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 !!!!

[PenguSven]

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.

Re:Yeah, but...

[PenguSven]

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.

Re:yeah but look at the isp's

[PenguSven]

then again, you can't expect to talk sense with the labor party....

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.

Re:yeah but look at the isp's

[Anonymous Coward]

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.