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]."

Comments

Isn't It AMAZING !!!!

[Crypto Gnome]

The Australian Government sponsored testing of an "internet filter' (ie censorship technology).

The participants were all

• already in the business of selling internet filters ... or
• tiny tiny ISPs ... or
• respectably large ISPs who limited the "testing" to
  • a tiny fraction of their userbase
  • who were *willing to be filtered*

And an the obvious (some would say FOREGONE) conslusion was "it works just fine".

.... brought to you by the department of No!Really?

Seriously folks, aside from all the dodgy (ie totally unscientific and statistically irrelevant) testing, this "internet filtering" is bad because CENSORSHIP IS EVIL!

Always, in every case, by definition and in principle.

Censorship is NEVER, ever, in any sense of the phrase, a good thing.

Re:Isn't It AMAZING !!!!

[AHuxley]

There is no "opt-out box" just a slow filter with an ever expanding list of sites based on the personal whim of a cubicle geek and their faith based government master.
The opt out will be the same list of min of ~10 000 sites minus 5 IPs/urls.
Just as slow, just as expensive, just as useless.
Also telling your ISP you opted out may be very unhealthy long term as that information would be shared with numerous state and federal agencies from day one or as mission creep.
Opt-out would light up your IP for a "random" net use log sample?
A few months later you become the 'example' of how a black list helps catch 'really really' bad people.

Time to

[vikstar]

move out of Chin..ahem.. Australia.

The thing that riles me most

[Anonymous Coward]

Are all my fellow countrymen who just don't care. Indeed, even my close family believe it to be a good idea, even after I've explained just why it isn't. They either think it'll stop them receiving spam, or think it'll stop some middle eastern type fellow from finding bomb plans on the internet and killing us (because we've had such a problem with that here).

I'm tired of explaining these things to people only to have them throw it back in my face and ignore everything I say. I've sort of gotten to the stage where I just think "Fuck em. Let them implement their filter and we'll see what happens." If it fails miserably, perhaps we can finally get some interest from the every day Australian.

More than half

[Psychotria]

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.

So, in other words, just less than half reported significant speed and technology problems. This entire situation pisses me off! I emailed the minister in charge of this and he didn't even have the decency to reply with a non-canned response. So, all the big ISPs are saying that this will result in big speed disruptions, but the other half (idiot home-run ISPs most likely) are saying it's fine. Gee, I wonder if it's because those ISPs have negligible traffic anyway!

Re:Yeah, but...

[donaldm]

Yeah, but they have to actually implement it before they can find out whether it can withstand all the attacks that will be launched against it. That's where it's likely to really cost them. :)

I think the main attack is going to be the voter especially if the opposition groups can get a good logical argument going and definitely not any disobedience which will play into these peoples hands. The problem you have here in Australia is many people vote for a party (Liberal or Labour) not the man and even if you have a minister cultivate a small moustache, wears knee high boots and walks in a funny way many will vote for him because he is a member of the party that that person votes for.

This is the sort of action that slowly erodes basic human freedoms by effectively having the Government gradually take over thinking for you and you really have to be stupid or just plain lazy not to see this. I have seen and heard arguments from various Government ministers on the so called internet monitoring and they initially sound rational with quotes like "Think of the children" and "We are against child porn" but behind the faÃade you really do have to worry.

A very good quote comes to mind here. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".