Internet Filtering gets some scrutiny

Public opposition to government Internet filtering is gathering momentum. Fairfax ran a piece today that has sparked particular outrage, wherein the DBCDE tried to silence a critic of their scheme. We also made Slashdot. (A point I made to the Fairfax journalist about the technical aspects of filtering in Iran seems to have made a juicy sound bite.) Many other interesting pieces have run in the last few days. As a result, Australian Internet users are up in arms.

Some more details have emerged about the clean feed proposal. On Monday 20 Oct, Senator Conroy testified before a Senate estimates hearing and was grilled about the Government's plans for Internet filtering. It makes for interesting reading thanks to Greens senator Scott Ludlam:

Senator LUDLAM-I am just wondering if I can put these questions to you without being accused of being pro child pornography. That would assist.

Senator Conroy-I was wondering if I could get the questions without being accused of being the Great Wall of China.

(I suppose he means the Great Firewall of China.)

What we can learn from further reading of the transcript is that the Government is indeed planning a level of filtering that will be mandatory, no opt-out to be allowed, for "illegal" content.

Conroy: People can opt out of an ISP filter if they wanted to look at material that is legal as opposed to not allowing an opt out for material that is illegal.

What "illegal" really means is still scarily ambiguous, the concept that it might even include material on euthanasia and anorexia came up in the hearing.

A few more inaccuracies are worth picking up on.

• The ACMA blacklist was characterised by the Minister as "predominantly child pornography sites", but in fact includes any RC, X, or R 18+ sites (without access restrictions) submitted to them. Drug use and "intense adult themes" are mentioned as criteria for classifying sites this way.


• The countries often cited by the Minister as examples of successful filtering regimes are a bit misleading. Firstly, none of these countries have anything resembling the dynamic filtering models that the Ministry seem to be pursuing - at best, they comprise very limited blacklists of illegal material, designed to prevent accidental access to such material. If the Government mandates real-time ISP-level dynamic filtering as a cyber-safety measure, China becomes a more accurate comparison. There are no technical measures in place in New Zealand.


• The "30 per cent" figure raised by Senator Minchin and dismissed by the Minister comes from the ACMA report released earlier this year which was welcomed by the Senator himself. The average impact on network performance by the 5 products tested was around 30 per cent.


• Mr Rizvi mentioned that "most of those tools enables the individual user to determine what is to be filtered", but I would question how this could be possible under a system if ISP-level filtering (as opposed to home PC-based filters).

If you haven't done so already, now would be a great time to write to the minister and to your MP expressing your concern. It would also be a good idea to let your ISP know just how unwelcome their participation in this scheme would be - pushback from the ISPs is crucial in stopping this plan from going ahead.