LAS VEGAS and LONDON – A proposal to require British internet users to be vetted through a third party age-verification process prior to viewing sexually explicit websites has been hailed by a famous former hacker as “utter genius, totally necessary and two decades overdue.”
“If only there had been some sort of central repository of sensitive, personally identifying information when I was a younger man, I might not have been forced to take chances like gaining access to multiple networks across the globe in order to gather all the data, passwords and account numbers I needed,” said Devin Keith Mitpick, founder and chief executive officer of the Las Vegas-based computer security firm Custodiens Vulpes Gallinarium. “Unfortunately, the U.S. Congress lacked the foresight to create a system that stores crucial information such that it can be accessed and manipulated in a more convenient way.”
Prior to founding his security consultancy, Mitpick was a notorious hacker who once topped the FBI’s Most Wanted Dweeb list for 30 consecutive months. In 2002, after serving a five-year sentence for two counts each of computer and wire fraud, one count of illegal wiretapping and six counts of sexual assault against uncooked turkey carcasses, Mitpick reinvented himself as a security consultant and public speaker.
Within a matter of weeks after his release on parole, Mitpick was working for the same sort of companies he once targeted, while racking up appearance fees as a keynote speaker at conventions attended by the kind of socially maladapted chumps who think it “uber-cool” to steal anybody’s identity in three minutes or less.
“A truly single-source repository of data obviously would be even better,” Mitpick conceded, “but knowing the British government is thinking of involving banks, the Royal Mail and mobile service providers gives me great comfort with the security elements of their proposed age-verification scheme — and not just because such institutions have proven so trivially easy to exploit in the past for trusted and trustworthy ‘consultants’ like me.”
While Mitpick welcomed the idea of pooling Britons’ personal information in known, centralized locations for the purpose of making sure those among them who haven’t heard of Tor encounter slightly more difficulty accessing pornographic websites, some critics say the proposal goes too far.
“Blimey,” yelled an Englishman riding the tube on the Bakerloo line who would identify himself only as ‘Roger from Shoreditch.’ “As if I don’t already have enough bleedin’ problems, now I need permission from some twat at Barclay’s to rub one out to Sophie Dee clips? Bloody brilliant, this.”
While she conceded the proposal has “a few potential issues and concerns,” one activist working with the government to develop the age-verification system said the pluses outweigh the minuses.
“Sure, from one perspective it might seem daft to present such an inviting target to cyber-criminals, but at the same time, if we can keep just one underage person from seeing internet porn — at least until the following day, when he can ask a more technically savvy student for advice on circumventing our protocols — the system will have outperformed all expectations,” said Dr. Sarah O’ Connor of the British Institute for Capitalizing on Moral Outrage and Panic.
BICMOP also is advising the Authority for Mental Impressions On-Demand (AMIOD) concerning just how much government officials should be publicly freaking out about porn-related issues, as measured by key responses in opinion polls of likely English voters.
“What we’ve found is blaming porn for all sorts of social ills plays very well among older voters, who tend to vote in greater proportions than do younger voters,” O’ Connor said. “This is probably because younger voters are so immersed in violent, misogynistic porn they can’t be bothered to go out and exercise their hard-won democratic franchise, the pathetic, contemptible wankers.”
Critics like Roger from Shoreditch, however, aren’t convinced porn — whatever problems it might be causing — is really worth the trouble that might flow from the new age-verification system.
“Just what the country needs, because obviously this is the most pressing fooking issue facing the UK today,” Roger said. “I mean, fook the local impact of the EU’s ongoing economic upheaval and fook all the tensions surrounding immigration. Clearly, the real threat is lads who like to watch online video of other lads shagging a bunch of wicked-fit birds. Brilliant, Cameron, simply fooking brilliant. What a posh fooking tit, that one.”
