David Cameron says that the reason Britons are fighting with IS is that they were hypnotised by unstoppable sorcerous "extremist" words on the net and that the best way to fight this is to get the big UK ISPs to agree to block any "extremist" content that's reported by the eagle-eyed public and added to (yet another) secret, unaccountable, extrajudicial list of websites that can't be reached from behind the Great Firewall of Cameron — and the big ISPs agree with him!
BT, Talktalk, Sky and Virgin are all going along with the gag, which is modelled on the existing (unaccountable, secret, extrajudicial) child sexual abuse blocking system (the one that banned all of Wikipedia for publishing a Scorpions album cover). Except that while child sex abuse has some edge cases (for example, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls) where there can be spirited debate about what falls into the category, "radicalising" material is much less clear-cut.
David Cameron says, "We must not allow the internet to be an ungoverned space" — but it's clear that he doesn't care if it's a space with the rule of law.
David Cameron seems quite excited about turning an open and free internet into a closed and censored space, where only content he likes is allowed:
Addressing a special sitting of federal parliament, Cameron said: "We must not allow the internet to be an ungoverned space".
Why? What's wrong with letting people speak their minds? The whole "terrorism!" claim is overplayed:
"In both our countries we have seen some of our young people radicalised, going off to fight in Iraq and Syria, and even appalling plots to murder innocent people back in our own countries."
Yes, but perhaps you should look at the root causes of why that's happening? But Cameron insists it can't possibly be poverty or UK foreign policy:
"And let us be frank. It's not poverty, though of course our nations are united in tackling deprivation wherever it exists. It's not exclusion from the mainstream. Of course we have more to do but we are both successful multicultural democracies where opportunities abound.
"And it's not foreign policy. I can show you examples all over the world where British aid and British action have saved millions of Muslim lives, from Kosovo to Syria – but that is not exactly the real point. In our democracies, we must never give in to the idea that disagreeing with a foreign policy in any way justifies terrorist outrages."
David Cameron Says People Aren't Radicalized By Poverty Or Foreign Policy, But By Free Speech Online, So ISPs Agree To Censor Button [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]
