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The government is not "forcing" this filter per se. They are threatening the industry with extensive regulation if the biggest ISPs does not put in place filters. It's their way of evading democratic oversight. It is worse than government enforced blocks. As for the hint of blocking "extremist" views, this worries me tremendously, as someone who in the past was a member of a marxist organisation (in Norway, not the UK) that for decades was under illegal surveillance (of the type where intelligence officials would stop prominent members in the street on occasion to openly taunt them with stories about the conversation said person had with his wife in the privacy of his own home the previous day) despite no evidence ever of any illegal activity (meanwhile members of the then ruling-party in Norway have been convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union...). Another organization under illegal surveillance was, subsequent to the illegal surveillance being rolled up, denounced as a terrorist organisation by an ex prime minister, in parliament, fro the speakers chair, with no evidence of any illegal activity provided (on the contrary, they stand as one of just a handful of victims of terrorist bomb plots in Norway - a bomb plot the intelligence services eventually had to admit they had used as an opportunity to steal internal documents), as he publicly made it clear that he wished that the illegal surveillance had not been stopped. In the UK, "extremist" views would likely have including support for the provisional IRA if it had been put in place a decade or two ago, but the question is how far out from that would they have stretched it? Would they have tried to block people who argued for secession but who did not explicitly support violent means? People who supported self-defence in the case of attacks from security forces but not terror? Note that many of the restrictions aimed to target the IRA were not so obviously restricting only people implicated in terror. While it is obvious to us that extremist fundamentalist islamism is dangerous since there are groups actively planning terror attacks, it is very often very hard to draw clear lines between people engaged in clearly harmful violent activity and people engaged in unpopular political activity that may very well turn out to be important down the line (back to my own example, a long list of the people subjected to illegal surveillance in Norway have become highly important and influential cultural figures) For my own part not more than 20 years ago since I debated people from mainstream parties - in fact including from the current coalition parties in Norway - that though my liberalist marxist views, which I have never backed with violence, was sufficient reason that they believed I deserved to die (meanwhile I also regularly debated Stalinists who wished me the same fate) or rot in prison. Because, hey, that's apparently what you should get if you want to reduce the governments power. |