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Australian Gov't Seeks To Record Citizens' Web Histories
An anonymous reader writes "If you thought the Australian Government's Internet filter project was bad, think again. They have a new project — they are examining a policy that would require all Internet service providers to log users' web browsing history and email data such as who all emails were sent to and from. And that's just the start. Telephone calls, mobile phone calls, even Internet telephony. It's all in there. Looks like 1984 was a pretty prophetic book." Several readers also point to ZDNet's coverage.
So how long before Aussies figure out that "encrypt everything" is a great idea?
Om, nomnomnom...
than pedophiles and terrorists.
When do we finally make the move to a fully encrypted internet? An unencrypted internet made sense in the days that CPU power was expensive and there were no good encryption libraries. Both these problems were solved a decade ago.
The block seems to be the current idiotically expensive SSL certificate business.
The first step would be for the web browsers to add a "low default security" level : user signed certificates are accepted as "normal" connections without throwing up big errors and don't give much of an additional indication.
Expensive SSL certificates can continue to give the "feel good" level of indication by showing the name of the verified company.
What banner is flying over this huge censorship push? What is the general public's thoughts on all this? Usually with this sort of absolute censorship you have a particularly powerful head of state like in Russia, Iran or North Korea. Australia still has free elections (to my knowlege). Here in the USA we had a bit of tightening here and there security-wise with 9/11, but Australia doesn't seem to have any sort of dictator-to-be, nor do they have any significant terrorist threats or major overarching foreign policy that would require them to keep an eye on dissidents. Usually someone can point to some major speech by a prime minister or president outlining an "improved security policy" for the welfare of the country against some outside boogeyman, but from what I can tell, Australia is tightening it's grip on everything for censorship's sake.
moox. for a new generation.
Rudd has to call an election soon, but what a choice it will be: Either Conservative-Christian Kevin Rudd or his opponent Conservative-Christian Tony Abbott. Abbott has refused to speak out against the net filter. Secretly, I would say he quite likes it and will go along with it.
> "I think that it makes sense to try to ensure that the homes of Australia aren't invaded with pornography via the internet," said Abbott. "On the other hand I don't want to see wider censorship and I don't want to see the internet destroyed as a tool for people's education or as a tool for people's businesses." Talk about fence sitting.
> What it came down to was a question of whether it was technically feasible, according to Abbott. Yet he wasn't willing to air his thoughts on the matter. "I just don't know enough about it at this stage to have an opinion on that," he said.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/abbott-drawn-into-filter-debate-339300089.htm
Given his conservative position on everything else he ever talks about, I'd say he *does* have an opinion on it... but he wants to cash in on the Rudd protest vote. At the end of the day we get to choose between two political parties... near identical... both headed by conservatives who like the idea of a net filter to stop the unwashed masses looking at boobs and bottoms, and to get them back into church. Pic related:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/03/31/tony-abbott-and-political-catholicism/
http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s1362997.htm
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=19151
when you support spreading democracy and freedom in other countries. Bombing the shit out of them, to spread your so called "way of life". Internally your "perceived freedoms" are slowly eroded. Go ahead and mark me as troll and go back to living in your cocoon.
> - Obliged to introduce CP filter. Filter can be expanded for other 'illegal' websites.
So THAT's why I can't find anything about Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the internet!
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
Trivially easy to circumvent once again. Google already offers SSL encryption for web searches and for Gmail and I don't even need to mention all the privacy tools available.
I think you're taking this too lightly, just a couple o' thoughts:
* just because _you_ have a way around it doesn't meen the general public does and it also doesn't mean it will not impact you in some way. /feeling/ of being monitored, your freedom of speech is already seriously impaired.
* encryption is only part of the solution (see other posts)
* email can still be scanned, only transport between you and your mailserver is encrypted, the gov't could still pressure gmail into delivering the data (even easier, less mail providers)
* international mail can (is!?!) still be scanned by officials
* psychological effect: Joe Schmoe will think: "I better not look at teen porn on the web or else I might get suspected". Once you get just the
Abbott has refused to speak out against the net filter. Secretly, I would say he quite likes it and will go along with it.
Secretly? (Disclaimer: I have posted this before, but it's worth restating)
Tony Abbot visited humble Darwin city recently and it was there that I personally got to ask him, in his public question and answer time, the following question (roughly remembered):
"The Internet is an important part of the lives of many young Australians, as well as Australia as a whole in this modern age- what do you think of the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's plan to censor the Internet?"
His answer began:
"Well, I'm afraid I'm probably going to disappoint you..." and yes, unfortunately, he did.
Paraphrased his answer was: "Stopping child pornography is extremely important to me and the Liberal party and therefore, if we can prove the censorship plan doesn't work, we will oppose it; but only *this particular thing*. We will continue to seek effective means to block 'filth' (his word) from entering our country any way we can. If the filter works, we will support it."
Basically the message I got from his reply is that Tony Abbot believes that the filter will work "well enough" and is too much of a hot potato to oppose politically. The subtext I personally divined from his answer was a little more chilling; that the filter didn't go far *enough* for his tastes, and that he'd personally rather a complete whitelist than a blacklist. Therefore, speaking as a card-carrying Liberal... if you think that voting for the Liberal party in the next election will make the filter go away, you are sadly mistaken.
On a side note, the fact that he himself is an extremely religious man probably doesn't help a great deal, since it seems that too many politicians tend to "trust God about these things" when it's abundantly clear that God knows sweet F-A about the Tubes and how they work.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Google offers SSL access now
Encrypt your stuff. They can still track the target IP addresses, but no URLs. Next stop: Widespread use of foreign proxies, then TOR.
nobody who is devout, or even remotely religious, should be allowed into government.
This political stance is part of the ALP's general move to social conservatism.
Unfortunately, this is the way that Australian politics is moving. We have a two party system, the ALP (Labour, notionally the "Left") and the Coalition (counterintuitively named Liberals and the country-oriented Nationals who are notionally the "Right"). The ALP is currently in government, but the balance of power is held in the Senate by one vote usually exercised by a couple of minor parties, Family First (ultra-right ultra-socially conservative), a couple of independents and the Greens (left wing progressive, but the government mostly refuses to negotiate with them). Usually it's down to the Family First Senator to decide whether a given piece of legislation passes the Senate or fails, and he's revelled in the power of his role. So the government has expended a lot of effort in wooing the Family First Senator, which has caused a slight move towards the right and towards social conservatism.
However, the ALP has apparently decided that the best way to get votes is to, as much as possible, be almost exactly like the Liberals. While they were ready to do something about Climate Change before the election, they have largely done nothing (because it's too hard). While they spoke about the importance of funding public options, such as public schools and hospitals and so on, they still haven't done anything about the massive and disparate amount of funding that is given to the private option. While they say that they say that they're against government misuse of public funds to advertise ahead of the upcoming election, several million dollars have been spent on exactly that purpose (noting that, in this case, I agree with the expenditure, but even so it is a Coalition thing to do).
Even on issues where you'd expect the ALP to be starkly different to the Liberals, nothing. Refugees are still being treated as lower forms of life, just as they were under the previous Coalition government. The ALP has gone out of its way to foment a war between itself and the Education unions by subjecting teachers to extraordinary public criticism (without actually putting up the funds and the political will to fix problems from above). Welfare recipients are still being hounded and stigmatised for the fact that they could possibly be cheating the system (even though the vast majority aren't) with no talk of improving the system and helping welfare recipients themselves to reduce their imposition on society. On and on and on, there is increasingly less difference between the ALP and the Liberals.
The Coalition has responded by going further and further towards the right. They've elected Tony Abbott as their leader, because the last leader had the gall to negotiate with the ALP on an carbon emissions trading scheme (which subsequently dropped like a stone in the now hostile Senate). Tony Abbott is one of the most conservative politicians currently representing Australia. He approaches politics from the perspective of his own highly religious Catholic upbringing and lifestyle, doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change and is really quite keen to return Australia to the 50's in respect to how we treat anyone who isn't an Anglo-Saxon white Male of upper-middle (or higher) socioeconomic background and being above the age of 35.
Unfortunately, the ALP's strategy is going to bite them in the ass. No Coalition voters have been wooed over to the ALP side, but, now that both parties are on the Right or the Far Right and well and truly entrenched in conservative politics, many former ALP voters are turning to the Greens or other alternative parties. The Greens now have a swing in their favour of between 7 and 9 percent, mostly taken from the ALP, and other smaller parties are enjoying smaller swings in their favour. It's likely that the Greens will hold, themselves, the balance of power in the Senate (because Family First aren't likely to have a Senator elected this time around) but we could have a situation where Greens could get electe
I don't understand how this doesn't stop ISPs from doing a man in the middle attack on gmail and using their own valid SSL cert - I mean, it's not like I can't register a certificate for mail.google.com, the majority of legitimate authorized SSL cert providers will let me purchase it regardless.
Or they could invest in buying one of Netronome's high performance transparent SSL proxies (What? Did you really think current SSL schemes are that secure these days?).
If technical people are serious about implementing such a system correctly, the bar of entry for the knowledge to get around this will get raised quite exponentially.
I doubt your 'average citizen' would even know (s)he needed to get around it first, and then having the knowledge bar of entry some how to get around it, seems highly unlikely.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
A system like this wouldn't be so bad IF governments could be trusted with keeping their hands off the data UNTIL a crime was committed. Then, when they had physical evidence of a crime, a bit of data mining and searching could dig up other relevant facts. However the Australian government (famous for Task Force Argos, who took someone to court for posting a video freely available on YouTube citing child abuse) and other governments around the world have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to refrain from abusing such data.
Mention the words "terrorism" or "child pornography", and suddenly governments want to go so far as to break existing laws to prevent these crimes. However there is only one problem - if the person has not committed the crime yet, they are not a criminal. So we get cases built on "conspiracy to commit" and "intent to commit", cases which erode our freedom each single time. Because any psychologist will tell you that some very nasty thoughts can pass through the heads of very average people AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS. The insides of our heads must remain inviolate and not subject to the state, or we become slaves. The law must draw the line at "yes but did the person go out and ACT on those fantasies?", not "did the person think about it". Otherwise everyone guilty of watching, writing or producing a murder mystery show is guilty of murder.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We have something called IPRED, that means that copyright owners can, via a court decision, force ISPs to reveal who has had a certain IP number a certain time. This person can then be sued for copyright infringement, if the copyright owners suspect them of it. This law is something the EU has thrust upon us, unfortunately it looks like a former Swedish minister of Justice was a major advocate of the EU directive.
And not long ago, the Swedish police talked to the current government, and told them that this law is giving them problems. Since no ISP wants to loose customers, a lot of them have stopped storing the information about who gets assigned what IP number when. So even if you know beyond any doubt what IP address has been doing illegal, you cant find the person "owning" the IP address.
And also, people are learning to encrypt their traffic, and to use anonymising services (proxies and/or TOR). Together with the ISPs not storing much information for long, the end result is that the Swedish police have lost the ability to track people who distribute eg child porn on a massive scale.
The Swedish politicians were warned of this potential development before the law was passed, but seem to have chosen to not listen. And now they are left with a population that has learnt to conceal itself on internet, so that even if they remove the law, the police will still be left trying to deal with anonimised and encrypted traffic....
I think the Australians would do good to talk to Sweden before they take any steps they cannot untake later....