In case you missed it, here is EFA Chair Dale Clapperton discussing the net filter on TV this week.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Spontaneous protests on Saturday, outrage grows
The outrage and skepticism of the Australian community continues to mount. A MySpace user has called for protests around the country this Saturday. Although EFA is not involved as a sponsor (this time) we hope this succeeds in sending a wake-up call to the Goverment.
Here's a sample of the sorts of commentary running in the press at the moment:
Internet censorship is draconian
Internet filter to cause World Wide Wait for Aussies
Net filter an assault on freedom that just won't work
(Thanks, Courier Mail).
Internet screening move hits hurdle
Two good pieces in today's Crikey - here and here (subscription required, sadly).
Finally, EFA's Dale Clapperton has prepared an interesting analysis of the legalities of implementing the filter - does the Government require legislation?
Here's a sample of the sorts of commentary running in the press at the moment:
Internet censorship is draconian
Internet filter to cause World Wide Wait for Aussies
Net filter an assault on freedom that just won't work
(Thanks, Courier Mail).
Internet screening move hits hurdle
Two good pieces in today's Crikey - here and here (subscription required, sadly).
Finally, EFA's Dale Clapperton has prepared an interesting analysis of the legalities of implementing the filter - does the Government require legislation?
Friday, October 24, 2008
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:
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.
A few more inaccuracies are worth picking up on.
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.(I suppose he means the Great Firewall of China.)
Senator Conroy-I was wondering if I could get the questions without being accused of being the Great Wall 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).
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Opt-Out in Jeopardy
It's come to light, via an ISP insider, that even if the Government honours its promise to make the Clean Feed opt-out there will still be a second level of censorship mandated for all Australians.
We haven't heard much from the Government involving the phrase "opt out" for a while, so this is indeed pretty worrying. It confirms a long-held suspicion about the voluntary nature of the Clean Feed - it would be too tempting for the Government to keep everyone inside their censorship corral. It seems they are giving in to this temptation.
To be fair, under some circumstances it would be possible for "Blacklist 2" (the illegal material) to be administered with less of the performance hit than Blacklist 1 (not child-friendly). This would be true if Blacklist 2 is a true blacklist of URLs, and not a set of filtering criteria, which, as has become plain, is the plan for the Clean Feed as a whole.
However, it seems unlikely that the ISPs are going to want to maintain two separate systems. From a cost point of view, it makes perfect sense to use the mandated filtering software for both blacklists. It makes even more sense cost-wise to simply refuse to honour opt-out requests, notwithstanding any customer rebellion. This is bad news, because the performance degradation that the Goverment's own trial found was 20-30% under the most optimal circumstances. Unless things change, this is a vision of the future for every Internet user in Australia.
The problem in all of this is a lack of technical expertise and direction by the Government. Mostly, we have had assertions that filtering can be done without slowing the Internet down, but these don't seem to be backed by any credible implementation details. If the Government intends to simply legislate and let the ISPs sort out the technical issues, all manor of chaos will ensue. In any case, the Australian broadband user is not going to come out a winner.
It's no exaggeration to say that this model involves more technical interference in the Internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world. That should give anyone some pause - if the Iranian morality police think real-time content filtering is too onerous technically, where does this leave our ISPs, who have their hands full already trying to roll out new services?
We haven't heard much from the Government involving the phrase "opt out" for a while, so this is indeed pretty worrying. It confirms a long-held suspicion about the voluntary nature of the Clean Feed - it would be too tempting for the Government to keep everyone inside their censorship corral. It seems they are giving in to this temptation.
To be fair, under some circumstances it would be possible for "Blacklist 2" (the illegal material) to be administered with less of the performance hit than Blacklist 1 (not child-friendly). This would be true if Blacklist 2 is a true blacklist of URLs, and not a set of filtering criteria, which, as has become plain, is the plan for the Clean Feed as a whole.
However, it seems unlikely that the ISPs are going to want to maintain two separate systems. From a cost point of view, it makes perfect sense to use the mandated filtering software for both blacklists. It makes even more sense cost-wise to simply refuse to honour opt-out requests, notwithstanding any customer rebellion. This is bad news, because the performance degradation that the Goverment's own trial found was 20-30% under the most optimal circumstances. Unless things change, this is a vision of the future for every Internet user in Australia.
The problem in all of this is a lack of technical expertise and direction by the Government. Mostly, we have had assertions that filtering can be done without slowing the Internet down, but these don't seem to be backed by any credible implementation details. If the Government intends to simply legislate and let the ISPs sort out the technical issues, all manor of chaos will ensue. In any case, the Australian broadband user is not going to come out a winner.
It's no exaggeration to say that this model involves more technical interference in the Internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world. That should give anyone some pause - if the Iranian morality police think real-time content filtering is too onerous technically, where does this leave our ISPs, who have their hands full already trying to roll out new services?
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