Has the Prime Minister been too naïve in cooking up plans to tackle unadulterated online access to porn? Today’s Daily Mail is totally ecstatic at the proposals, but fails to take into account how difficult regulating the Internet can be. Unless David Cameron decides to go for the totalitarian Great Firewall of China approach — which filters every tiny piece of traffic, known as packets — the proposals will have a similar effect to alcohol prohibition. Porngraphy will go even deeper underground; into the encrypted untraceable bowels of the web which are nigh impossible to infiltrate.
Some of Cameron’s proposals are not entirely useless. Opt-in filters for Internet providers will work much like Google SafeSearch already does — blocking any sites deemed inappropriate when browsing or searching. Blacklisting adult content on public wi-fi and adding filters to mobile phone networks work in a similar fashion.
More baffling are the pledges for ‘Ofcom to drive move towards a family-friendly web’, ‘search engines urged to ban searches for child abuse’ and ‘new powers for watchdogs to access heavily encrypted sites.’
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