There are two articles in the news today regarding child pornography prevention measures that are being applied at national level. These articles caught my attention because I think that they are great example of how not to apply censorship!
The first article describes how six ISPs in the UK are blocking access to a Wikipedia web page that contains a photo of a naked girl in her early teens. Initially this sounds reasonable, but the block is being applied to the whole page rather than simply the photo. Furthermore, the photo is of a well known album from 1976 by a well known band. So clearly the intention of publishing this web page is not to promote child pornography.
The ISPs are implementing the block using a transparent proxy that is not forwarding the original client IP address to Wikipedia. Unfortunately, this means that Wikipedia cannot identify individual clients within these ISPs, so all users of these ISPs are now blocked from updating Wikipedia!
To add to the stupidity of this situation, the photo is widely available on the Internet already, and a simple search for “virgin killer” on Google Images finds it. Apparently many UK bloggers are now posting the image in protest.
For more details about this see Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over ‘child porn’ album cover.
I am delighted to report that my ISP (Eircom) is not blocking access to this web page! I hope it stays this way. If you want to test your ISP then simply try viewing Virgin Killer.
The second article describes how an Australian judge recently found a man guilty of possessing child pornography. The child pornography was a fake Simpsons cartoon that depicted some of the characters have sex. For more details about this see Fake Simpsons cartoon ‘is porn’.
Again, this seems like excessive policing to me.
Tags: Censorship, Eircom, Google, ISP, Pornography, UK, Wikipedia
Comments Off on Extreme Child Pornography Prevention Measures
The Register describes some security vulnerabilities in two of Barack Obama’s websites in Congratulations, Barack – Now fix your websites. The most significant security issue that the article highlights is the fact that the administration pages load the Google Analytics JavaScrip file urchin.js. from the Google website. In theory, this means that Google can use this JavaScript file to do almost anything that they want with Barack’s websites. Not a good situation :(
Apparently, many readers did not share the author’s view on this security issue. So the author wrote a follow-up article that provides more details, and opinions of experts from OWASP, in Google Analytics – Yes, it is a security risk.
Independently, it seems that Barack is currently in negotiations in order to continue using his PDA! Apparently, communications devices are banned in the White House, and there are accountability and traceability issues associated with their use! That is an inconvenience! More details about this in Obama tries to stay connected.
Finally, I have heard that a considerable number of websites have appeared that are designed to help the Obama family choose what type of puppy they will get :) Gosh, it must be nice to have enough time to be able to create websites like this!
Tags: Barack Obama, Google, JavaScript, OWASP, PDA, The Register, US Election 2008
Comments Off on The Technology behind Barack Obama
Sarah Palin’s webmail account was hacked during the US election campaign, according to Palin webmail ‘hack’ trial delayed. The interesting thing about this is that the attacker correctly answered the “secret question” that is used when the user forgets his/her password. The attacker, who is a University of Tennessee student, successfully found the correct answer to Sarah Palin’s secret question using Google :)
I think that the conditions of the attackers bail are slight humorous:
The University of Tennessee student remains free on bail with restriction that prohibit his use of a computer except for the purposes of internet email and college coursework.
Should his use of Internet email not be restricted to his own email accounts?
Tags: Google, Sarah Palin, US Election 2008, Webmail
Comments Off on Sarah Palin’s Webmail Hacked
There is currently an explosion of websites appearing online with information and details about blue jumpers in Irish (“geansai gorm”). Some examples include:
If you would like me to add your website to the above list then let me know. However, I do not think that Google has indexed Teknovis yet :o
So what is the cause of this sudden explosion? It is a SEO competition that was launched by Damien Mulley last Tuesday. The full details are described in his blog post titled “Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest SEO of them all?“.
Good luck to all who enter!
Tags: Damien Mulley, Google, SEO
