A Sad Day For the New Zealand Internet 221
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."
Um why (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would an ISP implement a filter voluntarily?
Unless this is a filter designed to reduce bandwidth use (Torrents, P2P) I truly don't understand the logic here.
I did RFTA.
circumvent to destabilize (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [ustr.gov] to forcing the world [iipa.com] to filter as conditions on our trade treaties. (in this case, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA [iipa.com]) with Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam, Australia, Peru and Vietnam.
Re:Um why (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying you're wrong, but could you source this? It's not in the article.
NZ ISP experience (Score:2, Interesting)
Having recently moved to NZ, I'm still not used to having a 25 gig/month data cap, but at least my ISP (Slingshot) has taken a stance against the filter. We'll see how long that lasts. Having dealt with numerous account issues (overcharges, undercharges, VoIP issues, you name it) in the two months I've had it, I have a pretty dim view of their professionalism. At least I can reach an actual human being in customer service. They're usually quite polite and helpful (I make it a point to be also). Gotta give them kudos for that, at least.
Re:Same "it's voluntary" ploy here in Finland (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:NZ Filtering FAQ (Score:3, Interesting)
So those in the biz of hosting kiddy porn simply need a self signed certificate and the vile scum they call customers will still be able to access them, come to think of it, i can't believe they'd pipe that content over the web unencrypted anyway
Re:NZ Filtering FAQ (Score:3, Interesting)
it'd be weird to get charged for failing to find a way to obtain some.
No, actually. There are plenty of ways of being convicted of a crime if you fail to suceed. They call it conspiracy.
"Vadim has hit the server 50 times this year. We should get a warrant to search his computer for illegal activity that wasn't stopped by the server. Also, we should get a warrant to arrest him for conspiracy to acquire child pornography"
Or...
"Vadim has been blocked by the server 50 times this year. Let's look at the logs of where he goes. Oh, this looks interesting. Let's see if it needs to be blocked or not. *visits site* Hmmm... illegal content. Call Judge Judy to cut a warrant to search his computer"
Honeypots already exist for this purpose. This is something that the East German Stasi only wish they had. This will be a nice centralized honeypot with all your internet activity neatly filed away, sorted and scored by "relative illegality" and when you hit a certain score, you're hosed.
It won't end with CP. As we've seen with Australia, a whole bunch of things are censored in the name of "Protecting the children". Scope creep happens. Scope creep in government (or bureaucracies in general) is a foregone conclusion.
It sounds like tinfoil, but if you told me 15 years ago countries would be doing national firewalls and censoring, I would have accused you of shiny haberdashery.
You know it's going to happen.
Re:Don't forget us brits (Score:3, Interesting)
"herefore there are lots of credit card transactions going on in the sale of the stuff. Therefore force the credit card companies to police those transactions and stop them happening - if they don't, name and shame them in the public media."
They do, they are, and this is the police's main weapon in fighting it, the credit card companies are very cooperative ....
That graph doesn't mean what you think it means (Score:3, Interesting)
Corruption takes three forms:
This last one is actually most insidious, because the above leave a paper trail and can land you in jail. Being incompetent carries no such penalty, if it did, most judges would be in jail. These kind of measures are not introduced out of malice, but out of a sense "something must be done, this is something, therefor it must be done".
the problem is ultimately the voter. Politicians are like women, once they reach a certain age you should replace them with a new model.
Filtering NEVER works (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I support Child Pornography but I have seen many filtering systems over the years and NONE of them (including the one proposed for Australia or the one that seems to be being used in New Zealand) are going to stop someone who wants to find Child Pornography.
No filtering system that I have seen even attempts to block the kinds of encrypted p2p networks used by many child pornographers.
The right solution to child porn is to go after the people who are taking these pornographic photographs of kids in the first place and lock them up in a Gulag, Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison, Jail, Camp or whatever the appropriate correctional institution may be. If you cant do that because its not illegal in the country they happen to reside in, extradite them to a country where it is illegal and pressure the government of the country where its not illegal to make it illegal.
UK town name, sCUNThorpe, a classic example (Score:3, Interesting)
of why filtering doesn't work.
No, I don't mean just the fact that the simple text string filter is too crude, but mainly the fact that there is no penalties imposed (eg loss of job) on the assholes who implement filtering technology with the same due diligence as an indian first line support call centre, and fuck up the entire internet for whole groups of users, or domain owners.
Scunthorpe is just one example, what is crude, evil or illegal to one person, is totally innocent and innocuous to another person.
Back in the day, no ISP wanted to touch filtering with a bargepole, not even if it cut their upstream bandwidth costs by 50%, for one simple reason... once you filter, you take legal responsibility for EVERYTHING, and open yourself up to lawsuits.
Goodbye "common carrier" and "mere conduit" status.
EU Law states (and I know exactly of what I speak, being personally instrumental in this law being codified and specified within UK Law) that for the purposes of the Electronic Commerce Directive an ISP is a "mere conduit"
As this applies to a UK ISP this ruling SPECIFICALLY EXEMPTS the "mere conduit" from all civil, and criminal, liabilities, even if the material in question is defamatory, copyright violation, or even child pornography... PROVIDED THEY REMAIN A "MERE CONDUIT"
The nanosecond you start filtering, you are no longer a mere conduit or common carrier.
Re:Two words (Score:2, Interesting)
where I live, there are already kids setting up local wireless mesh networks to share their music collections and other stuff around.
One of the few good things about censorship, it does lead to more technically and politically literate kiddies.