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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]."
Yeah right.
Results of filtering - bearing in mind that the incumbent Labor federal government is largely ruled by the Catholic-dominated right wing faction:
This is a huge worry. The blacklist will not be subject to public oversight. As an Aussie expat, I'm glad to be residing across the ditch in New Zealand (where ISPs are allowed to opt out of the filtering).
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
The participants were all
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.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
then again, you can't expect to talk sense with the labor party....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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...?
it is a total failure, iinet has already provided the communicatino minister with ample evidence of this, but he's commited to being a total idiot it seems.
The whole point of censorship is to thwart opposing opinion, the ministers apparent asshattery should come as no surprise.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
minister ... commited to being a total idiot
Person in Government is a total idiot, more news at 11.
move out of Chin..ahem.. Australia.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
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.
Yeah, all the citizens need to do is search the internet for the results of the trial, and they only get results indicating everything went great.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Why aren't you protesting against existing censorship in Australia? Unlike America our ratings system is run by and enforced by the government. This is why our highest rating for video games is MA and we why we have no R rating ("because the nintendos is for kids right?").
Sad to say it but this internet filtering fits right in with general government and public belief that a minority should be able to control what material adults consume.
Fire up your proxies gentleman!
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
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!
it is a total failure, iinet has already provided the communicatino minister with ample evidence of this, but he's commited to being a total idiot it seems.
Yes. But you see what is happening don't you? He (Conroy or his department) is playing with dodgy statistics to put his argument/proposal in the best probable light. "More than half" of the ISPs he surveyed said the filtering was ok. What does that mean? Does that mean that more than half of the surveyed ISPs were little players without many customers? Does it mean that more than half of the surveyed ISPs are in the government's pockets? Does it mean that more than half of the surveyed ISPs are OWNED by the government? I don't know. But these are not reasons being put forward. They (the government) are playing the dodgy statistics game in the hope that the masses will fall for their flawed studies. The masses will fall for it, though. I won't and I will remain pissed off.
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"
I guess the 15 users of Nelson Bay Online would be able to help, but iPrimus seems to be the only notable ISP taking part.
I'm interested in testing a few url combinations - so if you are using iPrimus, could you post the results for the following urls:
http://redtube.com/
http://www.redtube.com/
http://www.redtube.com/terms
http://www.redtube.com/contact
http://www.redtube.com/privacy
http://www.redtube.com/dmca
http://www.redtube.com/usc2257
http://www.redtube.com/?foo=bar
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cyde/Weird_pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cyde/Weird_pictures
If you're reading slashdot, you should have figured out what I'm trying to test. The reason is that Conroy has claimed that only the exact url is supposed to be blocked, and if (for example) www.redtube.com is on the blacklist, no sub-pages should be blocked. How this is supposed to handle query strings (such as those used for slashdot threads) without overblocking or being trivial to defeat, I'm not sure.
Note that these sites contain adult content, but nothing that is illegal to view in Australia.
AC'ing because I don't want an $11,000 fine.
(Most sites taken from here)
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".
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
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.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future," he said.
"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, given we're still hooked to America by tin cans and string, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds. We promise you won't go over your download cap."
The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unAustralian thoughts.
"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, "but revealing the list is also illegal, and so is linking to someone linking to someone claiming to reveal the list. So we're blocking Google Search. Having to use Anzwers should keep usage right down."
Calling it the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year monitoring citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.
A consultative process will determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his votes. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Xenophon's bloody sane."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I blame that scientific genius Steven Fielding. Bloody balance of power.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
But its for the children.
Seriously tho, i'm afraid LOTS of people out there believe that some censorship in exchange for their 'safety' is a good thing. Which is sad. Actually most of the world is ok with giving up rights ( that most never really had ... ) to their governments.
---- Booth was a patriot ----