust Vol XIV" but that doesn't tie in with our "porn is nasty and should be banned because, well, people like it and men look at it" moonbat views so we'll just make up shit that it's probably bad anyway.

Mind you, what the fuck do you expect from Preston C of FE.

Oh and, icing on the cake, out comes John "I'm really tough, me" Reid who can't find all those foreign murderers, rapists and paedophiles or, come to think of it, his arse with both hands, with his attempt to hop on the bandwagon...

In the UK, British Home Secretary John Reid has said he is considering making paedophiles add their chatroom names to their other details on the Sex Offenders Register. And sex offenders could be forced to register their e-mail addresses to prevent them approaching children on the internet, the UK government has said.

Yep, that ought to do it, can't imagine that they would just go off and register a new IM and hotmail account.

Bloody hell I need a "Voluntary Encounter" with some pornography. Wonder if I have any of Bodil's movies hanging about...