[IP] "Cleanfeed" - British Telecom to ban child porn site connections
Begin forwarded message:
From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 6, 2004 4:43:50 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: "Cleanfeed" - British Telecom to ban child porn site
connections
[For IP, if worthy - note "first mass censorship of the web attempted
in a Western democracy"]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1232506,00.html
BT puts block on child porn sites
Martin Bright, home affairs editor
Sunday June 6, 2004
The Observer
British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all
illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The
decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead
to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western
democracy.
The move, previously thought to be at the limits of technical
possibilities of the internet and prohibitively expensive, was given
the personal backing of BT chairman Sir Christopher Bland at a board
meeting last month after intense pressure from children's charities.
Known as Cleanfeed, the project has been developed in consultation
with the Home Office and will go live by the end of the month, The
Observer can reveal. Other major players in the internet market, such
as Energis and Thus, which owns rival Demon Internet, are said to be
preparing to block banned sites.
Subscribers to British Telecom's internet services such as BTYahoo and
BTInternet who attempt to access illegal sites will receive an error
message as if the page was unavailable. BT will register the number of
attempts but will not be able to record details of those accessing the
sites.
A list of illegal sites compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation, the
industry's watchdog, has been available for some time, but until now
there has been no way to prevent people accessing them because most
are based outside the UK.
The initiative would not have been possible a year ago, but
improvements
in computer processing speeds means that the company is now able to
block websites, offensive pages and even individual images of abuse.
The move is the brainchild of John Carr, internet adviser to
children's
charity NCH, who wrote to Home Office Minister Paul Goggins last July
urging action on paedophile websites after a successful campaign to
block internet newsgroups (electronic message boards which paedophiles
used to share images of children). Goggins approached internet
providers
last September to ask them to investigate if it would be possible. At
first they were resistant, but BT came back to the Home Office last
month to announce early tests of Cleanfeed had been successful.
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. But
many in the field of child protection believe that the explosion
of paedophile sites justifies the crackdown.
'British Telecom deserve to be congratulated on this bold move,' Carr
said. 'I expect every other service provider will now look at what
they are doing to see if they can achieve a similar result.'
Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, added: 'You are always
caught between the desire to tackle child pornography and freedom of
information. But I was fed up with not acting on this and always being
told that it was techically impossible.'
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
--
Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf@xxxxxxxxx
http://sethf.com
Interview: http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article.pl?sid=03/12/16/0526234
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
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