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New Zealand Introduces Internet Filtering

Posted by timothy on from the watch-out-it's-catchy dept.

Thomas Beagle writes "The New Zealand government has been stealthily introducing a centralised internet child-pornography specific filtering system. Voluntary for ISPs but not for their users, ISPs representing over 94% of the market are already intending to join. Read the general FAQ and technical FAQ about the proposed Netclean Whitebox implementation."

42 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Governments love crime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where would your government be without childporn? If it didn't exist, the government would surely invent it.

    1. Re:Governments love crime by HungryHobo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Here's the thing.
      The kind of people who push for this crap genuinely believe that child porn is a big issue, that it's worth losing all those nice freedoms we have to get rid of it (or at least try as you might as well piss into the wind for all the good it will do) and that anyone who objects is some kind of pervert who is afraid of losing their child porn.

      There are people who genuinely believe that a police state is a good thing because "only criminals have anything to fear from a police state"

      There are people who genuinely believe that censorship is a good thing because they certainly don't want to be seeing... well just about anything since these are the kinds of nutters who write letters to the editor of your local newspaper.

    2. Re:Governments love crime by garry_g · · Score: 3, Informative

      Where would your government be without childporn? If it didn't exist, the government would surely invent it.
      What do you mean, "would surely invent it"? They are inventing it, at least as far as numbers and facts are concerned ... in Germany, "Zensursula" von der Leyen has come up with statistics about the amount of commercial Childporn distributed via Internet, none of which she to date has been able to actually back with any facts. Additionally, the "large number of countries" without legislation against child porn supposedly was the reason filtering (useless, as it's based on faking DNS results) is based on a year-old study, which on top of the age is also containing information that is plain wrong (e.g., if a country does not have specific laws against child porns, it is counted, even if it has outlawed all porn!). Upon examination of said list, it was found that out of almost 100 countries listed, only like 9 indeed didn't have laws against child porn. Of those, nearly all are well down on the technological scale, making distribution of child porn d@mn near impossible from there ...

      Of course, what politician can resist finally getting his wet dreams of actively taking charge of all of the country's citizens access to free information fulfilled?

      Politics suck.

    3. Re:Governments love crime by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

      You want to know the "funny if it wasn't so pathetic and sad" part? It will do absolutely squat to stop the real child molesters and child porn traffickers.

      I have a buddy who works in the state crime lab and every once in a while they will come across one, and do you know how they know? Two Words- encrypted DVDs. Apparently the ones that have been molesting kids and trading new material have been using encrypted DVDs sent through the mail for awhile now. He said the only ones that are caught by those child porn "stings" are the fat losers in their basements that haven't been around anybody in 20 years, much less actually have come in contact with kids. The actual predators moved to encrypted CDs/DVDs ages ago and the only way they get caught is when some kid they are molesting calls the cops. Of course since they are looking at like a bazillion years good luck getting them to rat out their mailing lists (also encrypted) or give you the access codes.

      So all this will do is give the NZ government a good way to make any website disappear like magic, since I doubt they will actually let anybody know which sites they have flagged. Meanwhile the actual child fiddlers meet in IRC or on some message board and swap everything through the good old postal service. Talk about a complete waste of time and effort.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    4. Re:Governments love crime by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not an American, so I doubt very much my approval or disapproval of the Second Amendment means all that much. I will say that, at the end of the day, the State (whatever state you're living under, unless it's a failed state) has a far larger number of very lethal firearms and advanced weaponry than you'll ever manage to accumulate. So while you may have some false sense of security about building your private army in Oregon, the United States government has at its disposal weapons capable of turning countries into radioactive wastelands, so you're right to bear arms shouldn't make you feel all that secure.

      The 2nd Amendment was written when a reasonably equipped militia with some decent leadership could take on an army of the time. That hasn't reasonably applied since the Civil War. The best you can hope for if the government is really out to get you is a tragedy like Waco, and I don't really consider taking a bunch of children with you a reasonable example of holding the torch of freedom high.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:Governments love crime by Shakrai · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think you've missed the point. Regardless of the feasibility of overthrowing a modern government by force of arms the GP quoted text that said "democracy is being taken over by people who despise liberty and fundamentally are terrified of the average citizen." If you aren't terrified of the average citizen than what argument can you come up with for disarming him?

      I would also say that the fact that the government has nuclear weapons is largely irrelevant. If the shit ever hit the fan to the point that an actual rebellion was underway it's a reasonably safe assumption that a large portion of the armed forces would side with the citizenry and not the government trying to oppress them. I can't speak for other countries but in the US our armed forces swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. They don't swear an oath to one person or one office.

      You think you can find someone in the US armed forces willing to drop an h-bomb on an American city? Good luck with that.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. Good to hear by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Especially as these filters are never misused for other things than child pornography for convenience, when they're in place and all.

    How about spending the resources on busting pedophiles and exposing pedophile rings instead? Or was that too straightforward and precise?

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    1. Re:Good to hear by emocomputerjock · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There aren't enough resources available for doing that, only for the filtering. If you want to have the authorities actually investigate crimes against children you're going to have to have a 15 cent tax for that.

    2. Re:Good to hear by macbeth66 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How about spending the resources on busting pedophiles and exposing pedophile rings instead? Or was that too straightforward and precise?

      That would involve time, money and intelligence. Something that governments, by definition, are always in short supply of. Politicians ALWAYS take the easy way and most Press friendly route. They will do what looks good now, even if they know it will be a failure later. Hopefully during the next administration.

    3. Re:Good to hear by QCompson · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How about spending the resources on busting pedophiles and exposing pedophile rings instead? Or was that too straightforward and precise?

      But that might drop the arrest numbers down considerably, which means cutting funding, which means less sweet desk jobs for law enforcement officials.

      Think about it. You can bust a guy who is molesting a child and taking photos of it, and that's one arrest. But if you bust all the people who download, trade, or look at those photos, you can potentially makes thousands of arrests! That's thousands of arrests based off of one sexual abuse incident. Best of all, you can keep arresting people who look at those photos for many years into the future. It's the gift that keeps on giving!

      No, it's best that these photos and videos continue to be produced. At least until everyone finally agrees to make stories and drawings just as illegal.

    4. Re:Good to hear by scubamage · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Likewise, if MADD, PETA, and anti-smoking groups actually achieved their goals, they would be destitute, along with all of their employees. They'd also have nothing to use as propaganda. Maybe that's why PETA only actually adopted out 16 animals out of its "no kill" slaughter houses last year. They depend on the very thing they claim to want to stop. If that thing stops, no one will fund them. However, if the thing they're 'fighting against' is promoted and increased, so is their funding. Funny how that all works.

  3. I've never understood by MikeRT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why normal people support laws like this. I completely understand why statist politicians, apparatchiks and lobbyists do, but not ordinary people. It's so incredibly obvious that if you know that a site focuses on this trash, just coordinate with the country where the servers are based. If the country is poor, it would be easy for New Zealand police to offer their police a modest "finder's fee" for allowing NZ police to tag along on a raid to take over the server, get the logs and go after the distributors. Hell, if we started offering bounties for people like this and the Nigerian scammers, third world governments would be falling all over themselves to help the first world countries fight internet crime.

    1. Re:I've never understood by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why normal people support laws like this.

      They hear the word child pornography. Then they stop thinking. And if you question the sense, you are a pedophile, or support them.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    2. Re:I've never understood by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Hate to point out the obvious, but they have to be thinking first in order to stop.

      The two minute hate, and choosing between various advertised products doesn't count.

    3. Re:I've never understood by Jason+Levine · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's close, but not quite broad enough: For a lot of voters the word "child" is enough to shut down the rational part of their brain.

      It's not just that it shuts down the rational part of their brain, but they wind up expecting someone *else* to do the protecting. Because, you know, being a parent yourself is too tough.

      I happen to be a father to two little boys (age 5 and 2) and I'll agree that being a parent is tough work. It's not all hugs and smiles with kids. There are temper tantrums. They *WILL* test boundaries to see how far they can go. Repeatedly. They *will* try to get away with things they shouldn't be doing. Keeping up with what is happening and keeping your kids in line (e.g. "No yelling in the store") and safe (e.g. "No running away from Mommy and Daddy in the parking lot") isn't always easy. Too many parents just let their kids run rampant because they don't want to exert the effort to set and enforce boundaries. Many people seem to want someone else to do the work for them. So they whine for the government to step in and "child proof" life. The problem is, you can't child proof life. Life has a lot of sharp edges to it. The trick is to teach your child to avoid the sharp edges *and* what to do if they accidentally hit upon one of them. That takes work and effort that too many parents just seem to not want to invest.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  4. Somebody's getting paid to look at child porn by sweatyboatman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since neither FAQ mentioned any mechanism for reporting sites that have illegal content, I assume that means they're relying on some dedicated law-enforcement professionals to go out looking for child porn/bestial porn.

    That's gonna make that first date "and what do you do?" conversation a little awkward.

    And hey, slowing down everyone's internet experience for only half a million dollars/year? That's quite a steal!

    --
    It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
  5. Oh god :( by DiSKiLLeR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We only just got rid of this laughably insane idea in Australia... here the ISP's refused to co-operate.

    Actually, no, sorry, a few did co-operate, just so they could show the govt how laughably infeasible it was!

    And now New Zealand introduces internet filtering, just before I plan to move there :(

    --
    You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
    1. Re:Oh god :( by Blixinator · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just please don't move to America.

      --
      "The Y chromosome is genetic. The odds are very good that if you are male then your father was too." -Internet Commenter
    2. Re:Oh god :( by DiSKiLLeR · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Come to think of it, what we need is a Pirate Party of New Zealand to make sure this sort of crap doesn't happen; We are already well on the way to establishing the Pirate Party of Australia (http://ppau.info/).

      --
      You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
    3. Re:Oh god :( by Cimexus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes I have to admit the fact in the summary that ~94% of ISPs are willing to implement this struck me as being really bizarre. I usually think of New Zealanders as our friends across the pond. That is, that despite our friendly jokes at each others' expense, we are very similar countries. But this is a night and day difference. In Australia the ISPs were basically all up in arms about the proposed filter, and it was in large part due to the Internet industry's concerns that that proposal was thankfully scrapped (or at least appears to be headed for certain defeat, at least in its current form). This was on ideological, as well as technical grounds - the ISPs know full well that any filter can be trivially circumvented through a variety of means, so it's basically useless, but yet would cost them (and thus their customers) a lot of money.

      I wonder why NZ ISPs are so different in their opinion (at least as reported by this article)?

      I sure hope the tech-savvy New Zealand public fights this in the same way we did here in Australia. These filters might start out as benign but there is massive potential for abuse there, and more to the point, I just generally don't like the idea of artificially constraining and slowing down what has been until this day a free and open network. We already pay a lot for connectivity down here due to our isolated geographical location ... don't let them make it even slower/more expensive due to this crap.

      The other reason you need to fight it is that if this gets successfully implemented there, it will be used as an example here and in other countries: "Look, NZ did it ... maybe we should?" That's a slippery slope we want to avoid if at all possible.

    4. Re:Oh god :( by AndrewNeo · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are people who live in the US that you wouldn't be able to pay to live in San Francisco.

    5. Re:Oh god :( by DoubleUP · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nothing the NSA and CIA feel like telling you, anyway..

      --
      This sig may contain nuts.
    6. Re:Oh god :( by Bigby · · Score: 2

      I live in America and I've been to Italy. I can tell you that if the US is a 2nd-world country then Italy is third-world country.

      You act like healthcare sucks here. If you have a plan, it is the best in the world. Most Americans (like 85%) have a health plan. Of the ones that don't, a third make over $50k and choose not to get a plan and a third already qualify for government coverage but never bothered to pursue it.

      Wages are higher here than anywhere else. You just need to work for it.

      My guess is that you benefit far more from your government than you pay in...and that is why you find America repulsive. You might only benefit a little bit.

      Education (and health care and wages for that matter) are all suffering from central-government control. We still have the best higher-education in the world. That won't last if we keep doing what we are doing, but where will you find a better secondary education?

    7. Re:Oh god :( by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Informative

      Of the ones that don't, a third make over $50k

      $50k is the median income, and in many places barely pays for food, rent, and utilities. It's about what I make, and it's not expensive to live here, UNLESS you have to buy insurance (thank God my employer offers it). Private insurance is damned expensive if your employer doesn't offer it.

      Saying someone making $50k "chooses" to be insured is like my saying I "choose" not to buy a Ferrari.

      Wages are higher here than anywhere else.

      [citation needed] Wages are only half the equation. Costs are the other half. And speaking of citations, Wikipedia says you're wrong.

      Education (and health care and wages for that matter) are all suffering from central-government control.

      Education here doesn't suffer from government control, it suffers from lack of funds. The government doesn't control health care unless you're eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, and wages (see linked wiki) suffer from too little government control.

      You should stop listening to that Oxycontin-addled radio personality.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    8. Re:Oh god :( by srjh · · Score: 3, Informative

      Haven't been keeping up with the developments, have you?

      This "laughably insane" idea is alive and well, as of two hours ago.

      And with precisely the same reasoning - any time you disagree with the government... "but, child porn!". The filters won't work, they'll be trivial to defeat. "Child porn!". This is a top-secret blacklist without a scrap of accountability, confirmed to contain mostly adult pornography... "CHILD PORN!"... and multiple political websites "you don't support child porn do you?". Your top-secret list of the most evil content on the internet leaked, exactly as we told you it would "kiddy fiddler!". Even PG-rated material is on the blacklist... "PEDOPHILE!".

      Ugh. And more depressingly, the tactic's working.

  6. ISP's are in a tough spot by mc1138 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As hard as it is to accept censorship, at the same time, do you really want to make a stand over child porn? It's a rough spot, because it does open the door to more censorship, and if it isn't stopped now it won't ever be able to be stopped, but at the same time this is a really sneaky way of doing it because of the subject mater and the general publics view on it.

    --
    The musings of just another geek and his junk.
    1. Re:ISP's are in a tough spot by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, I think the ISPs that want to sign up highly computer-savvy, low support-calls creating people would probably stand up against the law and 'fight' it as good as they can.

      Anyone who spent 6 months on the internet knows that such a tool is doomed to fail. Either the implementation sucks. Or the list gets out (pretty much creating a "pedo menu" of sorts, along with a lot of fallout should any site on the list not belong there). And many are just pissed off at the mere concept of government thinking it may decide what's good for me to know.

      So if you're an ISP and if you want to put some stress off your supporter's backs and if you want people who will pay their ISP bills before considering gas or water...

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:ISP's are in a tough spot by u38cg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tough shit. No-one said civil liberties were easy to take or defend.

      --
      [FUCK BETA]
    3. Re:ISP's are in a tough spot by PontifexPrimus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
      - H. L. Mencken

      --
      -- Language is a virus from outer space.
    4. Re:ISP's are in a tough spot by greenbird · · Score: 3, Informative

      As hard as it is to accept censorship, at the same time, do you really want to make a stand over child porn? It's a rough spot, because it does open the door to more censorship, and if it isn't stopped now it won't ever be able to be stopped, but at the same time this is a really sneaky way of doing it because of the subject mater and the general publics view on it.

      It has nothing to do with child porn. These list are NOT used to block child porn. They are used to block whatever the government or those in charge of the list finds objectionable.

      If it was about child porn the objective would be to catch and punish those who are actually producing and publishing the material. They are committing crimes and hurting people. Blocking has no effect on the production and distribution of child porn. Filters and blocks are trivial to circumvent. It's probable easier to circumvent the filters that it is to actually find child porn on the interent. If it's not it should be relatively easy for the government authorities to shut down the sites and prosecute the guilty rather than introducing censorship that, by all rights, will have a terrifying chilling effect on free speech and freedom of the press. One of the articles included in the summary states that legally objectionable material in NZ includes:

      All 'objectionable' material is banned. In deciding whether a publication is 'objectionable', or should instead be given an 'unrestricted' or 'restricted' classification, consideration is given to the extent, degree and manner in which the publication describes, depicts, or deals with:

      â acts of torture, the infliction of serious physical harm or acts of significant cruelty

      â degrades or dehumanises or demeans any person

      â promotes or encourages criminal acts or acts of terrorism

      â represents that members of any particular class of the public are inherently inferior to other members of the public by reason of any characteristic of members of that class being a characteristic that is a prohibited ground of discrimination specified in the Human Rights Act 1993.

      So this includes that video of the police beating that man who was rude to them. It includes the riot police attacking the crowd of peaceful protesters. It includes the police opening fire on the protesters who turn violent after being beaten. And don't say that won't happen. Finland's list already contains anti-censorship web sites.

      I find it strange and ironic that governments are in an uproar about the censorship in Iran and some are actually considering punishing the companies that sold equipment and software used for censorship while at the same time out of the other side of their mouths they are advocating establishing the same type of censorship here (where ever here is: US, Australia, Europe, Canada). It's about child porn my ass.

      --
      Who is John Galt?
  7. Ireland got it worse yesterday by ionix5891 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    small bit offtopic

    but theres no mention on slashdot of the new 1984 style big brother law coming in in Ireland :(

    http://www.independent.ie/national-news/all-email-text-and-phone-records-to-be-kept-for-2-years-1820026.html

  8. It's inevitable. by OpenGLFan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Post-Iran, governments see that controlling the Internet is vital to controlling their population.
    ISPs can declare 3rd-party VOIP and other heavy-usage models as violating the filtering rules (whether that makes sense or not) and kick them off the network.
    Large businesses prefer that customers be reached through communication channels they control and understand. (TV, radio, print.)

    Governments, ISPs, and businesses support it. Nobody important opposes it. (You are not important.) Why are we surprised that it is happening?

  9. Safe Harbour by thesupraman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The way this is usually done is by offering ISPs a safe harbour whereby they are not responsible for their users traffic if they follow the 'rules'.

    My question is, why is this not available to ordinary people?

    ie: if you run govt selected filtering software on your computer, you should be immune to prosecution for content accessed from that computer - much the same way as the ISPs are.

    In NZ I believe posession of child pornography is automatically an offense with no defense (ie: even if you did not know it was present due to someone else accessing it) - so such an arrangement would have the advantage of protecting individuals who chose to opt in.

    Of course this wont happen as its only the corps that get the 'get out of jail free' option, but it seems like a fair idea, no?

    1. Re:Safe Harbour by TheVelvetFlamebait · · Score: 2, Informative

      The idea of "common carrier" status (as opposed to "safe harbour", which applies to copyright) is that the liability for actions is passed downstream to the users, where, IMHO, it rightly belongs. It's the user's actions that caused the offence, and the ISP has no feasible capability to prevent them from causing those offences. It can't apply to people because there's no-one downstream of the end user (hence the name), so there's nowhere to pass the liability, nor would we really want to, since we've already found the culprit.

      It's certainly not supposed to be a "get out of jail free" option for anyone.

      --
      You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
  10. Won't somebody think of the children? by M-RES · · Score: 3, Funny

    Won't somebody think of the children? I mean, come on, we're adults and we have easy access to our adult porn on teh tubes, but what about the kiddies, how are they going to access their porn if these filters are put in?

    Or am I misunderstanding the concept of kiddie porn?

  11. Protect the imaginary children! by QCompson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From the FAQ:

    What type of material is censored? The trial scheme was used to filter child pornography including video, photos, stories and drawings. Other illegal material (as defined by New Zealand law) is not filtered.

    Stories and drawings. Because icky thoughts must be banned.

  12. Re:This path leads to the dark side... by QCompson · · Score: 3, Funny
    There's no way it could snowball. The NZ government is well aware of the possibility of a slippery slope and will do everything it can to avoid that situation. From the FAQ:

    Can other types of material be censored in the future?

    There is no reason why the same technology could not be extended to block websites with other types of content.

    Oh. Nevermind.

  13. First they came for the paedophiles and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    First they came for the paedophiles and I did nothing to stop them because I was not a paedophile

    Then they came for the children but could not put them in with the paedophiles for obvious reasons, realised they had made a terrible mistake, so had to let them go again and I did nothing because I was not a child.

    Then they came for the gay people and found that they could put some of the gay people in with the paedophiles without too much problem but had to let the rest go and I did nothing because I was not gay, or so I thought at the time

    Then the paedophiles escaped and boy were they mad, and they came looking for all the normal people and I did nothing because by then I figured I was at least a bit gay and so did not fit the 'normal' profile but they had other ideas and took me anyway, and there was nobody else left to save me. Life just isn't fair sometimes.

  14. Interesting technical details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the technical details article:

    Does it support the next version of IP, v6?
    No.

    Whoops.

    What if the website uses HTTPS (secure HTTP)?

    If the website uses https (e.g. as used for internet banking or online shopping), the filter server can't examine the request to see what website it is going to on the target internet address.
    This means the the filter server must block all https websites on a filtered internet address. This will interrupt service to any website that needs to use a secure connection.

    Whoops part 2.

    Is it possible to circumvent the filtering?

    It is relatively easy for a motivated user to circumvent the filtering. This is done by routing the requests to a proxy service in another country that does not filter the required site.
    There are also a number of free services that exist to allow people to escape from government monitoring of their internet usage. These services include: Tor, Freenet and WASTE.

    Major whoops. Not only do they admit it's easy to get around it, they helpfully give you the name of three services to use.

    Don't get me wrong, I find the idea of child porn abhorrent and sickening. It's just that I don't understand why governments continue to push filtering as the answer when it's never going to work. If they want to get rid of the problem, all they have to do is target offending porno sites with a massive DDOS attack. They could slave every idle govt PC in the country to the task, and there are an awful lot of idle govt PCs.

  15. I don't see what the issue is by brentonboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    If I own an ISP and I want to opt into this in order to prevent some child porn from being distributed, why don't I have the right to do so? It looks like the ISPs are being up-front about it and not hiding what they are doing.

    As much as people on /. complain about this sort of thing, I think that in practical terms, this makes the world a better place.

  16. Something to consider by nightfire-unique · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is well documented that incidence of rape, and violence in general, dropped dramatically with the popularization of porn.

    Let's assume the filter does its job (which most of us agree is unlikely). Has anyone considered that reducing access to child porn may actually increase the incidence of child rape?

    Maybe the sex drive works differently in these people, but if it doesn't, is it not reasonable to assume there is a significant risk associated with removing their "outlet?"

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  17. quality of life higher? by slashbart · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Define "quality of life"

    For me 5 weeks (or more) of paid vacation per year is better than 2. Or having more than 2 weeks warning before you are fired also counts as something. Or having a minimum wage that you can actually live on, or not having gun-ridden ghettos in every large city.

    I like the quality of life in the Netherlands way better than that in the US, and I've spent about a year of my life in the US.