Ben Tasker's Blog

ISPA Invited to Porn Discussions with Minister Vaizey - Analysis

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Published: Friday, 04 February 2011 13:47
Written by Ben Tasker

On Monday a meeting will take place between UK ISP’s, the Culture Minister and lobbying organisations such as Safermedia.

Safermedia have been supported by MP’s such as Claire Perry (MP for Devizes), who have suggested such measures as required age verification to remove a mandatory block on adult content on wired internet connections (wireless internet providers already have this requirement.)

The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) contends that the blocking/management of adult content is far better suited to software installed on the users computer (NetNanny being an example).

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Wikileaks and Payments - Who's in the right?

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Published: Sunday, 19 December 2010 14:27
Written by Ben Tasker

There's been a lot of upset in recent weeks over the decision of numerous payment processors to withdraw their services from Wikileaks. In this post, I'll be taking a look at whether or not Paypal, Mastercard, Visa and others are actually able to withdraw their services in this manner. We'll not be debating the rights and wrongs of Wikileaks and Mr Assange as they are both separate issues.

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Assange: The Need To Identify Two Separate Issues

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Published: Wednesday, 22 December 2010 17:48
Written by Ben Tasker

There’s a lot of upset about the arrest and possible extradition of Julian Assange. Many of his supporters claim that the case has come as the result of US pressure, but to believe this is to conflate two issues that may be completely separate.

 

My views on Assange are reasonably well known, I think he’s extremely creepy and there’s something that just doesn’t seem quite right. However, although he may argue with this, Assange is not Wikileaks. Although I believe Wikileaks have been very irresponsible in their actions (when compared to other similar sites), I don’t make the mistake of bundling one with the other.

 

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OpenBSD and the FBI

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Published: Friday, 17 December 2010 20:38
Written by Ben Tasker

Following the allegation that the FBI surreptitiously planted a backdoor in the IPSEC stack of OpenBSD (some ten years ago), followers of the controversy have generally split into two factions - those who believe the allegations and those who refute it. Very few, however, seem to be taking a neutral view of the allegations, and the true impact of a potential backdoor in IPSEC is both being over and underestimated.

 

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More Articles...

  1. Are you getting what your pay for? How to detect ISP Packet Shaping
  2. Why is Encryption not used more?
  3. Thoughts on Whistleblowers
  4. Tips on Good Password Management