Technical Specs Released For Aussie Net Filtering

smallkathryn writes "Technical specifications have just been released for the Australian net filtering trial. The trial, which aims to prove that ISP-level filtering is a viable way to stop 'unwanted content' from reaching users, will go live on 24 December. The trial will involve ISPs choosing a commercially available hardware filter from an internet content filter (ICF) vendor, adding it to their networks, then loading the blacklist of unwanted sites. Still no indication of how peer-to-peer information will be addressed."

Comments

Encryption

[vvaduva]

This is the time to invest in and bring to market an encryption product to the masses in Australia. What would stop a US company from selling cheap VPN tunnels to end users down under?

Re:Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

What would stop a US company from selling cheap VPN tunnels to end users down under?

Not a damn thing. Which is one of the primary reasons why this whole thing is such a stupid pointless waste of time and money.

Dangerous

[Eravnrekaree]

I do not believe any government should censor speech. This sort of technology is ripe for abuse. There will probably be sites which "accidently" are filtered, maybe sites with unpopular political views, or legal material, such as adult pornography. As well, this sets dangerous precedents as well, that government has a right to censor things. It could set a dangerous precedent for censoring things we all agree should not be censored, like pornography of consenting adults and unpopular (communist, marxist, etc) political views.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

They're already adding otherwise legal sites to the blacklist. From the second link:

One of the more recent concerns over the blacklist is its extension from 1,300 sites to 11,300 sites containing "objectionable material", the content of which has not been made clear. The only details that have been divulged about them is that pro-euthanasia and pro-anorexia sites will be included on the blacklist.

Unwanted?

[Tubal-Cain]

then loading the blacklist of unwanted sites.

Obviously someone wants these sites, else there would be no need to blacklist them.

Re:Unwanted?

[QuantumG]

Actually. The government's assumption is that reasonable Australians don't want to see hard core porn and other "offensive" material. You disagree? Oh, you're just being unreasonable.

This is what decades of tolerating film and media classification has done to us.

Re:Unwanted?

[QuantumG]

The problem is that it is illegal to sell a film in Australia without a classification, and that the Classification Board has the right, which it exercises often, to refuse classification. This effectively bans films which are considered "offensive".

My solution would be to make all films immediately R18+. You must be 18 years of age or older to purchase them. If the distributor wants to apply for a lesser rating, they can do so. Now all the "think of the children" morons are placated and the rest of us can watch a movie revolving around the abusive home lives of teenage skateboarders without the government getting involved.

Unethical

[nightfire-unique]

Won't somebody please think of the children, who will be grown-ups one day -- grown-ups shackled with the consequences of implementing this unethical system?

Re:Unethical

[Anonymous Coward]

"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." - Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf)

technical ramifications of network filtering

[liraz]

Putting aside the question of whether filtering is desirable in the first place ("think of the children!"), or issues regarding the potential for future abuse (e.g., censorship of unpopular speech, and who determines what needs to be filtered in the first place) at the technical level any halfway-reliable filtering technology that peeks into the transport layer is going to add a huge amount of overhead that will increase costs and degrade performance. Good for the equipment companies, but bad for everyone who would prefer their Internet connection as dumb and fast as possible.

OTOH, OpenDNS provides a free, opt-in filtering service available to anyone who wants it. It's very easy to deploy, why not just use that?

Re:Voluntary

[batdragon]

Only the *testing* is voluntary.

When (if, hopefully) the real thing goes live, "Filtering will be mandatory in all homes and schools across the country".

See: http://nocleanfeed.com

Re:URL based to start with

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.5

If I recall correctly, they're provided by various tier-1 carriers and telecoms (Level 3, Verizon, etc.).

Re:Voluntary

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

The awesome thing here is that the ISPs are now responsible for all the actions their users take.

Did Bob Aussieman pirate a movie? Well, the ISP should have filtered that out. Did Steve Kiddyporn upload/download illegal pictures of children? The ISP should have stopped it.

By even doing token filtering, they're taking responsibility for everything that happens on their network.

Re:Voluntary

[ozphx]

You want filtering? No problem, we make a law that your ISP has to provide it at your request, for free

Australia already has that law. Free NetNanny for everyone that wants a "clean" connection.

Now ask me how many people have taken up this offer...

Re:Voluntary

[Fluffeh]

42.

That's actual people that took up the Netnanny offer before you start going on about some answer to life, the universe and everything.

Re:URL based to start with

[Eil]

Step 1: Get IP address of blocked site
Step 2: Enter that IP address

That won't work on the vast majority of sites out there which either use name-based virtual hosting or complicated load balancers, both of which depend on the correct hostname being in the URL.

In the old days, a common trick to get around URL filters was to put a '.' at the end of the TLD as in:

http://www.example.com./

The '.' is the root of the DNS hierarchy. It's optional when specifying an Internet hostname but all software which handles domain names is required to handle it properly. Programmers of early web filters didn't know this so if they put the following URL into their block list:

http://www.example.com/*

Adding the dot meant the URL wouldn't match the entry in the blocklist. All the vendors patched this pretty quickly though and then the next workaround discovered was encoding the domain name as its hex equivalent. Took longer for the vendors to patch that, but they finally did. Most of the web filters out there have had plenty of time to come up to speed on all the workarounds by this point, though.

Re:Voluntary

[rdnetto]

Now, ISPs are usually international companies, few are still single country.

I don't know how it works in the US (or wherever you live) but the 2 of the top 3 ISPs in Australia (Telstra and iiNet) only serve within Australia, AFAIK. There headquarters are here too, meaning it would be difficult to move, especially since they own so much of the local infrastructure.
The reason for this is likely that Australia is geographically isolated from other countries, being a continent in its own right.

Most ISPs are either also in telco or cable TV, so let's shut down the ISP biz and concentrate on the rest.

Telstra is a telco, but iiNet is only an ISP. There's actually talk of them providing IPTV next year, but that would be over the internet.
Besides, at least one company will remain, and feel free to charge whatever they want (probably Telstra, due to their government given monopoly on the infrastructure). Isn't that the situation in the US - few people can choose an ISP other than Comcast?