UK is About to Filter Out Internet Adult Sites and…”Esoteric Material”?

[link to vigilantcitizen.com]

Last week, UK prime minister James Cameron announced that adult sites would be automatically blocked in order to protect “children and their innocence”. After some digging however (this policy, which was strategically timed to be announced right when the Royal Baby was born) is far from being only about “protecting children”. As usual, a catchphrase that nobody can’t disagree with was used to hide the ugly truth: UK’s policy will, by default, filter out and censor a LOT of material that is deemed undesirable.

After discussing with several UK ISPs, Digital advocacy organization Open Rights Group discovered that the UK web filter will ban by default a wide range of websites including:

- violent material
- extremist and terrorist related content
- anorexia and eating disorder websites
- suicide related websites

More importantly, the filter will also censor websites that mention alcohol or smoking, “web forums” and “esoteric material”. These last categories are the most worrying as their vague nature opens the door to all kinds of censorship. What exactly is “esoteric material”? Are “alternative news” and “conspiracy-related” sites included? Is mentioning the occult elite on a blog warrants a ban from the UK? The censorship possibilities are endless.

In order to unblock these sites, customers must contact their ISPs and ask to be unblocked. According to Open Rights Group, most people will not bother or even known about any of this.