Cameron told to sling his hook on Tor

David CameronMonths after Prime Minister David “One is an Ordinary Bloke” Cameron said he wants to ban encryption and online anonymity, a Parliamentary report has told him to shutup.

A briefing issued by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology saying that the such an act is “neither acceptable nor technically feasible” which is about as close as you can get to telling Cameron to shut up short of a coup and a guillotine.

The briefing specifically referenced the Tor anonymity network and its ability to slide right around such censorship schemes.

While briefings from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology are not legally binding it does mean that if Cameron pushes through any censorship bill it will be without the science behind him.

The briefing does explicitly state that there is “widespread agreement” banning Tor is not acceptable policy nor is it feasible technologically.

Tor has about 100,000 users at any given moment within the United Kingdom.

“There is widespread agreement that banning online anonymity systems altogether is not seen as an acceptable policy option in the UK,” the briefing explained. “Even if it were, there would be technical challenges.”

In 2012, UK police moaned that the Tor anonymity service was used by “many” pedophiles in order to trade child abuse images. However now it appears that they have changed their minds.

The briefing, quoting Britain’s Parliament by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP) of the UK National Crime Agency said that Tor “plays only a minor role in the online viewing and distribution of indecent images of children,” according to the briefing,

Coppers have worked out that Tor is less popular among offenders because it decreases the speed at which images can be downloaded.