Pornography, Violence, Drugs, Crime, Tobacco. What You Can't See If You Work for the UK Government

In early 2010 a Conservative member of parliament asked a question in the House of Commons. The question was which websites were forbidden to staff in the Culture, Media and Sport Department surfing the internet during their lunchbreaks.

The answer published by Hansard on 12 January 2010 was this:

"[The] Department uses SmartFilter to block access to web sites which are deemed unsuitable. The following categories of sites are blocked.

Anonymizers, Criminal Activities, Game/Cartoon Violence, Drugs, Extreme Hate/Discrimination, Illegal Software, Malicious Sites, Nudity & Provocative Attire, Phishing, P2P/File Sharing, Spam URLs, Pornography, Spyware/Adware, Tobacco, Gruesome Content, Violence".

In addition, "certain sites based on guidance about potential threats" are blocked. For some odd reason, the answer added that www.filthyjokes.freeserve.co.uk is not blocked.

The list seems pretty peculiar even given the convoluted levels of control freakery which infest government ministers' brains. Sniggering at filthyjokes is fine, and obviously none of the government's business. But if you're a young office worker and fancy having a look at bored housewives in their underwear or a gay biker sprawled on a Harley Davidson, why should the government object? Nudity may be pretty easy for the Department to monitor and block, but Provocative Attire? What's that? A girl in plaits wearing a pleated skirt? An itsy-witsy- teeny-weeny-polka-dot bikini? A burka?

And what on earth are Malicious Sites? Or Gruesome Content? Are staff banned from looking at The Addams Family and The Munsters? Or Tiger Woods apologising? The ban on Violence and Cartoon Violence must rule out looking at trailers for 90% of new films plus all Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Many of the blocked sites relate to content which is perfectly legal. Yet the UK government, a bit like the Chinese government in this respect, has decided certain types of content are undesirable. The most undesirable, perhaps, is Tobacco.

As far as anyone knows, tobacco is not yet completely illegal in the the UK. It is banned in public buildings and it's certainly widely frowned upon. There's talk about banning it in people's homes. (Presumably children will be paid to report parents to the police. Or the other way round.) But it's currently legal to buy tobacco and smoke it, with various restrictions. Why the government should block staff from looking at images of tobacco workers picking tobacco leaves in China or rolling them in Virginia is anybody's guess. Why should they block someone looking at the marketing efforts of a tobacco company or ordering a box of Cohiba Robustos from CigarsofCuba or the cigarsmoker? You may be no fan of philipmorrisusa.com, and nor am I, but at least their site says this:

"[We] agree with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers. There is no safe cigarette."

Since the government grants its staff the right to use the internet during breaks it's incredibly bossy to censor masses of legal content they may want to look at. Even with content on illegal activities, it's really none of the government's business to be censoring. A staff member may look at a site on cocaine or heroin and think about taking some. Or not. Either way, thinking about an illegal activity is not illegal. Forbidding it in this way comes close to the concept of thought crime, something which is edging its way into UK public life.

Apart from prohibiting the use of paedophile sites, there's no case for blocking any of the other content. Even the Extreme Hate and Discrimination sites should be accessible if someone wants to go there. Government staff have every right to look at sites advocating jihad or the ku klux klan if they want to. They may be doing research or just curious. In the unlikely event that they get involved with such groups, it's the law that should deal with them. But the government shouldn't be filtering Google search results.