The Porkbolter, a campaigning satirical sheet in Worthing, came across the sinister development after a young reader complained he had been unable to access its site. He had been using the public computers at West Sussex County Council's Information Shop for Young People (aged up to 24) in Marine Place off Warwick Street.

Although he could get onto the site's homepage, when he tried to read specific issues, he came across the problem. A message came up declaring: "You are being blocked from viewing content of the following type(s)..." And the system then produced some bizarre excuses for its censorship, falsely claiming the site featured 'pornography' 'hate' and 'illegal activities'. Even a simple google search for 'anarchism' was blocked because it apparently equals 'illegal activities'.

As for alleged ‘violence’, the system doesn’t stop the fragile youngsters reading murder stories on the BBC, for instance. Or from playing brutal ‘shoot-em-up’ online video games.

Enquiries revealed that the censorship was being caused by a Content Watch system installed by the council. A council spokesman claimed that the blocking was not censorship, but was just Content Watch picking out certain words mentioned on websites and on that basis determining they should not be viewed.

Said The Porkbolter in response: "Why does the council think that passing the blame onto software absolves it of committing censorship? It’s just censorship via a software package!"

Content Watch is an American corporation based in Mormon territory - Salt Lake City. It boasts of a highly complex system of filtering, including the use of combined ‘whitelists’ and ‘blacklists’ of approved and unapproved terms, references and even weblinks. The firm says on its website: "Users can control access to Web sites for pornography, gambling, hate groups, graphic violence and 29 other categories as well as filter and block inbound email." So what’s the definition of ‘hate groups’ in the current paranoid US political climate? And what are the unspecified 29 other categories?

Said The Porkbolter: "This is political censorship all right, but censorship by the back door, through a Trojan Horse introduced from abroad and apparently escaping any scrutiny or debate. Did Content Watch explain to the county council exactly what its system would be blocking? Did the council ask? Does the Worthing public have a right to know and to challenge its judgements, given that the system is, after all, run on public money?"

Links

Porkbolter

Content Watch