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Australian Censorship Bypassed Before Live Trials
newt writes "The Australian Government is planning to conduct live trials of as-yet-unspecified censorship technology. But as every geek already knows, these systems can't possibly work in the presence of VPNs and proxy servers. PC Authority clues the punters in." Maybe the ISPs secretly like encouraging SSH tunneling — and making everyone pay for the extra bandwidth used. Not really; Australia's major ISPs, as mentioned a few days ago, think it's a bad idea.
Ssh typically does compression and then encryption, so we might very well end up with a net savings in bandwidth.
A wise man once said: "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
(And if you don't know who, turn in your Slashdot account by tomorrow morning.)
=Smidge=
I can see a positive possibility here. Find a work-around, and when you're caught visiting "illegal sites", claim that you thought your actions were legal since there's a "foolproof" filtering system that should've properly protected you.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Even though geeks and tech savy people can bypass it, 95% of the population won't be able to.
The US voted out the religious right yesterday. Pitty our religious right goverment isn't due for re-election for another couple of years...
Won't it be embarrassing when people start routing their traffic through China to get around American and Australian internet legislation?
Vik :v)
As an Australian who fervently opposes Chairman Rudd's censorship bill...
There is one advantage I can see to all of this. Big Brother will block anything illegal and offensive to me, right? So I can download absolutely anything I DO find since it MUST be legal. After all, the censorship is perfect!
Pirate bay here I come!
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Any decent blocking software also blocks all the popular proxy lists and proxies too (and it constantly updated). Software that does this (like Websense) may not be impossible to get around, but it makes it damn hard (and I know, this is what my school uses and even with my knowledge it's still hard to find a proxy).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So far it's working out great! Haven't had my net cut off y
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
If Australia does what a lot of "secure web gateway" vendors are doing with their products - implement a man-in-the-middle attack against encrypted traffic by using a forged cert. So then Australians' choice becomes the same as employees of companies that deploy those systems - agree to being snooped on, or don't use the internet.
If Australia's government requires that PCs sold there include the root cert used to forge the other certs (again, like SWG vendors), most citizens wouldn't even notice the difference.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
This was introduced by the previous government the Liberal party, and going to be implemented by the current government the Labor party. So with the two party system there is no options for voters to have a say on this.
Hrm, so 11 years after their Federal powergrab to start banning arms. Not as fast as some regimes, but fitting the pattern pretty well.
Remember what Paul Hogan says, "That's not a knife, this is a knife... that'll get you locked up for two years if you try carrying it in my country."
Australians used to be such bad-asses.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
you thought your actions were legal since there's a "foolproof" filtering system that should've properly protected you.
It's fool-proof, not criminal proof. Since you're reading material that's critical of the Australian government you've proven yourself a criminal.
Please come with us. *click-clack*
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The US voted out the religious right yesterday. Pitty our religious right goverment isn't due for re-election for another couple of years...
It has little to do with being religious or right. The problem is statists, no matter their views on God, Gods, no Gods, or economics.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
1. http://www.google.com.au/
2. 'Australia internet filter bypass'
3. 95% of the population can bypass the filter.
It's time to enforce the dumb network model. Too many network operators aren't content with just moving data around for their customers. Port filtering, bandwidth shaping, transparent proxying and filtering are all violations of the dumb network design and the current attempts at limiting the freedom to access public information prove that leaving the dumb network model is a slippery slope.
The filter is there for people who don't want to bypass it.
The only reason there is no opt out planned for the "illegal material" filter is because a "reasonable person" should not want to opt out of it.
In other words: it's not malice, it's stupidity.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Really? You might want to read up on California's newest constitutional amendment.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Not if they block google.
It's LZO compressed by default - not to mention encrypted and X509 authenticated - which probably means a net reduction in bandwidth. Go visit their site. It's truly excellent open source software.
But seriously. As a practical matter, anyone stuck behind state censorship can use a friend's OpenVPN and proxy in another country.
you had me at #!
As well as Florida and Arizona's.
By what name do you wish to be mourned?
and where do we exactly tunnel to egh ? for free ?
everybody is so quick to point out SSH/VPN but its useless unless you have an exit point
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."
-- Adolf Hitler
Sorry for Godwin'ing this article but it is quite relative. Senator Conroy is trying to argue this like a Christian, any time someone speaks against him about the filter he just puts his fingers in his ears and says "la la la can't hear you, you're a pedophile because you oppose my filter"
Which was supported more than 50% by Democrats.
Hopefully, they will. Google is mainstream enough that killing it will be one of the quickest ways to piss off the public and get this whole plan scrapped. There's an old rule that 'the best way to fight a stupid law is to enforce it to the letter.' This explains why Australia has a tonne of boneheaded laws that are never enforced.
dude, you live in a country which has the most restrictive photo speed cam and photo stoplight regime in the world........
It's not about whether you can read by flashlight under the covers. I realize as a 'murican that the First Amendment freedoms of speech are a "local ordinance" in cyberspace, but Australia is copying China...Communist China. I am of the understanding that a printing press can reproduce odious child porn...so we should register and monitor ALL the presses. Does not this small bit offend, concern or otherwise motivate those "down under" ? I'm not very familiar with Aussie politix, but I would think that in a nominal democracy something this huge would trigger backlash. Censoring the internet in a free country ? Who cares if you can work around....that's SO not the point.
Oh please! Australia's convict legacy, (along with Australia's image of itself located in the bush or the outback, the bushranger rebel etc) is just over-romanticised nonesense. The fact is only NSW and Van Diemens Land (as it then was) were founded as convict colonies. The other states were founded by free settlers. And even in NSW and Tasmania the contribution of convicts to the population is insignificant (say compared to the fossickers who came during the 1850s and 60s). Let's stop pulling our collective dicks about that one. The truth is that Australia is, and has always been, a highly urbanised country made up in the made of staid townsfolk.
There really is no need for 'repressive' authoritarianism. The Australian population are docile with not the least streak of the convict or the rebel in us. Freedom of speech, separation of church and state etc. as abstract civil liberties have no resonance for Australians as they do for people who actually had to fight to gain independence and liberty.
A few will jump up and down, but on the whole 'we' will simply sit back and let the govt get about its business do this. And then just quietly use proxy servers to get our pr0n. And the govt, having satisfied the "fundametalist luddites" (read: FamilyFirst(tm)) won't care (unless the fundies grow a brain and want anonymisers blacklisted too). Tell me it isn't so.
Sorry, but having to fight to keep my kids out of scripture classes at our local public school (NB: we have almost the same provision against establishing religion in our constitution that makes this illegal in the US ... but no one gives a shit) against the apathy of other "atheist" parents who can't see anything wrong with the school turning their kids over to evangelicals who employ "the latest developements in developmental and cognitive psychology" (from the course materials) to indoctrinate defenceless 5 year olds, has left me with no illusions that Australians actually care ... about anything other than sport that is. (Actually I've only been here since '71 so maybe it's just my crazy reffo way of thinking). I'll get off the soapbox now.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
You get a VPS and SSH into that. Prices start at $4 per month and there are thousands of providers.
Dude, we have multiple states and territories with different traffic regimes. What are you talking about?
I would agree with speedlaw, who (in a metropolitan area) doesn't look at their speedo needle every 30 seconds or have a fear of major intersections (which often have a combined speed and red light camera).
Apparently not wearing your seatbelt can attract around a $250 fine in South Australia. And there was a police blitz this year which cost me a court appearance and $515 when one put the plate number of my unregistered car through their computer.
So the boneheaded laws probably are enforced.
That may be true in the US but in Australia the sad fact that similar technology is in use already at all Department of Education property large numbers of people know how to bypass this
If there is a way to bypass it altmost everyone under 16 will have got annoyed enough to search for 'bypass AU filter' which will almost certanly have results telling them how to
null
... the filter was an IP blacklist. If I recall correctly, they're planning on putting a CONTENT filter in place- scanning the md5 of any file transmitted in Australia against a hash blacklist. Now I'm admittedly a little hazy on the details of VPNs, but isn't generally browsing the net over a VPN a little... impractical? And, of course, as others have pointed out circumventing the filter will be illegal thus any technology/ website that allows it will be 404ed... It seems like such a stupid idea, but then, this IS Australia... :( I'm moving to New Zealand.
I see nothing boneheaded about requiring people to wear a seatbelt. The only thing that is boneheaded here is not wearing a seatbelt. And you didn't register your car and you got fined? Oh boo hoo!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The ALP's position on this before last year's federal election was that the proposed filtering system was optional; you could opt out of it. However, on 2 November, just weeks before election day, ALP candidate for the seat of Kingsford Smith, Peter Garret, told 2UE journalist Steve Price, "once we get in we'll just change it all". Now that comment was in the context of climate policy, but I guess now we know that it has a somewhat broader application, because the ALP's position has changed post-election to a mandatory filtering system.
Given that there are ISP plans that offer the sort of filtering that the ALP wishes to force on everyone in the country, and that the government already offers client-side filtering packages, free of charge, this post-election flip-flop is nothing sort of treacherous, and if they go ahead with it I suspect that a lot of Australians will be waiting for the ALP at the next poll with metaphorical baseball bats. I, for one, talk to my friends and family about this issue. It's a vote-changer for me, and I take time to make sure that my friends and family understand how this affects them.
Memo any ALP apparatchiks that might have found their way to Slashdot: This is a vote-changing issue. There are many of us who are extremely displeased with the pig-headed way in which the Minister has pursued this matter. The ALP stands to lose many votes over it. There are few votes to be won because nearly all of those you hope to gain over this filtering proposal already go to religious candidates and you have stuff-all chance of changing that. Summary dismissal and form letters that don't even address the issues are no longer good enough. Ignore the users of the internet at your electoral peril.
Athy, athier, athiest.
I think it's great to remind people of that, but I hope nobody gets confused into thinking that it somehow refutes my point.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.