RIP Freedom

A long time ago, in a place far, far, away, the internet was pretty anonymous. Those of a technical bent will scoff at this, but will agree that due to the distributed nature of the internet, it was very hard to see what people were doing. Sure, every Usenet, Web and FTP server could be set up to record the IP address of the client computer connecting to it, but these servers were all over the world, and in the control of many different people in different jurisdictions. Even if a state was politically powerful enough to be able to get it’s hands on all of this data (somehow) the internet, being the world full of technical boffins that it is, invented ways around this; multiple anonymous proxy’s, IP spoofing, etc. Nobody really thought much about it really ~ hey, this was the internet ~ it’s meant to be free (as in freedom).

Suddenly, however, the state realised that this wasn’t a good thing. Until then, communicating to the obedient citizen was easy. It had it’s own state propaganda arm, in the form of the BBC / Nu Labour alliance. All other MSN outlets were monitored and regulated, and could be made to obey D notices, and the like. The whole industry was pretty incestuous; the odd spat here and there about which of the two parties would be put forward for power, and how many crumbs would be thrown to the Fib Dems aside, none of them were comfortable with giving the people freedom, and all of them knew that the allegiance of the civil service was elsewhere; based where the real power was.

But this internet thingie ~ hell bells. Suddenly, any little uppity shit could take on a fish monika and start preaching about terribly inconvenient things. Then it got worse ~ the technology got better and more easy to use, and all of a sudden people were actually swapping ideas, criticising the political elite and, god forbid, setting up alternative political groups and movements.

This new found technology needed to be controlled and monitored, but they needed an excuse to be able to do this otherwise people wouldn’t buy it. Enter stage left, the BBC. None too happy with the prospect of a rival communications medium that would upset their exclusive little apple cart, the BBC had initially tried to ignore it. Then, as people started to slowly find out what all the fuss was about, they came up with two ideal bogeymen. Child pornographers and white supremacists. Should you have access to a time machine, go back and listen to just about any feature or story about the internet put out by the state broadcaster during the mid 90’s. As a lowly network technician at the time, I was amazed that, given my high exposure to such an corrupting medium, I didn’t get up every morning, put a white sheet over my head and lynch the first black man I saw. Hell, I knew there was a reason I was always the first to arrive at the pub after work ~ clearly I knew that all of my work mates would be stopping off at the local primary school to rape a few children before sinking a couple of pints. I mean, they must have been ~ some of them spent nearly all day on the internet, and were even anarchist socialist types, so if the BBC was to be believed, they must have been looking at kiddy porn.

It didn’t take long for the Daily Mail et al to shriek ‘won’t someone, please, think of the children’ (presumably, they weren’t to fussed about the lynchings). It didn’t matter that the shrills didn’t fit with the facts ~ sure, child molesters were using the internet, instead of BBS systems, and before that the good old postal service and the printing press, as their preferred medium of distribution of this kind of filth, but the state response was unprecedented and without any sense of proportion. It was twofold in its attack. Firstly, ISP’s were gradually ‘encouraged’, then eventually required, to pass all web traffic through the ‘cleanfeed’ system. This attempts to block access to child pornography websites by, in layman’s terms, comparing the page you have requested via your browser with a known black list provided by the internet watch foundation. The second string in their bow was to allow MI5 to monitor all internet traffic passing through your ISP ~ a process which is supposed to require a court order before it can be gathered ~ but I’ll leave it up to you to decide of that really happens, as the required equipment is permanently installed at all upstream ISP’s. The ‘cleanfeed’ system is the interesting one ~ the use of the IWF’s ‘watch list’ is a policy decision ~ indeed, it has already been muted that had the incitement to religious hatred laws been passed in their original form it would have been used to block sites that were covered by it, including xenophobia, or, again in layman’s terms, criticism of the EU. Combine the two, and you have a fairly robust, yet simple, way of monitoring pesky free thinkers, and blocking their naughty thoughts from innocent eyes. Complain or campaign about it, and you will be painted as a secret child rapist. If that is getting a bit tired, they can pull the white supremicist card out of the bag.

Naturally, once you give the state abusive power, they will abuse it further. Delighted with the tactic of associating anyone who believes in internet freedom with those who force children to have sex, they spot an opportunity for a bit of Bansturbation and state control. The ‘cleanfeed’ system will soon be extended to include websites depicting ‘violent’ pornography, even if it isn’t violent, depicts only consenting adults, and resulted in no harm to anyone involved. In fact, given the prospect of a suitably primed jury, just about any pornography that doesn’t meet with approval of our puritanical masters will result in your door will then be kicked down at six on the morning, whilst being filmed by the BBC, where you will then be taken to a police station to be placed on a register with rapists and kiddy fiddlers after a caution, having being warned by the Police that, even if found innocent, they will ensure the court case will be as embarrassing as possible for you. Even if said pornography is mobile phone footage of you and your sexual partner that you are exchanging for your own personal gratification Don’t believe me? Read the fucking act. Don’t think the boys in blue would stitch you up just to get a caution? Read about operation fucking Ore.

Why am I ranting about this today? Because the state has plans to go further still. You may remember how recently, I have blogged about RIP powers, that we were told were essential to fight the ‘new’ monster under the bed (always a good idea to keep the public frightened), i.e. Islamic terrorists, were being used by councils and any state employed jumped up little Hitler to spy on the population.

Now, the state, by order of the EU, wants a database of all of the details of every phone call, e-mail made by you and time spent on the internet. Naturally, we are told that only the security services and the police would be able to use them, and only after a court order. I would counter this with two points. Firstly, the police are corrupt. Yes, yes, they are. There is no discussion on this point. Read about operation ore again. Think about it. They withheld information that they knew proved peoples innocence of a conviction that, by it’s very nature, would instantly ruin someones personal, family and work life. Secondly, the RIP powers were ‘only for fighting terror’. Since when has preventing the taking of shellfish from the wrong part of the beach been an essential anti-terror function? Do you need more evidence ~ how about the people told to remove ‘Free Tibet’ t-shirts because of terror legislation? Do you still think this data won’t be misused?

It saddens me that we have come to this. It saddens me that they best the ‘opposition’ can do is worry a bit about the security of said data. What saddens me most, however, is that I suspect many people will have stopped reading this post half way through, walked away, and thought ‘well I never, I didn’t realise Harry Haddock was a white supremacists child pornographer’, which is exactly how they get away with this shit.