David Cameron’s plan to protect children from obscene material online has been dismissed as “absolutely ridiculous” by one of his advisers.
The prime minister announced last month major web providers had agreed to block internet pornography to new customers unless households opt to access it.
But Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales toldChannel 4 News the idea “won’t work”.
He said police should be given more resources to enforce existing laws.
Mr Wales said: “It’s an absolutely ridiculous idea. It won’t work. The software you would use to implement this doesn’t work.
“Additionally when we use cases of a paedophile who’s been addicted to child porn videos online, you realise all that Cameron’s rules would require him to do is opt in and say, ‘Yes, I would like porn please’.”
‘Flash and snooping’
Mr Wales, who co-founded online encyclopaedia Wikipedia in 2001, said problems like online child abuse, hacking social media sites and abusive or threatening messages could be tackled without the introduction of new legislation.
Responding to calls for tougher regulation of the internet, he said: “For me, what’s interesting about criminal gangs hacking into people’s Facebook account is that all of that activity is already illegal.
“I can’t think of any new laws that would actually help with that. What would help is actual enforcement.
“My view is that instead of spending literally billions of pounds, billions of dollars, snooping on ordinary people and gathering up all of this data in an apparently fruitless search for terrorists, we should devote a significant proportion of that to dealing with the real criminal issues online – people stealing credit card numbers, hacking into websites and things like that.
“Unfortunately we’re not seeing a lot of that. We see a lot of flash and a lot of snooping. But this is, at the end of the day, going to take an investment in real, solid police work.”
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