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

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: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