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UPDATE UK Mobile Broadband Operators Block Access to the Tor Project Website

Posted: 24th Jan, 2012 By: MarkJ
censorship uk internetThe Open Rights Group (ORG), which seeks to preserve and promote digital rights, has accused Vodafone , O2 UK and Three (3) of unjustly using their adult content filters to block access to Tor's primary website on Pre-Paid (PAYG) contract accounts. Tor allows internet users to surf with anonymity and avoid related censorship measures.

It's often argued that the recent revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries would not have been possible without tools like Tor. This enabled heavily censored citizens to access blocked websites like Facebook and thus to organise themselves. It proved to be very effective.

Sadly such systems can also be used to mask potentially illegal activity from view, such as to access and download child abuse content. As a result some mobile operators block them under the category of "anonymiser", although the site and tool is neither unlawful nor illegal and contains no adult content. A car can also be used for illegal activity but the vast majority of us drive lawfully.

The ORG's Peter Bradwell said:

"These problems would be less of an issue if it was clear to users when filtering applied to their account, how to turn the filter off, and how to report mistakes. But this isn't the case.

Phone companies 'filter' the mobile Internet because they don't know whether their phones are being given to or used by children and young adults. This happens by default in most cases. The concern is that if young people have unfettered access to the Internet they will stumble upon undesirable material. Filtering is usually turned 'on' by default.

Mobile Internet filtering systems can often block access to the wrong content, for example because content is categorised incorrectly or simply because the blocks are applied too broadly."

Indeed UK mobile operators have recently been in the news several times for similar activity, such as blocking access to a legitimate church website and several online clothing stores. General restrictions like this are often highlighted as examples of how unregulated censorship by commercial firms can lead to perfectly legal and legitimate content being blocked.

On the other hand there are usually multiple ways around such restrictions and, assuming you can figure out how to do it, related filters can also be disabled. But ideally customers should be given a choice, at the point of sale, about whether or not to enable an adult content filter on their connection (much as some fixed line broadband ISPs are already doing).

UPDATE 25th January 2012

Apparently T-Mobile is also blocking TOR, while Vodafone has claimed that its block was a "mistake" and would be removed. Meanwhile O2 has continued to defend the censorship because TOR would allow customers to "bypass the adult content filters we have in place and thus could enable children to access unrestricted material." The Tor project isn't pleased.

Tor Statement

Recently it has come to our attention that our primary website is filtered by Vodafone in the UK, by 3 (three.co.uk) in the UK, by O2 in the UK, and by T-Mobile in the UK and the USA. It used to be the case that we only saw filtering and censorship events in places like Egypt, Syria, or Iran and now we're going to explore what those attacks look like in the context of the UK and the USA.

T-Mobile UK treats TCP port 80 in a special manner and effectively stops users from reaching our web site. This is an attack against users who attempt to connect to our infrastructure. This attack, while primitive, demonstrates an active and malicious action on the part of the above named Internet providers.

This trend of providing partially censored Internet in what we all think of as free countries is alarming. Are we supposed to look the other way because the mobile Internet isn't the same as the "real" Internet?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of extending a censorship system for 'adult' content into other areas, it is correct that the issue be debated. Meanwhile O2 customers can remove the block here: https://ageverification.o2.co.uk .
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