“Why the UK’s porn filter plans are just an illusion”

So writes Bobbie Johnson over on Gigaom in an interesting piece, which I praise not just for his choice of whose tweets to quote…

Forget about the rhetoric or the controversy or the guiding philosophy, though. There is a much more simple — and much more real — problem facing the U.K.’s proposals to make porn filters opt-out.

The porn filters they’re talking about are absolutely terrible at doing the job they’re being asked to.

Given that any filters which are put in place will need to be built and operated by ISPs, I contacted Britain’s four biggest internet providers to ask them about the filtering services they have in place already. And the reality is that their methods are all very similar — and widely criticized.

You can read the story, including my tweet, in full here.

The problem about technology not being up to the jobs that politicians dream up for it is not unique to this area of course. It’s also one of the problems with the Snoopers’ Charter – the practical problems and risks of creating huge new piles of surveillance data barely feature in the calculations of its fans.