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Slashdot talks about “child porn sites” being blocked in Finland. I wrote about this block in Sweden a while back.

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Ledare i Svenska Dagbladet som diskuterar Sveriges väg mot ett övervakningssamhälle.

Under året har dessutom en rad lagar trätt i kraft – och förslag lagts - som går i samma riktning: statsnyttan går före den personliga integriteten.

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Every year brings us closer to a surveillance society…

Some people say that they feel safer when they are being surveyed by the government rather then a private company. I feel differently. It’s much easier to hide from a company then from the state, and, a company can be influenced by money and shareholders.

Then there is the argument that you can use elections to remove bad governments, but a government is a government. They are all the same, they just follow the leash of the USEU and it doesn’t matter if they are blue or red. In the end, we’re the suckers, and the politicians just keep lining their pockets with cash, while your freedoms are being cast in the bin one by one.

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It seems that the Swedish police is censoring the Internets as we know it.
Everyone knows that companies and governments use censorship software to block employees from accessing certain websites, but today I was pointed to a site which appears to be blocked by Swedish police on at least three of Sweden’s four largest ISPs: Comhem, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget.

The blockage is due to the alleged child-porn contents of the website so I am guessing the site itself is NSFW. The URL suggests that it might be a hentai site, which is in the western world synonymous with manga-style hardcore porn, i.e. pornographic drawings. I have not been able to confirm the true nature of the site, since I am unable to go there due to the blockage.

However, I feel that the motives behind the block are irrelevant. The fact that the site seems to be censored by the Police at the ISP level is very disturbing. The site has not been taken down, it’s simply not accessible from at least two large ISPs in Sweden due to government interference.
I was actually able to browse parts of the site using google’s cache service, but all the images were still blocked.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that accessing the contents of this particular site is not my goal, nor am I challenging the criminal nature of child pornography. I feel very strongly about putting every last abuser (sexual, or otherwise) of children behind some very thick bars. However, if one type of content is censored at a national level, what’s next? And should one government organisation, really be given that kind of power?

I suppose I might be overreacting, but whenever I browse the internet and see government or police logos where there should be none, I get scared, tired and frustrated. Scars of growing up in the USSR, no doubt. Here’s to a free world.

Am I naïve to assume that internet should be completely free? Am I wrong to think that censoring criminal activity is bad? Argh! My head hurts from all this.

Update: Nisse made a good point: since it’s illegal to view/posess child pornography, one could go to jail if one was to view the site in question… Food for thought.
Another update: Slashdot talks about similar blocks in Finland

Technorati Tags: censorship, censur, great firewall, police, polis, sweden

This story on boing boing points to an editorial at Forbes about modern cities. Worth a read!

I especially liked Cory’s Snitchtown. I have serious issues with surveillance these days, and Snitchtown mirrors my thoughts 100%.

Stockholm’s subway stations are lined with cameras. I counted around 20 cameras at my station. I wonder what they do with all that footage? Wouldn’t it have been wiser to invest that money in a few more security guards to patrol the subway at night?

I personally don’t feel any safer with these cameras. And the subway is still a shithole on Friday and Saturday evening when the drunk masses come out to play.

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Technorati Tags: surveillance

The alarm clock rings, and we hit the snooze button yet again…

CNETAsia
Japan: Schoolkids to be tagged with RFID chips

Japanese authorities decide tracking is best way to protect kids

The rights and wrongs of RFID-chipping human beings have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school.

Joi Ito, the tin foil hat guy, does not like this idea.
In general, I agree with him, however own views on surveillance and all this RFID tagging are still very much in limbo. While I fear the idea of being tagged, and followed by the government, I also feel safer on the subway knowing or at least hoping that they have cameras watching (says so on the doors). This is especially true as I am sitting programming on my very expensive laptop at 10pm in a 30% full subway car.

I guess the question is, how can this stuff be misused?
I have seen the movie Enemy of the State a few times, if you have not, you should. It shows how this technology can be misused. The movie is about an innocent guy that gets framed and the enemy (NSA) seriously fucks up his life with satellites and bugs and trackers. A worst case scenario to be sure, but it does raise a few questions and feeds the imagination.

Seriously though, what’s the real problem?
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