The U.K.'s New Porn Filters Are Blocking Sex Ed Sites, Too

While America's elected officials have whiled their days away
bickering about budgets, the prime minister of the U.K. has had
his hands full—with a war on pornography. Unfortunately,
some of the country's sex ed, porn addiction and domestic abuse
resources are collateral damage .

Because of course a giant porn filter wasn't going to work.
David Cameron's campaign against adult content comes on the
heels of a major national scandal about BBC personality Jimmy
Savile , who allegedly abused hundreds of children over the
years. Cameron has stepped up efforts to block child
pornography and got explicit content blocked on public Wifi
networks.

But Cameron has also strong-armed the country's major
Internet service providers into creating filters requiring any
adult who wants to see pornography to opt in. TalkTalk, Sky
and BT all have filters up and running, while Virgin plans to
launch its own next year.

BBC's Newsnight took the filters for a spin, however, and found
they're blocking more than pornography. TalkTalk blocked sites
including BishUK.com, an award-winning sex ed site, as well as
the Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre. On top
of that, it failed to block 7 percent of the 68 sites Newsnight
tried. Sky's filter blocked 99 percent of pornographic results —
but also six porn-addition sites.
BT blocked Sexual Health Scotland and two sites dedicated to
domestic abuse support. What keywords are they even using
here?
"It's really frustrating because I'm trying to provide a sex
education site for young people and it's hard enough directing
young people to good quality information on the internet," said
BishUK.com's Justin Hancock. Now, now, Justin, we can't have
teens getting their info from anywhere but whispered locker-
room conversations.

Spokespeople for all three ISPs basically said "whoops!" TalkTalk
used the old "there is no silver bullet" excuse, Sky said it's
"quick and easy" to unblock "misclassified sites" and BT says
it'll "investigate any concerns." Because that's what a tween
wants to do while trying to get accurate sex ed info without an
awkward chat with mom—call their ISP.

In short, there's probably no way to build these filters so they
actually work worth a damn, and the whole idea is essentially a
Monty Python skit. Can't wait to see what gets blocked when the
U.K. government adds "extremist sites" to the to-do list.