Oz Net Censorship plan still on track
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Australia’s Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy, minister for broadband and communications, are still hell-bent on following in China’s footsteps with Australia’s very own Net Censorship Curtain.
In the face of fierce and ongoing opposition from all quarters, including ISPs expected to ‘filter’ content on government orders, Rudd & Co are now also targeting P2P file sharing technology as part of their censorship plan, says p2pnet.The Oz government has plans to ‘filter’ online traffic and block access to 10,000 sites they say are replete with ‘illegal” content, but Australia’s largest ISPs are leery.
Around 1,300 websites have been labelled undesirable by the Australian Communications and Media Authority as part of its self-appointed role as Net Censor, said p2pnet.
In a post on his department’s blog, broadband minister Stephen Conroy says, “technology that could filter data sent directly between computers would be tested as part of the upcoming live filtering trial,” states news.comn.au.
“Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial,” the story has Conroy saying.
A list of 3,863 website addresses banned in Denmark was published by a whistleblower group and is believed to contain links to illegal material including child pornography, says news.com.au.
The department of Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has previously compared the Government’s filtering plan to “successful” programs in countries including Denmark.
“Earlier this week a list of 1203 websites banned in Thailand for political reasons was published by the same group,” the story continues. “It included hundreds of YouTube videos as well as blogs, cartoons and an article in the Economist magazine banned for reasons of ‘lese majeste’, or criticising the King.”
There are, “230 Australian ISPs listed,” notes Jason of Canberra in a news.com.au comment post, going on »»»
Every single one of these ISPs will designate one (if not, a small team) of technicians to maintain the filter and implement it into the ISP’s infrastructure, e.g. servers. Scenario: One person (say Mr. X), out of a minimum of 230, decides to save the list into his USB drive. He secretly takes it home and uploads this list onto the internet. Within minutes, links to our blacklist, of hundreds of child pornography websites spreads across illegal MIRC chat channels. Within hours, every single country in the world would have access to Australia’s blacklist. It would mean paedophiles/child porn addicts wouldn’t even need to do their own searching for this stuff on the internet, they just our blacklist - saved to their harddrives, paste the link into their Internet browsers and surf away. I can’t believe how stupid Conroy is, and it will be blood on your hands if this list gets leaked. It is unrealistic to say this list WON’T get leaked. My bet is it will be released for all eyes to see in less than three days after all ISPs get sent the blacklist.
“Many parties have made the point that the filter would not be effective in any case, and would allow some illicit sites through while blocking some perfectly legitimate sites,” says TechBlorge, adding:
“In point of fact, a test of six government-proposed filters missed 3 to 12 percent of the material they were supposed to block, while blocking 1 to 8 percent of sites that they were suppose to allow through. Worse, the most accurate of these filters slowed internet speeds by as much as 86 percent. This plan is certain to continue to generate protest and controversy for some time to come.”
‘Equal rights in all areas’
Meanwhile, “have you heard about this new Australian Sex Party?” - asked Luke in a recent p2pnet Reader’s Write, going on:
“They are trying to stop the mandatory ISP filtering initiatives. Interesting stuff. Check it out: http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2008/12/10/sex-and-politics-australias-new-political-party-takes-on-the-mandatory-internet-filter/“.
The party will, “seek to overturn this mandatory ISP filtering and return Internet censorship to parents and individuals,” it says, going on to quote some of its objectives, to wit »»»
- Develop global approaches to tackling child pornography which focus on production of the material rather than its distribution.
- To bring about the development of a national sex education curriculum for secondary schools as a first step in preventing the sexualization of children.
- To hold a referendum to create mandatory equal numbers of women in the Senate and State Upper Houses.
- Abolish sex slavery and sexual servitude by introducing non morality-based immigration policies that allow bona-fide sex workers to work legally in Australia.
- To bring about the establishment of a truly national classification scheme which includes a uniform non-violent erotica rating for explicit adult material for all jurisdictions and through all media including the Internet and computer games.
- To enact national pregnancy termination laws along the same lines as divorce law — which allow for legal, no-fault and guilt-free processes for women seeking termination.
- Overturn restrictions on aid to overseas family planning organizations that reference abortion.
- To create total equal rights in all areas of the law for gay, lesbian and transsexual couples.
Stay tuned.
p2pnet - Australian censor plan targets BitTorrent, December 23, 2008
are leery - Australia Net censorship plan comes unglued, December 10, 2008
The Age - Labor plan to censor internet in shreds, December 9, 2008
p2pnet - 1,300 sites already on Australia censor list, November 14, 2008
news.comn.au - Internet filtering plan may extend to peer-to-peer traffic, says Stephen Conroy, December 22, 2008
news.com.au - List of banned websites in Thailand and Denmark leaked online, December 24, 2008
TechBlorge - Internet site blocking goes forward in Australia, December 26, 2008
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December 27th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
As Ive said before
I present problem 1;
DNS Settings will be the Aus Govs worst nightmare
They cant filter or block access to sites when the ISP isnt in control of their Customers DNS queries
Just look at TPB when they were blocked in Italy, they put openDNS.com on their homepage
December 27th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Everyone should be using opendns anyway. In the current climate of ISPs recording both your habits and data for government retention polices and targeted advertising, a la phorm. we can ill afford to be complacent by assuming the fidelity of our network providers.
December 27th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
They can block ip address ranges though which would have the same effect regardless if you use opendns or your network provider’s dns resolution servers.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Guys, any opposition to any social or legal protective measures based on the fact that criminals can get around it, is akin to demanding the disbanding of the police force and annullment of all laws, as criminals continually get around these measures as well.
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So a straw poll: How many of you advocate the disbanding of the police force and annullment of all laws? (well, a fair question??)
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If I take the version of events above, which is technically correct when all ISPs manage their copy of the ACMA list and can see this in clear text, then yes an ISP staffer can divulge the list. Just as a bank teller can divulge bank account holders details, just as a legal secretary can divulge client’s case details. All possible, all illegal, all very viable and exactly what the hard-liners want to see…
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That would be the justification, if you wish to consider the hypothisis, to take direct control of the list and filter management, encrypt all list entries, implement IP forensics, deep packet inspection technologies, massive traffic routing logging and some brand new and very intrusive laws about this whole subject… (all in place in many countries outside of China BTW, commercial and military etc…)
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Good initiative guys. There would be a centrally managed list on strong failover systems and massive redundancy, remote lookups from all GET requests, gov managed interception devices in all ISPs, ISP licensing and certifications (Oh yes, you will push them to that….), loads more compliance paperwork and regulations (Oh yes you will push them to that as well), audits, controls and regulation.
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Tis the season to (not perhaps) be recalcitrant…
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I understand the desire to be free of gov interference, but if we do not work with these guys in some fashion, they will withdraw the initiative to have the ISPs choose and manage the basic filtering (mandatory) technologies, and will legislate ISP compliance. Believe me guys, this is on it’s way if we do not work from the inside to help steer this thing to a happier ending. Many ISPs look far further into your traffic than can even imagine today. Deep packet inspection vendors are sprouting up all over the place, and governments that do not get a reasonable level of co-operation on legal controls of internet traffic will begin to implement this stuff as well. Hallo P2P controls…
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So enough people claim continually that the whole system will not work becuase of technologies such as P2P, anon proxies, encryption etc. Vendors across the globe clap their hands with glee, make some calls to the DBCDE and let them know that they have products and technologies that can fix just that…. Whammo, we have just, ourselves, caused the whole shebang to grow by a country mile. We call wolf and the gov sends in the anti-wolf squad, armed to the teeeth with brand spanking new filtering technologies.
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This is government guys, at some point they will simply throw more $$$$ at this and buy what they need to get it going.
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This is not some gov forum on “would you like to be filtered” that you are opposing today, this is a “it is coming, how would you like it” exercise… We can either do this ourselves in accordance with guidelines (currently proposed) or they will legislate.
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I also want minimum gov intrusion in my life, but fighting windmills is a fairly pointless battle. And yes, I do work with organisations that can make the list so secure that if they lost the key they could not retrieve it themselves… That means that no ISP staffer would ever be tempted to indulge in the criminal act of exposing it, as they would never see it. (I know, hard words, but that is how the police see that folks…) The same will eventually apply to DNS servers, etc. If we do not have a robust system that is able to comply with gov guidelines, they will legislate certification and audits, and I do not want to see that happen as much as you do not…
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Mike the Participant
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| Disclosure: I am currently contracted to a vendor of ISP-filtering solutions whose products are being evaluated as part of the
| current ACMA trials.
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December 28th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Word.
December 28th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Jon Can I please hit Mike over the head?
I dont want my Internet filtered by anyone esspecially not by you
What you do is illegal you just dont understand that
@3
If your talking about OpenDNS, sure they can but then they would called an ISP or ClosedDNS
December 28th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
@mike the participant
go asphyxiate yourself with a wired mouse while beating off to f**king with peoples internet services. People who do jobs like this willingly deserve to be paraded through the streets like some kind of national threat. If your in the middle of a corrupt debate do the right thing and blow the whistle. This is not a pointless battle its a fight for every child now and in the future to have the freedom of access to the wealth of knowledge that has been amassed since the internets conception. You step in the way of my childs education or right to freedom of speech your definitely going to hear from me.
I dont live in Australia. If I did I would be rioting over this.
December 28th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
We have no documented “Freedom of speach” rights here, actually we really have very little documented “rights” whatsoever! most of the “rights” we believe we have are in fact assumed… We actually believe we have these “rights” because we watch so many US TV shows…… Just something to think about.