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

circumvent to destabilize

[FriendlyLurker]

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is apparently 'committed to helping people to circumvent government internet filtering,'

You might have got that a bit confuzed: US only circumvents in the case of the Cuba's, Iran's etc of the world - it helps destabilize our enemies. For everyone else like NZ, WE are committed to forcing the world to filter as conditions on our trade treaties. (in this case, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) with Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam, Australia, Peru and Vietnam.

Re:Um why

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called politics, mutual backrubs, one hand washes the other and so on; probably somewhat of a longterm investment that pays back in the form of favours and goodwill from the government.

Politics and business are about benefiting on the back of the least powerful party, i.e. citizens/customers. Communication companies help the government with their surveillance. In turn, governments keep new regulations and consumer protection laws to a minimum or erode existing ones.

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:NZ Filtering FAQ

[totally bogus dude]

This, to me, is the strangest thing about these filtering/censorship proposals. On the one hand, it's claimed that only really, really illegal stuff will be blocked by it -- the worst of the worst that pretty much guarantees a prison sentence merely for possessing, and that the lists will be accurate and won't block legitimate content. On the other, people who are detected trying to access this stuff won't be charged or even investigated?

It seems very strange. Obviously there's simple explanations for this lack of coherency, but the self-contradictory nature of the proposals is so much more transparent than usual in politics.

Re:Two words

[gilgongo]

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).

That's probably true, but I wonder how far things will go? For example, where I live, there are already kids setting up local wireless mesh networks to share their music collections and other stuff around. Sure, these are small and operated by pizza-munching geeks, but if the idea gained general traction and the Internet as we know it simply became something similar to cable TV today (plus perhaps a comms network similar to email), would not the people be able to steal the Internet revolution back? I'm also interested in whether this might mean a return in some form at least to the ancient (and perhaps default) mode of human life: that of small, tightly-knit communities.

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:Um why

[Anonymous Coward]

"voluntary" in politics is doublespeak.

It's doesn't mean: do whatever you feel like, there will be no consequences one way or another.

It means:
For now we leave you a choice but you better pick the right one or we'll just pass a law that will be even worse for you. By the way, nice tax-free service you're offering there, would be a shame if something happened to it.

Re:Um why

[daveime]

You *do* understand what an encrypted ZIP file is ?

Rapidshare is full of them, and no filter in the world can block randomly encrypted bits.

Unless you are suggesting shutting down every FTP, filehost, P2P application, Yahoo Group and other massive swathes of the Internet, this filter like all others is a waste of taxpayers money and government resources and time.

I don't know why you think pedos are so dumb that they will name their files "little_naked_boy.jpg" ?

They are possibly some of the most sneaky and conscientious people around when it comes to incriminating evidence, simply because of the very act they perform.

Re:Same "it's voluntary" ploy here in Finland

[Anonymous Coward]

That's basically the same ploy that was used here in Finland to get ISPs to censor certain (claimed to be) child porn domains. If the ISPs wouldn't do it "voluntarily", then it was understood that government would step in and make it mandatory. Interestingly, after a couple of years, some ISPs have turned off the censoring by default and allow people to explicitly order the censorship "service". Basically it felt like it was all about making politicians look good at that moment, nobody really cared about if it worked or not.