UNITED KINGDOM—Who knew that British MP Claire Perry, the main force behind the country’s move toward internet censorship in the name of protecting kids from porn, had such a despotic streak in her? After all, it’s one thing to go off half-cocked about porn on the internet, which a lot of ignorant people rail about, but quite another to threaten a journalist who has broken no law or done anything wrong at all.
“Talking to Sun on Sunday to make sure they know the views of their political columnist,” she tweeted Monday in the aftermath of a post by columnist Guido Fawkes, reporting on a porn hack of Perry’s official website. He posted the news to his own blog, not to the Sun’s site, but Perry, who also erroneously accused Fawkes of “sponsoring” the hack, still thought his employer should know what he is up to… even if it was all made up in her mind.
Fawkes is threatening to sue, and will likely win if he does, but the episode is also helpful in that it reminds the world that the British government is not only “internet illiterate,” as they say, but also feloniously vindictive when it comes to harassing people it does not like. Sorry to have to say this, but if the Brits don’t want to actually become a totalitarian state—hopefully, it is not too late—they had better nip this nonsense in the bud and quick. (The United States government is hardly a beacon of technological enlightenment, to be sure, but because the English seem so damned determined to fix the internet by deciding what people should see on it, they are the internet’s current villain de jour.)
The totality of Fawke’s “crime” can be found here, but the post is so short we can reprint it easily. In a post titled “Claire Perry’s Website Hacked by Porn Prankers,” he wrote, “Poor Claire Perry. Dave’s anti-porn campaigner has had her website hacked, so if you go to the address below* you are directed to a series of explicit adult images. The vast majority of which are certainly unsuitable for a family blog such as this.”
He then included a screen shot of a url that supposedly would lead one to the offending images, which of course are no longer available to see. Perry, by the way, also accused Fawkes of “hosting a link that distributed porn via my website,” apparently not realizing that no such link existed.
Fawkes’ post also included a final thought: “At least her website will be blocked when the new rules come into effect…” If life were fair, that would still be the case, porn or no porn.
Meanwhile, even PM Cameron appears to be softly backpedaling on his promise to “protect children from ‘poisonous’ pornography websites which, he said, were ‘corroding childhood.’” In an interview following his announcement of the opt-in plan that will make porn blocking the default setting at the ISP level, he amazingly did not know what sorts of sites would be blocked, and said that would be left to the companies to decide.
“The companies themselves are going to design what is automatically blocked, but the assumption is they will start with blocking pornographic sites and also perhaps self-harming sites,” he told the BBC’s Jeremy Vine. “It will depend on how the companies choose how to do it. It doesn’t mean, for instance, it will block access to a newspaper like The Sun, it wouldn’t block that—but it would block pornography.”
According to the Independent, “Mr Cameron said he did not ‘believe’ written pornography, such as erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, would be blocked under the plans. But he added: ‘It will depend on how the filters work.’
“He also admitted it could lead to some interesting conversations in families,” the article continued. “Asked if the ‘opt in’ system meant a husband would have to ‘fess up’ to his partner if he wanted to look at porn, he finally said: ‘Yes, it does.’”
Now that’s a nanny state.
Image: Claire Perry MP and Prime Minster David Cameron.
