Recently the government wrote to the main ISPs in this
country demanding that they make the internet safer. The BBC has published the letter in full. Now apart from the fact that if I received
this letter I’d assume it was spam, as the grammar is piss poor, it also shows
that the government have appointed some bod to make internet policy,
specifically the MP for Devizes, who doesn’t know how the internet works.
I particularly like that even though this is a technical
question regarding a technical issue and the ISPs have the technical knowledge,
there are not asked if, but instead told to, implement something, so the PM can
make an announcement. It’s a script from
Yes Prime Minister; “we need to announce something or the papers will embarrass
us.” Who cares about the papers; a dead
medium in its death throes.
The government wants the ISPs to pay for implementing a user
configurable filter system which is, in their language, default on. This allows parents to think all is well, and
when your child watches porn, because they will, the parents and the government
can blame the ISPs. This of course coming
from the same government that is driving cheap fast broadband to all areas of
the country for the good of our economy.
You can’t have one policy that demands always on, go anywhere, one size
fits all, cheap fibre internet, and then say ‘can we have the one size fits all
individually tailored to everyone?’ No
you can’t.
This post is of course heading towards Florence. She will be an internet user one day. She will never know a time where there isn’t
a gigabit in her hand, no matter where she is.
8 bit processors, 300 baud connections, and setting interrupts by hand,
will just be the clay tablets that her dad talks about. I expect her to know the difference between a
CPU, a GPU, and an ALU, but the hardware will be so ubiquitous and so
integrated that I doubt she’ll ever actually hold one as a discreet object
(I’ll say either one, for those of you who also know the difference).
The reason I take exception with this badly thought out
piece of policy is that ‘default on’ should not be the status of your browser
filter, it should be the status of your parenting!
I’ve used the Tor browser, I’ve looked at the deep web or
some tiny tiny parts of it. Do I want a
hundred grams of heroin? Or a 9mm
handgun; P226, nice solid Germanic engineering.
Bit expensive, but in a world with the PRISM program, anonymity
definitely has a dollar value. No I
don’t think I do. I am running out of
books to read however, so I’ll stick with Amazon.
The point being I know it’s out there, and I know how it
works and I know how to make Florence a good internet user. I’m not worried about her clicking on
something and seeing two people, and “look they’ve got no clothes on, and what on earth
are they doing?” The biggest threat to
her childhood is Facebook, and its constant need to compete and conform and
gain acceptance. Having more likes, and
more friends, and more updates, and revealing things about yourself you’ll
regret for years.
I’ve been on the internet since the beginning, of its
public phase anyway. I had a CompuServe
address in ’92. CompuServe, my god, if
you remember that I’ll be impressed. At
the time I remember halfwit journalists and ignorant politicians going on about
how corrupting it was and how it would mainly be used for terrorism. At the time you could download a text file
that told you how to make explosives. It
was quiet funny as I recall; the page detailing how to make nitro-glycerine in
your bathroom included in the list of ingredients, a new bathroom. Or you could, and still can, buy a textbook
on exothermic reactions. In fact you
could do that before the internet.
The internet is the greatest tool for social, economic,
and possibly political change for, I don’t know how long; possibly ever if you
take the rapidity of change in to account.
Certain traditional media likes to make us afraid of the internet saying
it’s a bad thing; mainly newspapers and record companies. Bad for their business model is all I can
see. The car, telegraph, steam engine,
automatic loom, and printing press, were bad for someone’s business model. Tough; we want our progress. The internet is a mirror; if it exists in
human society then it exists online. No
one has ever suggested we ban our children from human society.
Since I work in IT I know how to setup my firewall and
secure my wireless, and I can bypass my ISPs DNS and use a third party that
stops any malware I might get from reporting back to its controller. Florence will use a network that I am capable
of monitoring and she will know that.
Not everyone can do that I understand.
But that is not going to make her safe; education will make her
safe. If someone helps her, she says
thank you. If she goes in to a shop and
runs away with a packet of sweets, she’s in trouble. These are the rules. The internet is the same, it is a collection
of humans, it has rules, not technical rules; social rules. By learning and applying them she will have
no trouble at all, just as I, in my twenty years online, have never had a
single issue, apart from that spammer who wanted to buy my car on Autotrader,
who I toyed with for a while to see what I could make them do before they
realised I was taking the piss and stopped talking to me.
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