Protect our Children’s freedom: Give Them Privacy

We need to protect our Children’s future by protecting their freedoms. Your privacy is a human right that is about to be compromised.

In 2013, the Conservatives ran a campaign titled “Protecting Our Children”. A noble cause with a political agenda.

Here we are in 2016, faced with the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill 2016-17 which outlines that broadband providers will be forced into the mandatory blocking of all “adult” websites.

The original campaign outlined a number of points, which were unbalanced points of view that needed to be addressed.

• “Think of the children” type campaigns are simply an appeal to emotion to justify censorship and are potentially damaging to our future and our Children’s freedoms.
• The government can’t monitor children every hour of the day, nor would anyone want them to
• 90% of parents manage their children’s activities online, according to Ofcom, and that 70% of households do not have children
• Children have, throughout history been exposed to “adult material” in various media forms, including art, magazines, VHS, floppy disks, or just old fashioned voyeurism. In many ways, it is part of growing up. It’s what kids do.
• Living a sheltered life doesn’t give you the skills to deal with adult life
• Setting content filters to yes automatically means that you are assuming everyone is a potential criminal
• This is just the start. It gives the government permission to monitor and filter anything.
• This will simply drive people to use darknets and anonymous networks which are infinitely more difficult to filter, monitor or regulate than regular internet traffic
• The virtual world of the Internet should reflect the real world, the good, the bad and the ugly
• “Wikipedia is not censored” - like the real world, the internet has content that may be objectionable
• If Internet censorship is the answer to child safety, then you’re asking the wrong questions.

Privacy isn’t about having “nothing to hide” its about freedom.

This is how it begins: It begins as a way to “protect our children”, a noble cause.

Slowly, more and more “inappropriate content” is blocked, filtered, monitored and ultimately blocked.

You may begin to wonder who decides what is and isn’t “appropriate”. Is what the government deems inappropriate actually inappropriate to everyone?

Then it is made illegal to view the so called “inappropriate content”. People are arrested, then your friends and family are arrested for being associated.

As soon as your privacy is taken away, so is your freedom.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

– Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

Orwell’s 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.

Update: Do not censor the internet, sign here.

Update 2: UK to censor online videos of ‘non-conventional’ sex acts - The Guardian