Back in July I covered the push by David Cameron's government to censor Internet content in the UK, including "esoteric sites." The plan is moving forward, but as it turns out you can't keep a good techie down, especially when it comes to bypassing Internet filters. A new extension for Google's Chrome browser bypasses the filters on adult content and presumably esoteric material as well.
And, of course, the latter is exactly what groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned the UK government about from the start. Every single company that's tried to implement effective Internet filters that (A) filter out objectionable content while (B) leaving educational material and so forth alone has failed. What made them think that they could get it done by simply imposing a mandate on ISP's? The good news is that with this new Chrome extension there's now a solution for the esoteric-minded to avoid having sites they want to read filtered out.
Go Away Cameron can be downloaded here.
A Chrome browser extension called Go Away Cameron, which can circumvent the "porn filters" being implemented by ISPs, has been launched.
The news comes just a week after BT announced that new customers would have porn filters automatically switched on when customers subscribe to its broadband service. BT and the other major UK ISPs have signed up to the government's campaign to protect children from pornography, which will see 95 percent of houses connected to the Internet having to choose whether to switch on filters by the end of 2014. Sky and TalkTalk have already introduced a filter choice at the point of sign-up and Virgin Media will do the same soon.
The filters have already been shown to be ineffective, since they are letting hardcore material slip through the net while preventing access to sex education, addiction, and women's abuse charity sites, as Wired.co.uk outlined last week.
And, of course, the latter is exactly what groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned the UK government about from the start. Every single company that's tried to implement effective Internet filters that (A) filter out objectionable content while (B) leaving educational material and so forth alone has failed. What made them think that they could get it done by simply imposing a mandate on ISP's? The good news is that with this new Chrome extension there's now a solution for the esoteric-minded to avoid having sites they want to read filtered out.
Go Away Cameron can be downloaded here.
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