Comment by ifwinterco
15 hours ago
I think it’s an open question whether the British state has the technical chops, money and willingness to implement a Great Firewall type solution.
The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great
They already track everything going through the undersea cables, why couldn't they start blocking at those points?
Getting the raw data is relatively straightforward, but my understanding is doing real time DPI at country scale without being easily circumvented (and without breaking the rest of the internet you want to work) isn't so easy.
If you want to really make sure nobody in the uk can easily access 4chan (PRC style) it needs some effort, and you're in an arms race with attempts to mask/tunnel traffic so it gets through
i too love the idea of deep government inspection of every piece of data i send
Splicing and mirroring a cable is about 10x easier than filtering it.
Why are you assuming that they aren't totally incompetent? They look pretty incompetent from my perspective. Or they just want to present the appearance of incompetence for an ulterior motive? That seems needlessly complex when they are already admitting their malevolence daily.
There are examples of the apparently ineffective British state suddenly gaining some teeth and some competence when they actually care.
One example is after the Southport riots, miraculously the justice system became hyperefficient and the perpetrators were found, arrested, charged and jailed within a week.
That suggests a lot of what looks like incompetence (potholes, petty crime, maybe also this) is actually just the state not really caring about a lot of issues.
If they decide they really care about internet censorship, I wouldn't rule out them suddenly becoming a lot more competent in that specific area