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Australian Net Filter Gets One Step Closer
Condobolin sends in an update to the Australian government's ongoing efforts to implement ISP-level filtering. One of the hurdles they had to overcome was to build a system that would allow them to filter content without impairing other internet usage. A trial of the system has just concluded, and the results are positive — at least, for the government. Quoting:
"More than half of the Internet service providers (ISPs) taking part in the Federal Government's ISP filtering trial have reported minimal speed disruptions or technology problems. Of the nine participating ISPs, iPrimus, Netforce, Webshield, Nelson Bay Online and OMNIconnect told ARN they had seen no slowdowns in Internet speeds or problems with the filtering solutions in place. Of the remaining four ISPs, Tech2U and Highway1 were unable to respond by time of publication while Unwired and Optus refused to comment. ... 'From a technical perspective we're more than confident that if the government decided to roll out a mandatory Internet filter based on or around an Australian Communications and Media Authority blacklist or subset thereof, then it can be done without any impact whatsoever to the speed of the Internet,' [said Webshield managing director Anthony Pillion]."
The only ISP of any size who are saying it's all find and dandy is iPrimus. They had the filtering trial as an Opt In. There is of course also the fact that the company is run by fucking idiots. Before the trial started, when the public debate about the filter was first firing up, the CEO of Primus Australia tried to do a cosy deal with Stephen Conroy to allow Primus to make a profit from the whole thing.
What is...?
I'm glad to be residing across the ditch in New Zealand (where ISPs are allowed to opt out of the filtering).
Can but ain't. They're all queuing up to opt-in; we've got Telecom's CEO saying the Internet needed this years ago. It's the fallback for John "The Internet is the Wild West" Key's three-strikes-filesharing-bill, I'll bet money if they can't pass that they'll just use the filter to block the likes of the The Pirate Bay. Hopefully we IPREDator before we get the filters.
I hate this planned filter as much as the next guy, but don't think this is a labour-only special. The Coalition wanted to do the same thing during the late 90's.
What is...?
Some ISPs, including one of the market leaders Orcon, have clearly stated they will opt out and instead offer voluntary filtering software to their subscribers.
Sorry, but IPREDator in recent discussion, has been flagged as not quite the knight in shining armour. Best we fall back on the likes of Tor or I2P.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
no, what they did was provide free filtering software to anyone that wanted it. a much better, cheaper solution for anyone concerned about billy seeing his first boobie.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
It's a two part filter. There vague descriptions split it into "illegal" (which we already know is not limited purely to illegal material) and "unwanted" (who knows what that could include. The "unwanted" part is Opt out, the "illegal" is mandatory, with no public oversight, and no standardised review process.
What is...?
I'm posting anonymously, as I work for an Australian ISP (and no, not the one indicated by my IP address).
The previous government did have a filtering plan. Which it had been investigating for around five years. Every time they needed Senator Harridine's balance-of-power vote, they'd announce another inquiry into Internet censorship. And having got his vote they'd shelve the report. For all Senator Alston's lack of understanding of the Internet, he was superb at politics and he knew how to create the illusion of progress whilst making sure the rubber never actually hit the road. Which Alston was clever enough to know would lead to a showdown between the liberal (Costello) and conservative (Howard) elements in the party. A showdown which would damage the government, and thus to be avoided.
Then Labor arrives. And hey, how inefficient was the previous government, making no progress on this for the past five years, despite all of that work? So the new minister tells the department that he want results this time. Without quite understanding what he is asking for. Again there's a rabid conservative religious nutter holding the balance of power. But the new minister lacks the political skills of the old, and has set the snowball rolling...
Technically, the report is a farce. I don't care what a group of hick ISPs say about filtering not having an impact. They aren't the ones with multiple 10Gbps links to the USA, links so fast that any PC-based filtering just doesn't cut it. Those hick ISPs don't have customers that need a robust network, because people die when those customers websites go down. It's just the government fishing for the results it wants. If it actually cared, it would only ask the top five ISPs. And they've all said that filtering will hurt performance somewhat and hurt robustness a lot. And since CPUs aren't getting faster at anything like the rate at which links are getting faster, the performance hit increases over the years.
Just remember - this is the senator who said that the previous trials were a success as well.
Those previous trials showed an average 30% slowdown (87% for the most accurate filter), and still managed to block about 1% of the internet by mistake.
The current trials are a farce - everyone knew they would be rigged from the start (one ISP - iiNet asked if they could perform a comprehensive double-blind test and Labor told them to go jump in a lake). We have an extremely tiny proportion of the population testing the filters, on a purely opt-in basis (scalability and selection bias are obvious concerns here) - and they can't possibly test the potential for over-blocking (there are over 1 trillion urls on the internet, and there are only 15 users trialling the filter in some cases). They've also got nothing to do with what Conroy now claims the filter is going to block (halfway through the trial when the blacklist leaked he actually realised what was on it and promised the real blacklist would be different).
As for redtube being blocked by mistake - it's not a mistake. It was on the leaked blacklist from March and the user who submitted it has the official response from ACMA confirming it is prohibited in Australia. Virtually all pornography on the internet is technically prohibited here, even "simulated" sexual activity and "adult nudity" (check out ACMA's homepage linked to from TFA if anyone doesn't believe me).
The Censordyne ad had a great line about "get results indicating everything went great"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEEbsEDEM4
more about the ad
http://www.censordyne.com.au/
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25781616-15306,00.html
and how it was barred from airing on QANTAS flights to Canberra.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Try the 5 biggest. Telstra, Optus, iinet, internode and one other I cant remember. IPrimus is the 6th largest ISP but the other 5 make up 80-90% of Australia's ISP market.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Like in the US, Australian protests are surrounded by clean faced people in strange clothing with cameras
I think you meant "clean shaven" and in any event you don't see much of that here in the U.S., not anymore. Generally the Feds don't give much of a damn about protests, because We the People no longer give a damn about protests. Besides, don't you know that it's terrorists that are the big threat here now, not protesters, and we're on the path towards a UK-style camera-State anyway. They'll have us all on camera, all the time, so no point in sending agents around to make home movies of us.
... the government did a pretty thorough job of creating an atmosphere of fear, just like they're doing now with terrorism, and for the same damn reason. Civil liberties are so gosh-darned inconvenient, after all. Hell, back in the old days the FBI and even local cops were infiltrating all kinds of (ahem) "subversive" groups, even though for the most part the people being investigated were just exercising their Constitutional right to be stupid and misguided. There really was a sort of governmental paranoia going on at the time: pretty bizarre by current standards ... I guess insanity changes over time. I can't say we're any better off today, really.
... I'll take your word for it since I've never been there. Maybe you guys need to come up with some appropriate legal protections at some point.
It was different back in the fifties during the Red Scare, when everyone was afraid that their neighbor was a Commie. Or should I say, was induced to believe that their neighbor could be a Commie
So far as Australia goes, though
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually, all of those people are what? 4% of the Victorian voters. And what's really annoying, if we get a double-dissolution causing an early election, Steve Fielding only needs half that to stay in the Senate. Bugger.