GCHQ planning UK-wide DNS “firewall”

[1984hasarrived]

Now this scares me.  The future of the interwebs is going to be interesting to say the least.

Probably there will be a small number of people who actually do anything about this, or take a stance.  Will the IT community offer an option?

I know it says opt-out, but the average PC user I meet can't even install a printer driver on his/her computer, let alone be aware enough what clicking OK actualy means on a screen, to allow this firewall to work.

UK surveillance agency GCHQ is exploring the use of a national ‘firewall’ in its fight against cybercrime, according to the organisation’s head of cybersecurity.

Alongside BT, Talk Talk and Virgin Media, GCHQ will work to filter out websites and email campaigns which are known to contain malicious content. The intelligence organisation believes that the best to way to set up such a blockade would be to build a national domain name system (DNS).

In a speech delivered at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington DC, director general for cyber security at GCHQ, Ciaran Martin, said:
 ‘We’re exploring a flagship project on scaling up DNS filtering: what better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming into contact with known malware and bad addresses?’

The DNS plans, which will be private sector led, are said to be in the early stages, with no official announcement expected soon. Martin’s speech suggested that the filtering would be on an opt-out basis, to allow users to disable the settings – addressing inevitable concerns over privacy.

Martin also added that GCHQ has recently implemented a trial of the DMARC protocol to help prevent malicious emails purporting to be from government officials and spoofing the .gov.uk domain. As an example, he explained
that since DMARC’s trial rollout in government, a cybercrime operation which had been sending 58,000 malicious emails per day from [email protected] has been stopped.

BLT