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Clarifying the Next Step in Australia's Net-Censorship Scheme
teh moges writes "I recently received a response from the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, regarding issues I had with the ISP filtering proposed for Australia. My comment can be summed up by 'Any efficient filter won't be effective and any effective filter won't be efficient.' His response clarifies the issue of using the blacklist for censorship." Read on for the gist of Conroy's mistakes-were-made response, which seems to sidestep teh moges' critique, but offers Australian Internet users some idea of what they're in for.
From Conroy's email in response: "...concerns have been raised that filtering a blacklist beyond 10,000 URLs may raise network performance issues... The pilot will therefore seek to also test network performance against a test list of 10,000 URLs ... As this test is only being performed to test the impact on network performance against a list of this size, and actual customers are not involved,the make-up of the list is not an issue."
teh moges continues: "My initial query about the lack of effectiveness of the filter still stands, however it is important that the censorship issue is clarified. It seems, at least for now, that the trial that will begin on December 24th for the '10,000' list is for testing purposes, rather then using a list that will be used later. Still, no information on a guarantee of regulation is provided, so there is still a long way to go before this ISP filtering gains support, especially given Senator Stephen Conroy's lack of ability to answer questions in media conferences."
teh moges continues: "My initial query about the lack of effectiveness of the filter still stands, however it is important that the censorship issue is clarified. It seems, at least for now, that the trial that will begin on December 24th for the '10,000' list is for testing purposes, rather then using a list that will be used later. Still, no information on a guarantee of regulation is provided, so there is still a long way to go before this ISP filtering gains support, especially given Senator Stephen Conroy's lack of ability to answer questions in media conferences."
Things I'm not clear on:
1. URLs or entire domains?
2. Only 10,000? Do they feel that the Internet is really so small?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So if I'm running an IPv6 tunnel am I attempting to circumvent the filter or not?
Excerpt from
INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER CONTENT FILTERING
PILOT
TECHNICAL TESTING FRAMEWORK
5. Circumvention
The Pilot will seek to test the ease with which different filtering solutions can be
circumvented and the capacity of filters to detect and provide warnings on circumvention
attempts.
This got sidespread coverage yesterday. A citizens activist group raised $30,000 in donations to fight the Rudd Firewall IN JUST ONE DAY. There are protests planned around Australia around December 15. I'm going.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/technology/cash-floods-in-to-fight-rudds-web-censorship/2008/12/05/1228257284512.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Pro-tip: Writing to Conroy is pointless at this stage. He's quite foolishly staked his career on it, and will never back down no matter what the price for everyone else. The only way out of it is to lobby the senate and convince Rudd that this will cost him the next election. I voted for Rudd but I'm thoroughly disillusioned with him - not just for this, but but this weighs heavily on my mind. I've already decided my vote three years out.
Now all we have to do is find him. If anyone knows where our jettsetting Prime Minister is, please send him back home because we'd like to talk to him. First place to look: anywhere in China. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/prime-ministers-600000-flying-circus/2008/12/04/1228257229282.html
I am completely tired of listening to people use the "for the safety of the children" argument for every damn thing. 20 years ago there were just as many pedophiles per ca pita as there were 100 years ago and will be 100 years from now. We just hear about them more now!
News agencies are businesses. They are in no way shape or form an altruistic humanitarian agency that is set to expand our minds. They want to scare the piss out of you because, no different than the movies, TERROR SELLS. And terrifying people about innocent children sells more. If you make people afraid enough than they'll give up everything they have to feel safe again. They will not consider their actions. It's a cut and run response to a perceived danger. No different than being chased (literally) by a wolf. You run fast till the danger is gone and when you get the chance you think.
In the latter part of the 20th century we willingly gave up (en masse) our desire to think. We let agency after agnency, group after group, make policy and laws to envelope us and make us appear protected. All the while those very structures were sucking the very marrow from our bones - making enormous profits off our fear.
The net will effectively be the last stand of us as a species. Our very society will either evolve or fall into dystopia in the next 10 yrs over the issues surrounding the internet. From over priced billing to international spying, everything we do, every bit of culture we have, all of what it is to be us will pass through a point on line.
And someone will want to control it and profit off of it.
We either make a choice to say no and let it be completely free. Or we make a choice to let them control us. Issues like the Oz law will be seen by history as a major turning point. That is, of course, if that history remains intact.
This is a petition to stop this mess: http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442 Continuing on, I personally cannot wait until my government takes the next logical step and begins to open and read every single piece of mail that's delivered in my home country, and look forward to my Emperor's glorious 15th term.
Just as the USA have lost their moral right to castigate countries who use torture as a tool of statecraft, so too has Australia now given up her right to criticise those authoritarian regimes who would limit the freedom of communication of their citizens.
Given that all the experts (yes, ALL the experts) agree that it won't stop anyone who actually traffics in this despicable content from peddling their filth even for a moment, can anyone here tell me what else we're buying for the price of our moral high ground on this issue?
China will be laughing their socks off at us next time we try to mention the censorship of news and internet in their country - no matter what language our leaders speak the message in.
--M
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
network performance so they're only testing 10k? What happens when mass censoring goes live and, inevitably, blocks more than 10k?
http://transformativeworks.org/
From the article:
"The Government's approach will be informed by the filtering technologies adopted in countries such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Canada where ISP filtering, predominantly of child pornography, has been successfully introduced without affecting internet performance to a noticeable level."
I wasn't aware that those countries had filters. Their internet isn't so horrible, is it?
Where I stand is that I am not ideologically opposed to censorship so much as I think that you have to be very careful about it. If the IP blacklist was subject to public scrutiny and input, and if there were still some way to access the information if you really needed to (ie, people doing research on the kiddie porn industry), and there were strict limits to the expanses of the blacklist, and it didn't slow down internet speed, then it would probably be an OK plan.
Their plan probably won't fulfill at least some of those conditions, but I still think that it might be most productive to reach for a reasonable compromise.
this whole thing is a farce they know wont happen. labor is just appeasing this other right wing christain party (family first) who they want on their side, for numbers against the opposition party. They know it will fail, but they can go to this "family first" party and say - 'we tried...it cant be done, you still owe us your vote.'
What is the practical reason that a list of 100,000 domains is going to result in a less efficient network than 10,000? Is there something wrong with their implementation of a hashtable?
remember this crap the next time you go to the polls.
nuf said
I have emailed Rudd and told him that: That if this filter goes ahead as is, he loses my vote next election. Labour is a safe seat where I live and otherwise, I'm very pro-Rudd, but this is potentially a step too far.
Unfortunately, I'm with iiNet, one of the ISPs who has agreed to test out the filter, but only to show how worthless it is. (The CEO is an outspoken critic.) But since things are going to be tough for a while, I'll now be accepting donations through my Nigerian brother-in-law's bank account...
I would rather confront the issue head on.
Anyone remember the Australian part of ebay attempting to make paypal the one and only way to transfer money for a won item? I remember that they made paypal mandatory in all listings as a payment method, then they tried to make it the ONLY method. The ACCC put a stop to this, but the paypal payment method is still compulsory for all listings, even if you dont want it. Perhaps the Rudd govt is planning on doing a similar maneuver? Push the censorship thing further than it has to be, and then back down slightly, so everyone is happier, but still have some form of censorship?
I have emailed Rudd and told him that
You can't convince people who have already made up their minds. I could presume these tests are more of a walk-through for how much can be done and how effectively, rather than a feasibility test on the whole issue of government censorship.
These concerns will be carefully considered during a 'live' pilot of ISP filtering which will test a range of content filtering solutions in a real world environment, with the cooperation of ISPs (including mobile telephone operators) and their customers.
- Ref, http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_consumers/funding_programs__and__support/cyber-safety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot
What "customer" would willingly go to an illegal Web site in order to test a government filtering system. Unless the government is giving them a list of banned URLs and an amnesty from prosecution then this testing will largely be bogus. Though I don't know how they define "cooperation".
That's right : he spent so much time speaking Mandarin to Chinese bureaucrats that he now acts like one.
Conroy is known as quite a back-room numbers man and power broker, but he isn't very well liked either. There are rumors that he's been set up to take the fall when the filtering scheme fails, along with the almost inevitable failure of the national broadband infrastructure tender process.
Rudd's interest in this is that both the filtering and the national broadband scheme were election promises, and while I admire his integrity in trying to carry through with all of his election promises (unlike the previous mob, who turned election lying into a high art), I really wish he would dump the promises that were clearly stupid. (I see now he has dumped the dumb idea of forming a Department of Homeland Security. That was surely an ill-advised scheme to attract right-wingnuts to vote for the Labor party.)
But the bottom line is that there is a real possibility that Rudd is complicit in setting Conroy up for the fall: he not only gets Conroy out of the front bench (and possibly out of parliament), but he also gets to dump the election promise of internet filtering with the excuse that it isn't his fault that Conroy botched it.
Rudd IS NOT respecting an election promise. He promised an OPTIONAL internet filtering scheme : one you could opt out if you wanted to.
There is a huge difference.
Last night I signed up for a deal for an encrypted VPN outside of Oz.
$10/month or $120/year buys me my freedom if the world goes belly up.
I tried it for the first time last night. Random IP, switch on/off when you need it, slight increase in latency (450ms) - no probs when torrenting, I set up off-shore DNS servers too. Had to stuff around with router settings though.
Now if you pay an average of $50/month for broadband and an extra $120/year guarantees you privacy and freedom, then that's the way to go.
It seems like lately the Aussies are mimicking the U.S., only more so, no matter how insane. I hope for their sake that they stop soon.
Unless, of course, the U.S. is headed into an era of reasonable behavior, in which case I defy them to do _that_ in spades.
expandfairuse.org
mod parent insightful
Now that is interesting, because the one thing I haven't been able to understand is why Conroy has pushed this one so hard, and even pushed to make it more extreme. There's nothing to be gained here, and the now plenty of people hate the man's guts. But why would Rudd set the man up? If if it is, why make the rest of Australia pay the price while they pay tiddlywinks?
There may be something more to this. Or maybe it's sheer stupidity on both their part.
You're in the electorate of Griffith then, are you?
If not, then I hate to point out to you (no I don't!) that you do not vote for Kevin Rudd, but a member of his party!
Learn to understand the electoral system please!
As soon as it became a tool for blocking illegal sites it was clear it would no longer be optional. If you are going to block illegal stuff, the it makes no sense to let people opt out of it.
It is a rotten shame that Australia now has to battle with censorship. Obviously America and Europe also have a running battle with those that would control what we see and read.
Any man that would censor what I read is my mortal enemy. I hope others will not be willing to play nice with such ilk. Censorship is always evil.
Been a labour supporter forever but this prompted me to become a paying member of the Greens, mainly to support Senator Ludlum for actually attacking Controy vigorously on the issue. Here's a video: http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/content/tv/senator-ludlam-questions-minister-conroy-internet-censorship
It's clear writing to Conroy would be useless.
There are protests planned around Australia around December 15. I'm going.
All of the protests are on December 13th, including the one in Brisbane (assuming by the fact you link a Brisbane newspaper that that's where you are) Details can be found at http://stopthecleanfeed.com/
Since when election promise need to make sense ?
That is the whole point, the original election promise didn't make sense on lots of levels. But one level where it didn't make sense was to spend a lot of money to install filters for a set of known illegal URL's, and then let people opt-out of the filter. That would be like the police shutting down a brothel by posting a guard at the front door stopping people from entering, while putting up a sign to point out that people are still free to get in through the side entrance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet) --
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
I disagree with part of what unlametheweak wrote above. HOWEVER - while controversial, his comment is neither disruptive to the conversation nor is it obviously intended to evoke an emotional response for its own sake.
As I write this, the above post has been modded Troll - and it is not. That is not an opinion that it's not trolling - it is a statement of fact.
Will whatever fucking dweeb or dweebs going around abusing their fucking mod privileges please fucking stop? There have been a lot of LOT of unnecessary Troll mods in the last few weeks and I, for one, am getting sick of it. Mod points are here to help us focus and defocus interest - they are not intended for your personal censorship agenda.
The irony of having to explain this in a thread on free speech is maddening in the extreme.
Comrades all - N.B. that I am not posting anonymously.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Grandparent poster is an idiot who doesn't understand Godwin's Law. Of course you can mention and discuss Hitler or Nazis. We need to examine and learn from the worst historical period of the 20th Century.
Comparing Bush to Hitler is stupid. Learning the lessons of appeasement is not.
There is nothing stupider than someone who thinks "Godwin!" is a debate-ending comment. Dumb dumb dumb.
human rights are only a problem in degenerate third world countries like Asia...
There is an online petition which will mail the government. So far, it has received around 80,000 signatures within a few days.
If you're Australian, you probably should sign it and tell your friends about it. Unless this meets with overwhelming opposition, the government will force it through.
that the US has a bill of rights and constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association. Australia, a former penal colony and military outpost of the British Empire, has no constitutional guarantees of any rights other than there not being a religious test for public office. That, and the apathy of the citizens of the "Lucky Country", allows the government of the day to get away with things such as passing draconian sedition laws, banning online advocacy of suicide or euthanasia, banning video games unsuitable for children and controversial art-house films (never mass-market entertainment; if the films banned are French and highbrow, it wins them anti-elitist culture-war points), and now the national firewall.
There is no way that the US government could push something like this through.
I thought the next steps were as follows:
To resist politically by any means necessary, including taking to the streets.
To resist electronically by circumventing this bullshit.
We can only hope this is true. I'm off to my first protest march since university next weekend against this abomination (and I've voted Labor for over two decades - this is going too far).
I'd just like to add the words anorexia, bulimia, sexual abuse, incest, penis, vagina and genital to this post so that when I look it up after the filter comes in on my ISP at Xmas (or the winter Solstice for us old-skool people) I can point to it as being a false positive. Of course all of those items are found in the Bible so having that put on the internet blacklist may not be such a bad thing...
The election promise didn't in any way suggest compulsory filtering. It was clearly defined as being opt-in. Since the election it has changed to opt-out of some filtering with a compulsory component. There's no need to follow through on this to fulfil election promises.
This is a must-listen if you want to learn more about why blacklisting won't work in terms of blocking child porn. Broadband Censorship, Copyright and Complaints http://blogs.bnetau.com.au/aussierules/2008/12/03/broadband-censorship-copyright-and-complaints-btalk-australia/
How does this filter work again? By IP? Considering all the cheap shared hosting out there where 20-50 sites are hosted on one ip address that would be doomed to create more false positives than real hits. Or is it just in the DNS? Maybe it can be sidestepped by using a foreign DNS server (hopefully with a local cacheing server in the middle).
I'm with you on this one - I have voted and defended Labour my entire life. This is the one big straw that has broken this Camel's back. I still despise Libs, but now also despise Labour.
In the future my vote and support is going to wherever it will damage Labour the most - I may even have to vote for the despised Libs.
Please don't assume others are ignorant because you are pedantic. He may not have explicitly voted for Rudd but he effectively voted for Rudd.
Pissing into the wind my friend.
Every politician hears the same phrase with every decision that they make. It's just white noise to them.
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
I believe by voted for Rudd he means voted for Rudds Labor government. Julia's doing most of the work anyway, it's not like the PM's hanging out in Canberra. You knew what he meant, stop being a tool.
I think what you meant to say was "get in through the back door" ;D.
Internet filtering is completely useless, because if you ask another site for your site info, the other site, not blocked will return an answer. So, if you have a direct call, blocked (blank page or something), and the indirect call (with some sort of answer), then you will know that you have being censored... For sure there are already sites that allow this kind of magic to occur... I believe they are called... proxies... ;)
Is that all you're willing to do, though? Vote for the other guy and maybe encourage others to do likewise? I've had to ask myself that question about US politics.
Revive the Constitution.
It's important to understand that the US Constitution's guarantees of freedom do not consist only of the Bill of Rights. As written, it created a sharply limited government under which most of the things the US federal government does today, eg. pensions and health care funding, are illegal. (See eg. the commentary in the Federalist Papers about "interstate commerce" and "general welfare.") Today we've abandoned all of the Constitutional restrictions on federal power except for some aspects of the Bill of Rights. To say that "it can't happen here" for some foreign outrage is a mistake unless we uphold all of the Constitution. I wonder at this point whether such a thing is possible.
As evidence that the US government can and will attempt to censor our media, consider the FCC's indecency fines for TV broadcasts, the Republicans' advocacy of restrictions on Internet gambling, and the Democrats' advocacy of the "Fairness Doctrine."
Revive the Constitution.
We already had that!
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
And terrifying people about innocent children sells more.
Well that's hardly new. The Midwich Cuckoos was first published in 1957 and made into movies in 1960, 1963, and 1995.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Illegal = Alternative Views
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
> Rudd's interest in this is that both the filtering and the national broadband scheme were election promises, and while I admire his integrity in trying to carry through with all of his election promises (unlike the previous mob, who turned election lying into a high art), I really wish he would dump the promises that were clearly stupid.
I want to pick on one incorrect point you made because it is very important history is not rewritten here. In the election campaign the Rudd government promised an *optional* filter. That is, one people could opt out of by notifying their ISP.
In August this year it was leaked that the filter had become mandatory.
Please do not allow Conroy and Rudd to get away with claiming they are just "fulfilling an election promise". They are not - they are breaking an election promise. (it is worth noting that the in same week the filter became mandatory Fielding magically turned around and passed reams of government legislation in the senate - this gives me very little hope that Conroy is going to change - if a back room deal has been done then it's been done).
Do one better - drive to your nearest swing seat and attempt to vote there. It'll mean your vote might actually make a difference, and you can more handily threaten politicians if they understand that you are not happy at all and are far from apathetic about it. If this goes through, that's what I'm doing (I did vote Rudd in the last election, but mainly because he had a better broadband plan than Howard, and I was mad at the Liberals for selling off Telstra).
It's new to me that the Netherlands has any internet filtering. I've looked at opennet.net and don't see my country on this list at all.
So I'd like to see some proof of your assertion.
Bart
except the other guy wanted to do it too. they started the process when they were in abusing power. You need to vote MORE for Rudd to give him a senate majority so the independants cant force independant ideas. Bloody democracy.
If Conroy knew he was being set up for this, he should have just quit.
Instead, he's carried on like a complete asshole this whole time. I'll shed no tears when he takes the fall for this.