It’s not often these days that the comments underneath a newspaper’s online article are supportive of the Liberal Democrats. However, virtually every commenter in this Independent article backed the party’s stand on filters which are aimed at restricting access to content deemed in appropriate for children but in reality block a great deal more. Since they were activated, we’ve reported that they’ve blocked access to the LGBT+ Lib Dems’ section of the Liberal Democrats’ website and the site of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow.
Tim Farron’s and Julian Huppert’s motion to Spring Conference on a Digital Bill of Rights makes a brief reference to the problems caused by filters, such as the blocking of such websites and the creation of an “invasive list of citizens wishing to engage in legal behaviour.” Party Conference debated the issue of protecting children from online pornography last September. The motion was referred back and will reappear at some point in the future, but virtually every speech from the floor rejected the idea of filters.
Nick Clegg has consistently said for some time that what’s needed is robust, up to date sex education to help children build resilience to the messages that they get about sex in the modern world, not just from pornography. Tim Farron backed that up strongly in the Independent piece:
Mr Farron said there was growing evidence that the filters were ineffectual and doing more harm than good.
“Essential sites on sexual health, gender and sexuality, domestic violence and LGBT rights are being blocked by these filters, whilst pornographic content is still available,” he said. “Our motion is designed to strengthen Lib Dem ministers’ hands in challenging this nonsensical policy, which has yet to be brought before the House of Commons.”
Mr Farron described the plans as “misconceived, ineffective and illiberal” and said they were designed to win Mr Cameron headlines, instead of protecting children.
“If the Prime Minister really wanted to protect children from inappropriate material, he’d ensure they had access to good sexual health and relationship education and give parents the help and support they need to talk to their children about this issue,” he said.
A Conservative spokesman insultingly suggests that Farron doesn’t care about the safety of children online. It’s a lazy and entirely predictable attack. However, the more stories we hear of filters blocking invitations to crib services while allowing access to porn sites, the more the Conservatives’ solution is discredited.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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14 Comments
Even if the filters did block porn successfully, it would still be highly illiberal and a serious violation of our rights.
There’s not even any evidence to suggest that porn harms children (nor does it make any sense), so I’m somewhat baffled by the whole thing in the first place. I’d even argue porn can be good for young people; it is a way of exploring yourself while harming no one else.
Porn was hugely helpful in me finding my own sexuality, which resulted in me being a much happier person; porn has had a very real positive effect on my life. I’m sure it’s the same for many other young people.
Getting rid of illegal online material is fine, but filtering perfectly safe, legal stuff is absurd.
It must also be mentioned that under this filtering plan of Cameron’s, it’s not just porn that’s filtered. “Terrorist” sites are filtered out as well – meaning that if you unsubscribe from the filters, you’re labelled as a potential terrorist.
Website blocking software is available to parents. Surely it is up to parents to decide at what age their teenage offspring are mature enough to be more exploratory.
Teenagers are probably tech savvy enough to get around all this anyway. David Cameron is a bit of a nannying fool.
This is one of the few areas where the Liberal Democrats are currently showing some mettle in the defense of civil liberties. And wait for it, on this issue, Nick Clegg is entirely right.
When people talk about “protecting” children, they often mean controlling children, which is what Mr Cameron is attempting to do here. First of all, we have to decide what we mean by “children” in this context. Precisely who is it that requires the state’s “protection”? Bearing in mind, of course, that the late Mary Whitehouse said that teenagers, and in particular older teenagers, are more vulnerable to pornography than infants. Recent Tory proposals seem to indicate that childhood is about to be extended. They talk of withdrawing Housing Benefit from under 25s, raising the legal drinking age to 21 and banning under 30s from taking passengers in their motor vehicles. And these kind of proposals are backed up with dubious academic research showing how our brains are not fully developed until we are 30, or 50, or maybe ever. The aim is to take freedoms away from children and young people first, then remove it from adults, so that ultimately freedom is the possession of the elite alone.
Tim Farron says the plans are “designed to win Mr Cameron headlines, instead of protecting children”. Er, I think there’s rather more to it than that, Tim. Surely, the censorship of the internet (towards which this is a preliminary step) is a key component of the elite’s control agenda, which seeks to enslave us in an Orwellian nightmare the like of which the world has never seen.
David Cameron is simply doing what his masters in the elite are telling him to do. Just as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did.
The Snowden revelations show us that the control agenda is no fantasy. It is very, very real. And it’s coming.
Oh, if Tories really care about protecting children, perhaps they would drop their support for child-beating and stop sending their children to boarding schools.
You can get around the filters by pretending to be doing French homework on Google translate. You can put any URL into Google translate and it acts like a proxy, getting round the filter.
Paul ‘French homework’ heh heh! Don’t tell the wife.
I campaign for children to have an entitlement to sex and relationships education (SRE). When has Nick Clegg been a long and consistent supporter for it??
I recall what Scott Adams, creator of the ‘Dilbert’ comic strip, once said about the futility of trying to prevent teenagers seeing online pornography.
He asked us to imagine which was the stronger force in the world: the combined brainpower of all the world’s computer experts, or the combined libidos of all the world’s teenage boys.
The Tories’ proposed restrictions are likely to frustrate only one audience: elderly Tories without the requisite computer skills.
I’m a little confused. The article suggests the policy will simultaneously both prohibit and allow voluntary filters. Is there a draft of the motion published somewhere?
Let’s not forget that the education motion passed last Conference included calls for better education on relationships and consent.
Surely there is a both/and case for improvements to filter packages for parents to use and better sex education.
I favour filters for three reasons: a. to give parents tools to protest their children from harmful and distressing images b. to block the reach of those exploiting children and young people involved in the porn industry.c. to help protect children whose parents do not talk them through the dangers – the assumption that all parents are bound to do this is naive.
I recognise that there is a libertarian argument for the freedom of the individual to watch whatever they like in the privacy of their own home. However, I’m of the view that children need protection from damaging images which could seriously distort their view of sexual relationships – until they have the educational tools and emotional maturity to make meaningful judgements for themselves.
As far a sex education is concerned: this needs to be delivered by people who have been trained in this area. Too often it is left to the form tutor, who is not trained but is used by Heads in order to save time and money.
@Helen Tedcastle
A filter that a parent is unaware exists and/or is incapable of wielding is not a ‘tool’ in any meaningful sense. It is at best an infrastructural convenience. The whole crux of the protect-the-kids-from-birds-and-bees debate is whether, and in what manner, parents should be involved in making decisions about the information available to their offspring.
Do you really believe that parents should not be actively involved in protecting their children? Because I think they should be supported in doing so. Which, yes, would take time, education and information. It would probably best go hand-in-hand with an effort to improve the general technical competence of the adult population. Heck, you could even use our national library infrastructure to support the process… if if it hadn’t already been largely dismantled. Oops. But wouldn’t it have been helpful? A tech-literate adult population is a more employable population, a safer population, a population less likely to fall for every phishing scam or fraud that comes their way. A population that can figure out how to whitelist a few kid-friendly sites on their Apple-obsessed toddler’s iPad. A population, in short, that can survive outside the playpen. How do we expect to compete in a 21st-century economy otherwise???
So yay for IT-literacy and developing competences, but of course working towards such a goal has little short-term political impact,takes time and involves fiddly little details. Therefore, why would we bother? Let’s just indulge in some half-assed censorship and derive a little dopamine rush from the idea that, yet again, we’re Saving The Children.
And if these “filters” are used by abusive partners to prevent their victims accessing support services?…Who says it’s only children who will be affected?
daft ha’p’orth: “The whole crux of the protect-the-kids-from-birds-and-bees debate is whether, and in what manner, parents should be involved in making decisions about the information available to their offspring.”
This is rather caricaturing the argument. Whilst the likes of Cameron and the Daily Mail may well wish to impose filters which block sensible sites in a bid to block destructive ones, my view is broader.
I wish to see big improvements in sex education teaching which is resourced inadequately in too many schools, and often subject teachers and form tutors are launched into teaching it without adequate preparation or training (but it’s a cheap way to cover the topic). Clearly the ethics of pornography need to be analysed too as well as the value of mature relationships.
Filters should be used to screen out the most destructive sites. Whilst in an ideal world, parents would be internet savvy and regularly sit down to have meaningful and reasonable conversations with youngsters on the ethics of pornography, most are too busy and/or feel inadequate to the task.
Of course education is the key but there is a major problem with internet porn now.
In 2013, all the teachers conferences have flagged this issue up to the Government as a result of teachers’ concerns about what pupils are viewing on screens (at home and on their I-phones, now. Teachers are witnessing the consequences of internet porn on the attitudes of teenagers now, because children/teenagers are viewing it and parents are doing little about it.
Sorry but we can’t just hope that the situation will improve and/or leave it to chance. There needs to be action taken now.
China has a large scale filtering system, with the addition, I am told, of more than a million mediators to enhance the filtering.