The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with plans to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to filter all Internet traffic within Australia. This proposal, which the government says is non-negotiable, will be mandatory for all people inside Australia. Making matters significantly worse, communications minister Senator Conroy, refuses to even discuss the issue in parliament or with the press. As such, the only details available are those being leaked by concerned ISPs.
When the Labour party came to power in 2007, one of their election promises was to do away with the previous government's plan to filter the Internet, however, as they failed to gain a majority in the Senate, they have been forced to partner with the Family First and Christian Democrat parties, both of whom represent the right-wing Christian vote. In so doing, they are now pushing the pet projects of those parties, in return for votes on their big ticket items, such as their environmental policies. So now we see the return of Internet filtering to the agenda.
The filter is being pushed to "protect children" from pornography, online gambling and paedophilia. Of course, the filter assumes that every single Internet user is a child, as, being ISP based, there is no way to turn it off. If it goes ahead, the filter will be more restrictive than those in either Iran or China.
What makes this situation so sinister is that Senator Conroy is actively refusing to discuss the issue. Even in Question Time, in parliament, he is simply ignoring questions being directed to him on the topic and has only stated that "people who are against the bill are for paedophilia". He has also tried legal action to silence critics of the plan. So we are now dangerously close to having mandatory Internet filtering introduced in this country and many people either don't care (understand) or simply don't even know.
However the ISPs being forced to get involved are not staying silent. Here's a little bit of what we now know about the proposed filter:
* It will be mandatory. No one will be able to opt out.
* Tests so far show almost 86% reduction in speed. Home ADSL accounts perform at worse than dial up performance.
* Initial testing showed tens of thousands of false positive sites. False positives sites that users cannot access include youtube, slashdot and MySpace. Additionally, countless innocent Blogs and newsites were banned.
* The filter will also ban sites with "key words". Sites such as RustyLime are likely to therefore be banned, as they may include the word "sex" or "kiddie pr0n" in user comments.
* Almost all actual pr0n sites were still available.
* Once a site is banned there is no know way to have it "unbanned".
* Sites that share a server with banned hosts will also be banned. As some servers host thousands of web pages, this will cause massive outages.
So in effect, this idiotic proposal will reduce the Australian Internet to a barely functioning, circa 1990's speed pile of junk... while leaving the pr0n freely available. Additionally, Australians will never be allowed to see what is on the list or what the criteria for blocking is.
iiNet's Mike Malone, CEO of Australia's second largest ISP has referred to Senator Conroy as "...the worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed...". Considering his predecessor tried to "make email forwarding illegal", that should tell you something about this man's credentials. He stated that:
"...They're not listening to the experts, they're not listening to the industry, they're not listening to consumers..."
Australia's largest ISP, Telstra has likewise made several statements that this proposal will never achieve its goal and will only damage the Internet. Initial testing by Telstra found that not only did the filtering massively degrade performance but it also caused the service to completely fail regularly:
"...Anything you are going to put in the end-to-end data path that actually does blocking can be invasive. It's invasive meaning it is expensive [to implement], and invasive in the sense that installing it in our network is complicated and may in fact cause outages..."
Conroy doesn't plan to stop there, however. He also plans to filter:
* MSN chats.
* Email.
* Secure web traffic, including banking transactions.
And hopes to eliminate P2P traffic altogether. When questioned about the legitimate use of torrents, for example obtaining Linux, Conroy typically had no response.
This means the government will be reading your email and online chats and deciding what you can and cannot say in them. Strangely enough - no one seems to care about this. The TV media is barely touching the topic and while print press is all over it, Joe Public doesn't care about something until his TV tells him to. Of course, the large media companies stand to gain a lot out of this, as they are the ones pushing the inclusion of the ban on P2P and torrents.
The Internet filter is now in its final stage of testing and despite a complete and utter failure in all previous stages, Conroy intends to press on and sort out the details once it is in place. The filter is planned to be introduced to all Australian's in 2009.
When we have absolute luddites in charge of our technology, who are completely at the whim of even more luddite Christian groups and if there is no public outrage, then this filter is virtually assured to go ahead. None of the decision makers in this process have even the slightest understanding of the technologies involved and despite every single committee and working group reporting back that it is destined to seriously damage the internet, while failing to achieve it's objectives, they're just pressing forward.
I urge all Australians to care about this. Get involved. If you don't the Internet you know and love is about to go away for ever and you will only have yourselves to blame. If you don't ordinarily get involved then this is the one thing you should get involved in.
Sites to visit:
http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/
http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/
Australia's largest ISP, Telstra has likewise made several statements that this proposal will never achieve its goal and will only damage the Internet. Initial testing by Telstra found that not only did the filtering massively degrade performance but it also caused the service to completely fail regularly:
"...Anything you are going to put in the end-to-end data path that actually does blocking can be invasive. It's invasive meaning it is expensive [to implement], and invasive in the sense that installing it in our network is complicated and may in fact cause outages..."
Conroy doesn't plan to stop there, however. He also plans to filter:
* MSN chats.
* Email.
* Secure web traffic, including banking transactions.
i plan to use ANTHRAX and DIRTY ATOMIC BOMBS in a TERRORIST ATTACK on PARLIAMENT. my JIHAD will be funded by distributing CHILD PORNOGRAPHY to WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
The Greens won't co-operate on this, I doubt Nick Xenophon will, and I surely don't think the Libs will be up for it, so that pretty much leaves the good Senator Fielding. Would be pretty funny, if you think about it.
It's a question of what these people consider "inappropriate" material. Xenophon wants gambling sites included. Fielding wants pr0n included. Others, including many Liberals (I suspect) want euthanasia sites included. All Conroy and the govt. want to do is censor the net and they are happy to cater to the pet hates of the bigots to achieve this.
This censor policy will be adopted universally soon. The media companies ( TV, print media, etc.) are losing big time and they want to tame the Internet. They want to control the Internet, so that they can generate better revenues. They want tools in place and child pornography is the excuse that would sway the public opinion. It has already happened in NZ, it is happening in Europe and lastly it would happen in USA.
The technology is not fit to do that right now. This test will show that. But in the mean time, latest technology is being developed to achieve that purpose, and within a few years it will be available.
Simple website blocking as adopted by China and many other countries is simple, but keeping an eye on individual session is a huge task. The results from a technological stand point will indeed be interesting.
I doubt a solution based on current technology can see the encrypted sessions as pointed out by sinner's article. It is simply put impossible, unless a dedicated supercomputer is used for each session, which is highly unlikely.
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the Press and that cannot be limited without being lost.
It will be interesting to see how the news media reacts to internet censorship. Thomas Jefferson once said
Our liberty now depends on the freedom of the internet.
Internet articles against the filtering will be included in the black list, so none of us will be able to read it anyway: [size=+1]I jest.[/size]
[size=+2]Police move to ban blogs on accused firebug[/size]
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/02/17/1234632773480.html
Hmmm. One can only imagine what the Internet will be like once the National Thought Police have gained FULL & TOTALITARIAN control over Internet Censorship.
So, you want to vent your spleen online about some psychopath on the loose? Well, be prepared to be jailed by the NTP for the privilege of breaking their Internet Censorship laws!!
Oh dear. What ramifications will this imminent and severe Internet Censorship have for ASF'ers?
Joe will have to ban any post that is either (a) not sickly sweet or (b) not in total agreement with Government Internet Censorship Policy....
Double
Next, they will want to ban groups of people standing around talking about *stuff*.
I agree with those that think "internet filtering" is a move toward totalitarianism, and that Conroy is a twit. However, on the point being raised here, remember that the name supression, etc, is from a court order.
Police raid Wikileaks.de domain owner Theodor Reppe's home over 'censorship lists'
* Police crack down on whistleblowing website
* Domain owner's homes raided for evidence
* Raided after Australian blacklists leaked
* Conroy: Leak 'resembles ACMA's list'
POLICE have raided a Wikileaks associate's homes in Dresden and Jena after the website published a list of banned websites.
Theodor Reppe owns the German domain registration for "wikileaks.de", one of the many URLs used by the whistleblowing website.
This morning, Wikileaks published a Twitter update:
"Police raid home of Wikileaks.de domain owner over censorship lists - stay tuned."
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