UK Internet Filter to Also Block Conspiracy TheoriesEric Blair According to Wired: As well as pornography, users may automatically be opted in to blocks on violent material, extremist related content, anorexia and eating disorder websites and suicide related websites, alcohol and smoking. But the list doesnt stop there. It even extends to blocking web forums and esoteric material, whatever that is. Web blocking circumvention tools is also included, of course. The definition of esoteric makes clear that censorship of broad topics is the goal of this so-called ISP filter: esoteric [es-uh-ter-ik] adjective The organization Open Rights Group refers to this totalitarian tip-toe as sleepwalking into censorship: Whats clear here is that David Cameron wants people to sleepwalk into censorship. We know that people stick with defaults: this is part of the idea behind nudge theory and choice architecture that is popular with Cameron. The implication is that filtering is good, or at least harmless, for anyone, whether adult or child. Of course, this is not true; theres not just the question of false positives for web users, but the affect on a network economy of excluding a proportion of a legitimate websites audience. Open Rights also says the law could be used to play economic favorites, thus undermining the free market on the Internet: There comes a point that it is simply better to place your sales through Amazon and ebay, and circulate your news and promotions exclusively through Facebook and Twitter, as you know none of these will ever be filtered. It seems Western governments voracity for Internet censorship has increased many fold since the Snowden revelations about digital spying. Direct Internet censorship was imposed on millions of U.S. government computers blocking them from viewing any material related to the Snowden leak, which at the time of the leak and even now represents a large percentage of all political and technical news stories. And as John Naughton of the Guardian points outtoday, the real story about the Snowden leak that everyone is ignoring are the implications on Internet freedom, which he lists as the following: The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty. Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable. Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administrations internet freedom agenda has been exposed as patronising cant. Today, he writes, the rhetoric of the internet freedom agenda looks as trustworthy as George Bushs freedom agenda after Abu Ghraib. As a final note, porn filters already exist for parents in the private marketplace if they choose to use them. So, there is no need for governments to make them mandatory, which indicates that the real agenda behind these new proposed laws is much more about censorship than protecting children. Read other articles by Eric Blair Here 