How the UK Government Censors and Monitors Internet Traffic and How to Frustrate Them
9th Dec 2008, 19:07:07
In 2003, the UK Government created a service called Cleanfeed, the stated purpose of which is to block access to pages deemed to contain indecent images of children. This is achieved by blacklisting sites based on a list maintained by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Nobody (except paedophiles) would object to the idea of blocking access to kiddie porn, but any Briton who values their freedom and privacy should be concerned by the techniques and political apparatus used to accomplish this goal.
In 2007 the government "asked" all UK ISPs to use Cleanfeed. Because this has been done on a "voluntary" basis, no debate took place in Parliament, no new laws were enacted, no discussion or consultation of any kind was done. The government can make any new laws it likes as long as Parliament and the house of Lords agree that they are reasonable. If Cleanfeed is involved in something as vital as the protection of children, why not use the law to compel ISPs to implement it? I suggest that this is because Cleanfeed uses some pretty questionable practices in order to implement the IWF's blacklist.
The IWF is a registered charity and is ostensibly an independent body whose role is to minimise the availability of child pornography on the Web. We are led to believe that the IWF's blacklist comprises URLs of pages showing indecent images of children, criminally indecent content or incitement to racial hatred. It is, however, impossible to check this. Only the Home Office, not ISPs or any truly independent body knows what the content of the list is and the Home Office isn't telling.
The IWF/Home Office's blacklist is implemented by ISPs by passing traffic through deep packet inspection, a process which examines the content of HTTP traffic in order to determine the URL being requested. This means that every web request you make could potentially be logged. If the firewall determines that your URL is unacceptable, it inserts a false 404 page. It would be trivially easy for the government to log all of your web browsing history or block access to any site they wish without anybody knowing.
This week, the IWF blocked part of Wikipedia for almost the entire UK populace. Due to the mechanics of Cleanfeed, this has made it impossible for the affected individuals to make anonymous edits to the online encyclopaedia. Given that around 25% of Wikipedia contributors are UK-based, this is internet censorship. Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales is considering taking legal action against the IWF.
As a result Cleanfeed, you can as of now only access pages approved by the government, just the same as citizens of China, North Korea or Myanmar. The potential for feature creep is enormous and the government has shown time and again that it can't be trusted not to succumb to temptation like the Finnish authorities have begun to do. "Wacky" Jacqui Smith has already proposed that the government should use Cleanfeed to target sites that "groom" terrorists.
"If we are ready and willing to take action to stop the grooming of vulnerable young [people] on social networking sites, then I believe we should also take action against those who groom vulnerable people for the purposes of violent extremism"
she says. Why not block all social networking sites? No more Facebook, Myspace or Bebo for you. Why not block all sites that are critical of or damaging to the government? Why not block my site because I allege that Jacqui Smith is as thick as two short planks of wood and as ugly as a bucket of arseholes? It's not much of a stretch.
With all this in mind, it is your civic duty to do as much as possible to inconvenience any potential snoopers when using your computer, here's how in no particular order:
Encrypt your computer
If you use a Mac, make use of FileVault. On Linux, have a look at LUKS, or if you must use Windows, try TrueCrypt.
Encrypt your email
It is possible to sign or encrypt email messages using a free of charge certificate. This will let you know at the very least if someone has altered your message in transit, or can prevent a third party from reading the message at all, but only if your recipient is also using a certificate.
Anonymise your web browsing
Tor is a simple way to do this. If you are more serious about this, you can lease a server quite cheaply (less than £10.00 per month) in a country not encumbered by internet censorship. You can then encrypt and forward your browsing through this quite easily using SSH or my favourite method, OpenVPN.
Internet censorship is creepy, don't put up with it.
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