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In Australia, Censorship vs. DNS, and Porn As Network Driver

Posted by timothy on from the ok-you're-going-to-need-2-jiggers-of-porn dept.

daria42 writes "Remember how Australia's planning to censor its Internet? Well, it looks as though the country's second-largest ISP, Optus, has made a stumble right out of the gate. Optus today confirmed you could circumvent its filtering technology simply by setting your PC to use a different DNS server than the default. Yup, it's really that easy. Oops." And why would anyone want to change their DNS settings? angry tapir writes "While the Australian Government has extolled the virtues of its currently under construction National Broadband Network (NBN) in delivering e-health and government agency services to every Australian, adult content will be the major driver of consumer adoption."

25 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Is that really a surprise by king+neckbeard · · Score: 3, Funny

    Everyone knows that the internet is for porn

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    1. Re:Is that really a surprise by Hsien-Ko · · Score: 2

      I think "Jack Off Australia" would be the more appropriate song here.

  2. I'm new to Australia by Nasajin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But even I know that you'll get better Internet access to porn by not using a terrible provider like Optus.

    1. Re:I'm new to Australia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I read an article from somebody who was the only competent person at the internal meetings for setting up such a censorship in Germany.

      What you all have to know, is that all this censorship "technology" ultimately is an offspring of something a Swedish (I think) company made. And that original thing, which they all drag around to show how "nice" it works, is extremely flawed and utterly idiotic.

      Neither them nor the government they started with, can tell the difference between the WWW, domains, the Internet and IP addresses. To them it's all the same.
      (You have to know that there are usually only lawyers and totalitarian-oriented politicians at those meetings.)

      This goes so far, that if you try to tell them how the Internet works, they look at you with a blank stare and ridicule you. Followed by openly calling you a "troublemaker" who "spreads lies" in their speeches, etc.

      I'm not kidding. That's how it went down in Germany.

      To say they were incompetent, would still be a disgusting insult to the incompetent.

      In the German meetings, it became clear, that it was technically completely impossible, to create such a filter in a proper way. You could either create a completely failing one, like this one, and look good politically... for about a day, before everyone would laugh at you about how much it fails. (In other words: Political suicide.) Or just push the whole project under the rug, and hope you get away with your failure.

      Luckily, because of that one techie among them, they chose to scrape it and tell nobody here in Germany.

      It seems, that Australia went for the political suicide.

      So I say, good luck with that, and good bye! ;))

    2. Re:I'm new to Australia by captain_sweatpants · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To say they were incompetent, would still be a disgusting insult to the incompetent.

      Yes this perfectly describes the situation in Australia. Senator Conroy (the man responsible) simply refuses to listen to the advice of anyone who disagrees with his ideology or points out the gaping flaws in the implementation. He is obsessed by his own personal ambitions and is too stupid to recognise good advice when he receives it.

      It seems, that Australia went for the political suicide.

      I certainly hope this is the case, although I have my doubts. Apparently being stupendously incompetent is insufficient grounds for removing a minister from their post. I fear this will be one in a long serious of blunders he inflicts on the Australian people.

  3. No problem! by ewanm89 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not in AU, but I happen to use my own DNS servers anyway.

    1. Re:No problem! by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Watch out they'll make it illegal soon. And soon only criminals will run bind.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:No problem! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As do I (and I live in AU), so I thumb my nose at these measures. I made the decision early on to DIY with as much as possible: mail, DNS, NTP, web and whatever other servers I need. Mainly for my own education. At times I've wondered whether it's easier to just use free services, but now I can sit back smugly and say "Ha!" The next part of my education is adding encryption to those protocols that aren't already so.

    3. Re:No problem! by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 2

      so THAT's what they meant by 'finger yourself and you'll go bind!'

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    4. Re:No problem! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      I'm not in AU

      I know, right? It's good to know that there are places that have more intrusive censors than my country.

      I always thought that Australia was full of rugged individualists. Another myth shattered. Are there a bunch of fundamentalists there or is it just that they're all prudes?

      Did the government take power in a military coup or did Australians actually elect this bunch of pearl-clutching church ladies?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:No problem! by Billlagr · · Score: 2

      It's voluntary, it never made it through Parliament, and I'd guess the largest 2 ISP's who also happen to be the largest phone providers are doing this to differentiate themselves from the 'filth pedalling' smaller ISP's, and can use it as a selling point. Their service sucks balls, so they can cry 'Think of the Children!! We will protect you from that filth!' rather than sell their product on actual service levels. As for the elected pearl-clutching church ladies (which BTW yes, they are)..politicians lie (see Carbon Tax that will never be implemented by our current PM yet the pricing is being announced on Sunday) and honestly, they are all pretty interchangeable with each other, regardless of the party they belong to.

  4. The Internet if for... by TheReaperD · · Score: 2

    PORN!!

    Required YouTube link: The Internet is for PORN!! (WarCraft Edition... just because).

    --
    "Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
  5. sadly, easy to block by KiloByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

    for prot in tcp udp;do iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i lan0 -p $prot --dport 53 -j DNAT --to-destination 1.2.3.4;done

    There are other reasons for DNS hijacking, too. For one, it lets the ISP do SiteFinder-like spewing of adverts. Another reason is to "fix" broken local settings -- here, a bunch of "computer repair" bozos used to hard-code people's DNS settings to a big ISP's DNS server, and when that ISP reconfigured it, suddenly "the Internet broke, fix it!", making small local ISPs go the easy way rather than argue with customers.

    Thus, don't expect this workaround to last long.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  6. Not for techies by muphin · · Score: 3, Informative

    all the ISP's saying they "voluntarily" apply the mandatory filtering state its easy enough to bypass, doesn't affect P2P traffic, only websites. I'm in Australia and have been using OpenDNS for years. the ISPs DNS servers really do suck and some even use custom error pages.
    Thing is,once the NBN is setup, the gov will have complete control over the data, and where to route it.

    --
    It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
    1. Re:Not for techies by snookums · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Thing is,once the NBN is setup, the gov will have complete control over the data, and where to route it.

      No, it won't.

      The NBN will simply provide layer-2 pipes to ISPs. The ISPs will issue IP addresses, handle routing and all that jazz. If an ISP wants to set up a fully encrypted back-haul (say using L2TP/IPSec VPN) then they're free to do so.

      If the government want to control the data moving over the NBN they'll do it by legislation, just like they would do with the current model (ISP-over-Telstra-copper), not by deep packet inspection or DNS blocking.

      --
      Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
    2. Re:Not for techies by TheRealGrogan · · Score: 3, Informative

      OpenDNS doesn't block anything, if you're just using its DNS servers in place of your ISP's. It's not until you create an account on their web site, add a network and configure the filter settings that it blocks any lookups. You can disable the smart caching, typo corrections, DNS proxying etc. if you register. I choose "none" myself, because I don't want anyone fucking with my name lookups.

      I sure as Hell don't trust an ISP's DNS server to return unaltered results, or to return results quickly for that matter. OpenDNS has been working very well for me, for years and I certainly do look up porn sites.

  7. Re:It is not about porn by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The filter is not about porn, it is about kiddy porn, the sort that they arrest people for.

    Indeed it is, and I'm sure of this because they're so open and... oh, wait, they're not even telling us WHO is contributing to the list, so their promises of WHAT is on it are a bit suspect. Reputable international organisations with such good reputations that they don't want to be associated with this? Really?

    Perhaps they don't want to be blamed the next time a dentist is mistaken for a pornographer.

  8. Re:This is a good thing by ChrisMP1 · · Score: 2

    Your kid's netbook isn't going to cough up goatse, lemonparty, tubgirl, 2girls1cup, mr hands, etc via a random click.

    Yeah, until someone puts up a machine serving one of them, configured to answer to any (or no) name. You can make a link to an IP address.

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    <sig>&nbsp;</sig>
  9. NBN != govt control by mjwx · · Score: 2

    all the ISP's saying they "voluntarily" apply the mandatory filtering state its easy enough to bypass, doesn't affect P2P traffic, only websites. I'm in Australia and have been using OpenDNS for years. the ISPs DNS servers really do suck and some even use custom error pages.
    Thing is,once the NBN is setup, the gov will have complete control over the data, and where to route it.

    No it wont,

    Stop getting your info from News Limited (Limited News).

    NBNco is a corporatised entity and not under government control.

    NBN's mandate is to provide layer 1 and 2 services only. Layer 3 services are provided by RSP's (Retail Service Providers) which will be today's existing ISP's such as Internode, iinet, Adam and even Testra and Optus.

    So any filtering will need to be done at the RSP level, iinet and Internode as well as several other ISP's are committed not to do it. Remember that this scheme is voluntary because it failed to pass in parliament, last time it was even bought up Labor faced a revolt from it's own back bench.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  10. Nest step: Parent makes incorrect statement. by mjwx · · Score: 2

    Obviously the only reason you'd want to would be to circumvent a legal restriction

    But it's not a legal requirement to filter (it's voluntary), so there is no impetus to restrict changing DNS.

    Besides, if you wanted to avoid Optus and Telstra's voluntary filtering, you'd just go to Internode or iinet who have flatly refused to volunteer for this scheme. In fact, the fact it wont work is why iinet expressly said it wouldn't implement it.

    Oh, you'd also save some money by going with iinet or Internode.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  11. For everyone not in Oz by mjwx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One of the big reasons Telstra and Optus are doing this is because they want to restrict traffic on their mobile networks. Optus and Telstra are our oldest ISP's so they have a large historical customer base but their landline services are so expensive they have been haemorrhaging customers to other ADSL providers for years, so most of their customers are mobile. Mobile services are so horribly oversubscribed in Australia due to lots of new customers signing up for cheap data plans but no new investment in infrastructure. Vodafone already had a massive crisis last year when it's data network fell in a heap, now it seems Telstra and Optus are headed for the same thing so they want to restrict users from using what they've paid for (as retroactively changing the contract enables customers to leave with no penalties).

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  12. Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The exact same week Telstra and Optus were awarded massive contracts to migrate their customers across to the NBN, they also 'volunteered' to implement the filters Conroy couldn't pass into law. iiNet (the third largest, nerd friendly ISP) flat our refused to implement censorship, and were coincidentally told that they wouldn't get any contracts.

    I can't help but think Optus were forced to agree to this censorship, so did it in the least effective way possible to just barely comply with the requirement. It still sets a very dangerous precedent though, and it paves the way for Conroy to later go back to parliament and say 'Look, they're doing it voluntarily, it's a great idea let's make it law'

    Good on iiNet for taking the flat out moral ground. It's even more noble considering it might have cost them a lot of money, looking at switching to them

    1. Re:Money by WhitetailKitten · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The exact same week Telstra and Optus were awarded massive contracts to migrate their customers across to the NBN, they also 'volunteered' to implement the filters Conroy couldn't pass into law. iiNet (the third largest, nerd friendly ISP) flat our refused to implement censorship, and were coincidentally told that they wouldn't get any contracts.

      Quelle surprise.

  13. In the words of Men At Work. by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 3, Funny

    "I come from a land Down Under,
    Where laws don't work and politicians blunder."

    1. Re:In the words of Men At Work. by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      .............
      "Conroy said, you can't read-a that language,
      The telco's smiled and gave us a shit sandwich."

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.