“Gun hats? What a brilliant idea!”

Another week, another faintly frightening bit of proposed state surveillance. Me, on Techradar:

What’s happening here is a classic bit of political manoeuvring. What’s supposed to happen is this: the security services ask for the power to do anything they like, plus some satellites with giant lasers and hats that can be used as guns, because that’s what the security services are supposed to do.

The government then tells the security services to get stuffed because we can’t afford gun hats, and because privacy is a fundamental human right.

Like Labour before them, the Tories have forgotten to do their bit. Instead of saying “get stuffed, you power-crazed doom-mongers!” they’ve said “Gun hats? What a brilliant idea!”

“One, we are not doing the right things. And two, the things we are doing are wrong”

Bruce Schneier talks about post-9/11 airport security.

Airports are effectively rights-free zones. Security officers have enormous power over you as a passenger. You have limited rights to refuse a search. Your possessions can be confiscated. You cannot make jokes, or wear clothing, that airport security does not approve of. You cannot travel anonymously. (Remember when we would mock Soviet-style “show me your papers” societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.) And if you’re on a certain secret list, you cannot fly, and you enter a Kafkaesque world where you cannot face your accuser, protest your innocence, clear your name, or even get confirmation from the government that someone, somewhere, has judged you guilty. These police powers would be illegal anywhere but in an airport, and we are all harmed—individually and collectively—by their existence.

The other side of SOPA and anti-piracy legislation

I like Michael Marshall, and his blog post about the other side of the piracy debate is worth your time. Not all anti-piracy sentiment comes from swivel-eyed loons or Disney.

The government is supposed to be on the side of laws, isn’t it? Copyright is a law too. If they don’t defend that law in the new kind of social space that the internet represents, where will the laxity end? What other laws will be let slide on the grounds that they might impede the rights of Internet users to do what the heck they feel like? What about your right to privacy? You care a lot about that one, don’t you? What makes it so desperately important for the government to defend your rights there, but not defend others’ rights to be paid for their intellectual property?

In which I suggest blacking out Wikipedia doesn’t really change much

Today’s the big protest against SOPA, the latest bit of dangerous anti-internet legislation. I’ve written a wee column suggesting that it won’t change much in the long term, because lobbyists are fighting a long war:

Copyright industries want the net regulated, and they’re willing to spend huge sums to make it happen: SOPA is a battle, but the lobbyists are waging a war.

You don’t fight that by turning sites black. You fight it by supporting the EFF, and the ACLU, and the ORG, and by lobbying your elected representatives, and you fight it it in the ballot box. In the last general election just 55% of 25-34 year olds voted, while turnout for the 18-24 age group was a pathetic 44%.

We need to do better, because the best way to fight bad laws is to stop clowns from getting into power in the first place.

According to somebody on Twitter, that’s akin to telling women of the 1960s to shut up and know their place. I’m a bit baffled by that.

The slippery slope: now BT’s being urged to block The Pirate Bay

It’s not a surprise, but it’s still deeply worrying: BT, the UK’s biggest ISP, is under pressure to block The Pirate Bay. 

The BPI chief executive, Geoff Taylor, said The Pirate Bay was “no more than a huge scam” defrauding the global creative sector.

“We would not tolerate Counterfeits R Us on the high street – if we want economic growth, we cannot accept illegal rip-off sites on the internet either,” he said.

You know this bit already, but it’s worth reiterating: The Pirate Bay doesn’t host anyone else’s content – the torrents it provides are essentially maps that tell your computer where to get content – and not all torrents point to illegally copied content. Oh, and The Pirate Bay isn’t based in the UK, let alone on BT’s servers.

Counterfeits R Us? I lost my favourite headphones – a pricey pair of Sennheisers – the other day and had a look on eBay for replacements. There were dozens of listings, of which the overwhelming majority appeared to be for counterfeit copies. Should ISPs block eBay too?

I understand why the BPI and its pals are annoyed, but “the global creative sector” can go after The Pirate Bay in the courts. That may be difficult, expensive and ultimately pointless, but that’s the global creative sector’s problem, not ours.

Column: here come the internet police

BT has been ordered to block newzbin2, a Usenet archive site largely devoted to sharing movie rips and other infringing content. I don’t think this can end well.

The BT ruling is worrying because it turns ISPs into censors, and of course copyright infringement isn’t the only kind of content people would like to block.

We’ve had calls to ban sites that espouse extreme political views, sites that promote anorexia, sites that discuss ways to commit suicide. If BT can block Usenet archives, why can’t it block everything that anybody thinks is unpleasant or undesirable – like WikiLeaks, or anti-Scientology sites, or anything that isn’t appropriate for under-fives?

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Facebook is coming for your children

I do a wee news roundup for Techradar each week, and this week social networks were the main story. Facebook, it seems, is coming for your children.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like the way the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prevents Facebook from giving accounts to under-13s. But it’s not because he wants to make money from advertisers desperate to target the elusive and big-spending pre-teen market. No sirree.

It’s because getting the wee ones on Facebook will make them clever, or something. “In the future, software and technology will enable people to learn a lot from their fellow students,” Zuckerberg says.

Remember the adage “If you can’t see what the site is selling, the product is you”? That’s Facebook – so when Zuck says he wants kids on Facebook, I have a mental image of children being fed into mincers and made into sausages. I know I’m not Facebook’s biggest fan – I’d love to write a column called Fuck Zuck where I make appalling and libellous comments about whatever annoying thing the Facebook founder’s done that month – but when a company whose business is selling your life to advertisers says it wants your kids, my Sinister Detector tends to go off the scale.

According to Reuters, Zuckerberg is now “contradicting some media reports”: ”some time in the future, I think it makes sense to explore that, but we’re not working on it right now.” What he isn’t doing is changing his position. The comment that kicked off the “coming for your kids” stories was: “That will be a fight we  take on at some point.”

He isn’t saying Facebook doesn’t want your children. He’s saying Facebook doesn’t want them just yet.

This is why some of us worry about copyright cops

When people like me get worked up about ISP censorship, national firewalls and other wonderful ideas, it’s not because we condone theft. It’s because the people who do the censoring are often idiots. Here’s yet another example: the UK Music Publisher’s Association (MPA) managed to get an entire public domain music site taken offline because it – wrongly – believed that the site was hosting an illegal music score.

Thoughts on the proposed Firewall For Filth

If you haven’t heard, communications minister Ed Vaizey is asking ISPs to consider adopting an opt-in system for online porn. Essentially ISPs will filter unless you specifically ask them not to.

Me, over at Techradar:

There’s some awful stuff out there, and I don’t think kids should see it any more than I think The Human Centipede should be shown on cBeebies.

I think I’m pretty consistent on this. I don’t think seven-year-olds should play Call of Duty: Black Ops, and I don’t think Frankie Boyle is the best choice of entertainer for your four-year-old’s birthday party.

The problem, I think, is that attempting to filter out porn isn’t going to work. Any attempt to create a national firewall is both doomed and dangerous.

And of course, there’s the biggest problem of all, the hole in the digital dyke nobody can plug.

Other parents.

As a parent, I’m well aware that it’s my responsibility to keep my kids away from filth. The problem is that I can’t ensure that you keep your kids away from it.

I can’t help thinking that the first couple of commenters are missing my point.

Twitter trials and tech tomfoolery

Two things online, one serious and one less serious. First, why the Twitter joke trial is a travesty.

If you can be arrested for saying something unpleasant, if obvious attempts at comic hyperbole can get you prosecuted, then Charlie Brooker, Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr had better get out of the country fast.

Also, it’s weird tech – including plans for luxury hotels that’ll let you stay for free if you’ll have sex in front of their webcams.

Could such a scheme work here? We asked the manager of our local Travelpit, who told us that while free rooms probably wouldn’t happen she’d throw in breakfast if we [censored] her [censored] and [censored] [censored] [censored]. We’re pretty sure that isn’t national policy.

The original said Travelodge, which I think is funnier. Oh well.