Filter Vendor Agrees Aussie Censorship Can't Work As Promised 143
Acidspew writes "The Australian Government's plan to filter the Internet has caused furore and has been met with vehement objection. Many people have put their opinions forward regarding this matter, but this time around, M86 Security — the vendor that provided many ISPs equipment during the initial filter trials — has finally weighed in on the discussion. Six of the nine ISP participants in the URL-based Internet filter trial last year used M86's R3000 filtering kit. According to ARN: 'Internet filtering won't prevent people deliberately looking for inappropriate material from accessing blocked content, according to security vendor M86 Security.' The company continues by saying its filter gear was designed to be implemented into schools and enterprise businesses, not for an entire country. The article also touches on M86's views on censorship."
Re:Keep up the pressure (Score:5, Interesting)
A comment posted below article linked to sums up the problem very succinctly:
"every one of the content types stated by Senator Conroy for implementing the proposed net filter are already illegal in Australia and already filtered by the ACMA blacklist. [...] What Conroy actually wants to block is stuff that isn't determined to be Illegal in Australia but fall under the much much broader category of Refused Classification."
I think that illegal material should be blocked (it usually is, by removing the associated IP addresses from DNS servers). On the other hand, blocking refused classification material is censorship. The government needs to clearly justify the proposed block for RC material rather than pointing to illegal material to attempt to justify it.
Re:Pull the plug... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Keep up the pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it seems that even if God almighty would have stepped down and told Mr. Conroy that filtering of this sort is a bad idea i wouldn't have helped much.
Chances are he turned to God, looked down at him and sneered "You a god? I am my own god. I will ignore the drivel coming from a being such as you".
Most people consider good and bad to be two extremes of a straight line. I see them as opposing points on a circle. If you go too far one way there is a chance that you will end up where you didn't mean to be. The best place is somewhere in the middle, IMHO. No, its not a perfect view, but what is?
XS4ALL (Score:5, Interesting)
In related news, I want to add that the biggest and oldest ISP of The Netherlands (XS4ALL) has also taken a stand against internet filtering. Unfortunately the site and documents are only available in Dutch:
http://www.xs4all.nl/overxs4all/maatschappelijk/dossiers/downloaden.php [xs4all.nl]
What they have done is write a very thorough 32 page document explaining why internet filtering should not happen. It centers around a couple of arguments:
- It's very expensive
- It introduces single points of failure and bottlenecks, doing the opposite of what an ISP should be doing
- It can't work without also blocking a lot of legal content, no matter what method you choose
- Blocking legal content and censorship is against the idea of free speech, but more specifically the Dutch constitution and the European treaty on human rights.
It's really well written, I wish there would be an English version. It's well worth the read.
They have sent this to all Dutch political parties and the committee for copyright legislation. I was very happy to see them get involved in this discussion. We're having national elections next june, and it looks like at least some political parties are picking this up and making it a point in the elections.
Re:Pull the plug... (Score:2, Interesting)
The greens whole platform on things like climate change an nuclear energy is based on pipe dreams and bad science. 40% cuts to CO2 emissions, who do they think they are kidding? they don't have any kind of real polices on things like health, law enforcement or social security. they are fine in the senate as a counter balance, but as a government it'd be like the pink batts saga only for everything....
Our internet filter (Score:4, Interesting)
I am posting as anon because I do not want anyone to know who I am, however, I do know people involved in this project and I know what I am about to say is true. It is designed to be a rudimentary fix to a possible political problem the govt will inevitably face from the conservatives in the opposition when the new NBN (National Broadband Network - a fibre to the home network for almost all homes, work places and institutions) has been rolled out.
You see the Labor govt has young(ish) knowledgeable tech savvy people working for it. Most of the opposition have no idea how to use the expensive tech that they have access to as ministers. The opposition screwed up our whole telecoms sector while they were in Govt, and the Labor plan is to replace the entire telephone network in Australia with a proper data network (not a phone network), and separate wholesale and retail arms of the sector. This should have been done 10-15 years ago - it is projected to cost around 42 billion $AUS.
Labor is also giving children in all govt schools laptops to use instead of their normal books.
The opposition will inevitably ask why the Labor govt irresponsibly connected children to the porno-interwebs and use a family values scare campaign. The IP blocking filter doesn't work the way you think it should, and they all know it, and they don't care. When primary school kids hook up their laptops to the NBN, or the police, or the hospitals (patients and staff alike) - they will have to actually *want* to subvert the firewall to access this stuff......and politically - that is enough for Labor to point the finger back at the user, and tell them it is not the Govt fault, and the user should be held responsible. Oh and as far as I am aware - there is not law that will penalize you if you do get around the firewall.....no one is going to arrest you (like in China or other less liberal countries).
I actually agree with this approach. I do, however, think that the list should be publicly available, blocked sites should have the right to ask why their site is blocked, and a system of appeal to get it unblocked. I also think that people in Australia should understand that while we do not have a bill of rights, we do not have an explicit right to free speech......so ask your pollies why they haven't introduced one yet (Victoria has one...but it is a bit crap ).
Re:Keep up the pressure (Score:4, Interesting)
Production of the material can be quite readily defined as illegal, blocking the material is pointless, pursuing those that create it and publish it, is the obvious point of focus regardless of how difficult it is. Now it other countries don't wish to cooperate in the producers and publishers of that content, simply block the whole country, no selective deceitful censorship, if the production of the content is so harmful then the only true choice is to block the whole country or, is the whole censorship to protect children thing a lie, a huge disgusting corrupt lie.
It appears the true target of censorship is anything that might harm corporate profits including the truth targeted at false advertising, copyright protection where everything is claimed as being owned by default, of course political dissent and anything eve loosely tied to the concept of 'free' speech.
The truth is if the want to protect children from the adults internet then they should create a completely separate children's internet, one that's monitored for let's see cyber bullying (children remorselessly targeting other children), late teens targeting early teens for sexual encounters, early teens talking younger more gullible children into doing destructive things and the most evil of all adult marketing executives seeking to psychologically manipulation children into purchasing products via abusive peer pressure and distortions perceptions of what is of true social value. Of course those first ones governments will have no problem tackling but that last one, I'm sure corporate greed via lobbyists and corrupt politicians will do everything in their power so that they can continue to manipulate the choices of children regardless of the psychological or resulting physical harm done to them.