Cav's Place

As a next step in the international plan of bringing the iron fist down over the Internet, the British government wants to block pro-suicide sites. They’d also like ISPs to automatically redirect those who want to access such sites to organizations who try to prevent suicide.

I won’t rant about the right to die again, did that plenty of times so far, the real problem this time is greater than that. This is controlling the Internet, controlling what people can say or see according to the government’s views of right and wrong, even blocking things that aren’t illegal. We’re talking about stamping out free speech!
What’s even more worrying is the wording used, assuming the quotes were accurate. Who exactly decides what is “harmful or distasteful” or “offensive”? (From my point of view, such an initiative fits that definition perfectly.) And if those who decide that information on suicide is harmful are allowed to block it because of that, how long before they’ll decide to block other “harmful” things such as revealing incriminating information about those in power, criticizing the government, the opposition’s political campaigns and other such things, to focus only on a single issue? This is thought police, as simple as that!
Moving further down that line, doing something like this implies total monitoring of the Internet and each person’s on-line activity. No warrant, no proven illegal activity (actually, no illegal activity at all), just permanent monitoring to see if anybody ever does anything that they’d consider to be “wrong”. That’s a police state, and thought police at that! Any “guidance” that might benefit the receiver under some circumstances becomes censorship that only benefits the giver when it’s forced…

I guess the Internet is a big thorn in their side, because it allows people to speak out and encourages free thought. Certain people who have gotten too used to having power over others really don’t like that. So the assault on the Internet is likely the priority right now because it’s the quickest way to spread information and any tyrant knows that informed people are a threat to their continued reign…
First it’s protecting people from terrorists, now it’s protecting them from themselves… It’s easy to find some reasons to take away fundamental freedoms, but next to impossible to actually find good reasons. That said, why do we stand for it, letting them nibble away at our rights and freedoms little by little until it’ll be too late to do anything meaningful about it?
I know I’m becoming more and more bitter about this and am starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I see the pattern, the slope and the quicksand at its base. Once we slip past a certain point, there’s no going back…