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Australian Internet Filtering

Revision as of 18:07, 20 March 2009 by Matthudson (Talk | contribs)

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Contents

About

  • The Government plans to impose mandatory Internet filtering at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level. There are two lists, a 'child' safe list which filters both illegal content and hardcore pornography; a second which users can 'opt-out' to which only filters unwanted content.
  • Senator Stephen Conroy, the Government Senator responsible for this project has stated that they will also be looking into the possibility of filtering other content that may be illegal in Australia. Which would for example include: euthanasia, abortion, drug-use, etc.
  • Other political parties and members have made their intentions clear to include further content to be banned, such as overseas online gambling, and as suggested by Family First Senator Steve Fielding - hardcore pornography.
    • 'Conservative' Senator, Cory Bernadi has since rescinded his support for the Government's plan, voiced his concerns with mandatory Internet filtering, and has also elaborated no his frustations with the current filtering systems in use in Parliamentary offices. 4
  • Mark Newton, a Network Engineer from ISP Internode was the victim of bullying by the Office of Stephen Conroy over his criticisms of the Government's Internet Filtering plans. Conroy's policy advisor Belinda Dennett, sent an email to the Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton stating requesting that Mark Newton rein in his comments over the Government's proposal. This email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed onto Senior Internode Management. Mark Newton has made it clear that his comments are his own and do not reflect the opinions of his employer.
  • Senator Conroy accused Senator Ludlam (Greens) of suggesting that people should have access to child pornography when questioning him at committee meeting whether users would truly be able to "opt-out" of the system. 1 2
  • Email, Peer to Peer, Instant messaging, newsgroups and any other custom application protocols are on the ACMA report as things that the Government is also planning to apply the ISP-Level filtering to.
  • Conroy has answered in the Senate at Question Time that the filtering system will block access to "unwanted content". He has avoided answering any questions that Senator Ludlam has directed at him.
  • The filtering trial will begin in April/May 2009. iiNet and Optus have applied to participate in the ISP Level filtering trial, however have maintained they are doing so to prove the inability of the system. The initial participants in the trial have been announced. The ISPs that will take place in the first stage trial are: Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. iiNet are in talks with the DBCDE to be included in the trial.
  • Up to 10,000 websites will be on the blacklist of the ISP Level filtering trial scheduled for April/May 2009. It is unknown what is on this list of banned websites, and it is likely that they will not be released at any time in the future.
    • A list has been released on Wikileaks claiming to be the ACMA blacklist, however Conroy, ACMA and Tech2U have claimed this is not the actual ACMA list. Although Senator Conroy did confirm that a number of URLs on the list were present on the ACMA list and suggested that legal action would be taken against people passing on the list and AFP may become involved. The validity of the list cannot be confirmed as unbiased sources are not able to gain access to the real ACMA blacklist. 3
  • Senator Conroy has been repeatedly questioned on the proposed filtering system by several other Senators from various parties, however has each time failed to answer the actual question directed at him.


Further Information

Misleading Claims

Senator Stephen Conroy has asserted a number of times that the UK, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand have already implemented similar filtering systems with no impact to performance. Mark Newton an engineer from the ISP Internode has outlined that these claims are misleading where these countries are operating filtering systems that are contrary to Senator Conroy's claims.

In the UK the Government is excluded from online censorship by the Communications Act and British Telecom only provides a private voluntary clean feed system to their customers. In Canada eight ISPs run a voluntary parental control tool - there has been no Government intervention for the ISPs to provide this service as there is no legal obligation. A single ISP in Sweden runs an optional blacklist - this system later came under heavy controversy in regards to 'Scope Creep' by the Swedish Police threatening to add the Torrent site The Pirate Bay to the child pornography filter blacklist. New Zealand has no filtering system - an examination of the British Telecom filtering system in the UK was found to only block 10-15% of the targeted restricted material. libertus.net Whirlpool (Mark Newton)

It has also been claimed that users would be able to 'opt-out' of the filtering system when in fact two blacklists would be operating, users who choose to 'opt-out' of the filtering would be still be filtered according to a list of unwanted content. The definition of opt-out has been varied by Stephen Conroy, he has first claimed that it was not possible to opt-out of the filtering system competely, however in a recent comment by Conroy on SkyNews he mentioned that it would be possible to "opt-out" from the cleanfeed. The definition of the cleanfeed at this time possibly meaning the filter list that includes hardcore pornography.

Issues

Social

  • The ACMA Report in June 2008, has shown the Government's interest in applying filtering/blocking to non-web protocols. These include normally considered private/personal methods such as e-mail, instant messaging, newsgroups and other custom defined non-web protocols.
  • The definition of the 'unwanted content' has not yet been determined, however it has been made clear that the Government will seek to ban content that is considered illegal under Australian law. This would include content concerning euthanasia, abortion, suicide, and drugs.
  • In the implementation of the filtering system, it is likely that many parents would become complacent and assume that the "Internet" is then safe for their children to use without supervision which they would otherwise have maintained a careful vigilance over. eg. More parents would allow their children to use computers in their own bedrooms/personal privacy without supervision.
  • In the event that once the filtering system comes into place, it is highly unlikely that the filtering system would be removed from use at all. (Government admitting defeat on filtering solution).
  • No guarantee in future on what content would be restricted or monitored.
  • Through the denying of inappropriate content, information resources that allow the population to educate themselves and create their own unbiased opinions over issues such as abortion, euthanasia or anorexia would be denied.
  • Sufferers of particular social problems would be restricted contact with online support groups (forums, newsgroups, Instant messaging, irc chatrooms). These types of contact currently allow adults/teenagers to seek support or varying opinions from those that would normally be within their everyday real life peer groups.
  • It is not known what will be blocked, and currently there are no plans to define "unwanted content" or the type of content that will be blocked.

Technical

  • Slows the Internet. Performance degradation may be introduced by the filtering systems onto Australia's Internet infrastructure.
    • Even if a user were able to opt-out completely, performance degradation (PPI in the ACMA report) is still present to an extent.
  • The filters are not perfect, not all of the illegal and pornographic content will be censored by the filter.
  • Websites which are not meant to be filtered or blocked, will be mistakenly blocked/filtered.
    • An ISP may receive 100,000 webpage requests per second - under best scenario conditions would mean that 3,000 of those requests would be accidentally blocked (delta filter which however is also not appropriate for large-scale deployment - ACMA report June 2008).
  • Websites which are banned that share a webhost IP address with other websites will result in those other websites being blocked as well.
  • There are currently no filtering systems that support IPv6 - in future the planned filtering systems may be made redundant; or their performance capacities may be different to what has currently been tested so far. This was not considered the ACMA report (June 2008).
  • The ACMA report in June 2008, does not consider future proofing the filtering systems for modern and future Internet connection solutions. It considers 1.5Mbps as an average connection and the live trials to be held at the end of 2008 would limit users to 12Mbps. Current technologies exist for home users to access Internet connections of up to 50Mbps. [1]
  • Filters are currently not able to handle encrypted data, and other non-web protocols. However, 5 out of the 6 filters tested were able to filter HTTPS traffic potentially making all online purchases and banking insecure.

Financial

  • The Internet will become more expensive for the end user. Ongoing maintenance costs of the filter will be passed onto the consumer.
    • Similarly services provided by businesses that utilise the Internet may also be forced to pass the additional costs onto customers or allow it to detract from their profits.
  • Smaller Internet Service Providers (ISPs) may not be able to afford the costs associated with the filtering. Initial setup costs and costs to provide adequate network infrastructure would be comparable to larger ISPs who are more able to provide the necessary funding.
  • ISPs who have already built a 'family friendly' brand around them already offering "clean feed" would be hurt by the Government's duplicitous ISP Level filtering scheme.
    • The product chosen by the Government would extinguish the need for any other filtering products in the Australian market. Companies and businesses who have already spent money on providing filtering solutions for their networking uses would find their chosen product pointless and an unnecessary duplication of infrastructure.
    • Would cause a monopolisation in the Australian market by a single filtering company who owns the product that the Government would select. Any additional filtering would mostly be redundant and performance restrictive.
  • The costs are going to be far beyond what the government has budgeted for. $189M.
  • In the event that a website be blocked (and subsquently added to the blacklist) accidentally, Internet oriented business stand to lose entire days of profits. The same can be said for non-Internet oriented businesses as where they are communicating and advertising to potential and existing customers.
  • Overseas investors are currently unsure what effect the filtering system will have on business with Australia, and what changes may take place in future.

Legal

  • Will hinder Police and cooperative International Police operations in the task of tracking child sexual offenders.
    • Operation Auxin (2004) made use of the current ability to track a specific user's "paths" along international data networks. In terms of escalating technological efforts of both sides of the law, it will force more offenders to utilise methods (eg. encryption) which the policing bodies have no ability to monitor. Mick Keelty, AFP Commissioner has described this as a "silver lining" of the Internet in its ability to help authorities track criminals. [2] [3]
    • Child sex offenders have even used their credit card details to sign up for bait and trap child pornography websites set up by policing authorities.
    • However it should be noted that people who are committing crimes willingly and regularly already know what they are doing is illegal. As such they have already utilised encryption, Peer to Peer and other methods to circumvent detection. This means that ISP Level filtering will have minimal effect on most current offenders.
  • Illegal content is not defined uniformly between the State, Territory and Federal levels. What may be legal in one state/territory, may be banned by the filtering system.
  • Contents of the blacklist (inappropriate material) may be released to the public and would enable offenders access to a list of where to find illegal content (eg. Child pornography). See the leaking of the Danish and Thai censorship lists.
  • Would limit the content of illegal content available to Australians over the Internet. However would never stop such material from being available without being a breach of freedom of expression. (Australian Institute of Criminology)
  • Which party would be to blame should the occasion arise that a business or company would seek compensation for profits lost in the event that their website/IP gets added to the list and becomes inaccessible.
  • Parties hosting a banned link in Australia on the ACMA's list are liable for fines of $11000 a day. (eg. User posts a banned link on forums hosted in Australia and the host/website owner are liable to fines.)

Action against the Government's Plans for Internet Filtering

  • Get in contact with your local members or Senators. (Letter, email, phone call).
  • Spread the word to all your friends and family. Let them know what it is about and what they can do.
  • Join facebook groups.
  • No Clean Feed
  • Contact local and national newspaper outlets. (eg. Herald Sun, Courier Mail, The Age, your local city newspapers, etc)
    • Write Letters to the Editor
  • Contact television and radio productions. (eg. ABC, ACA, TT, 3AW, FoxFM, etc)
  • Contact businesses and companies other than those involved directly in IT. Essentially every industry utilises the Internet in some form in Australia, even farmers.
    • casgeroth has written an excellent letter to contact banks/credit card companies, here.
  • For ideas on where to start try this thread on Whirlpool.
  • Sign the TakingITGlobal online petition
  • Sign the GetUp! online petition.

Responsible Parenting and the Internet - The Right Way

  • Have your child's or family's computer in a visible family space such as the living room. This way they are unlikely to go and seek out inappropriate websites while in plain view of others. (eg. Pornography) This does mean necessarily that the parents will have to actively watch them, for younger teens the chance that they may be caught would be enough of a deterrent from fear that they may get caught.
  • Do not leave young children unattended alone at a computer browsing the Internet.
  • Filtering Software such as Net Nanny will help aid in protecting younger children from accessing unwanted content such as pornography, or graphical violence.
    • Many ISPs are already "family-friendly" and offer their own filtered feeds to help aid parents. Contact your ISP to find out if they support filtering or provide filtering software to install.

Facts

Discussion in Parliament

Media Coverage

Main article: Australian Internet Filtering Media Coverage

Opinion

Polls

Blogs

Groups

Mark Newton | Senator Kate Ellis MN 2

YouTube Videos

Comics

Resources

Mention Worthy Quotes

There have been so many relevant quotes that they decided to stop free loading and got their own place.

Australian Internet Filtering(Quotes)

Terminology

Cleanfeed
The term referring to the content that has been fed through an Internet filtering system after it has filtered or blocked content that exists on one of the two blacklists.
ISP
Internet Service Provider
Key word filtering -
Latency
The delay (time) for a packet of data to move across a network connection between one point and another.

People

Anh Nguyen 
2006 Victorian Election candidate for Family First.
Mark Newton 
A network engineer with Australian ISP Internode. He was the victim of the attempts by Senator Conroy's office to silence his criticisms over the Government's ISP Level filtering plan.
Senator Stephen Conroy 
Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
Clive Hamilton 
A Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, ANU. A vocal supporter of mandatory filtering.

Other

Australian Internet Filtering(Newspaper Scorecard)

Chinese Firewall

A piddling offence and much worse - SMH Historical insight into Senator Conroy's political career

Retrieved from "http://www.overclockers.com.au/wiki/index.php?title=Australian_Internet_Filtering&oldid=14857"

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