The four ISPs that have agreed to block explicit web contents – read porn at the time of writing – are Sky, British Telecom, Talk Talk and Virgin according to The Guardian newspaper. Subscribers to those ISPs need to opt-in to be able to view explicit contents on the Internet.

It is expected that the prime minister David Cameron will announce further moves like restricting “aggressive advertising campaigns and certain types of images on billboards”. Those obviously will come without opt-in options.

The government furthermore plans to unleash a website called Parentport to the public which citizens can use to “complain about television programmes, advertisements, products or services which they believe are inappropriate for children”.

It is interesting to note that the government believes that they can filter out all explicit contents on the Internet this way. Web filters, even on the ISP level, have weaknesses. This includes not only that they will never have a 100% detection rate, but also that the likelihood of false positives is high.

It is also not clear at the time of writing if individual web pages will get blocked or the entire domain.

That’s beneficial for the Orwellian phantasies of the British government in two ways. They first have established censorship on the ISP level, supported by parts of the population. The term explicit contents, adult contents or even porn is vague at best which leaves lots of room for interpretations. Will this only include images and videos or other forms like texts as well.

Vagueness actually is a common denominator in public state-driven censorship. From a concerned citizen perspective it all boils down to the question of power. Who has the power to decide what to censor and what not to, and what quality objective guidelines are available to base that decision on?

Others might say that violence, drugs, computer games, weapons, Tom and Jerry, The Simpsons or Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet should also fall under that censorship.

It is also interesting to note that part of the users who would opt-in won’t because of fear of landing on “the country’s perverts list”.

It is not clear yet how users can opt-in. Do they have to phone their ISP asking for permission to watch porn on the Internet? The opt-in cannot be anonymous, and it would not make sense to display options to opt-in right on the blocked web page.

Update: BBC now contradicts earlier reports stating that parents can opt-in to filter specific types of websites during sign-up (presumably like Open DNS offers packages to block certain types of sites).

The riots in London, which were at first triggered by the shooting of a 29 year old man by Police last Thursday in circumstances which have not yet become clear, quickly escalated with opportunistic thugs and criminals burning cars and buildings, destroying homes and businesses and robbing and looting.  In scenes seen last night in the capitol, one youth was seen robbing another of all his clothes in the street, while an injured and dazed individual was robbed of his possessions while he tried to regain his balance.  These riots last night spread to other parts of England including Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham where copycat looting, destruction and violence towards the police was again seen.

Blackberry made a statement last night saying that it would cooperate with the British Police and release all messages sent by these criminal gangs to the authorities.  This will take time however which is causing frustration on the streets of Britain.

Unlike Twitter, which was commonly and very effectively used in some Arab countries recently and which helped bring the people of Egypt onto the streets to overthrow their president, Blackberry messenger allows users to send secure and encrypted messages to other Blackberry users.  This means the messages cannot be intercepted in real time.  The Metropolitan Police in London said they believe that criminal gangs were using this to co-ordinate the riots and chaos across the city, and to inform each other of the next targets to hit.

Twitter has also been used by the youths responsible for a string of violent attacks against police and property, though these messages are open and have been tracked in real time by the authorities and the press.

Blackberry Messenger needs the Blackberry Internet Service to function, rather than using a normal unencrypted web connection.  It offers facilities including chat groups and dedicated discussions while also allowing users to share pictures, audio recordings and files.  Perhaps more importantly it allows maps to be shared.  The network is only accessible by Blackberry devices and cannot be seen by people on other devices or desktop computers.  Blackberrys have long been favourites in business because of the security and encryption they offer.

How the information share from RIM will happen is as yet unclear.  So far over 400 young people have been arrested in London and it is highly likely that those with Blackberry’s will have their mobile records released.  However there may be a wider claim made by the police for all mobile phones within certain cell areas during the times of the rioting.

So far there are no reports of any fatalities in the UK, though the eyes of the world will be on the country ahead of London hosting the Olympic games next summer.  There will be a reported 16,000 police from various forces around the UK on the streets of London tonight to try to bring the violence to an end.

UPDATE —–

In just the few minutes since this article was published, one man has been reported killed after being shot during the violence last night.  There are no further details as of this time.

This first part of this article series seemed to raise some strong feelings from you all, and I must ask that you please continue to respect other people’s cultures and beliefs when commenting. In part two I want to examine the west’s current approach to the Internet.

There have been several major Internet events in the last year that have raised all sorts of questions about the Internet freedoms we all enjoy, and what the future of the Internet should look like. The first of these was the WikiLeaks scandal where hundreds of thousands of secure military documents were ‘stolen’ by a soldier and later exposed.

Now one thing I’m not going to do here is get into a discussion about the leaks themselves, or how the Pentagon’s internal security allowed the documents to be appropriated in the first instance. It is interesting to note the US government’s initial response to the leaks however.

People were reported inside the Pentagon saying that it should not be possible to publish these types of documents on the Internet, and that governments should have greater control over what can and can’t be published online.

It’s very interesting this as, while this was probably a reaction resulting more from initial anger than reasoned judgement, we know that major western powers are thinking about this and that there are diametrically opposing viewpoints.

The French for instance recently passed a file sharing law that many countries in the European Union strongly disagree with, and the UK government has publicly stated that the Internet should not be constrained.

The UK is another interesting case. Here recently a premier league footballer had obtained what’s known as a “super-injunction” against a former reality television personality that he’d had an affair with. The reasons for the injunction are still not clear though blackmail has been suggested. Despite the British press doing their bit to maintain the injunction and not naming the footballer, hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter publicly outed him.

This has started a debate in the UK about our own laws but not in the context of constraining the Internet, quite the opposite in fact. The debate here has been about bringing UK law up to date so that it can accommodate the Internet.

This doesn’t mean that any new laws, if and when passed, won’t give greater powers to the authorities over finding the identities of people who break the law online so that they can be prosecuted. Indeed every Internet service provider in the UK, after 9/11 was required to fit a “black box” so that email traffic in the country can be monitored for crime and terrorism detection purposes. Many people opposed this at the time but the Labour government in power in the early 00′s got it through parliament.

Now I’m not going to speculate what freedoms we should all have online, you will decide that for yourself, but it’s becoming clear that there is a very strong debate going on in the west about the Internet and if it should be constrained. It’s still possible that some constraints will be put in place, all in the name of terrorism, crime and national security, and this will be a major battle-ground for people’s who have so far enjoyed unfettered access to what they want to see and do online.

In part 3 of this article series I’ll look at how the Internet is being used by criminals and terrorists, and also how major world powers are already using it in warfare.

The campus is located in Reading, Berkshire in the south-east of England it consists of five huge office blocks set in extensive gardens with a lake and nature trail.  This is lovely actually and the first place I headed for even before going to main reception.  There is all manner of wildlife including some ducks that are clearly used to getting scraps of people’s lunch.

The gardens are also home to a summer house with free tea and coffee making facilities, juice and cola.  This is a nice touch and there are free drinks all over the Microsoft campus along with bowls of fruit scattered around.

The five office buildings, which house around 1,800 staff are enormous and quite intimidating too in military grey.  Main reception which is where I was headed is in building 2, but there are other receptions in different buildings for specific areas such as the customer centre.  All of this though contributes to a very relaxed feeling and a very comfortable atmosphere in the offices themselves, that was very welcome.

I had several meetings, first with Ian Moulster, Product Manager on the Windows team and then lunch with Simon May an IT Pro Evangelist among other people.  I’ll talk about some of the specific topics we discussed in part two of this write-up and show some of the technology I got to play with.

As for lunch, I ought to point out for anyone who’s ever been to Ikea that the Microsoft canteen made me feel I was back in the Swedish superstore, though there were no meatballs.  They did have plenty of apples but when I asked about Penguin biscuits they admitted it’s not something they ever had available… hmm.

There are always lots of events going on at Microsoft’s UK headquarters and this day was no exception with the UK finals of the Imagine Cup, a worldwide student technology competition that we stopped in on while they were chilling out to a dance game on the Kinect.

It’s clear that this certainly won’t be my first visit here as there are plenty of other people I’m about to be introduced too so I’ll probably be back in Reading long before the end of the summer.  I have to say that Microsoft’s UK campus is a genuinely friendly place to be.  Everyone seems incredibly happy and they made me feel very welcome.

All told I spent a good portion of the day there in various meetings and on a tour.  I’ll talk about this tour, about the meetings I had and more in part two of this write up on our sister site Windows7News.

I’ll be meeting with the Windows and the Windows Phone teams and touring their “Technology Centre” with all their cutting-edge prototypes, which I’m certain will be extremely interesting, and will take far longer for me to get round than the time they’ve got pencilled in for it!

I thought it only fair and reasonable to throw the doors open to you, the fantastic readers at gHacks to get out there any and all questions you’d like me to ask when I’m there. You might want to know about legacy support, Windows 8, Windows Phone sales projections or the future of Kinect. I’ll also be taking my camera to document all the cool stuff I expect to find (and will hopefully get to play with) in the technology centre.

So feel free to submit all your questions below in the comments, I’ll be subscribing and will keep them all safe in my email. No question is too silly, believe me I’ll a fair few myself, and I’ll try and get any many in as I can during my meetings there or afterwards by email.

I’ll also be tweeting live from Microsoft on the experience and what I see and find out.  You can follow these tweets live on Wednesday 20th April from 11am (UK BST), 3am (PST) by following me here.

This is definitely a welcome move as Nominet currently has no obligation to close down criminal websites, but the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) wants things to change.  Not everyone is welcoming the news however.  David Harris, an IT lawyer and barrister told the BBC “In a world of online retailing, the ability for a police officer to seize any business, whether that is blocking a domain or seizing the servers – pre-conviction or certainly pre-warrant – would be a dramatic change in the relationship between the police and the Internet community.”

While this is of course a very good and serious point, the move is being broadly welcomed from other quarters, so long as it comes with judicial oversight but there are some serious flaws to consider.

The most obvious is that such a move would need international agreement at government level.  At the moment criminals would just register a new domain or avoid .uk domain names altogether.  Thus the police would have no way to shut the sites down.  The second flaw is that these domains will only be able to be shut some time after they have already done damage.

It can be extremely difficult to detect criminal websites early on though online security companies do make a good job of detection.

SOCA’s move is an important first step and now needs to be picked up by the British government and discussed formally at the United Nations.  Then perhaps in a few years we will be able to see Internet security firms, international law-enforcement, domain registrars and web hosting companies working together for the greater good.  This one won’t be easy to thrash out however.

The FBI worked with police and security agencies right around the world.  The UK police confirmed that more people had been detained the Ukraine.  Other countries involved included the Netherlands.

The US Attorney General said that those arrested in the US had been charged with conspiracy to commit bank-fraud and money laundering.  They acted as go-betweens providing bank accounts for the criminals to deposit stolen money in.

The FBI added that the crime ring had attempted to steal $220m by obtaining usernames and passwords for bank account details.

The arrests are the culmination of an investigation that began in May 2009 when FBI agents noticed a string of suspicious bank transactions.

In the UK, 19 suspected members of the ring were arrested and Ukranian police arrested 5 people suspected of directing the scheme.

Defending all of our interests in cyberspace is a relatively small cadre of talented and highly skilled public sector and private sector cyber security professionals,” said Baroness Neville-Jones, Minister of Security.

Lady Neville-Jones said the pool of available professionals had to grow and the Cyber Security Challenge was an “innovative” way to attract people to take up the profession.

The UK has fallen behind in recent years in computing expertise which has angered many who remembered the country as the birthplace of the modern computing revolution where programmers were sat in every front room and bedroom on their Sinclair Spectrum, BBC Micros or Commodore 64 only thirty years ago.  Since then, other countries have stolen the lead in expertise because they have put much greater emphasis on the appropriate skills during schooling than British governments have done.

A virtual competition takes the form of a treasure hunt that will involve looking for flaws on a dummy website and answering questions about what was found. The challenge will take about two hours to complete with will be run on several dates between September and December.

The face-to-face challenge will see teams taking over a simulated network and defending it against a series of attacks carried out by security professionals.

The winners of these initial competitions will go forward to the UK Masterclass at which they will work with others to defend a different simulated network.

If you fancy yourself as a computer security specialist and would like to enter the competition you can do so here.

The apps, ranging from between £10,000 and £40,000 each.  One of the most expensive is a DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) app that provided a “masterclass for changing your wheel”.

A spokesman for the DVLA told BBC News:”We want to make it as easy as possible for motorists to renew their car tax, tell us about a change of address or update their driving licence, meaning they stay safe and legal to drive.

“This would also bring benefits for DVLA, for example by reducing the number of reminders that need to be sent out.

“We considered how an application could help with this but no final decisions have been taken and the app, for now, is still in development,” he added.

This information has emerged only a few weeks after the government announced a wholesale review of all its websites after the Central Office of Information revealed that UK.gov had spent £94m on website development and running costs and a further £32m on web development staffing during the year 2009-2010.

The new government coalition in the UK is currently implementing swingeing cuts across all government and public services, in order to reduce the country’s huge budget deficit.

 The job hunting app has been downloaded more than 53,000 times, but critics have asked “why someone who can afford both an iPhone and the expensive running costs would need a Jobcentre Plus app.”

“It seems many Government bodies have given in to the temptation to spend money on fashionable gimmicks at a time when they are meant to be cutting back on self-indulgent wastes of money”, he told BBC News.

In a statement, the Cabinet Office said “The government recently announced a freeze on all marketing and advertising spend for this year and this includes iPhone applications.  Future spend on iPhone development will be subject to strict controls: only essential activity, approved by the Efficiency and Reform Group, which is chaired by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, will be allowed”.

Get over to the other side and get updated in the mean time.

Nokia X6 To Land In The UK This Friday

If you have been eyeing Nokia’s latest touchscreen music phone – the X6, it is coming to the UK Friday. As is usual with many phones there, it has found a carrier who will be offering it for free against a long-time contract. This time it is Orange for £35/month.

For the SIM-free version you will have to pony up £449, which is roughly around $670 at today’s exchange rate. You can pre-order it from shop.nokia.co.uk from today. [read]

Skype Nokia N900 Demo Video

Nokia N900 comes with Skype built-in. So now you have more reason to buy the N900 for $649, that is if you can wait for the next shipments to arrive. The last I heard of it was that it was pre-ordered to capacity and new orders were behind huge queues. At least now you can get one for $480 on Amazon ($530-$50 mail in rebate). [read]

Skype has demoed Skype for Maemo on an official video. Since Skype is already available on Linux, this port could not have been all that hard to execute. [read]

UK Retailers Pull Satio, Big Bugs Need Squashing

Bad news folks, Sony Ericsson’s Satio is now as good as off the shelves right now. This decision had to be taken after numerous customers came in with complaints about freezes, mysterious powering down of the phone and other problems. The two major retailers of the Phone in the UK – Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U – have decided to offer replacements to customers who are returning the Satio.

Official word from Sony Ericsson is that the issues will be fixed before Christmas. The bugs are apparently to deep for normal updates to tackle. Well, I guess that’s what we get for lusting after a too-good-to-be-true 12MP camera phone.

Kurara Reviewed, Is OKAY

Like he promised, the man behind mobile review has posted a more detailed look at the Kurara. From Murtazin’s post, it is clear that the phone sounds good on paper but it is pretty ordinary in person. It definitely fits the bill for an understudy of the Idou and should be priced somewhere around half of the high-end offerings. That said, if this phone is priced right, it could become a hot-selling phone for those who are looking for an entry-level touchscreen experience that is slightly better than the Samsung options.

The ARM Cortex Ab with 256MB RAM still is powerful enough to breeze through the Symbian UI. So that part is covered I suppose. Read the extensive review of it right here.

O2’s ‘Free’ HTC HD2

The Brits are at it again. They are really good at giving away phones for free as long as you promise to pay them a hefty sum. If you are in the market for the HTC HD2 and if you are in the UK, you can get it for free from O2 against a long-term contract. You will have to pay a nice £45 per month on it though. So far, I do not think the HD2 retailing SIM-free there. So O2 looks like the only option right now. [read]

Ding! First Round Of UK iPhone Battle

As you might know, Orange UK has recently started selling the iPhone and in response to this new competition Vodafone and O2 have gone in to defense mode. To keep more customers on its side, Vodafone sent out an email to all those who had registered with the carrier prior to the iPhone release, in which they claim that their’s is the network that is the fastest for the iPhone.

In a slightly surprising move, O2 has begun offering an unlocking service for the iPhones. No, they are not going to hack any iPhone you bring in but they will unlock their own iPhones at the end of a contract. They are going to charge a £15 fee for it and they are also warning that the process might take some time, as long as up to 14 days. Even though they are charging for it, it would seem like they are trying to ring up some customer good will by doing this. Once they have unlocked the iPhones, the customer can insert any SIM card in to their iPhone and start using it legitimately.

O2 has also asserted that they have seen tremendous growth in their data network. According to the company — data usage on their network has grown 20 times in the last 12 months, doubling every 4 months. They are also offering free home broadband to people who buy into the tethering option to use their iPhone as a wireless modem.

Analysts have also been quoted saying that the iPhone is the best way to make customers pay more, even in this recessive market. But Vodafone is surely on the right track because what iPhone users mainly want is network strength. They are paying an awful lot to get the connectivity and hence they expect a lot in return. [read]

Orange has only just started selling the phone, so it is too early to say anything about them. But as far as the response goes, it has been extremely positive. The company has tweeted saying that they have recorded more than 30,000 iPhones on the very first day. For a phone that has been launched months back, this is really good indeed. The Droid has sold 100,000 units through the first week and it is a newly launched phone that has gotten positive reviews. Orange’s free film-themed app has also received a lot of success, hitting the number on spot in the entertainment category and the number two spot on the free apps category.

Hilton iPhone Apps To Give You More Choices

Guests of the Hilton hotel might soon be able to check in remotely and have food waiting for them when they arrive through multiple apps being launched by Hilton. I say might because once they reveal the app, it will still have to go through the App Store’s approval process. These apps are going to give you many more options and will “help you manage your stay.” [read]

Taptu Goes Real Time

Taptu is already well loved for their friendly mobile-searching app and now they are about to kick things up a notch. They have partnered with the real time search engine OneRiot to bring you search results as they are unfolding across the web. [read]

ITV Player uses Microsoft’s Silverlight format to stream its media, which allows it to be played on Windows and Macs. Users report problems with it working under the Linux build of Silverlight. The website itself looks quite slick but is nowhere as near as nice to use as BBC’s iPlayer.

The service allows users to watch shows like Coronation Street but I cannot see any way to download these episodes to watch portably as you can with iPlayer.

Whilst it’s nice to see ITV using a non-Windows only brand (unlike Channel 4), it would have been good had they used a more universal format like Flash or OGG.

There are a few other issues with it. Many shows can’t be watch live due to licensing issues, the video is too small and the only options are small or fullscreen – unlike iPlayer. ITV Player also fails to offer HD shows.

I think ITV Player will either be drastically improved or scrapped! I’m surprised ITV are in-touch enough with the public to stay clear of DRM but I’m disappointed they used Silverlight and made it incompatible with Linux. The interface needs work too.

I expect the site won’t work outside the UK but it’s still a convenient service British readers may have overlooked. If it does work outside, please comment and let us know!

A side-effect was that users of those Internet Service Providers in the United Kingdom were not able to modify other Wikipedia articles anonymously anymore.

It did not take long however before some users created a Greasemonkey script Antiproxy 4 Wikipedia so that users from the United Kingdom who cannot edit Wikipedia entries anonymously anymore have the opportunity to do so. A Firefox extension based on that Greasemonkey script has been designed in the meanwhile which can also be used to edit articles anonymously.

A more technical explanation can be found at Computerworld:

The measures applied caused the ISPs to redirect traffic for a significant portion of the UK’s Internet population through six proxy servers, which can log and filter the content that is available to the end user, Wikinews say. But the knock on effect resulted in Wikipedia being unable to distinguish UK users from one another by their IP address. That triggered Wikipedia’s anti-abuse mechanism, blocking all non-registered UK users from editing articles, according to the foundation.

A search for Virgin Killer will reveal the album cover on many websites who are still available for UK users.

Update: The Firefox extension has been taken down, it is no longer available on the Mozilla website. You can still use the userscript.

The last incident came to light this Sunday. The Times Online is reporting that an USB Stick was found outside a Brewers Fayre chain pub in Cannock, Staffordshire which contained confidential passwords, security software and the source code of the Government Gateway. The data on the stick could be used to access the personal details of more than 12 million individuals who registered on the system including names, addresses, national insurance numbers, credit card information or passwords.

The system had been shut down shortly after the USB stick was found (again) to protect the data of the citizens. According to government officials the system has not been breached by then. Even more pressing than the discovery of the data on the stick is the source code which could be used to exploit the system to a much larger extent.

Investigations are in full swing and should reveal additional information soon. Gordon Brown commented on the incident with the words: “It is important to recognize we cannot promise that every single item of information will always be safe because mistakes are made by human beings.”

The ISPs in question, those that are better avoided like the plague from now on are: BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, Sky and Carphone Warehouse. I really do not care as much for the reason why they signed the agreement as to that they did sign it at all. The Register thinks that they agreed to the “voluntary” code to avoid or even mute further legislation of the matter which might have forced them to invest in monitoring and storage equipment.

There is no word on punishment yet but it is interesting that the ISPs, Ofcom and the music industry have a few month to agree on a punishment. And I thought it would be the law that would determine the punishment, boy was I wrong.

The Music Industry is favoring the three strikes and you are out punishment which means that if your name, sorry IP, turns up three times you will be kicked out of your contract with the broadband company. No word yet on how they are going to manage false positives and identify offenders in first place and if the user has the right to appeal against the offending letter.

One of the Internet Service Providers (TalkTalk) published a FAQ already on their website that is answering some of the most pressing questions that their customers might have.

It will be interesting to watch how this unfolds.

Now the interesting question that arises is why they would want to educate their customers. My first assumption would be that they, as a cable provider, want to reduce the average bandwidth usage of their customers in an effort to maximize the profits from their infrastructure. Usually filesharers have a much higher bandwidth demand than the usual Internet user with the exception of video portal junkies maybe.

Reducing the amount of filesharers that are their customers would definitely reduce the bandwidth bill of the ISP. Cable is a shared connection as well which could increase the speed of all customers as well.

The interesting question will be how they will pick the customers that will receive the warnings. Will they actively monitor P2P networks, will they only react when the BPI sends them a list, will they verify those lists ? What about false positives ? Someone who is download music from Jamendo using the Bittorrent protocol. Will he receive a warning as well ? What about secure Usenet connections ? IRC, FTP, file hosts. How the hell will they be able to determine that a file that is being transferred is indeed a copyright violation ? Filenames alone are without doubt not the safest way of determining that. So, how will they do that ?

My second assumption would be that Virgin Media could have some ties with the BPI or a company that is a member of the BPI. I really do not have enough time to research this so if anyone could help me out it would be appreciated.