Unbelievable. Why is it that the Government never consults groups which know about internet privacy and freedom like the Open Rights Group but consult "Consumer rights groups" which usually work on retail issues.

I'm not sure if any UK political party has got the grasp of this issue. I hope it's a case of not understanding technology enough or the reason old media and new media rare very different in terms of freedom and not that they actually feel you can just block sites/users. This wouldn't make any kind of difference and i'd rather have these people posting in the public view than via the thousands of other means of communications they have to choose from.

If this is how they feel why hasn't every Criminal in the UK been banned from having a landline or buying a mobile phone.

It would be interesting to check to see what David Cameron said in response to North African governments like Egypt who did the same thing this year.

I'm surprised they wouldn't prefer to leave them up but subpoena the data afterwards (or even require realtime backdoor access to it).