Online safety bill.

[burger1701]

I've just realised I'm coming up to my 19th year on OCC. I can't believe it's been so long. I also can't believe I probably won't make it to 20 years.
Well not as an active member anyway.
The new uk online safety bill becomes law in the autumn and will almost certainly put a stop to most of my current online activity.
It would be interesting to know if The OCC mods have any ideas as to how this great forum will be affected.

[supersmoothy]

Originally Posted by burger1701

I've just realised I'm coming up to my 19th year on OCC. I can't believe it's been so long. I also can't believe I probably won't make it to 20 years.
Well not as an active member anyway.
The new uk online safety bill becomes law in the autumn and will almost certainly put a stop to most of my current online activity.
It would be interesting to know if The OCC mods have any ideas as to how this great forum will be affected.

It's been discussed in the past, but the posts usually get blocked and/or deleted in a matter of a day or two. I don't know whether this is because the mods don't want us to talk about it, or because of the possibility of the discussions going downhill. For example, the last one degenerated into a political argument between (US) Democrats and Republicans, which was sad.


Anyway, the conclusions are:

The new bill, if it passes in its current form, will stop practically every website with user-generated content, including forums like this one and Wikipedia.

Possibly, it will even block apps like WhatsApp, if they don't accept complete snooping of all messages by introducing encryption backdoors (which would make encryption all but useless), but this is most likely going to happen at some point in the future, because an amendment was inserted that gives them a temporary reprieve.

Most likely, smaller forums and websites will simply disregard the requirements, if they are based overseas, or close, if they are based in the UK. Of course, this is just my own opinion of what's going to happen, and only time will tell.

Regardless of what OCC and other websites will do, a possibility to circumvent the blocks and checks is to use a good VPN. The emphasis here is on good, because of a series of technical reasons that may affect possible countermeasures and potential consequences for the users, and which would be long to talk about here.

The government can decide to block such circumventions by mandating that ISPs block VPN traffic. This can be done at the level of protocols and also ordering ISPs to block connections to IPs owned by or associated to VPNs. China does this, and it works reasonably well there (but not perfectly). Of course, I don't know whether this will happen, but if I have to make a bet, I think it's more likely to happen than not.

Related to the previous point, the government can also easily make all VPNs illegal, with the exception of corporate ones used by some employers. This way, if one were to use a VPN, they will risk arrest and jail time, regardless of the reason. Again, in some countries in the world this happens, and my bet is that it will happen here too (but possibly by degrees, so only after they attempt a block at ISP level).


So, yeah, I think it's going to be ugly (and get worse in other non-online aspects too).

[burger1701]

Thank you for you considered reply. It's pretty much as I expected. My government has screwed me and every other Brit over using the cover of protecting children. It'll be a while before I vote again. And I've voted in every election since the mid 80s.

[~*ghetto_star*~]

I'm not sure if this relates but I'm located in the United States and my state was one of the first states to enact a law that requires you to upload your driver's license to access websites with adult-oriented content, I believe the law states that sites with at least 33% pornographic content must adhere to this law. Obviously, because of the risk of systems getting hacked, nobody wants to upload their driver's license and have their porn viewing habits possibly exposed via hacking (think of the Ashley Madison hack).

Also, this summer my state's Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) was hacked, which basically drove home the point of people being afraid to upload their license.

This has caused many people in my state to start using VPNs but there are many sites that either do not use the ALLPASSTRUST system or redirect people directly to the login page as well as sites that just don't adhere at all.

Quite honestly the 33% rule is rather stupid because I've literally gone on Twitter and Reddit, two sites that are not considered porn sites, and have seen all sorts of pornographic material.

Currently, there are people filing a free speech lawsuit against the anti-porn law in my state.

[road_warrior92]

Originally Posted by ~*ghetto_star*~

I'm not sure if this relates but I'm located in the United States and my state was one of the first states to enact a law that requires you to upload your driver's license to access websites with adult-oriented content, I believe the law states that sites with at least 33% pornographic content must adhere to this law. Obviously, because of the risk of systems getting hacked, nobody wants to upload their driver's license and have their porn viewing habits possibly exposed via hacking (think of the Ashley Madison hack).

Also, this summer my state's Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) was hacked, which basically drove home the point of people being afraid to upload their license.

This has caused many people in my state to start using VPNs but there are many sites that either do not use the ALLPASSTRUST system or redirect people directly to the login page as well as sites that just don't adhere at all.

Quite honestly the 33% rule is rather stupid because I've literally gone on Twitter and Reddit, two sites that are not considered porn sites, and have seen all sorts of pornographic material.

Currently, there are people filing a free speech lawsuit against the anti-porn law in my state.

Wow! Which state do you live in ?

[supersmoothy]

Originally Posted by ~*ghetto_star*~

I'm not sure if this relates but I'm located in the United States and my state was one of the first states to enact a law that requires you to upload your driver's license to access websites with adult-oriented content, I believe the law states that sites with at least 33% pornographic content must adhere to this law. Obviously, because of the risk of systems getting hacked, nobody wants to upload their driver's license and have their porn viewing habits possibly exposed via hacking (think of the Ashley Madison hack).

Also, this summer my state's Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) was hacked, which basically drove home the point of people being afraid to upload their license.

Exactly! And, even without any hacking, companies that carry out the checks are going to be selling the data and identities of people for sure, since it's incredibly valuable data.

Originally Posted by ~*ghetto_star*~

This has caused many people in my state to start using VPNs but there are many sites that either do not use the ALLPASSTRUST system or redirect people directly to the login page as well as sites that just don't adhere at all.

I think this is working because it would be very hard to block VPN traffic in the US, even just based on first-amendment rights. As for ordering ISPs (that are private companies) to block VPNs, which are not by themselves a criminal tool, I don't see this happening in the US, either at the state or federal level. Here in the UK, the matter is quite different, however. For once, the bill will give the power to the authorities of imposing humongous fines on sites that do not comply, or shutting them down and seizing them altogether. Of course, I don't see how this is going to work exactly if a website is registered overseas and has no servers in the UK, but then it can be simply added to a blacklist of sites that are inaccessible from here.

Originally Posted by ~*ghetto_star*~

Quite honestly the 33% rule is rather stupid because I've literally gone on Twitter and Reddit, two sites that are not considered porn sites, and have seen all sorts of pornographic material.

LOL, how do they measure the amount of porn?!

Originally Posted by ~*ghetto_star*~

Currently, there are people filing a free speech lawsuit against the anti-porn law in my state.

I think these are going to fail, because the laws are not intended to block porn completely, but only to mandate age checks.

[supersmoothy]

Originally Posted by road_warrior92

Wow! Which state do you live in ?

I think he's in Louisiana.

[burger1701]

I can't go into all the technical details that you guys have. I don't have the know how. But as far as I can see, the era of easily accessible porn is coming to an end for many of us.

[badrus]

Originally Posted by supersmoothy

I think he's in Louisiana.

You can read about the law here and its basically only in Louisiana and so far only Pornhub is following

www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/louisiana-law-requiring-proof-of-id-for-porn-site-access-has-privacy-advocates-worried[/url]

[supersmoothy]

Originally Posted by badrus

You can read about the law here and its basically only in Louisiana and so far only Pornhub is following

http://www.marketplace.org/shows/mar...ocates-worried

Thank you, this was an interesting read, especially because it shows that some people, in Louisiana, do talk about some unintended implications of the letter of the law. It's also interesting that they say that it is "worrying that people have to resort to VPNs to defend themselves in the United States". Here in the UK, instead, it seems like there's just a knee-jerk reaction, and no one dares to discuss these things, even though it seems like our bill will have a much broader range than the Louisiana one (for instance, when I mentioned Wikipedia before, I meant it as an actual example of a site that has already announced that they will close access from the UK).