A Sad Day For the New Zealand Internet

An anonymous reader writes "Another one bites the dust, as New Zealand's Internet filter stealthily goes live with two smaller ISPs, and three of the largest already rumoured to have signed up to do the same. However, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is apparently 'committed to helping people to circumvent government internet filtering,' so perhaps the USA will launch an invasion to free the poor downtrodden Kiwis from their own evil government?" Clever of one of the acquiescing ISPs to have named itself "Watchdog."

Comments

Two words

[presidenteloco]

Encryption

Proxies

Re:Two words

[zwei2stein]

Dropping connections that want to hanshake encryptions / look encrypted.

IP-bans of proxies; general useleness of open proxies; ease of proxy detections.

---

Do not solve social problem with technical means, it will never work (see: drm).

Re:Two words

[t0p]

If you allow HTTPS site you can't block SSH tunneling.

They don't need to block every https site. They block a list of named sites, and that list grows over time. The police add pedo sites to the list. Other agencies add other sites that they deem "inappropriate". The IWF maintain such a list and governments say it's good because it's targeting child porn sites. But there are also lists maintained by various governments, and they often filter for political sites too. It's impossible to run properly effective filtering by algorithm. So there will be lists involved. But who maintains the lists?

Re:Um why

[MrMista_B]

It's not voluntary.

If they don't their government will intervene.

NZ Filtering FAQ

[BeagleBoi]

If you want to know more about it, check the NZ Internet Filtering FAQ at: http://techliberty.org.nz/issues/internet-filtering/filtering-faq/

Re:NZ Filtering FAQ

[buchner.johannes]

Everyone should read this.

The scheme is currently voluntary for the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) as there is no law to force them to use it.
How does the filtering work?

      1. A list of banned sites and their internet addresses is maintained by the Department of Internal Affairs.
      2. The DIA then use a routing protocol to tell the participating ISPs (Internet Service Providers) that the ‘best’ way to the internet address of the banned site’s web server is through the DIA’s filtering server.
      3. When a person tries to access a site (banned or not) on one of the filtered addresses, their ISP knows to divert the request to the DIA’s server.
      4. The DIA’s filtering server then looks at the request. If it is to a banned site, the request is refused and a message is sent back to the person. If it is to a non-banned site, the DIA’s filtering server passes the request on to the real server through the DIA’s internet connection.

Does the filtering work with HTTPS (secure HTTP)?

HTTPS (secure HTTP) is used for security on sites that need it for services such as internet banking and online shopping.

HTTPS requests can’t be examined by the filter server (because they use encryption for the security). This means that all HTTPS traffic to an internet address that has any banned content (possibly for a completely different website) will be passed through the filter.

Does the internet filter only apply to web browsing or does it apply to other traffic as well?

All traffic (web, email, P2P, etc) for a filtered internet address will be forwarded to the DIA’s server.

All non-web Internet traffic will be forwarded through the filter to the destination site.

What type of material is censored?

The trial scheme was used to filter child pornography including video, photos, and text articles. Other illegal material (as defined by New Zealand law) is not filtered.

Can other types of material be censored in the future?

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

Apparently the NetClean software is contractually restricted to only being used to block child pornography.

So far, so good.

But these are bad:

Is it possible to check whether a website is on the filtered list?

The only way to check whether the website is filtered is by attempting to access it.
If a website is filtered is it possible to find out why?

No.

Re:Democracy

[BeagleBoi]

We have two major parties in NZ (Labour and National).

The filter process was started when Labour was in power.

It's now gone live while National is in power.

At least the Greens are against it! Oh, pity they only get ~5%.

Re:Um why

[Sparx139]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but could you source this? It's not in the article.

I'm going to go ahead and say he's wrong. Pulled from this page, it was linked to in another comment:

The scheme is currently voluntary for the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) as there is no law to force them to use it.

I'm hoping that this causes non-cooperating ISPs to start advertising the fact to attract customers. That, and that this falls flat on it's face and injects some sense into the Australian filter plan.

Don't forget us brits

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget us brits too.

Re:Don't forget us brits

[t0p]

Yes, you may be surprised to learn that various ISPs in the UK have been taking part in a voluntary filtering scheme since 1996. The Internet Watch Foundation is a "non-governmental charitable body" that "operates in informal partnership with the police, government, public and Internet service providers" (from Wikipedia). So there's no legal standing to what it does. What's more, it compiles a black-list of sites whose content the IWF considers is potentially illegal, and ISPs block the sites accordingly. So sites get blocked if the IWF thinks they might be illegal. This has resulted in cases like when Wikipedia was blocked in 2008. Internetarchive.org was also blocked in the past. Similarly to the NZ filter, IWF does not inform sites that they have been blacklisted, nor does it make its list available to the public. So IWF has nothing to do (officially) with government or law enforcement, yet it is part publicly funded (through national government and EU grants), and an awful lot of UK citizens find their internet access is filtered according to its list. Who needs official censorship when you've got a voluntary system like this?

Re:It's just stupidity and ignorance of technology

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry... are you from the past?

Bloody Aussies... check your facts next time.

As any Kiwi could tell you, sheep numbers are plummeting with the dairy boom. 32 million sheep and 5.8 million dairy cows in 2009.

I have to agree that the government does some stupid things sometimes though. Mostly when they try to copy Australia.

Re:NZ 2nd least corrupt government?!

[Anonymous Coward]

this has very little to do with the government, they recommend that isp's enable it, but it is not compulsory (as of yet) many of the isp's that are agreeing to implement it are ones generally regarded as companies that like to keep a strong-hold on their customers, many of the other isp's are relatively small ones that still value their image to consumers

Re:Um why

[alanw]

In the UK it was recently reported that the government will not buy services from any ISP that does not implement the IWF blacklist.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article7055882.ece

And in the USA, the Minnesota Senate is considering a proposal to prevent state employees staying in hotels that offers "violent" pornography.

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=843624

Re:It's just stupidity and ignorance of technology

[GigaplexNZ]

As any Kiwi could tell you, sheep numbers are plummeting with the dairy boom. 32 million sheep and 5.8 million dairy cows in 2009.

As a Kiwi, I wasn't aware of that. Not all of us obsess over the sheep population.

Re:Democracy

[master5o1]

Perhaps try this: http://pirateparty.org.nz/

Re:More to the point

[calibre-not-output]

There is no such thing as a "threat of coercion". Threats are coercion.