UK Gov. Clueless About Own Internet Blacklist 203
spge writes "Computer Shopper magazine has interviewed the UK Home Office about its relationship with the Internet Watch Foundation and discovered that the government doesn't actually know what the IWF does, although it still plans to force UK ISPs to subscribe to the IWF's blacklist. The main story makes for interesting reading, but the best bit is the full transcript of the interview. Short version: the IWF investigates suspected child porn websites and adds any it finds to a list that ISPs can use to block these sites; uk.gov wants ISPs to use this list; however, the IWF is not an official government organization, does not appear to have legal permission to view child pornography, and quite possibly is breaking the law by doing so."
Re:Or in other words... (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you report a crime without self-incriminating yourself since viewing said crime is a crime?
Use doublethink [wikipedia.org], which is a very British thing to do.
Re:Or in other words... (Score:5, Interesting)
A guy in my local had an indecent image of a child emailed to him from an address unknown to him. He didn't know what the email contained, and it was obscured with content which wouldn't identify it as being CP in any way (subject and body were innocuous). He called the local police station and a PC came down to check it out.
Apparently, the PC saw the picture, turned to the guy, and said (paraphrasing) "I'm going outside for a smoke. You're going to delete that email and the picture before I come back in, or I have to arrest you for viewing an indecent image of a minor. That's just how the law is written."
Moral of the story? If you're in the UK, don't report ANYTHING to the police. Ever.
Re:Who watches the watchers? (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm going to test a little thing here.
I will report an innocent site to IWF, if it gets blocked, they fail, if it doesn't, they fail.
Either way, they should not have any power of censorship if they can't even VIEW what it is they are censoring.
In fact, i think i will actually MAKE a site stating exactly this, and get them to block it.
Re:Or in other words... (Score:4, Interesting)
Check out the Protection of Children Act 1978 [opsi.gov.uk]. From the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on the subject:
"In the United Kingdom, it is illegal to take, make, distribute, show or possess an indecent image of a child. Accessing an indecent image is considered to be "making" the image, meaning that a defendant can be charged under the Protection of Children Act if he accessed an image without saving it."
It is illegal to view the image. It's just how the law is written.
Re:Or in other words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sir or madam, people spam for _everything_. Read http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/03/offspam.html [sophos.com]: while the article is a few years out of date, there's a commercial notification from a security company that it does occur.
Now, the policeman's behavior was one of making sure he didn't have to do any work and deal with the complaint, not one of actually dealing with the porn. That matches FBI behavior in the US, whose actual response to spam and fraud remains, basically, 'hit the D key', despite the millions invested in the completely useless and clueless 'Internet Crime Complaint Center', which is apparently a fancy website which gets you an autoresponse and then completely ignored no matter what you report.
Re:Who watches the watchers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I downloaded Brooke Shields "Pretty Baby" from Pirate Bay, since no other organization would carry it. For those not familiar, this movie shows a naked girl at around age 13, just prior to the onset of puberty.
In which countries is ownership of this movie considered illegal? The UK? France? Germany?
Why?