Think of the Children!

After getting back to full on, foaming at the mouth, political ranting yesterday, I thought that I'd follow it up with another anti-Tory rant.  Indeed, we're back to one of my favourite subjects: 'Call me Dave' Cameron's deepening obsession with internet pornography.  The other day I had the misfortune to hear the plummy voiced tosser on the radio, crowing about how he'd forced Google and Bing to block search terms for child pornography.  "They said it couldn't be done," he boasted.  Well, I've news for you Dave, it can't and it hasn't 'been done'.  All that has happened is that two search engines have arbitrarily blocked a number of search terms and phrases which may, or may not, be associated with searches for child porn.  However, we don't know what these phrases are - we'll only find out if we happen to use them on either Google and Bing and find our search returning either no results or a warning notice.  For all we know they could be perfectly innocent search terms which are being blocked under the pretext of fighting child abuse.  In fact, unless the government is now contradicting its earlier statements, some of them must be.  After all, wasn't one of the moral panics Cameron was trying to spin a few months ago the fear that children could stumble upon this sort of stuff by accident as a result of entering an apparently innocent search term? 

Of course, the million dollar question is whether or not blocking these search terms will stop people from accessing child pornography online.  The answer is, obviously not.  I doubt very much that peadophiles find the stuff which interests them simply by searching on Google or Bing.  As I understand it, they access it through 'backdoor' means, on the so-called 'dark web'.  As ever, though, this has nothing to do with fighting child porn.  Instead, it is about censoring the web, which terrifies this government as it represents a channel of dangerous free speech and expression.  Totalitarian regimes always try to dress up their repressive measures as being necessary for the protection of the people.  Clearly, our current reactionary rulers have latched on to child abuse as a powerful smokescreen for suppression (the war on terror having been largely discredited) - who could object to protecting children, after all?   Even as I write this, I see that Dave's 'web advisor' is calling for Facebook and Twitter to ban anonymous comments, forcing users to use their real identities, in order to stop bullying.  Never mind the fact that web anonymity is mainly employed to allow people to express opinions freely, without fear of intimidation or being sacked if their employers don't like their opinions.  Oh no, in order to protect the vulnerable from bullying, we unfortunately have to restrict free speech.  You know it makes sense.