UPDATE: This post was followed up by another post summarising core points from these comments: http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/21/further-thoughts-on-the-filter/ and then by
Q and A from my thoughts on the internet filter and the specific ammendments the Senator is proposing to the Labor Caucus to modify the policy are on the My thoughts on the Safer Internet Group statement blog post.
First, a bit of history: Whilst the call for a mandatory filter had originally come from some Christian and parent groups, the idea attracted cross factional attention in the ALP when Clive Hamilton from the Australia Insititute brought a broad left view into the debate calling for a mandatory filter, not to mention declaring that it was indeed feasible prior to the 2004 election campaign. This had an impact within the party. Very soon after the 2004 election I was moved out of the IT shadow portfolio by Mark Latham, and federal Labor adopted a policy of filtering, provided it was cost effective and technically feasible.
When the Rudd Labor opposition reaffirmed the policy on a mandatory internet filter prior to the 2007 federal election, it was largely a conceptual policy that sought to protect people who felt vulnerable and exposed to unwanted online content, that in other mediums had some form of censorship applied. The details still had to be developed. It was also contingent on an ISP filter actually being effective and workable.
At the time, I took comfort in the seemingly well-established ‘fact’ that such a filter was not technically feasible and that any reasonable test would establish this ‘fact’ yet again. Certainly at the time of the former Howard Government’s notorious Online Services Bill in 1998, studies showed that such filters were neither cost effective nor technically feasible.
This view of technical non-feasiblility was echoed strongly around the industry in 2007 and since, so the Minister did what a sensible Minister would do pursuant to the policy on the books: test the technology and the industry’s claims along with it.
In the meantime, the debate and discussion about the merits or otherwise of mandatory censorship per se being applied to the internet manifested itself instead in discussion and debate about just what was proposed to be filtered.
To Minister Conroy’s credit, he tackled the issue of defining exactly what was proposed as being filtered: the content that could not be regulated here because it was not on a server in Australia, and was incabable of being classified within our system of classification, hence refused classification, or ‘RC’.
His announcement that it was RC material that was to be subject to the filter was helpful and resolved some concern about the lack of detail of what was to be censored and fuelled conspiracy theories about the loss of freedoms. Material that is deemed RC by a properly skilled entity such as the classification board affords more confidence than the previous methodology, which had given rise to much of the concern about unjustified, unfair or plain wrong blacklisting of web sites based on complaints because there was no transparent system or method of picking the sites.
With the issue of ‘what’ being resolved, the ‘how’ still remained to be resolved by a series of ‘tests’ conducted by industry. For all intents and purposes (and I am aware of the debate about the technical detail and scope) the testers have said that the tests were successful (media release and report).
Did I expect this? Frankly, no. Was Clive Hamilton right? Probably not at the time he said it. But again, for all intents and purposes, the Minister had abided by his commitment to ensure the policy was grounded in evidence that it did what it said it did. The industry’s original claims that the filters were not feasible were proved false.
What Minister Conroy has never said is that the filter will guarantee people will never be exposed to RC content. He can’t say that and he understands why. What he has said all along is that this is one tool in a tool kit of policies to make the internet safer.
This is where a lot of passionate opponents of the filter get very frustrated “well if it doesn’t work 100%, why do it?” The answer is because the Rudd Labor Government is convinced it will encourage concerned people that the internet will be a safer place for themselves and/or their children.
However, people with a deep abiding commitment to a truly open internet, the very idea of introducing a mandatory filter will always be an anathema, no matter the definitional limitations to what is being censored or how accountable/transparent that process is.
Unfortunately, the debate about whether reducing the risks of people being exposed to unwanted online content through mandatory filters outweighs the value people place on the concept of an open and unflitered internet was resolved by the Rudd government before the last election, when the policy was announced. So it is not surprising many people feel they have not had the opportunity to have this debate.
So where to next? With a policy announced and the tests done and the definition of what is to be filtered resolved there is little room to move. Given the principle of openess associated with the internet is for some, irreconcilable with mandatory filtering no matter how it is done, one approach may be to allow ISPs, if they chose, to offer adults an ‘opt out’. The problem with this however will be that many people are unlikely to be comfortable with an opt-out given the inevitable stigma that will be attached to “wanting” access to RC content. It may also lead to interest by the authorities, even though individuals may simply want to ensure they are not having legitimate content filtered.
In many respects this will be the practical effect as it is assumed that the filters will be circumvented, with the defiant justification being defending this principal of openess anyway. However by creating a legitimate mechanism, the strongly held diverse views within our population would be respected while still adhering to the Rudd Labor election commitment of providing a mandatory filter.
My past statements clearly outline my preferred approach of more effective parental education and support, including filters at the desktop and improving confident use of the intenet throughs skills development across a range of community, education and work-based strategies.
So my plan is to advocate within my party an approach which recognises the openess principle that underpins the Internet as I have argued for in the past. This discussion is rightly an internal one, and I have no doubt that the public will be expressing their view as they have already started to do. In this regard I urge constructive and sensible debate. Remember that Minister Conroy is implementing an election commitment determined by the whole Cabinet.
I want to thank people for the respect they have shown me on this issue too, given my previous advocacy and obvious discomfort with the current approach. I am also firm in my belief that this debate does not diminish the exciting work we are doing with the NBN, in Gov 2.0 and other areas of ICT policy. I will always be committed to realising our ICT-related social and economic potential.
Finally, I want to be very clear that ultimately, as a Senator in the Labor Government I will be bound by Labor Caucus’ position on the matter. I remain supportive of Minister Conroy and will work closely with him to reach the best possible outcome. I do believe that the intention of this policy remains noble – to protect our young and vulnerable. I am keenly aware that many mechanisms used by criminal networks will not be stopped through a filtering mechanism, and I believe the complementary strategies being put in place are good, such as increased funding for the AFP to tackle cybercrime and online safety education.
I will follow the online conversations closely as always and look forward to your feedback.
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Kate, it is not actually correct that Labor went to the 2007 election with a mandatory filtering policy – what was going to be “mandatory” was that ISPs had to offer filtering, not that every single Australian would be subject to it.
Labor really needs to listen to its own base on this issue, which is dead against this proposal.
Pia and Kate, please note people are attacking the policy stance of the Labour party and how it has fooled the average Australian who lets face it does not read a lot of a party policy papers. This is not a fault of the average Australian as they have mortgages to pay, children to raise etc. I believe the average Australian did not vote Kevin Rudd in but voted John Howard out due to the need for change. However the change that Labour is trying to introduce infringes on not just my freedom of self expression, but my education, work, research and as an uber geek my self identity which is connected to the internet.
My choice is to stand against the filter. As a person with a 9year educational history in Information Technology (systems administration, e-security, web deverlopment) I see it as my duty to be criticl of information technology policies where needed.
I have tried to word five questions below that i belive the Australian people need to know;
1.Stephen Conroy came out on radio and sated that he will be filtering individual urls, which means page by page. please confirm?
2.he has stated that the filter will impact speeds at 70th of the blink of an eye, however this will effect people on low speeds in the bush significantly has and will this be explained them?
3.he also stated that 10,000 is the limit that telstra said that the network could handle without major slow downs… if we are blocking per url then how in the hell are we not going to reach 10,000 within the first week? If we block per page url not domain then what this means is that if each website had 1000 pages each (very very easy for a porn site to do) we can only block 10 without effecting speeds, how will you address this matter?
4.What assurances will Kevin Rudd put in place to ensure that the filter does not reach 10,000 and effect speed defredation as pointed out in the Telstra filter trial?
5.Why does Conroy and Lundy keep on saying that Australia will be like other democracies who have a filter like Italy and Finland however you fail to mention to the public that those countries have an opt in filter not mandatory.
You know me, and you know my life and exsistence is technology, computers, the internet and people
Hence my deep concern on what is being proposed to occur in the country i live, work, study, research and wish to raise my family in. I guess you know me well enough to know that in my heart i am pleeding for an answer to the above five points. I truly can not belive what is being proposed, it makes my 8bit heart die inside :’(
During the last election campaign Labor said there would be an opt-out for the filter. What is being proposed now is NOT the same as what was promised at the election.
I do not believe that the true intention of this policy is noble, the “protect our children” mantra is a typical political smokescreen.
This is about government control of information plain and simple. K Rudd understands the power of the web, having used it to great effect to win power.
Once this technology is in place there is no doubt that subsequent governments will add more and more material to the filter for political purposes.
Whilst I respect that you cannot be seen to oppose the policy, I’m sure you know how flawed it is and I think Labor is underestimating Geeks’ ability to mobilise politically.
Hi James and Paul,
Please read the document that is linked for the policy that Labor ran on. I’ve added it here again for you http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf
It appears that has been the policy since before the 2007 election.
James, if you only see demons, you can’t engage meaningfully. Your concern is one that Kate deals with and is one many people (including myself) have legitimate concerns about for down the track, however I think it would be better to try to balance the actual concerns of both sides of this discussion, rather than assume one side is simply nefarious.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Kate Lundy
Pia, I’ve just read my copy of the report and it says:
That is why Labor will:
Provide a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children.
My computer is not used by children, Australian or otherwise, and is not public. Why will my connection be censored?
Dear Pia,
Thank you for linking to the Election 07 Fact Sheet, Labor’s Plan for Cyber-safety.
Can you please address a couple of points for me:
On page 2, the document states that Labour intends to:
“Provide a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children.”
OK So the word mandatory is in there, but it is also qualified with “for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children.” So the mandatory nature of the policy could well be interpreted applying only to those computers being made available to children. What of those of us who live in a child-free household?
On page 5, the document states:
“A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.”
The word “offers” is used in this case. What’s the first definition for the word “offers” on dictionary.com? Let’s see:
“to present for acceptance or rejection; proffer: He offered me a cigarette.”
Sounds pretty optional to me.
So while the term opt-out was never explicitly used, there is more than enough ambiguity and suggestion within your fact sheet to suggest to anyone reading it that this “clean feed” would be optional, at least within certain circumstances.
Can you comment please?
We are all waiting for your comeback Pia.
Pia
Thanks for replying. I have read the document, and read it at the time it was released along with other announcements and comments about what Labor’s pre-election policy was. Obviously there is a world of difference between a filter which is mandatory for all users, and a filter which it is mandatory for ISPs to offer. The document you link to makes it clear that for ordinary users there was going to be an opt-out, and that it was the latter proposition – that ISPs must OFFER the filter – that would be mandatory.
As such, there is a world of difference between the pre-election policy and the current proposal, even though the language used to describe each might be similar. I doubt many people oppose the notion of helping people control access to the net for kids, but Labor is apparently happy to use the tools of authoritarianism to achieve liberal democratic aims. I really hope that the discussion behind closed doors is more informed and sensible than the public statements of late.
Pia, thanks for your response.
Let me start by saying that I’m a huge admirer of your work, especially for the Linux community in Australia. It pleases me no end that the geek community of Australia has someone who really understands the issues working inside the system.
I am in the ICT industry, and a parent, and I must confess that I agree with James on one crucial point: It’s hard not to see the “protect our children” line as nothing more than a distraction. It’s simply not credible, and the government will have to do better than this and lay out an evidence-based, rational argument for why this is a) necessary, and b) the best option.
The credibility problem is severalfold:
First off, the “you’re with us or with the child pornographers” attitude so beloved by Senator Conroy over the last year gets old really quickly.
Most Australians know by now that most material that is presented for classification and refused is not pornography, child or adult. The cases that we all know about are art movies such as “Salo” and “Ken Park”, and video games that would be rated R18+ if the classification were available. This is in addition to material which was only given a classification on appeal (e.g. “Romance”), and movies which had to be re-edited for an Australian audience. This material is, at the moment, legal for adults to own and privately view in most places in Australia.
Most of the material that Senator Conroy wants you to think he’s talking about, such as child pornography, is not material that any well person seeks out (unless they’re engaging in legitimate research). Additionally, almost none of this material is available on the open web, so is beyond the reach of this type of filter.
Incidentally, the Bill Henson fiasco is still fresh in the minds of everyone I know. Don’t forget that it was the leader of the current government labelled an exhibition by one of our most internationally renowned artists as having no “artistic merit” (a phrase was lifted directly from the classification guidelines). It’s hard not to see this and the proposed mandatory filtering as being related.
Which brings me to my second point, which is that it’s hard not to see this as one generation trying to nanny another generation, or wowsers trying to nanny art aficionados. There is a sense, I think, that policies should be based on the best evidence and submitted for public debate. There has been no public debate on this issue, and it is perceived as a sign of weakness that the government has not taken a leadership role in creating one.
It’s instructive to compare this to the way that the issue of R18+ classifications for computer games is being handled. Senator Conroy and his Department deserve a lot of credit for taking a rational consultative approach.
My third point, and I think this is the key one for the geek community, is that we are all acutely aware of the problem of scope creep.
Petrol taxes were intended to pay for road maintenance, but are now channelled into general revenue. Police powers intended to combat terrorism tend to be used for non-terrorism-related criminal investigation. There is a sense that when you give the government a power for a limited purpose, that purpose will not remain limited for long. There are certainly enough examples from quite recent history that this fear is not completely ridiculous.
My fourth point is that there is a fear of government secrecy. There are no national security issues which apply here. There are no privacy issues which apply here. But still, the blacklist is secret, and to most Australians, this is an abomination.
One of the great strengths of Australia’s classification system is that everything (apart from purely internal matters) is done in the open. If the government were to create a separate, “shadow” database of OFLC rulings which was closed to public view, the Australian people would be understandably upset. But this is exactly what the proposed secret blacklist is.
One final point.
I am a parent, and I am acutely aware of the risks that children face in today’s world. I am essentially unconcerned about what is available on the Internet. We always monitor our childrens’ Internet use. I feel insulted that the government thinks that parents are incapable of parenting.
We can monitor web sites before our children visit them. What we can’t monitor is what our children will be exposed to by marketers and advertisers, on television, in supermarkets and so on. We can screen which web sites they visit, but we can’t screen supermarkets for junk food labelling, or music videos for body image issues. If the government is serious about the well-being of our children, we should be spending money and effort on that which parents can’t control, rather than things that they can, do and do well.
I’ve rambled enough, but I hope you get my semi-coherent points.
The reason you’re seeing a difference there is because Senator Conroy and his department have nothing whatsoever to do with the R18+ classification for computer games issue.
That’s being run by the Attorney General and the Home Affairs Minister.
It’s so, so hard to play the ball rather than the man when it’s obvious that the man is actually a large part of the problem.
– mark
You may be right on the games classification, but Senator Conroy himself is actually pretty clued-up when it comes to most of the high-level issues. Obviously, there will be some “agree to disagree” moments with anybody, but when you consider the NBN, the breakup of Telstra’s wholesale and retail arms, overseeing the move to digital television, continued funding for NICTA… These are things that are easy to get right, perhaps, but he still deserves credit for them.
This is the only decision that I’ve seen in his tenure which is completely, utterly and objectively wrong. If you have some other examples, I’d like to hear them.
Thank you for confirming my recollection that I did not vote for the manditory filtering of all internet.
I do recall voting for the requirement for an ISP to provide a clean feed and that all libraries, schools and houses with children would be required to use it…. of course, I don’t have children so I expect the party will honour the promise it made to me and NOT filter my internet.
The Government has said aprox 15 or so Western democracies have implemented the same filtering plan, but what they fail to mention is that the other countries have made the scheme voluntary for ISPs and the blacklisted content is limited to child pornography.
For example, Italy, Denmark, Finland have opt in not opt out or mandatory.
Pia, hiding behind the defence of it was written on our policy when labour did not sing about it at the election they sung about giving people faster speeds. This is what the Australian people are upset about they feel like Labour has fooled them.
On another note, Freedom fighter, Free speach if you were these things why did you join a party that wants to implment the largest ban and enforcement of Australians suppression of access to information. I have no problem with you supporting the party YOU advice. But please do not claim to be a freedom of speech advocate when you are working on an internet filter regime.
I remember you and Jeff had a very different stance on this issue at bar camp 2008, i am not sure why things changed so fast early last year, as a geek girl it is disapointing to see someone who i felt could make a difference toe the line
“Australia’s proposed regime would uniquely combine a mandatory framework and a much wider scope of content, the first of its kind in the democratic world,”
As a web researcher i will be writting a full document and report for the goverment as well as releasing it to the public to help show people from a technical position the effect this will have on our access to information and the speed of our networks. Pia you grew up in an Australia that had no filter, dont your children and future Australians deserve the right too??
Also Penny Sharpe has stated she will cross the floor, so why can’t Kate? All politicians can, they can in Liberal is there a submission here that party politics of Labour do not let you have freedom of choice it always must be the parties view, that is wrong. Australians voted for you and Kevin Rudd is in power because we voted for him. Why are you requesting us to be so ignorant and go ohh poor Kate she has to do what the man tells her? Not an excuse look into the history of Australian politics crossing the floor is a large part of what makes Australian demmocaracy work!
So there is no excuse only where you stand either for the blocking of information or against it, and when you come to a decision please change your status to information blocker not freedom figther.
Hi Aimee,
I’m hiding behind nothing and I resent your comments, especially given you know my track record. It is frustrating that people will generally assume the absolute worst and I want to make it clear, as I and Kate have through several comments, that all the feedback on this blog will help to build a case against the situation as it currently stands. This is the best possible contribution I can make to this issue, and although I have already and will no doubt continue to cop abuse, I will continue trying to do the right thing, as I always have. My actions have always been influenced by a strong commitment to openness, freedom and equality – and that has not changed.
Please consider there are many ways to skin a cat and if we all stand outside the walls yelling, who will be left inside to open the gates?
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Aimee,
One last thought, I think your research paper will be a great contribution, and we would really appreciate it if you could post a link here once it’s available.
Thanks,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Well, 334 comments compared to the usual 0-3 on Kate’s blog – that should give you some ammo, Pia!
For sure, thank you all very much! Please keep them coming!
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Pia,
I am sorry you see some comments by myself and others as a personal attack. At no time did i set out to do this you are an admirable person i would never say anything different and i know that you are there to make a difference and you do. I was trying to point out that stating it was policy before election as a blanket excuse for someone with your background i felt was out of character, only my oppinon not an attack. Once again very sorry. I have written a request for some information and posted above, i have tried to make it more direct and to the point as well as asking specific questions about the filter policy.
So you support censorship. Disgusting.
What little respect I had left for you has gone right out the window.
Hang your head in shame. This is a loser of a policy, completely indefensible, and you know it.
You have damaged your relationship with the online community; they will no longer be able to trust you.
While I appreciate your efforts and your honesty on this matter and others, I do take issue with your claim that you are “bound by Labor Caucus’ position on the matter”. You are not.
You were not elected to serve the Labor party, or Kevin Rudd, or the ACL, but the people of Australia and in particular the people of the Australian Capital Territory.
You choose to follow the position advanced by the Labor Caucus, and you might be correct to do so, but it is nonetheless a choice. Even if that choice means expulsion.
As I said, though, I appreciate your efforts and knowing that there are people like yourself working for us – even if much of that work has to be behind closed doors – makes me just a little less disillusioned with the current government.
The cop out of all cop outs.
The stated aim of this whole thing is to “protect the children”. Filtering out only “illegal” material does nothing to “protect the children” from perfectly-legal material that parents don’t want their kids seeing. It also blocks a bunch of perfectly-legitimate material that is perfectly legal to possess, just not to distribute — like the Poison Pill Handbook.
Very disappointed Ms Lundy.
Opt ‘IN’ not Opt ‘OUT’. Those who want this can make the choice instead of the other way round.
Opt in solutions already exist (Webshield, OpenDNS, NetAlert etc,) but there’s not all that much demand for them. Therefore it only makes sense that filtering should be forced upon every Australian.
My god. I hope you’re not in government – The forced filtering is exactly what it is – I don’t feel I should have anything forced upon me – this is one policy I disagree with at a most fundamental level – If I am doing no harm, then no harm should be done to me.
I was debating whether to post that or not because going on how absurd the policy is, someone was bound to take me seriously.
That said, this seems to be exactly the thought processes that was involved here. The NetAlert filter was axed (which in my opinion was in itself a completely irresponsible move) years before the government came up with a replacement solution. Now that this new mandatory filter is on the cards, it’s far less effective at protecting kids, and nobody’s even clear what the real motive or benefit behind it actually is (aside being a Christian vote grabber, but that can’t alone drive policy like this can it?)
The whole issue is contentious because the mandatory filter in its current state is going to do effectively nothing but drive up the cost of Internet, whereas to actually rid the Internet of “illegal” (and I use this word with a heavy sense of irony) content would cripple the Australian IT infrastructure as well.
I’m really hoping this policy gets shot down, but it’s just so depressing watching it play out in the mean time while reason flies out the window.
Cozman, I think you are missing the sarcasm. The point being made was that the lack of uptake of filters (in spite of the huge fuss about them during the Howard years) indicates that most Australian’s don’t want a filter solution.
I can understand that you’re in a difficult position here, and for the most part you have (wisely) chosen your words carefully. However, there’s one glaring issue, when you say:
“The industry’s original claims that the filters were not feasible were proved false.”
If you look at how the tests were conducted, they prove nothing of the kind. The proposed filter will clearly not achieve the desired goals of “protecting the children”, particularly when there are so many real, physical dangers facing them.
I appreciate your stance on this, but please, be careful not to lose site of the supposed higher goal.
Brilliant!
I wish I could articulate my concerns this well.
So the reason I can’t get traction with my @zittrain inspired opportunity cost of breaking the generative nature of open Internet is:
“Unfortunately, the debate about whether reducing the risks of people being exposed to unwanted online content through mandatory filters outweighs the value people place on the concept of an open and unflitered internet was resolved by the Rudd government before the last election”
Well at least I won’t die wondering.
Thanks
p.s. Perhaps you could buy yr senior colleagues a copy of “the future of the Internet (and how to stop it) for Christmas reading
Labor will lose a generation of voters over this misguided attempt to censor free access to information in this country. This is absolutely disgusting and I feel ashamed to be Australian. We are an international embarrassment.
This will not help one child and in will in fact cause more harm due to sweeping the issue under the carpet and directing money away from where it can help.
This is very true. I’ve always voted for the ALP and find almost everything the Liberal party stand for to be antithical to my own views. However, I and most of my gen-X/Y acquaintances find this issue to be important enough that if it is passed, we will vote Liberal.
So true. I can neither vote for labour or liberal anymore – their policies are draconian, medieval and closer to a socialist/communist order than a free thinking society. Little johnny sold us to the world and now Rudds killing small farmers across astralia (youtube Peter Spencer), while Conroy tries to choke the internet from getting free and fair internet – “protect the children” is a lie and a farce – if anyone believes this wonder line, then you deserve the government you’ve got. The writing is on the wall people – when will you stop being “The Sheeple”… sad times for Australia.
Very true. Last election was the first time I voted Labor (previously a Democrats voter.) Even though I loathe some of their policies, next election is looking like a Greens vote.
“as a Senator in the Labor Government I will be bound by Labor Caucus’ position on the matter.”
Which, of course, is just another form of censorship. No independent thinking allowed. Another vote lost here, Kate.
She has the ability to cross the floor when it comes to a vote. Your credibility is on the line Landy
Actually, the ALP doesn’t let MPs cross the floor, if they do they get disendorsed.
Indeed, and one cant risk being turfed off the gravy train over something as piffling as principle!
I applaud your critical thinking on this issue Kate, but even you seem confused by Conroy’s smokescreen on the purpose of the filter.
Is it?:
1) To protect Children from seeing Bad Things?
Hmmm no. This would best be achieved by an opt-in service that filtered out much more than RC content. There is a lot of perfectly legal content that I’m sure most parents would not want their children seeing.
2) To protect Good Adults from seeing Bad Things?
Hmmm no. The type of heinous content that Conroy insists is the only content being targeted is not easy to find. You have to go looking for it. And, if by some incredible coincidence, you did happen to stumble upon it, One would hope that an Adult would be sensible enough to simply navigate away again…
3) To prevent Bad Adults from seeing Bad Things?
Ahah. This almost makes sense – but wait, anyone who actually wants to see this stuff can circumvent the filter quite easily, or more to the point probably doesn’t get it from the web anyway, but rather other internet protocols. For this purpose the questions is not whether the filter can work 100%, but whether it can work AT ALL.
Given that the filter does not seem appropriate for ANY of it’s puported uses, the question of whether it technically filter out a list of urls sucessfully seems rather moot.
Perryn
Where in the policy does it say that the filter will be mandatory for all computer users? It talks about ISPs having to offer a clean feed, but I don’t see where it says that ISPs will forced to only offer a clean feed. Obviously for many people there is a huge difference between a filtered feed being available and they being forced to use it or to even being forced to opt-out rather than opt-in.
Hi Chris,
Look at the original policy from 2007 – http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf and search for “mandatory”.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Hi Pia,
The mandatory in that document seems to refer to the ISP’s having to offer the service not that everyone would have to accept the clean feed. eg an opt-in service.
At the time if it was understood that the Labor was intending to filter everyones internet connection there would have been a lot more opposition to the proposal
Chris
It is mandatory Chris. During the election campaign it was said there would be an opt out clause. This is no longer the case. I can assure you. This is mandatory for all Australians.
Thanks for the clarification in community expectations from the time. It does help.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Pia, the community’s expectation in 2007 was that Labor’s proposed ‘clean feed’ was going to be mandatory only in terms of being a service provided by ISPs. Nowhere in the proposal is there language which says that users would be subject to mandatory filtering. I certainly would not have voted for Labor (which I did) had there been any such language. I strongly suggest that you and Senator Lundy read it again.
I can absolutely guarantee that if Labor tables the legislation as Senator Conroy has drafted it that Labor will be in for a shellacking in the next election. This is a vote changer.
Thanks for that Brian. I think understanding the difference betweenn the policy and community expectations will be important in moving forward. Some people have commented on their reading of the policy, which is useful. It does mention in that document “a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children”, so there is some confusion.
Cheers,
Pia
Office for Senator Lundy
“a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children”,
Hi Pia,
If we are going to argue semantics, then what about a computer that is not “accessed by Australian children”?
Surely they are expressely excluded from the requirement for a mandatory ‘clean feed’?
Sorry, wasn’t trying to argue semantics. As many people say, the community expectation at the time was different and I’m trying to understand that gap. Trying to find reference materials.
Thanks for your comments, they’re all really useful.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
No worries Pia.
I’d also like to say that even though I don’t agree with the Senator’s current position (and still hope that it will change), I do appreciate that you are taking the time to be involved in the discussion.
I just hope that the Senator will actually read the responses and realise that those of us opposed to the filter are not a bunch of paedophiles upset that we won’t be able to share our child porn. Many of us are professionals, have families, and work in the IT arena. Our protests are not gut reaction “we don’t want it”, there are many very logical and reasoned arguments against the filter.
I’d be very interested to see a study into how many extra cyber crime fighting AFP staff could be supported with the funds currently tagged for the filter?
Cheers,
Andrew.
She will certainly be reading all of it
Thanks again for the comments and ideas.
Personally, I have great respect for Kate for making her statement. She is trying to express her own views about the issue, and is aware that her own views may diverge from the party view. This involves considerable risk of party backlash against her. To do so takes great courage, especially in such a public forum as this.
I would ask all of her detractors to keep this in mind. Instead of lambasting her for not coming out with all guns blazing, perhaps you could give her credit for saying as much as she has about an issue she is clearly passionate about – possibly as passionate as any of you.
One thing I notice is that the #nocleanfeed community are very quick to hit the button. Maybe we could all think a bit before we hit that button.
Good on you Kate – and Pia too.
If we really need to be congratulating Kate for saying, and committing to, as little as she did in this post, then the Australian Labor Party is an even bigger menace to democracy than we thought.
Maybe if people stopped “playing the game”, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.
This ongoing moralistic rubbish coming from the government is to freedom what the death of a thousand cuts is to the human body…
Mobs like the ACL will push for something, 100% solution. You compromise and manage to argue them down to 25%. Next time around, they ask for 100% again, and you manage to hold them to a 25% increase. Now you’re at 50%. Next time around, they argue for 100%, you lose another 25%…
That is why there should be no compromise on this. Offer subsidies so people can avail themselves of a filtered service if they wish, but no mandatory system ever. Even if it worked perfectly with no slowdown and would never block stuff that wasn’t on the blacklist, I wouldn’t trust it because the list is administered by people, and people are prone to corruption. Even if it’s a simple as silencing websites about something that isn’t popular with the current government (gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia etc), once we start introducing secret lists, it’s a short trip down the path to abusing them…
The appalling thing is that the government via Sen Conroy, have resorted to vilifying the public and a senator who have stood up to this…
http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/10/24/cheap-tricks-not-the-right-response-on-internet-filtering/
or that he has tried to use the power of his office to silence members of the public…
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/264974/appalled_opposition_hits_back_conroy_internet_censorship
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/23/1224351430987.html
How any member of the Senate/Parliament can stand by when such gross miscarriages and attacks are carried out is beyond comprehension… Particularly when the holders of the supposed ‘moral’ high ground are shown to be hypocrites…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/alp-leader-sorry-for-drunken-night/story-e6frf7l6-1111114215865
Yes, our glorious leader can pontificate about the dangers of alcohol to our society.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/and-baby-makes-five–the-senator-his-wife-and-the-surrogate-mothers/2006/11/06/1162661615860.html
And our censorship minister evades the law in his home state to get what he wants, rather than try to change the law for the better… The quote from that article that should seal this issue forever…
Conroy:”I appreciate the interest that this event may create but I trust people will respect our privacy”
Respect your privacy Sen Conroy? When you do not respect ours?
Side note: Yes, I know dragging Conroy surrogacy in to this is very poor form. So is the inference that not supporting the filter = supporting child porn.
Sen. Lundy, how can you sit by and watch these grotesque events continue?
I could only imagine what would happen if a politician bullied a member of the AMA for instance. The way this farce has been conducted by Stephen Conroy is nothing short of breathtakingly arrogant and ignorant on what exactly he is talking about. Its not the opponents of this censorship that are misinformed, its the minister.
Constantly miss using (deliberately or worse; incompetence) and interchanging words that mean different things under legislation ‘prohibited’ ‘unwanted’ ‘Refused Classification’ ‘illegal’. Every time he opens his mouth hes contradicted himself (either through incompetence or a blatant bald face lie).
Here are some chestnuts:
“Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will filter out content that is identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).”
http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf
“Senator Conroy- “…we are looking at two tiers – mandatory of illegal material and an option for families to get a clean feed service if they wish.”
Senator Conroy- “We would be enforcing the existing laws. If investigated material is found to be prohibited content then ACMA may order it to be taken down if it is hosted in Australia. They are the existing laws at the moment.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S11346.pdf
Senator Conroy: “Cleanfeed is broader than the prohibited sites. You can’t opt in or out of the prohibited material. The cleanfeed is something you can opt out…”
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=o4UGEWYf2bY
“The pilot [of ISP-level filtering/blocking] will specifically test filtering against the ACMA black list of prohibited internet content… While the ACMA black list is currently around 1,300 URLs, the pilot will test against this list as well as filtering for a range of URLs to around 10,000 so that the impacts on network performance of a larger black list can be examined.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/dailys/ds111108.pdf
“ISPs are invited to participate through two streams:
1. Filtering the ACMA blacklist of prohibited URLs; or
2. Filtering the ACMA blacklist, and also providing additional content filtering e.g. dynamic filtering of other unwanted internet content and non web based applications (such as peer-to-peer networks).
…
Successful applicants will need to install the ACMA blacklist on their filtering solution.”
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/89159/request-for-expression-of-interest.pdf
There just a few.
Then we are told:
“Senator Conroy— … In terms of the mandatory ISP filtering that we have been talking about, I would argue that there is a very strong case for blocking RC or “refuse classification” material that includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act. I understand that we are all engaged in significant public debate around the inclusion of other categories. This is a decision that has not yet been determined and it will be determined, as we have always said, following the live pilot trial to give us advice— [...interjection...] —about what is technically feasible. So, as we have said consistently, the RC illegal material under the classification act, not under other arguments that others have put forward, will be included. But no other decision has been made and it will be determined on the basis of the trial.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S11635.pdf
..”The full scope of what we filter won’t be determined until after the trials,” a spokesperson for the Senator told iTnews.
Assumptions that the Government intends to “filter the entire ACMA blacklist and extend its scope,” is a myth, the spokesperson said.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/99567,optus-remains-conroys-last-filtering-hope.aspx
“STEPHEN CONROY: But that is not what is being proposed. I mean we believe that there is a compelling argument to block refused classification. We’ve not suggested, and I repeat, it would go against the fundamental tenet of the Labor party to suggest you would block political content, which is the China line and the Saudi Arabia line. I couldn’t be more clear or simple or straightforward on that. … We’re looking at technology to see if technology can help replicate what happens in the real world. … and, again, Greg tried to just slide in, “Oh, look, it’s going to be a much broader list.” Refused classification. Material that you can’t view and distribute today is what I am talking about.”
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2521164.htm
Much of RC is …legal… to view.
“MARK NEWTON, ISP NETWORK ENGINEER: I can address that in a few ways. In order to be prohibited on the internet in Australia, in order to make it onto the ACMA Blacklist, content needs to be refused classification – which doesn’t just mean child pornography and bestiality… Or it can be X-18-plus,… Or it can be R-18-plus and not behind a restricted access system. …also the most recent addition which came into force in January this year – sorry – last year – prohibited content on the internet in Australia includes material which is MA-15-plus sold for profit and not behind restricted access systems…
…
JENNY BROCKIE: …But Stephen Conroy is that right that this net that you’re throwing out to gather in material is much broader…
STEPHEN CONROY: This is one of the great furphies that people have wanted to engage in to try and create a scare campaign about what we’re actually proposal. I on have only ever identified refused classification in terms of child porn, bestiality, rape, incest sites – those sorts of things. For adults who want to be able to watch the other material we’re not proposing to do that – we’ve never proposed to do that. …
…
STEPHEN CONROY: …I think – I repeat again – there’s been, unfortunately a lot of misinformation spread about what our intent actually is. I was more than happy to accept to come on the show to make sure that people understood – we are talking almost exclusively about refused classification. …”
Misinformation indeed. Anyone interested can read -
http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan-timeline.html
Andrew,
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that, Kate seems to be the only Labor Senator with a basic understanding of I.T without hearing it second hand from an I.T nerd who is paid by Stephen Conroy to tell him what he wants to hear.
If anything I hope debate here will make Kate and the Labor party realise that by following this course of action through will be slippery slide down the 1 term government slope. Seriously Kate, this issue WILL be an election issue. It’s not up there with ETS or NBN at this stage because of the way Labor have played it out of the mainstream media (not juicy enough and too hard to understand for the general public) however once this gets the media spotlight consistantly as it has over the next few days, then people will gain understanding of what is being proposed.
Avoid having the Liberal’s use an anti-filter campaign at the election (a campaign which will be backed by a vast majority of Australians will back as evidenced by every poll on any online news site). Make it opt out like the original policy stated and everyone can pack up their bags and go home. Then we can focus and spend money on policies that will actually achive something good.
Shame though isn’t Andrew that her staffer is trying to assert that the mandatory filter policy was pre election when it wasn’t right?
I suggest Kate should cross the floor on this issue, if the ALP are petty enough to expel someone over this they’re not worth representing.
How you could support Conroy when he has alinged himself with that nutter Jim Wallace of The Australian Christan Lobby is beyond me?
*Apologies if this is a double up as my post seem to work before.
AndrewS,
Senator Lundy has always had my support for her efforts on this and other IT related matters until I read the following sentence in the second to last paragraph of her blog post:
“Finally, I want to be very clear that ultimately, as a Senator in the Labor Government I will be bound by Labor Caucus’ position on the matter.”
I realised at that point the Senator is just like most other “politicians” and is prepared to let poor policy become bad law in order to keep pre-selection.
I hope she reconsiders her position.
With all due respect Pia, the policy Labor went to the last election with was released five days before the election that was being fought primarily on industrial relations issues, along with climate change and social justice for indigenous Australians.
The phrase “cobbled together at the last minute to appease wacko-fringe swing voters” comes to mind when describing that policy document. It wasn’t a major part of the Labor campaign and a lot of people who voted Labor to kill WorkChoices, cut carbon emissions and say “Sorry” feel cheated that Conroy is slipping this offensive policy in under the wire.
You can find the references you’re after at http://libertus.net/
Pia – you may find this helpful. For example, the ABC reported Conroy as follows on 31 December 2007 (after the election): “Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.”
“Mandatory ISP Filtering
A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.”
Pia…
I take this as they are saying its mandatory that the ISP’s provide a facility that offers clean feed. It does not state it is a mandatory clean feed to ALL.
If that (the linked document) is a word for word policy statement then your government is wrong as it does not state or imply imposing it on all citizens without choice.
Senator Conroy does not have a mandate to impose this.
If he was to take it to a poll as say the republic issue he would loose hands down.
The biggest flaw in all this apart from the affects to all users of the net both in cost and speed is that the people it supposedly intends to protect will become even more vulnerable than without it.
It will set up a false sense of security.
The best solution is the old localised firewall and parents supervision.
I hope that clears up any confusion.
Hi Pia,
First off, thanks for being such a good sport about this, it’s very commendable.
Now to the business end of this comment: What is happening here isn’t just a ‘gap’ in community expectation. It is a dishonest act, a broken election promise.
Promise keeping is considered by some philosophers to be a fundamental part of ethical behaviour. The flip side is that breaking a promise is always wrong, unless there is good reason for doing so.
Senator Conroy said one thing and now plans to do another. He broke a promise to the electorate. Nothing that has come to light so far strikes me as being in the category of ‘good reasons’. Worse still, the shift from it being mandatory to provide the option of a filtered service to it being mandatory to provide only a filtered service seems very much like a deliberate attempt to manipulate the structure of choices offered to voters.
Pia, there is no confusion on the mandatory component by us public. Senator Conroy made that very clear:
Conroy himself backed that up by telling the ABC that adults who didn’t agree with the policy could opt-out.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.html
The confusion is on your end. I remember debating before the election that the filtering should be opt-in, not opt-out. This policy is much worse!
Mark M, that ABC site you linked to is now showing “Page Not Found”. Is the ABC destroying evidence?
Hi Kate, Pia.
I’d just like to add a voice to those pointing out that the community expectation around this policy was for an opt out filter:
“A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.”
I don’t interpret this as “mandatory”, and from a quick ask around of my family and friends, I’ve not had a single taker so far to interpret it as mandatory. I’d suggest from the poll results I’ve seen in every different type of media, it’s reasonable to conclude that the majority of Australians also feel the same.
I also have serious concerns about the way the debate on this policy is being hampered by the policy being released only a few days before the election, and the results of the study being both poor quality and again released at a time to minimise exposure.
If the Government is serious about this policy, let it stand on it’s merits. It’s quite clear that currently debate on it is being stifled and misdirected by playing the “think of the children” line, which I think there is ample examples throughout the comments showing that realistically, all this is doing is giving uninformed users a warm feeling of safety whilst doing nothing to address the problem.
As mentioned above, I think most people got the impression ISP’s would be asked to provide a clean feed, not to make it mandatory.
Opt out was definitely mentioned and it was never mentioned that businesses would be subject to it.
Pia said – [ It does mention in that document “a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children”, so there is some confusion.]
Where is the confusion?? “used by Australian children”
Its not as if that could possibly be interpreted to mean “every single computer in the country whether children have access to them or not.”
The word “mandatory” is used twice in the entire Labor Plans document, the first instance has been mentioned a few times already .. Here is the second mention.
“Labor’s ISP policy will prevent Australian children from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by ACMA, including sites such as those containing child pornography
and X-rated material.”
Again, referencing children.
The smoke and mirrors on this whole policy is something the Labor party should be ashamed of.
Pia, I agree with Brian.
My expectation is that Labor would deliver on their promise, which was an optional clean feed.
I voted Labor for the first time in my life at the last federal election. I will not vote Labor again if this filter goes ahead.
Pia I would like to refer you to an ABC news article published Mon Dec 31, 2007 which includes the following quote as further evidence that the filter was pitched to the Australian public as being optional:
“Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.”
I await your reply.
Dear Pia,
Please clarify if I am incorrect, but your response could be interpreted as seeming to suggest that your view is the community reached some erroneous expectation about the government’s policy or interpreted the policy that was floated before the last election incorrectly, but that they did this on their own accord, via no fault of the message the government was pushing at the time, because the government’s stance on the policy has been consistent throughout?
You do not address the wording present in the Election 07 fact sheet you yourself linked us all to, that to any reasonable analysis refers to an optional “clean feed.” A number of people have also brought up an ABC article where the government states that the “clean feed” would be optional.[1]
At least you could acknowledge that the government has not been consistent in communicating its policy, rather than appearing to put the responsibility onto the community for their misunderstanding of the governments mixed signals.
[1] http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/17/my-thoughts-on-the-filter/#comment-12579
Not to mention the expectations of sitting members – I had a bit of back and forth on the matter with Anna Bourke when the policy was released and she was convinced at the time the filter would be mandatory but opt-out. I can’t find the conversation, but when I do I’ll email it your office.
There was no mention of a “Mandatory Feed” during the televised political spin of Labor. Matter of fact, it was actually mentioned by Conroy as being an “Opt out” filter. This not only contradicts the paper you linked to, but also brings forth an amazingly large lie on the part of Stephen Conroy to bolster support for Labor votes!
Proof can be read in these articles!
August 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/08/10/1186530595566.html?page=2
Labor’s proposal is far more radical and would require ISPs to filter all internet connections.
“We have an opt-out provision, so for X-rated [content] they can opt out, but for child porn and violent sites, they’re completely blocked, there’s no opt-out,” Senator Conroy said.”
December 2007
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/31/oz_net_filter_plan/
“Under the latest variant of the filtering plan, Australian ISPs would have to provide a “clean feed” option for schools and homes. Individual users would be able to opt-out of the service and receive unfiltered content.”
January 2008 and someone at the Courier Mail has gazed into a crystal ball and seen the future!
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22990520-27197,00.html
“And here’s the really important question: just how long before “opt out” becomes “no option”? It’s only a small step from where we are heading.”
Move ahead to October 2008 and Conroy starts waving the “Hammer & Sickle” Flag
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/technology/family-first-sparks-net-filter-fears/2008/10/27/1224955922160.html?page=fullpage
“Despite his earlier promises that Australians would be able to opt out of any internet filters, Senator Conroy said the first tier would be compulsory for all Australians and would block all “illegal material”, as determined in part by a blacklist administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).”
Ahh, the wonders of the internet. Better enjoy freedom of speech while it lasts!
All i can say is that im disgusted to be an Australian with Kevin Rudd leading this country.
Labor can use all the excuses in the world it wants to justify censorship but nothing justifies taking away freedoms that so many men and women have died to uphold in the past. This is our country Labor, not yours. You work for us, not yourselfs or the interest of some religious whacked lobby group. If anyone in Labor actually has the belief in their party now would be the time to stand up and oppose this.
I really hope you’s that support labor feel ashamed to call yourselfs Australian.
One more vote lost here for your support of this non-sensical filter.
Very disappointing.
Thanks for a thoughtful, as always, post.
A couple of points where I would disagree:
Firstly, as someone who argued strongly that the initially proposed filter was “unworkable”, it surprises me not at all that a blacklist filter of a few thousand URLS – vastly different to the implied content-based filters – is technically feasible. (Particularly when tested on a relatively small sample set).
Secondly, is this statement: “This is where a lot of passionate opponents of the filter get very frustrated `well if it doesn’t work 100%, why do it?’ The answer is because the Rudd Labor Government is convinced it will encourage concerned people that the internet will be a safer place for themselves and/or their children..”
It’s not that it doesn’t work 100%. It’s that it doesn’t work 30%, or even 20%. This will, I would argue, have a negligible effect on the experience of children on the internet. It will, of course “encourage concerned people” because most concerned parents do not understand how limited the filter is. Encouraging an impression that this will help “protect” children actually disempowers parents – it is tantamount to lying to them about the safety of their children, which is downright immoral. Many parents are understandably anxious about their children’s confident wanderings through an online space they themselves navigate very gingerly, if at all. Their sense of powerlessness to protect their children in unfamiliar territory is unquestionably something the filters’ opponents have dismissed too easily, particularly in understanding its potency as a political force. You quite rightly identify that community education; some hands-on training courses for parents in online communication; as well more general parenting help (a desktop filter can be helpful here, as part of an educated framework about what it does, and does not, achieve) is the way to tackle this, and could use some more funding and support. But this filter hampers those efforts, it doesn’t support them. Because it offers this image of a “magic bullet”, that reduces anxiety without changing the problem at all.
Of course, I think lots of critics (and I get the sense you above) think this anxiety is mostly misplaced, and so it doesn’t matter if you offer a false sense of comfort, because the cause of discomfort was non-existent anyway. Certainly, the chances of most kids being bombarded with child porn aren’t great. But an approach that breeds ignorance will always bite you in the bum at some point.
I could point out also, that actually barely over half of the blocked material was RC. So there does remain an issue with the non-transparency of what adults are being denied access to.
directed at Alison – I’m sorry but it is not the fact that the filter is not 100% successful that makes the hair stand up on the oppositions neck but rather the way that the government intends to damage free speech and further hide what it calls an issue rather than educate.
Furthermore it is sickening that people like yourself put a success value on it rather than questioning the validity of its implication.
sorry alison plse discard my previous reply. i reread your post and realized that i had misread it.
Senator,
The simple point of the matter is that it is the work of a moment for a site owner to simply alter the URL being blocked.
For example, if it was deemed that the content on http://example.com/ was refused classification. Then the site owner of example.com could simply require HTTPS (Secure HTTP), and thus change the URL to: https://example.com/ There is also very little (if any) actual cost involved in switching this on for a site.
It requires no effort on the part of a user, and a user generally is not aware that this is actually occurring. These are the same sorts of users that the filter proposes to protect against inadvertant viewing of inappropriate content.
The filters tested and proposed cannot block sites that are secured by HTTPS – it’s the same technology that protects you when using Internet Banking, or making other online purchases.
All a mandatory filter will do, then, is waste taxpayer money better spent on policing.
Plus, ofcourse, that ‘insignificant’ impact upon performance. We can see what happens when the filtering system is required to filter specific pages from highly trafficked sites.
Just look at what happened in the UK when they (inadvertantly!) tried to filter a page on Wikipedia: http://apcmag.com/internet_filter_stuffup_cuts_off_wikipedia.htm
So it’s about protecting the children, is it?
Someone want to tell me how a mandatory filter of websites is going to protect a child from being bullied by a classmate via instant messaging? Or how it’s going to protect a child from being stalked on Facebook?
Amazing to watch a political party sabotaging its relationship with two entire generations of voters.
Yeah, it’s weird. Senator Conroy is actually wedging *his own party*! For what?
Thanks Sen.Lundy for these well balanced thoughts. It is indeed a difficult position to be in, and it’s great to see you expressing your own opinion together with those of the party and government you’re a part of.
We also appear to be in sync about circumvention; although I believe that not only adults would choose to bypass (out of principle, mainly), but in fact any computer-literate child will be capable of this as well. My four year old daughter is already pretty savvy on her EeePC, in a few years changing some DNS settings or even rigging up other tools will not phase her – and I have to say she figures things out herself through exploration, not my guidance. I just keep an eye on things, and I’m continually amazed and how fast kids pick up and truly grasp the concepts that we learnt about only later in life.
With regard to the “declaration of successful outcome” of the trials, my chief concern is this. The report indicates “filtering of innocuous content” of 3.3%. May we translate this to plain language, and call it false positives, i.e. legitimate sites becoming inaccessible because of the filtering.
In spam filtering of email, false positives are the worst; successful catching of spam needs to be above 98%, but it’s a key objective to not incorrectly flag any legitimate email. The reason is obvious, a company does not want to run the risk of losing any client email! In the case of spam though, there are usually quarantine measures in place and thus someone at the company can review the spam basket; nevertheless, a false positive percentage of 3.3% would be regarded as completely unacceptable in this realm.
Taking the analogy to AusPost, we would not find it acceptable to have 3.3% of all envelopes/packages disappear.
Imagine 3.3% of innocuous films and books getting RC and thus not be available in Australia, the public and political outcry (not to mention international outrage) would be immense.
Yet the trial of the Internet filter is still regarded as successful with this high percentage of false positives…. for some reason, www resources are not regarded on the same level as these other media/resources? That I find very troubling.
In the case of the filter, there is no quarantine or public overview of what has been blocked (I appreciate the reasons for this but don’t like it any better), the filter just is and does its thing. And that makes it even more problematic than the above examples, as identification, verification and discussion of possible incorrect classification will be extremely hard, and in some cases legally impossible as the discussion would have to involve noting the URL and if I understand correctly that in itself would be illegal.
This the filter legislation will define taboos, and the discussion of the taboos are taboo also.
“Our pilot, and the experience of ISPs in many western democracies, shows that ISP level-filtering of a defined list of URLs can be delivered with 100 percent accuracy.”
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/162958,government-ignores-enex-warning-on-over-blocking.aspx
“”For those families that wish to have a wider range of material filtered, including possibly X18+ and gambling sites, the Government will establish a grants program to encourage ISPs to offer these services on a commercial and optional basis,” he said.”
So he rather give parents no education on use of home filters or self education.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/162975,filter-pilot-did-not-test-high-speed-internet.aspx
“Enex TestLab did not test ISP-level filtering products on internet connection speeds greater than 8 Mbps, raising questions of possible degradation at ADSL2+ and fibre speeds.”
“Further, none of the nine ISPs who piloted filtering technologies could provide an environment to test Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), an addressing scheme the internet industry expects will be necessary in the coming years as IPv4 addresses run out.”
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/163020,australias-net-filter-makes-world-headlines.aspx
“In the United States, Fox News ran with the headline: “Joining China and Iran, Australia to filter internet.”"
“The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the The New York Times ran with a moderated version of an Associated Press story which stated that the Australian Government was introducing a filter “despite concerns it will curtail freedoms and won’t completely work.”"
“Agence France Press described the Government’s scheme as a “mandatory China-style plan to filter the Internet” that the Government will pursue “despite widespread criticism that it will strangle free speech and is doomed to fail.”"
“BBC News and USA Today played the same story with a straighter bat, the former simply reporting that Australia “intends to introduce filters which will ban access to websites containing criminal content” and the latter running with the headline, “Australia to introduce mandatory internet filter.”"
I suggest Kate Lundy who I thought to be respected (and now I don’t) for lining her self up with religious nuts (who are really behind this filtering nonsense).
To fight this stupid scheme.
I for one do not support this scheme at all, plenty of solutions already available.
Policy = EPIC FAIL
The very people that voted for Kevin Rudd due to him being more hip and chic then John Howard (i.e. appearing on Rove, using Twitter etc…) are also the very people that will also be against this policy. In one fell swoop, people labour will loose a large number of the internet connected voters.
Thoughts for the public to consider
1) Any tunnelling traffic mechanism will bypass this protection
2) Sites like YouTube cannot be controlled as they have too much traffic and each video would need to be separately controlled.
3) The telcos have all said that their is a FINITE amount of URLs that can be blocked before the filters start to slow down your access speeds.
4) Australia already has some of the highest costing broadband (and slowest too – hence the need for the NBN) in the world, and the costs of the filtering will be passed on to the user base
5) The test was based on current internet speeds, not the NBN speeds. As networks get faster, routers get more expensive to just SWITCH packets, not actually check them and drop them…
6) How much Carbon Footprint will the extra hardware impose on the Australian CO2 emissions? The hardware required will need electricity.
7) This opens up a very difficult area for the courts. Currently Australia lacks an R18+ classification for computer games (unlike the movies). Anything that cannot be classified as MA15+ MUST be Refused Classification and is therefore on the list. It also gives the defence of “I did not bypass the filters, but they allowed me to download it. It is therefore not my fault that I download illegal child porn – the government failed to protect me”.
Australia is fast becoming a nanny state. Children of the age of 16 went to two world wars, yet Kevin and Co believe adults cannot supervise their children or make informed decisions.
I have allways thought you where the bright light in the ALP on technical matters. However I do note that you took comfort in the thought that filtering was impossable.
I have to say I agreed with you then. Our complacency in wallowing in facts and technology ment we where sidelined by political reality of pandering for votes in the “Family Values” electorate.
Warning: my blog HFUA uses fruty language as I write in the voice of a “Chopper Reid” character, but I do agree you need to keep causcus solidarity. You just need to sway caucus to go with the side of angels and not for the Feilding pandering to the scared parents.
The Australian Christian Lobby is calling for the scope of the censorship to be expanded to include X18 + and R18+ material. Is the ALP strong enough to resist the temptation to give in to them?
Even if it is, given that the classification rules for what is ‘RC’ are pretty broad, so broad that they include a great deal of material that is not actually illegal to possess, there is definite potential for legitimate freedoms to be curtailed. Any material that promotes or gives instruction in illegal activity is potentially RC. That includes plenty of very nasty activities. But it also includes advocating civil disobedience or euthanasia or maybe even polygamy. Are we to suppress these?
This is a ridiculous and dangerous plan. The only way to ensure the transparency needed to avoid abuses of power is through Senate oversight – or independent review, so long as it is on the public record and open to public submissions. But this would turn a slow process into a virtually motionless one. And in the face of a medium where millions of new pages are generated every day, this is utterly absurd.
As the author of a technical book on web programming, I can assure you that what will happen here is that the filter will be trivial to circumvent. People’s understanding of the way to bypass it and other internet access controls will be improved by the very act of implementing the filter. Finally substantial resources that have already been wasted on the trial, and ongoing resources to maintain the filter are being diverted from useful activities, most notably education of end users.
So I can only conclude that the proposed legislation will be worse than useless, and is a waste of taxpayer funds. This should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of technical literacy.
Disappointing Kate, very disappointing.
Your acknowledging you support a waste of millions of dollars in taxpayer money because you will tow the line with whatever the party decides. How very undemocratic and a show of the lack of freedoms we have. You were elected to represent your electorate. Well conduct a poll on the issue, if less than 85% are against Internet Censorship then I’d be surprised.
The question you need to ask yourself is this. Is this really for the children? Conroy says it is. That being the case make it OPTIONAL for people who chose to use the system. This will never happen, you know why? Because Conroy knows that 148 million dollars wil be spent on a service that will be taken up by about 1% or less of the population and when those figures get published under FOI requests that will be very embarrasing for your government indeed.
In a nutshell Kate this is not about protecting the children. This was never going to do that. Mr Conroy is now responsible for – through misinformation about what this filter will do – making parents even more complacent with supervising their children. He has just made them even more vulnerable because parents now think that everything is red roses and cute little rabbits on the Internet. Well done.
And to finish – how dare the government suggest to me that I cannot parent effectively enough without government intervention – as useless as this intervention will be.
Show some individual thought Kate – like Penny Sharpe. There is a person my hat goes off to and who I now have nothing but the upmost respect for.
Clive Hamilton writing/influencing Labor policy? Scary.
Nice words, Senator, but this is pandering of the worst sort and reading between the lines, I think you know it. The filter won’t work, it will slow down connections, it is censorhip, and it flies in the face of your governments other commitments on our broadband future such NBN.
What’s more, Senator Conroy from the outset sought to label anyone who disagreed with this move as somehow in favour of child porn, perhaps the most offensive statement ever made by a member of a government. His insults speak eloquently of the lack of real argument to support this draconian response.
Hate to say it, but shame on all of you.
I’m 25 and been spending alot of time on the internet since i was 14.
I do agree that for young users with a basic knowledge of the internet that the filtering will reduce the risk of them viewing certain materials, but anyone who knows a child who has grown up with computers knows that most children around the age of 15 will easily be able to bypass these measures, rendering the filter pointless.
An op-out option is in my opinion stupid, many legit websites from overseas(such as forums and such) are not rated by their local governments and therefore would not be able to be accessed.
I fully support setting up the filtering in the ISP’s as long as it becomes an opt-in option that parents can call up and have it activated on their account, this will keep computer ignorant parents happy and should satisfy most of the religious groups that support the filtering.
A lot of people have been concerned that an opt-in option may not be effective because parents may not know about it or know who to call, this can be solved simply by sending a letter to the household advising them what to do. And to the obvious argument of cost and environmental impact that mailing out all those letters would cause, tell that to centerlink who mail you out 3 peices of paper every fortnight to tell you that you have been paid, this is alot of paper use from a government body that was taking steps to developing a paperless system.
If the filter will be circumvented by anyone with the ability and the will do do so, then what on earth is the point of making it compulsory? This is going to cost Labor an extraordinary amount of goodwill, even amongst the families that they are trying to ‘protect’.
There are plenty of options for parents wishing to censor the internet for the children and themselves, including the one that none of the filter proponents seem to want to discuss – that of actually supervising children. This has the added advantage of protecting children against harmful situations in instant messaging and chat applications as well as social networking sites like twitter, myspace and facebook – something that the internet filter will do absolutely nothing about.
As far as I can see, the filter does precisely one thing – it convinces those who don’t know any better, or who choose to believe the rhetoric coming from the filter supporters, that ‘something’ is being done. It’s a crying shame that not only a lot of money has to be spent, but that the already backwards Australian internet system has to suffer (and yes, despite the spin put on the report it *will* suffer) in order for Labor to be ‘seen’ to be doing something.
Most of us know better, Ms Lundy, and not only are we not convinced, but we’re very very angry.
I have mixed feeling re Internet filtering. When I was at CSIRO, I prepared a report for the Government to indicate that ISP censorship could easily be circumvented – and it still can. I guess the point is that most kids will (hopefully) not be able to figure out the work-arounds too easily, and so hopefully most will be protected most of the time. The work-arounds will be promulgated on bulletin boards, of course, but then someone can hopefully block the work-around – and a chase-your-tail situation will invariably arise.
The other issue was whether filtering at the packet level, which is the most effective way of doing it, would slow down high traffic media services – video and voice. I would like to know the extent to which overall performance will be affected.
Let’s face it, there is a lot of vile stuff on the net. As a father of 2 eleven year olds, I am concerned about what they look at and listen to. Perhaps it’s my advancing years; perhaps it’s the reality of fatherhood coming to the fore. But I’m at the stage where I’m erring in favour of RC censorship…
I have a feeling my views may be contrary to most aficionados of this site…
Phil,
Your comments are valid and you should definitely have the opportunnity to filter out RC material if you choose.
However you should be able to see that what is good for you is not good for everone else.
At the very least this proposed filter should be optional, like the last one.
Now what was the take up rate of that one again….
*Finally, I want to be very clear that ultimately, as a Senator in the Labor Government I will be bound by Labor Caucus’ position on the matter.*
Democracy hard at work, eh?
If this issue isn’t important enough to justify crossing the floor I don’t know what is. Perhaps we need a constitutional bill of rights?
Sorry Phil – dropped that in the wrong window, meant for OP.
You outline the possible option of an ‘opt out’ system where those who do not want the filter (for whatever reason) do not have to suffer it and also list the disadvantages of this (stigma, fear etc). Why then should the filter not be made ‘opt in’ instead?
Doing so would still achieve all the governments stated goals, but does not come with any of the disadvantages. I also suspect it would go a long way to quieting the wall of opposition this proposal is currently facing.
Censorship = Child Abuse
Censorship/filter increases child abuse.
Why?
1) Parents will get a false sense of security and not look after their kids.
Predators will still have access to their kids… (no parents are watching like they would in real life)
Kids will still have access to porn…
Thus, put the PC in the family room people, its not hard!
2) Creates a wall between child abuse and the public allowing child abuse to go unnoticed and therefore cant report child abuse to police: the people that really solve these problems.
(It is the same as if you see a child being abducted in the middle of the street, you will cover my ears and look away instead of reporting it or your windows have been boarded up by the government while this is happening.)
Dear Senator Lundy,
As is pointed out by many in the IT industry, this was a fundamentally flawed trial. For you to say that the trials were successful is just not correct as (as least some of) these filters were never under an excessive load. Lets also take into account that the speeds tested did not exceed 8 megabits and I have 15 at my home. What about the NBN promising speeds of 100? What will happen then? It is the question of scale that has not been adequately addressed.
As has been reported, one of the participating ISPs was Nelson Bay Online which had 15 customers opt into the trial. This is hardly an accurate indication of what mandatory filtering will do. I could also setup a filter for 15 users and my graphs would look fantastic.
This aside, I also have plenty of other objections to this filter. One is that you will essentially drive people underground with this policy. Unless you are willing to block VPN technology it will always be defeated. The effect of doing so on traveling business people to this country would be enormous and I suspect that this will never happen. Even China don’t do this. VPN technology is also encrypted meaning you will have little chance of monitoring suspects that use it. At least with open internet, suspects can be watched.
This filter will also be easily bypassed by any 14 year old. You must know that. You can’t lock down the internet from the technically competent and I can assure you that most 14 years old kids are far more so than their parents. All you will do is lull parents into a false sense of security. This is dangerous.
I could go on forever but basically this is BAD policy on so many levels. I can’t believe your government is seriously going to attempt it.
Thanks,
Stuart
This is really dissapointing. I expected a little more moxie from you, Kate. Supporting the party over your own common sense and the will of the people that you represent- where’s the democratic value in that?
Hi kate, considering that there is a dwindling number of resources with respect to ICT skills, why would the government be interested in making the internet safe for the majority of the population, yet not provide alternative incentives for the reseller / channel community to be able to leverage on this massive revenue generation mechanism? If the Internet is filtered at ISP level, what happens to companies who already provide these services to their clients, in education, government and corporate streams of segmentation?
Additionally, where in our current laws is it written that I, as an individual of 38 years old, requires to be monitored and shaped by the Australian Government for the purposes of keeping me safe on the internet? I would have thought that this was a fundamental breach of the rights of an individual, and a big privacy issue. How will the internet be monitored? will the individuals actively be followed and protected by the government?
I understand that this is required at some levels to protect children, and other vulnerable members of our society, but in the case of Children, It is not your responsibility to ensure the safeguarding of the internet for kids, it is Mine, as their parent. If i am remiss in doing so, I should be held accountable. But there must be clarity regarding the people in charge of safeguarding kids. You cannot safeguard my children. I can.
The prior government talked about providing a netnanny type software package to each household for free. the implementation cost is far less than filtration at an ISP, and allows the individuals of legal age to make their own informed choices as to where they go and what they see.
One other thing to consider, if I accidentally log onto a suspect site, I exit it. will there be a trace tag that shows I went there, and what ramifications would there be if the authorities decide that it was a purposeful visit?
Too much like a nanny country. the ones you are trying to stop will find workarounds, the ones that have done nothing to deserve blocking will suffer.
I hope everyone understands that the kind of filtering Conroy is now proposing (after spending nearly a year trying to work out what to block and how to block it) is a basic URL filter.
That means the Wikipedia entry on child abuse can be blocked but a live streaming video of a real child being abused can’t be.
I usually vote Labor. I did in the last election. Next time around, I’ll be voting for whoever is opposed to the filter. There is no place for it in a free and democratic country.
This filter could stop un-intentional viewing of child porn, but I have to say that in all my years of surfing I have never seen any child porn, on the Internet or otherwise.
It’s widely acknowledged that even with ISP level filtering Anyone seeking child porn will still be able to find it. If anything, child porn outlets will be pushed further underground and be harder to track than ever.
So, what then is the effect of ISP level filtering? Well, as this system will be run by humans, there will naturally be mistakes. Sites will get misclassified, its virtually impossible to be right 100% of the time. So given the previous points, the only noticeable effect of mandatory ISP level filtering will be that legitimate Internet users, will get blocked from legitimate Internet sites. And these users will be the users who don’t know how to get around the filter.
In my opinion this filter is the wrong way to fight the battle, and is a slippery slope to places we don’t want to go. Minister Conroy is clear about the intentions for the filter today, but what will the next Government do, and the next? Monitoring of public surfing trends? Watching as we surf without a warrant? Blocking of material that denounces the Government?
Kate, please stick to your guns and push hard within the party to quash this policy and get support for the wholly more worthwhile process of educating Internet users.
I am truly disheartened to hear that you are supporting this crazy legislation.
As a father of two young children, I implore you to oppose this legislation, and instead:
1. Reinstate the provision of free net filtering software so that families with children can choose to filter out the net nasties locally.
2. Redirect the millions of dollars that are going to be wasted on a filter that can be bypassed by any 14 year old into funding an increased “anti-bad-stuff-on-the-web” police presence. I’d much rather know that the AFP are hunting down and prosecuting the vile and evil purveyors of child porn, rather than pointlessly trying to filter it (which won’t work anyway, because they all use P2P/HTTPS/IM to transfer their files).
Thanks,
Andrew.
Andrew, im guessing you used to write comics in the 60s either that or Bushs war on terror speech’s. perhaps next time you talk about vile evil doers being apprehended by the police you add a POW or even a KABLAM
This is wrong on so many levels. While I appreciate that you are in a difficult position I can only hope that you are doing all you can to fix this mess internally.
A quick example for just one of the wrong bits. The trial.
The ACMA list is somewhere over 1000 URLs. Much of that is rated below RC. A trial of modest scale on a small list was declared a success.
When is the phase two trial where Labor test a blacklist of several million URLs against a couple of million customers who aren’t permitted to opt out?
Is the ACB up to reviewing millions of URLs in a rapidly changing environment? Does the ACMA have enough staff to continually review millions of URLs to see when one of them might have dropped below RC?
While Conroy likes to point out some bits of RC he neglects to acknowledge things like the Peaceful Pill and fetish material. He claims RC content is not acceptable in any civil society. We have a real issue on our hands that will be a vote changer.
It’s surprising how rarely this issue of scalability has been brought up in the debate this last week. I would have thought it’d be the _most_ important thing to test.
Pushing the line that ISPs with already minimal load (both users and blocklist) were ‘negligibly’ affected in some of the tests is pure spin.
I just hate that mums and dads are thinking this is a wonderful idea, without thinking it through logically. This plan has absolutely zero to offer over already available opt-in, family-friendly browsers/isps/dns. Only bottlenecks, security/privacy questions and the potential for the restriction of freedoms.
That said, I’m all for making it easier/streamlined for parents to get information and/or their own individual protection. I’m sure any ISP would be happy to help out if asked.
“I am keenly aware that many mechanisms used by criminal networks will not be stopped through a filtering mechanism, and I believe the complementary strategies being put in place are good, such as increased funding for the AFP to tackle cybercrime and online safety education.”
Good to hear. Curious to know then just what value you see this censorship adding? Bonus points for justifying the cost. Don’t worry, it’s a rhetorical question.
We need some people in power who understand the Internet. If you know any who can stomach a life of politics, please urge them to get involved.
The past year of Internet news in Australia makes me want to move.
One good thing about this censorship going ahead is that eventually, even the slowest of the herd will realise it’s worthless misrepresented waste of money, and we can work on liberating ourselves from censorship (for the Nth time throughout history) and finish up with a big ol’ party!
Censored wins 1000 internets for the funniest post so far.
If we’re going to hold up the pre-election policy and say “we told you we were going to do this”, well then we should examine it. I quote:
“A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.”
Fantastic, but what part of “offer” a clean feed indicates that such a feed will be mandatory? Additionally, what about homes and spaces that are INaccessible to children?
The pre election policy document states that its aim is to “prevent Australian children from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by ACMA, including sites such as those containing child pornography and X-rated material.”
Fantastic, but I’m an Australian adult. What about the right of Australian adults to freedom of speech and association, and a free press?
@balkandishlex
Firstly thanks for taking the time to clarify your position in public and doing so in an open manner (enabling comments). This should be an example for other Members of Parliament/Senate.
—————————
If the intentions of Sen. Conroy are indeed noble as you say:
Why has all of this so-called ‘testing’ be done in secrecy ? Nobody (with any credibility) in the tech-community believes that this technology will achieve anything. ISP’s are being forced into this and all they will comment is that it will ‘not significantly impact’ speeds.
If these ‘tests’ show the feasibility of such a filter, why is the criteria for this not available for scrutiny by experts ? Feasible for what ?
We are all for child protection and cyber safety. But the way this is done smells much more like dirty backroom deals rather than noble intentions to achieve such an outcome.
And the wider implications of this are not being discussed at all there are no clear limits that this technology will be limited to the aims of ‘child protection and cyber safety’. Who will set and police this ? To most interested/informed observers this seems the first step to a Chinese style ‘we know what is good for our citizens’ police state under the pretense of ‘we just want to look after our kids’. Noble ? I don’t think so.
This will very much diminish other work on NBN & #bbfuture. This development is the exact opposite of what you have been trying to preach in these forums. Innovation and OPEN INTERNET.
First of all, it’s laughable that Clive Hamilton should be considered part of the “broad left”. He’s further Right, and has less trust in people, than Senators Joyce or Minchin.
Secondly, this plan is futile. There are plenty of guides on how to get around Internet censorship – such as the one at http://bit.ly/beatcensorship . These guides will be spread as far as possible by those who, like me, oppose government censorship of the Internet.
Thirdly, in the last 48 hours, the technical claims of the censorship trial have been shown to be laughable. The trial did nothing to test censorship of high-speed internet, and the more accurate the censorship got, the more Internet speeds slowed down. No doubt Senator Conroy will ignore these details in public, but the technically knowledgeable will make sure every policymaker knows he is being dishonest.
This censorship plan is a bad idea, and shows contempt for the Australian people. I hope it fails.
“The industry’s original claims that the filters were not feasible were proved false.”
Incorrect. Dynamic web filtering was not even tested.
This is a particularly sneaky aspect of the report, and the subsequent reporting.
To genuinely block all prohibited content would require dynamic real-time filtering, which would slow our internet down drastically. To block a static list was well known to be feasible prior to the testing – and they only tested blocking a static list. So the result was, of course, a foregone conclusion. The testing was charade, creating the appearance of objectivity and fact-finding.
What will happen after the static blocking of the pages on the list is introduced? It cannot effectively block the actual content, which will be continually moved to new sites. The same people who have pushed this idea will then push for dynamic filtering, which is fraught with technical, political and economic implications.
(“Static” means the filter blocks one particular web address with prohibited content on it; “dynamic” means that the filter actively seeks and blocks that content wherever it is on the web in real time.)
Thanks for that Pam, it is a really interesting point.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
This is where the secret “blacklist” is pretty scary. Conroy first went to the Australian Christian Lobby to show the results. The same people who are pushing for this filter to be increased. Why is the ALP pandering to fundamentalist nutjobs?
Good question why the ALP is pandering to nutjobs. The Victorian Branch of the ALP preferenced Fielding in 2004, that’s how he got elected. Now Fielding is being used as a smokescreen to justify introducing this legislation. Conroy really wants this, it is not a tactic. Is there some preference deal we haven’t been told about?
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/163063,commentary-why-we-dont-need-a-filter.aspx
Please stop lumping illegal material in with RC. They are two completely separate things. Read the above.
My main problem with all of this – the pure waste of money.
The test wasn’t a “success” – it was a shallow attempt. Telstra already acknowledged this in their report – circumvention was not tested. The trial also only tested web traffic on port 80. You can get so much more – one example – via usenet newsgroups. Look it up. Old school sure, but available via Google Groups. Will this be filtered? A child can easily go to Google Groups and see far more than I would allow a child of my own to view.
Speeds above 8mbits per second were not tested. The proposed NBN is 100mbits per second, never mind the fact that I already get 18mbits per second at home.
The filter is EXTREMELY easy to circumvent. It doesn’t require an IT degree (which I have incidentally, along with 20 years in the business) to get around it. Simply go to http://www.anonymizer.com and you will be able to circumvent. So it won’t stop people getting to RC material if they want to. I’m seeing a great use of millions of dollars so far. Top work. Other sites already wrap content. Go to Bing and search for videos. You can watch a video and it looks like it is coming from Bing. The video is fed from somewhere else, but it will be impossible to add all of these URL’s to the filter. It will cost millions more to maintain to achieve nothing.
VPN is another technology. Many large businesses in Australia would already have an encrypted tunnel back to the US (say). Their users in Australia would in fact be getting their Internet from the US, outside of the filter already. Is the company an ISP by definition here? Telstra seems to be talking home users. My office is connected to the Telstra back bone. Will my firm be an ISP for my 20 staff? Do I have to spend money on implementing this as well? If a user in Australia views RC material via the business link, will the business be held accountable? So this means this business must also apply the filter. How much will this cost to implement?
I don’t have children, I’m a big boy, so if I inadvertently end up at RC material I am sure I will cope. People with children are already able to apply local filters that will filter far more material and appropriately so.
The other issue is that the web is changing. Latency, ie the time between the user clicking on something and getting a response is critical. If the proxy servers need to check a database etc, this only increases latency. I write business applications whereby users do their accounting, document management etc using web applications. There is already about 200ms due to the little restriction of the speed of light for data to get from them to me and back again. Now add in my server processing time. To whack an additional layer for ineffective censorship on top and users will get very frustrated.
Conclusion – don’t waste the money. Spend it on health, the environment, education, free filters for home users, whatever. Everyone in the industry knows this. It really makes me wonder how much more money is wasted in the quest for headlines and back room deals.
I’m still waiting for an explanation as to how ALL the filters blocked 100% of the ACMA blacklist, but NONE managed to block 100% of their additional lists test, and additionally, the Enex tests from tasmania, showed that NONE of the products tested thern (presumably at least some are the same across trials) managed to block 100% of a similar size list as the blacklist.
also no speeds above 8Mbps were tested, and bottlenecks did occur in the filter at the upper end it appears, well i have 20Mbps connection, soon to go to 30Mbps, and I refuse to pay for that privilege if the Great Barrier Sieve cuts that by more than 2%. Will Conroy pay me the % of my bill that my speed is cut? I feel sorry for the people in Melb, Syd and Brisbnae who are or soon will be experiencing 100Mbps connections. The test showed up to 10% speed decrease. that’s 10Mbps, which is more than the trial even tested!
There is no reason for this filter. no one accidentally comes across child porn, and those that are looking for it, will still be able to access it, so how does this do any good besides spend my tax money pointlessly. I would rather see the 44m go to the hungry or something. or you know scientific research into disease.
Ms. Lundy, you have sold out to the party room. You are not bound by the caucus, you are bound by your desire to not be put to the sword and you have sacrificed your previously stated principles to do it.
To use the word “backflip” would be to imply a level of grace that just doesn’t exist here. You do not agree and yet will not stand up when it actually counts. You should be ‘bound’ by the desires of your electorate, and the Australian people in general. Or, failing that, bound by your conscience.
This is the wrong plan, it won’t stop a single child from being molested, it will not stop pedos from abusing children and sharing their sick snapshots with each other. It’ll pull the wool over our eyes and pretend that everything is alright. It’ll deceive parents in to believing they can leave their children unsupervised on the net, safe in the arms of Labor when you acknowledge and know in your heart that there is no guarantee of ‘safety’…
It seems that the need for this filter and the action of the Labour Party is a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’.
This filter is not for the people familiar with ICT, Twitter, web developers, it’s for everyone else who will place trust in this network to be safe, who hardly uses the Internet now but will find it become such a major part of their life as we continue developing those ideas evident at #bbfuture.
Like turning on TV at night, we know that we will not be confronted with graphic images & that trust needs to be developed with the average person for the Internet network.
There is so much work going on to get the most out of this network, to improve our way of living, to fundamentally reconnect in a way never seen before. It would be a shame for it to be tarnished by some media backlash, for that trust to be lost, for ‘society’ to become misguided and lose sight in all the good work that is possible if repeat incidents of obscene material being accessed by those vulnerable.
It seems to me, after asking a few questions online, that people are scared of what government may do down the track, of, our freedom of expression being repressed, of political dissenters being blocked.
Therefore my only suggestion is opening the ‘blacklist’ to a group in the community who can ‘moderate’. This group can come from a variety of sources, backgrounds and experience who are perhaps trusted key-influencers. This will ensure that the blacklist is in the best interest of society not the government in control at the time. You may already be doing this but its not clear, I can’t see the group, what I can see is a group set up by ‘government’ and not free of it. At arms length but still ‘easily influenced’ Not saying this is the case but this is how it appears.
Just let me make clear that I wish we did not need this filter, do fundamentally believe that I don’t need it, that I can protect myself. But this isn’t about me, this is about all those who will come to use this network and expect that they are protected from obscene material so they can get on with getting the most out of it.
BTW: I find the # #nocleanfeed a little ironic, but thats just me
Michelle Williams
@mia_will
“This filter is not for the people familiar with ICT, Twitter, web developers, it’s for everyone else who will place trust in this network to be safe, who hardly uses the Internet now but will find it become such a major part of their life as we continue developing those ideas evident at #bbfuture.
But this isn’t about me, this is about all those who will come to use this network and expect that they are protected from obscene material so they can get on with getting the most out of it.”
Sorry Michelle, but you’ve missed the point.
This filter will not protect anyone from all the nasties on the web. Even the illustrious Senator admits that in her blog post. And that is one of the greatest dangers of this filter. That parents will become complacent and believe that “the government is protecting my children, now I can let them use the Internet at will, knowing that they will never see anything nasty”.
Thanks for pointing that out. I totally agree that that this filter will not block all nasties out just as you can’t stop a kid from accessing material if they still want to.
And that is why I cant undersatnd what the big deal is. If we want to access these blacklisted sites we still can. This filter proposed seems to simply be a basic level of protection that must be provided when implementing an infrastructure of the magnitude that Australia is about to. This infrastructure also needs education of parents, at school and the public in general.
Again, I wish we did not need the filter, have been following intently and agreed with many of the arguments, opinions & beliefs of people online vehemently opposed to this filter. agree that those I have discussed with don’t need it & it should be openly available to them, if they want to get around it they will. Am all for openess of government, business, people in general.
I get why people dont want it, I dont want it myself. Maybe its my optimistic nature that believes this Filter is being implemented with the best intentions. Hence my suggestion for opening up control of the blacklist to the people, perhaps even craeting a group voted by the people, who can monitor what is being blocked, to ensure no groups have influence.
So my view is: I dont need the filter, you dont need, many people now don’t need the filter. People accessing the Net now are fearful of what will be classifies RC so let that be decided by the people . But as an infrastructure provided by a government, in the same way we expect to be safe catching a train or watching TV, there needs to be some safe guard, a certain sense of trust that what is provided by government can be trusted to be safe. Thats all.
Hi Michelle,
I would like to hope that the Government has best intentions too … but unfortunately the common perception is that the Government has been quite devious in the way the clean feed policy has evolved over the last couple of years from something quite innocuous through to the mandatory filtering system now being deployed.
If the Government were to even entertain the idea of a community-moderated blacklist that would almost certainly help address this bad publicity that has accumulated but I can guarantee you this won’t even be an option.
There is a lot of literature about the web and the significance of it to society. It’s more than just an online dictionary or a way of easily sending out birthday party invites … and any talk of censorship or limiting the freedom of the web should be taken very seriously. The Internet is still very young, people haven’t realised the potential of the web. But for many people it’s the one place left where they have a voice. Society dictates how people should live their lives, in a nice little suburban house with a partner and kids, go to work at 9 every day (earlier if you want extra brownie points), how to conduct yourself in the office, even how to dress … the sheep-herding won’t last forever. People won’t stand for it. The web is an outlet, a new nation, a new culture of freedom and expression which exist at the very heart of the concept and thus any talk of anything that threatens to suppress freedom and expression is a terrible threat – like national security to a physical country.
No one trusts this filter. Sure, block the illegal content. Make it black and white the criteria for blocking a site. You think the web lacks credibility now? What about when the filter proves unreliable and blocks good sites like Wikipedia (as happened with filtering in the UK) and lets bad sites through? To have your trust in security betrayed like that will result in a worse situation and will not diminish the responsibilities of parents to be vigilant about their kids accidentally stumbling on these illegal sites … if accidentally stumbling on them is even possible – I’ve never heard of it happening.
Better to be safe than sorry. Get it right the first time, rather than in five years time regretting we stood by and did nothing while they confiscated one of the greatest and most important tools ever invented by humanity that had the power to end war, end poverty, end cultural differences. Yes I really do believe the web is capable as a platform of effecting changes of that magnitude. As a communication, collaboration and marketing channel it has already achieved much for rallying the support of people for great causes … like this one, ensuring that if we are going to have mandatory filtering in Australia that it’s done right for the right lawful reasons and nothing more.
Good points and its why I raised them.
I also totally agree in the power that the ‘greatest network the human race has ever known’ can achieve, a global consciouness of sorts where the great minds can connect & work together on solving climate change, social justice etc etc and I also totally agree that our society is stuck in a broken model at the moment which can be kick started in a more ‘connected’ positive way. (check out my blog if you don’t believe me).
As for Australia’s NBN. I think that everyone has forgotton that Australia is leading the world in devloping this infrastructure, we are pioneers in building such a high speed, far-reaching infrastructure and as such it seems the penalty is some steps that are going to hurt, that are going to push buttons on points regarding the democratic ideals we hold so dear. Possibly we are also the first to have to take such steps.
Do I totally trust what Department of Broadband has presented as an option? NO. Do I hope that this debate we are currently involved in will push for openness, will ensure that technically it is the most viable option, that we dont rush into something for the sake of it? YES
Again, as I keep reiterating, I am an agent of Change, I love it, I love choice, I love freedom of expression , I love and appreciate how damn lucky I am to be living in this country, to be a part of this society that can express itself so passionately. But let the people drink alcohol freely and they drive home drunk or they start a fight or they fall over & sue the government. I wish it wasn’t like this but I am being realistic, unfortunately it is.
So, I cant wait to see the change we can make thanks this National Broadband Network. In the meantime I look forward to a more open plan & technically viable solution being shown to the people before it becomes Policy.
Michelle Williams said -
“Thanks for pointing that out. I totally agree that that this filter will not block all nasties out just as you can’t stop a kid from accessing material if they still want to.
And that is why I cant undersatnd what the big deal is. ”
The big deal is that:
* It will lead parents into thinking that the net is now a safe place and they can let their kids access it without any parental control. This is a very dangerous idea. There are several child protection advocacy groups who are completely against the filter for this very reason
* No matter what the rigged “trial” say, this thing WILL slow down our internet. And we all know that it is slow enough already.
* This filter will block material that is NOT illegal. Refused Classification does not equate to illegal. I don’t need some Christian extremist pushing his or her views down my throat. I am a grown adult and I can decide what I do and don’t want to see/access.
“Maybe its my optimistic nature that believes this Filter is being implemented with the best intentions. Hence my suggestion for opening up control of the blacklist to the people, perhaps even craeting a group voted by the people, who can monitor what is being blocked, to ensure no groups have influence.”
And this is where second, even more villanous part of the equation comes into play.
Conroy has state repeatedly (and this won’t change) that the blacklist will never be made public. So in theory nobody will ever know what is on the list. There are reports that the head of the Australia Christian League has been personally briefed by Conroy on the results of the “trial” and yet nobody else, especially any opponents have been afforded the same luxury.
This filter is the thin edge of the wedge. What happens when the ACL get the ACMA to start blacklisting pro-abortion, safe-injection and sex education websites? Or the government decides that a site discussing their policies and trying to organise resistance is deemed to be “against the best interests of the population”.
Then we have an Orwellian big brother with oversight.
Which scares the beejesus out of me.
The ENEX report is flawed.
It fails to mention sample sizes for all of it’s statistics. From memory, some of the participants only had around nine people testing the filter. No wonder it shows no speed issues.
Also, the tests never went above speeds of 8mbps. My last connection was 22mbps. The NBN is proposing 100mbps! The ENEX report is worthless.
Also, you say it’s better to do something rather than nothing.
Given that:
The filter will be dead easy to circumvent.
You don’t “stumble” across RC material on the net anyway.
Then who exactly is this filter aimed at? Wouldn’t the money be better spent going to the Federal Police?
Scope creep is a huge issue. We already have the ACL calling for the list of material to be blocked expanded. Conroy still hasn’t officially ruled out ‘prohibited content’ whatever that is.
If this becomes law, I’m never voting Labor again.
I voted labour because I didn’t want to vote for aristocratic conservatives. Um… I also didn’t vote for a totalitarian dictatorship. The entire planet is comparing us to Iran, China, North Korea now. I am ashamed to have voted Labor. Ashamed to be Australian. If Australian citizens are ever allowed another vote of government, it certainly won’t be for Labor.. I’m 28.. So… If I live to see even 80, thats 52 more years where Labor will not get a vote from me, nor anyone else I can demonstrate to, that this is a party which stands for Fascism.
Any doubt that the announced censorship is grossly unpopular has been laid to rest by various polls – for example the SMH poll which showed 95% opposition.
Realising that, has our current government given consideration to the consequences of imposing broadly unpopular legislation?
The result will be seen as a violation of trust.
A government that loses the trust of the people will never gain control of the senate.
James comment is a good one.
We supply staff with VPN access to our office, the internet can be routed in from our USA office.
Staff can then VPN in at their HOMES and access unfiltered internet, children could then see all those so so naughty RC pages. Filter=Busted.
You would be better off making the filter OPTIONAL, or bring back the home based filter or just give the AFP the money!
It will lead parents into a false sense of security and that is not good for their kids.
Thanks for your comments kate, and given the system you are constrained by (the caucus) I can appreciate your frustration. Latham did some good things but removing you from the shadow ministry was not one of them.
However as has been clearly demonstrated, every aspect of this horrendous folly is flawed and MUST be rejected by ALL intelligent Australians with a shred of IT knowledge. No amount of spin can turn what has, within 48 hours, been universally scorned. For heavens sake, do you really want to be on the side of legislation that has been rubbished by Fox News!? That is exactly how alarming this is.
Australia is proposing a measure that no other liberal western democracy is. Enough spin and politicospeak. Convince your caucus colleagues that Conroy is leading them down a path no thinking ALP member could ever contemplate and that has already made us an international technological laughing stock.
Its that important, its that simple and its that terrifying.
Good Luck, and have a chat with your colleague Penny from Sydney, she knows how to stand up to the machine clowns and stand for the true believers.
Here is a question that needs answering:
For those who are stuck with congested exchanges,
What about those who are stuck with slow speed already (i.e. 5mbit and lower?)
And what about those people who play Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming?
Such as WoW, Eve Online, Everquest and so on?
How will this filter effect Online gaming in general?
Online gaming is a dynamic environment that changes as people come along and talk to each other, complete quests, etc.
As such, it will not be filtered.
Currently, it isn’t even regulated and the only thing the OFLC can do is say “Gaming experience may change with online play” (which is kinda obvious and the whole point of many games like World of Warcraft).
Since it can’t be accurately classified, guess what will get filtered out next…
“Since it can’t be accurately classified, guess what will get filtered out next…”
Under the proposed legislation, it is feasible that access to the WoW servers, for instance, could be blocked by the filter after a member of the public submits a complaint because they were subjected to “innapropriate” content through world chat.
Alex, actually I am not talking about it being blocked/filtered or not.
But overall, Speeds/latency effected by the filter (since it has to check every connection and every URL) it may effect Online Gaming, and since both smoothness and latency is required for MMO’s and games in general, I wonder how much it would upset the gaming community?
MMO’s generally do not have local servers here either.
Latency won’t mean much at all if the game’s servers are blocked.
The filter CURRENTLY being discussed probably won’t have much effect at all because it completely ignores the ~60% of the internet that isn’t the web (making it useless from start) but once the PRINCIPLE of state censorship is accepted, then all bets are off and your WoW servers will get blocked because somebody complained about an abusive player on a server in California.
As a former Justice of the High Court of Australia said this morning, this filter is the “thin end of the wedge”.
Alex, again it’s not a matter if the servers are blocked or not, all traffic will go through the filter, thus will be effected, regardless if a site or game is blocked.
Kate, you state, “adhering to the Rudd Labor election commitment of providing a mandatory filter.”
That was NEVER your election platform though was it. The comment on filtering was released FIVE days before the election.
It mentioned filtering for children and so on. It did NOT say mandatory and it excluded businesses. So please don’t tell us we voted for this, because:
a) A release buried 5 days before the election
b) A policy that does not equal what was released at that time
a+b Mandate from the public.
Kate,
I don’t understand how you can be supportive of a secret blacklist of sites that Australian adults aren’t allowed to view.
This surprises me, particularly after having heard you advocate government openness and transparency at the Pearcey awards last month. This is another example of unnecessary restrictive (and not to mention offensive) policy that encourages the ‘brain drain’ of young technology entrepreneurs to California.
How can anybody who respects democracy defend (or be a part of) a government intent on the regulation (read: control) of information available to its citizens?
I was pleased to read about your move to the DBCDE. As mentioned by previous posters, it’s disappointing to read that you’ve sacrificed your beliefs in order to gain it.
Even so, I’m glad you and Pia were able to make an impression upon Penny Sharpe with respect to your Public Sphere initiative. I’m glad to see that Penny has not since relinquished the freedom of expression principles that encouraged her to establish a similar system in NSW.
Sydney Morning Herald poll on the filter, 20345 respondents. 96% against the filter should tell you something.
“as a Senator in the Labor Government I will be bound by Labor Caucus’ position on the matter”
Which is another way of saying that you arent a representative of the people, the voters, because the sacred cow of ‘party unity’ is more important.
Pathetic.
Further to my last comment, I’d like to respond to what you’ve said in the following paragraph:
“This is where a lot of passionate opponents of the filter get very frustrated “well if it doesn’t work 100%, why do it?” The answer is because the Rudd Labor Government is convinced it will encourage concerned people that the internet will be a safer place for themselves and/or their children.”
It’s never a good idea to encourage people to feel safer than they are. What you’ve told me here is that the Rudd Labor Government is implementing a system that will work 0% of the time (to address its stated objectives) simply to convince people that they have made the internet safer.
THIS IS A CON. You’ve acknowledged that the Rudd Government is trying to cheat those concerned about cyber-safety into thinking the internet has been made safer.
Please, do yourself a favour and break free from Labor’s saddle. Run as an independant and act to do some real good for your constituents and for the wider Australian community.
“a properly skilled entity such as the classification board…”
I’d like to point out that the decisions of the classification board can be capricious and inconsistent and far from “skilled”. The latest example being the banning of the erotic film Matinee from the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, while at the same time giving the sexually violent and explicit film Antichrist an R rating. Even the film Pirates was banned because it had an animated scene where two skeletons were fighting.
It’s time Australia had a frank discussion about the way it treats sexual speech and the rather draconian laws dictating exactly what sexual activities are considered “obscene” and therefore RC. The board defines female ejaculation – a normal aspect of female sexuality – as a “fetish” and therefore any films depicting this are off limits. The same goes for fisting which is a regular sexual activity for lesbians. Anything BDSM is also RC, even though this is a legal and legitimate sexual activity for consensual adults.
Banning RC-rated erotic films and sites means that the government is declaring consensual sexual activities to be obscene. It’s legislating morality without making reference to REAL community standards in 2009. It’s also making assumptions about “harm” without relying on any kind of peer-reviewed empirical research into the topic.
It’s going unsaid but one of the reasons so many people are against this filter is because it means applying our out-of-date censorship laws about sex onto the internet and into the privacy of our own homes. If the content causes no harm, the government has no business deciding what adults can see or hear.
Where, then, is the evidence of harm that would necessitate this filter against RC content?
Dear Kate, I’m sorry to say that this is a deal-breaker for me and (I believe) many other progressive Internet users. It’s a fraud to pretend that this is nothing but wedge politics, with the Labor Government happy to discard Internet freedom of expression as collateral damage.
Australia does not need the tools of a police state. I don’t trust this Government to run a secret blacklist, let alone future Governments.
I have been a Labor member and voter for 35 years. I have handed out how-to-vote cards in elections for Labor and supported it through many ups and down.
No more. I’ve joined the Greens and will be campaigning for them.
I’m in the same camp. I’d suggest preferencing the Liberals over Labor. Become a swinging voter. You will feel much less impotent that way.
Grass roots activism defeated the ETS because it split the Liberals. Labor needs to be split over this. But this time they can’t blame the Tories – this is Conroy’s idea! He is wedging his own party… way to go
I’m in the same camp. I’d suggest preferencing the Liberals over Labor. Become a swinging voter. You will feel much less impotent that way.
Grass roots activism defeated the ETS because it split the Liberals. Labor needs to be split over this. Disunity is freedom.
But this time they can’t blame the Tories – this is Conroy’s idea! He is wedging his own party… way to go
In the policy document it says
“A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.”
Offer doesn’t sound much like impose. Or is Labor saying we’re offering you a choice. The offer is that it’s filtered and your choice is to not use the Internet if you don’t like that.
Also from your quoted text it sound’s like if you don’t have children in your house you should be able to say “no thanks”
“This is where a lot of passionate opponents of the filter get very frustrated “well if it doesn’t work 100%, why do it?””
What opponents get frustrated about is that this is being brought in using felicious arguments about pretecting children where as anyone with some knowledge about the internet can tell you the gains will be negligible. So we all know it isn’t going to work 100%, but we wonder whether it will even work 1%. Will it have any positive affect at all?
The trial should have been as follows:
Step 1: State the aims of the policy (be it protecting children from accessing dodgy content or whatever)
Step 2: Test with a trial whether the proposed madatory filter will address these policy goals and at what cost.
If the affect of this policy is negligable (or if it actually makes things worse) then the technical capabilites are a moot point.
It makes me wonder how stupid the ALP thinks Australians are.
It’s easy for me to say “Screw the Caucus, I’d risk my job to do the right thing”, but I’m not in your position so it’s easier said than done. I do sympathise with you, to a point, because in the end if you cave, you’re not part of the solution, it makes you part of the problem.
The release of the Enex report and subsequent announcement of success has been a clear tactic to dissuade the focus from the argument of “Should it be done” and skip that right to the “It’s possible to do”. This irritates the hell out of me. If the Australian people were given all the information and then be made part of the discussion and decision making process this policy would fail faster then Senator Conroy as Minister for BCDE.
Putting aside the fact that the filter should not be implemented in the first place (but not forgetting this as seems to be the intent of Senator Conroy) there are a few simple but glaring omissions and circumstances that Conroy should be held accountable for, especially since there was an in excess of $800,000 price tag on the reporting process.
First there was no Pass or Fail criteria set before the trial commenced. This meant that what ever the results, they could be spun as acceptable. And they have been. 10% Speed degradation is acceptable? If Senator Conroy had announced this before the trial began he would have been forced by the Industry and Internet users to drop the acceptable % of speed degradation. 10% is simple too high, even on an 8mbit connection, and what happens when this is applied to the future NBN with much higher speeds?
Second, no where in the report could I see any testing done to push the filters to their point of failure. If we don’t know their limits how can they be accurately deployed? This is even more relevant when an insignificant sample size, like during this very Trial is going to be used as “evidence” for a filter that would be applied to every singe Internet Connection in the country! How well will the filters hold up then?
The Enex report created more questions than answers and has only strengthens the feeling that the filter is not designed to protect children and for what ever reason no matter what the ALP want to censor the Internet.
For too long have the Industry bodies been too scared to outright speak out against this policy for fear of losing Government funding and the DBCDE have done nothing but spin, time announcement so they get buried by other news/issues, sit on or manufacture reports or just outright lie about this policy. Senator Conroy should be held accountable for all of this and there should be an enquiry or even some actual damned public consultation outside of filter vendors and the ACL on this issue.
Our Grandfathers and Great Grandfathers did not die for Australia only to have it slowly stolen from the people by an oppressive and deceitful Government.
Kate, good luck to you and I hope you can find the strength to do the right thing.
I’ve been a huge fan until now. I’ve been generally very impressed with your work on helping to enlighten the Parliament and Government about the virtues of an open internet.
It makes me profoundly sad to feel as though we (the people) have lost such a strong, reasoned voice emanating from within Government; Unfortunately reason seems to have been abandoned and, to some extent, double speak and spin embraced. I really thought you felt more strongly about this.
This post categorically invalidates your blog’s tagline – Taking Australia forward with openness and vision – I hope you’ll be changing it.
Kate,
You are being disingenuous, the Rudd government does not have a mandate. “Mandatory” was only applied after the election, I would never have voted for the ALP had I known the policy would be changed.
Our classification scheme can not effectively regulate internet content. The scope of ‘RC’ is far too broad and lumps child abuse material in with controversial topics which have every right to be discussed and debated within a free, confident and civil democracy – topics such as euthanasia, abortion, religious extremism and safe drug use to name just a few.
Do you not see what a can of worms this will be? What about a website which gives information on illicit drug use while also combining political content calling for an end to prohibition. What will the government’s answer be when it starts blocking this type of political content?
Would you care to explain how blocking approximately 10,000 websites out of approximately one trillion (and growing at a rate of roughly one billion a day) will make the least bit of difference?
This filter will block the proverbial drop in ocean. Bring back NetAlert, it actually works and gives choice back to the people. Conroy dumped NetAlert over a year ago, thereby taking away an effective method for Australian families to protect their children from objectionable content, while at the same time, proclaiming the ALP are “thinking of the children”.
Kate, you know this policy is deeply flawed and has no place in our society.
Regards,
Matt
Ms Lundy
You do realise that scope-creep is inevitable? RC is far more than the cheerypicked spiel from Senator Contoy. Are you aware that this year ACMA banned anti-abortion pics on the internet that were “RC”. Even links to those pics, not the pictures themeslves, atrract fines of 11000 dollars a day.
You are also aware of the extraordinary revelations this year in a senate committee hearing? They included claims that paedophiles bring their victims through Australian airports. Please spend my taxpayers’ money on an international effort to tackle such a root cause, rather than wasting time and money on a leaky bucket that can be circumvented.
“Unfortunately, the debate about whether reducing the risks of people being exposed to unwanted online content through mandatory filters outweighs the value people place on the concept of an open and unflitered internet was resolved by the Rudd government before the last election, when the policy was announced. So it is not surprising many people feel they have not had the opportunity to have this debate.”
Weasel words, Senator. You left out the words “that will not work” after “mandatory filters”. You know it as well as the rest of us do and probably better than any of your fellow parliamentarians.
“This discussion is rightly an internal one” – no, it’s rightly a public one. You were elected on a platform of voluntary filtering; you’re about to impose mandatory filtering. I assume *that* was an internal discussion. You represent us – you have an obligation to tell us where you stand and to have the discussion in public – with us as full participants.
By the way – where are you when Senator Conroy labels those of us who oppose this plan, including Save the Children and the National Children’s & Youth Law Centre, as “paedophiles”. Do you tell him how desperate and outrageous that sounds? Do you tell him that he’s insulting the 95% of Australians who oppose this plan?
I had hopes for you, Senator. I still suspect that you don’t agree with this lunacy, but clearly the party system prevents you from representing the people who elected you. Perhaps you might think about whether it’s time to become something in which you can use your knowledge and experience to the benefit of Australia: an independent.
Your party carried our hopes for a more honest, open and compassionate society into the last election. We will neither forgive nor forget what it’s done to those hopes.
I’ve written and spoken publicly a number of times on this issue in the past couple of years. It’s all available on my blog and clearly points out the various issues with the policy. I’m hardly the most eloquent on the matter, but here you go – http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22clean+feed%22+site:acidlabs.org
As for the history of the issue, here’s what I remember from 2007 before the release of the policy Pia links to:
- the Labor opposition had a policy that required ISPs to offer a non-mandatory clean feed so that subscribers who wanted it could have it
- this was to be supported by education programs and free filtering software
Imperfect, flawed, sure. But certainly workable.
At this point, the technically savvy voting public, especially those inclined to vote Labor, were pretty comfortable with the policy. The matter of ACMA’s blacklist was still contentious given the holes in the governance of it.
The release of the policy saw several people (including me) note there was ambiguity around for whom, where and when the “mandatory” applied. Was it mandatory to offer? Was it mandatory only where children were concerned? Or was it plain mandatory?
What has happened now, as Senator Conroy appears to have received increasingly bad advice from his Department and has become increasingly strident on the matter, equating opposition to the mandatory feed with being pro-pedophilia, is that the public understanding of the policy as campaigned upon no longer equates to the implementation.
The implementation being proposed has several flaws, not the least of which is the possible breach of the UN Declaration on Human Rights (we’ll see how that goes in the High Court, no doubt). All the other flaws have been raised, discussed, analysed and dissected at length, so I’ll not rehash them here.
Suffice it to say, this policy is not what the public voted for and is not what they want, either. The public outcry is more than adequate demonstration of that. You have to wonder what previously unencountered level of hubris Senator Conry and the Prime Minsiterhave access to that has them perpetuating this dangerously flawed policy.
“This is where a lot of passionate opponents of the filter get very frustrated “well if it doesn’t work 100%, why do it?” The answer is because the Rudd Labor Government is convinced it will encourage concerned people that the internet will be a safer place for themselves and/or their children.”
Do you mean a placebo? A placebo is meant to have no effect, the policy will have no effect on access to material like this http://bit.ly/8BSfT2 for children as it is rated PG nor any other content as it can’t block https.
Consider this URL, https://broowery.com/content/rudd-conroy-gambling-mandatory-internet-censorship-working note the HTTPS at the start, that is all it takes to bypass the filter. ie A webserver that is configured for https traffic, do you really think that wont be used when it takes 5-10 minutes for the site operator (not the user) to configure and can cost nothing? All the user needs to do is click on the link, if the difference wasn’t pointed out many wouldn’t even notice the “s” in https.
I’d just like to congratulate Senator Lundy for facing the public discussion on this topic. I think it is a particularly difficult situation to be in and it is great to see that the blog post and the enormous discussion in the comments creates a forum to expose some of the core issues.
I think what you have to really look at is the statement that the “trials were successful”. As has been stated by others, the tests undertaken were not representative: the lists too short, the bandwidth too low, and the algorithms not dealing with dynamic content. The tests were indeed following a Web model that was current about 10 years ago, but has nothing to do with the Web we are experiencing now: Web 2.0 and NBN. I think we need to seriously question the results of the study.
In addition: anything bar the main list had a huge false positive rate, filtering out legal content. This could be businesses that get destroyed because they are being removed from Australian access – or educational sites that provide a fair diversity to the public opinion.
And finally, being part of a video-based business, I would hate to see network delays in Australia increase even more – 5ms is an eternity in video terms! A mandatory filtering scheme in a NBN environment will certainly have a hugely negative impact on the use of video for business.
In summary, in my opinion, the trials showed that it is not technically acceptable to roll out a mandatory filtering scheme. However, I would have no issue with an opt-in filtering scheme – even if I would not apply it because I think I have taught my son well what is acceptable on the Internet and what isn’t.
I hope you Senator Lundy will be well prepared with technical details when she enters the behind-the-door discussions!
“as a Senator in the Labor Government I will be bound by Labor Caucus’ position on the matter”
Kate don’t be a puppet, listen to the people you are supposed to serve.
“This is for the children” seems to be the catch-cry for supporters of filtering – it’s sad that you have such little confidence in the ability of parents to care for their kids. At any rate, there are plenty of home-side filtering options available already. Indeed most ISPs offer these packages to subscribers already. And they do so voluntarily!
Your party’s rhetoric is aimed squarely at stigmatising anyone who raises their voice in opposition to this plan. Very sinister and Orwellian…
First off I have to say Kate you deserve a big bravo on your comments. You have proved that politicians do not have the nations or their constituents interests at heart, but are rather more interested in pushing personal and party agendas over the needs of the nation. This is being proven over and over again by both state and federal labor parties.
When will labor be announcing the changes to the national anthem? I refer to the second line of the anthem that states “For we are young and free;”, since this absurd proposal is merely just the beginning of our freedoms being snatched away by the government, this line in our anthem in no longer correct.
In addition Conroy has many times stated that this measure will be open to public consultation, when can we expect this to happen? Or is this merely another case of a broken Labor promise?
We voted for the government to represent our views. If you go to any poll, online polls, newspaper polls, tv polls, radio polls, >90% are against this censorship plan. Therefore the majority wins, if this was a democracy. But is it now? With Kevin Rudd being great friends with China, this is really communism. And why hasn’t Rudd said anything about this?
It is disingenuous at best for you to support Rudd’s proposal to filter the ACMA RC list as being to protect children. Firstly, hiding illegal acts from view does not stop them, it makes them less noticeable and easier for perpetrators to escape punishment. Secondly RC is not limited to illegal media, it includes legal to own media as you well know such as MA15+ games, and video of illegal acts such as graffiti. If the same standard were applied to film and television, then all the police dramas and crime shows would be banned from free to air TV.
Is it convenient to abandoned your previously stated principles, or a requirement to remain a member of the Labor party?
Utterly disgusting policy, i hope the whole labor government gets crucified with this policy. Funny thing is, there’s so much public out cry against this filter yet Conroy is still contempt on going forward with it. And you say his actions are noble? I think not. We all know there have been some backroom deals to push this policy through with little media coverage as possible.
We should change out national anthem from:
Australians all let us rejoice
For we are young and free
To:
Australians all let us distress
For we are young and bound.
Hi Kate, Pia et al.
Others have voiced an opinion I agree with in the comments, so I won’t repeat what they’ve said. I will simply say that I will not vote for any individual or party who supports a mandatory “clean feed”. I will do every single thing in my power to convince others that this is a bad policy, that ultimately can’t work, won’t protect those who feel they need it and will cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
The proposed filter is bad enough I that it could be the most important policy come election time.
Turn the ship around before it’s too late!
Pia
Here is a question that is worth asking to test the boundaries of this legislation.
If you go to the movies and see a movie trailer that has not been classified, it carries an “Approved for advertising” classification and tells you to check the classification closer to the release date.
Not imagine watching that trailer online – the movie has not been classified in Australia, so it is RC. Am I now banned from watching the latest summer blockbuster. Potentially the IronMan 2 trailer at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/ would have to be blocked…
Now IF the argument is that this is available to view as it is yet to be classified, then that would be the case for 99.999% of the content on the internet as it changes daily.
If a website is editted, does it need to be re-classified as it is no longer the same page as before?
Firstly, thanks to everyone for taking the time to contribute. The response has been (understandably) overwhelming and while I can’t respond to all the points raised I am/will be reading all your comments and the conversations online.
There’s been a lot of constructive input which will help me articulate the issues to my colleagues. As you know, this Bill will be going before Parliament in the first sitting session next year.
Details of the timing at http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/115
Kate
Pretty disappointing Kate. I have applauded your work with the computer industry to date, in particular dealing with pair gain issues and Telstra, but your stance on this issue has voided any credibility you had.
It is one thing to tow a party line, and another to support something with such a lack of transparency.
At the very least please push for a full and proper evaluation, and a full and transparent report, surely you can at least do that while towing the party line.
Hi Kate/Pia,
It’s very easy, really. Since we are looking at a double-dissolution election in the new year, why not put this in as a referendum question. Make the question neutral and unambiguous and get people to vote on it.
The election will be on ETS, thus Conroy and Rudd cannot claim that they have a mandate to filter the internet, just like the last election was fought on the base of industrial relations.
This is too important an issue to be decided WITHOUT public consultation. All Conroy has shown is that he will stick his fingers in his ears when he hears opinions he doesn’t like.
With a referendum, every Australian is bound one way or the other to declare their stance, AND they get to do it secretly without being accused of being child molesters if they are against the filter. IFF there is indeed majority public support for this policy, then what is the government afraid of?
We have had pointless referendums on matters far less crucial than this in the past, this is an issue that will define as a democratic (or otherwise) country.
Kate, I am not so much surprised by your post, but I am saddened by it. I take it to mean that you will vote in favour of this misguided policy. I admit, I had hope that you would stick to your principles and abstain from the vote, even if party room politics mean that you can’t vote against it.
As a side note, I find this ‘vote our way or else’ stance of the Labor party to be deeply worrying and undemocratic, as it means you must put the party before your own constituents, many of who would not have actually voted for the Labor party.
That aside, I, like several of the other commenters here, I must point out some flaws in your logic.
The filter has not been demonstrated to be technically feasible. Indeed, the live trial was deeply, *deeply* methodologically flawed, so much so that it appears to have been built to prove filtering works, rather than test the technology, as I suspected from the moment my FOI request confirmed that the trial had no real success or failure criteria. Some of the more glaring flaws are that the trial relied on users who desired to opt-in to censorship, allowed Webshield, an ISP who has a vested interested in proving the effectiveness of filtering and whose CEO is a proponent of the mandatory filter, to participate, and did not test at anywhere near the speeds expected with the NBN. Some of the results bear examining more than once as well – one filter actually appears to have *improved*speeds, which I find remarkable.
“The answer is because the Rudd Labor Government is convinced it will encourage concerned people that the internet will be a safer place for themselves and/or their children.”
This is *exactly* why we have been saying that this is a bad policy. This is exactly why Save the Children says that this is a bad policy. It’s giving parents a completely false sense of security and encouraging them to think that the internet is a safer place when it won’t be, not by a long shot. As safety measures go, it’s not even a rubber bullet.
If people are concerned about the internet, let them opt-in to a filtering system. Educate them about filtering options, including pc-based filters.
Finally, this policy, before and after the election, was pitched in terms of it being opt in. The policy document suggests that the mandatory filter would only be applied to areas access by children. Further statements to the media by Senator Conroy said, bluntly that adults would be able to opt out. If you’re interested in seeing exactly what has been said and promised by Labor regarding this policy, and what promises have been ‘forgotten’ or modified since prior to the election, I recommend libertus.net, which is extremely detailed and well researched.
Hi Kate,
As a professional in the technology industry who has his feet in Y and below generations and industry, am shocked and disappointed. I thought you were savvy enough to see through the smokescreen to see the implications it will affect the voting public and the industry.
The report is deeply flawed and heavily side steps a lot of issues, both technical and policy goals wise – these are the words from someone who has graduated with a PhD and understands the rigorous research process when dealing with such studies. I can see a lot of omissions and bias ( such as filtering solution claims) that would have been done in the report because the amount of words describing positives outweigh the negatives which only hold a few sentences there and there. For example not much was elaborated on high throughput connections, scalability when the amount of traffic exceeds the filtering machines when doing more sophisticated filtering (DPI etc), its impact on affecting small ISPS (reducing competition), the many issues of of re-routing traffic for small isps who cant afford the extra logistics. Based on the maneuverers done by Conroy lately especially in the timing of the report release, immediate announcement of going ahead with policy on same day as report release appears premeditated and reeks of undemocratic lobbying.
Theres a lot of hidden motives under this plan and as you can see currently the industry, savvy and intellectual public are angry. This is simply a simple censorship regime that the various christian lobby groups and certain political individuals are secretly oiling wheels to turn into a full blown variant and hamper people’s freedoms when it comes to online – aka turning it into the next Chinese Firewall.
The manoeuvres that Conroy has done lately, ignoring the greater censorship etc issues at hand, just picking a single line from the tech industry (technical) and try and get this such report to attempt to push his own pawn in the scheme of thing is deeply unfair as a public discourse/debate & democracy. Its becoming more and more like what religious leaders/groups attempt to do when forcing their own viewpoints among the less powerful.
As others have said, education, parents, opt-in/opt-out solutions are better than mandatory ISP enforced filtering and does the same job without causing lobby groups enforcing their own self-interests.
Im disappointed because this all has turned Australia into a joke in the face of the international community, including the R18+ classification for games blocked by Atkinson n co, we are now forced to educate the rest of the public including MPs to better understand whats wrong behind the smokescreen. This already has gone viral and is affecting various generations especially 35′s and below.
Hopefully this makes better sense of the potential implications/fallouts if they were to occur and the waste of public money if this was spent instead of educating/supporting families and other better initiatives.
Thanks very much for taking time to read. I support your other policies such as NBN etc except this which has heavily swung voting hand. If this was re-fixed or removed, you would regain a whole new generation of voters back for the ALP and better voter support many years on.
Regards,
Abe
The labour party never threatened us with a mandatory all encompassing filter before the election. Don’t try to tell us after the fact that this was the case – it only serves to make very angry people angrier. Had this been one of their platforms I would not have voted for them. They offered an opt in (or out) service for those who were interested.
Now we a are a laughing stock around the world with even super conservative Fox News comparing us to Iran and China.
I am a mother with young children. I am capable of supervising their internet use.
If you want to protect children then why not give the money you are wasting on the filter to an organisation like the AFP who can actually do something.
If this goes ahead then I will never vote Labour again.
I want to congratulate everyone who is contributing to this thread. The level of analysis and critical intelligence is pretty mind-blowing. Whether it’s all a useless echo chamber is another matter. Sigh.
The Victorian Era Classification Board should be closed down. Social media technologies can replace the filter-by-blacklist, the Classifications Board should be completely ‘wikified’.
Police can use the freed up resources to investigate and prosecute crime.
Check out stumbleupon.com for one example.
The posters here are to be congratulated for leaving any supposed mandate in tatters.
Further,the act of releasing the Enex report and the final policy line, and making them simultaneous, was utter arrogance. Rudd, Conroy and the ALP left no time whatsoever for feedback on a complex, technical, lengthy report. But then again silly me. Experts like Mark Newton don’t matter do they? He doesn’t repeat back what Rudd wants to hear: that the internet censor machine is fantastic and magic. Worse still, Conroy and Rudd sat on that report for months and let the Australian Christian Lobby, a group of utter nutters, either look at it or get a precis [we will never know which].
This is the daftest, most dangerous, arrograntly conducted example of government policy since the ID card of the mid 80s.
Senator,
I had a letter published in today’s Canberra Times about the scope of Refused Classification. It is not a good candidate to base a blacklist on as most RC material is legal to posses and view in the ACT (and most of Australia). You would also know from Senate estimates that the ACMA blacklist contains much more than RC material anyway, all the way down to MA15+.
I have written another letter to the Canberra Times about the problems with the trial today. In short, the trial was a farce. I am including the letter here, as I obviously don’t know if the Canberra Times will publish it:
—
After almost 1 million dollars and over 10 months of delay, the Enex report on filtering the internet has finally been released, and it’s not worth the electrons it’s served with. Either Enex is incompetent, or the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has been playing with the numbers. They have been sitting on it for 3 months, after all.
No mention is made of the sample size of the ISPs involved. However, one ISP revealed they had only 15 households in their trial, and the
impression was that this ISP was far from the smallest. How this gives any indication of the technology’s capabilities with the millions of internet connected homes is not discussed.
The government has been heavily trumpeting their proposed National
Broadband Network which will deliver speeds up to 100 Mbps, yet the trial barely tested speeds 12 times slower. The fastest speed tested was 8 Mbps, barely into ADSL2 speeds. Even then, the report implies a bottle neck at around 7-8 Mbps. No investigation into this bottle neck seems to have been done.
Website addresses are currently based on IPv4, which allows for 4 billion different IP addresses. These are expected to run out within the next few years (there are that many computers connected to the internet), and it is already being replaced with IPv6. Current censorship technology is often incapable of dealing with IPv6 based websites, and no mention of this major transition is made in the report.
The report mentions that censorship technology is expensive and that the government will have to take the matter of funding this equipment
seriously. This will mean more expensive internet access, and less competition as smaller operators are forced out of the market.
The report also concedes that it would only take minor technological competence to bypass even the most draconian of the filtering products
tested. This is below the level of competence that today’s school children posses, as they easily remove restrictions on government provided laptops.
Finally, the report shows in some of the results, that internet speeds are actually faster with the filter in place. This is not only technically improbably but physically impossible.
Any claims the government makes about the technological feasibility of
censorship based on this report are fallacious. Continuing with this
project will be a phenomenal waste of taxpayer money that could have gone to actually doing something about the scourge of child abuse.
(Address withheld, although you have it as I’ve written to you previously).
—
The report also makes the extraordinary claim that a speed decrease of 10% is considered negligible, and that over-blocking rates of over 3% are acceptable.
Frankly, I don’t have much faith in Kevin Rudd being in control of a secret blacklist, and I certainly wouldn’t trust Tony Abbott, let alone any future Prime Minister that we haven’t met yet.
It’s also worth noting that Michael Flood, Hamilton’s co-author in that 2003 report, has recently come out and said that he was wrong about recommending filtering as a solution.
There just is no logical reason to impliment this filter.
It is said it will protect our children. How? It doesn’t block chat rooms nor social networking sites which are the breeding grounds for the majority of our safety concerns. So it wont protect our children.
It will combat child pornography. Again, how? It filters http traffic. I challenge you to actually find any via http. Filtering http traffic will have zero positive impact on combating child pornography. Even if some child pornography was filtered due to this scheme all you are doing is forcing those viewing and posting it to use a vpn connection to bypass the filter (which itself will be encrypted) making it infinitely harder to actually catch them. So it certainly wont combat child pornography.
All it does is give parents a false sense of security regarding their children which will make them even more vulnerable online.
So the question must be asked…why?
There are already far more effective solutions in place, they have existed for years. Using a client end filter (such as net nanny) parents have far greater control over restricting hazardous material. Why can’t the government fund the creation of their own version and offer it free to family homes? it would be cheaper. It would not tax our already slow Internet and it would actually meet the stated goals put forward which the current filter will not do. Going off some of the sites that were actually filtered in the tests I really don’t believe this was ever about protecting children or fighting child porn.
Very disappointing, Kate. I used to think you made your own choices based on your own thinking.
You don’t seem to have picked that “the test was successful” does not mean the filter will be successful in the real world. The test made all sorts of simplifying assumptions, such as ignoring the use of encrypted tunnels, an user base that can adapt, etc.
You appear to be clinging to this “100% accurate” statement to justify ALP leadership’s policy. You have lost my respect and my vote.
You want input on this subject? Here’s some… This mandatory filter is a bad idea for many, many reasons, and most people either don’t want it, or want it to NOT happen.
Hi Kate & Pia
Whatever credibility you were trying to manufacture with your participation in debates about gov2.0, transparency, NBN, etc have been exposed as a sham with this drivel of a blog post. I am really disappointed in your position, nor does it even read like it was written by you.
Furthermore, by putting on your lawyer hat and trying to justify your position as being something that was in writing before the election (even though it is against most other things you advocate) shows how shallow you probably are.
Stop towing the party line, and cross the floor on this. Otherwise you will be forever remembered as a fake.
Sincerely,
Sam Granleese
PS. You can remind Mssrs Bitar & Rudd they can say goodbye to those marginal Liberal seats expected to pick up next year too.
I also just wanted to say how valuable this blog, and Kate’s willingness to discuss and reason issues out as part of the community is. I think the ALP policy on this is truly awful, but having a Senator be open and frank about her views is refreshing and encouraging. Be good if this blog could be an example of how useful it is to engage in that way, because you solicit info and ideas from the public. I particularly appreciate the honesty around Kate’s commitment to follow caucus (I have my own views, like everyone, on compromise and political party membership and for that matter, what the representative in representative democracy means, but none of it simple.)
I think the question of this filter is going to be a line-in-the-sand issue – even though it won’t effectively block much at all. But it’s not just about whether we want to allow the government to decide what we can and can’t look at; but also about whether we are more interested in pretending to solve problems than we are in solving them.
“This discussion is rightly an internal one” So much for Government 2.0 then? What a farce. Once this infrastructure is in place future conservative governments will have no impediment to adding further material to the list. Why did the ACL, who have publicly said they want more currently legal material added to the list, get a private meeting with the minister when opposing groups have been fobbed off? It’s clear who’s driving this policy, and it’s not the ALP caucus.
I for one DO NOT support this scheme. It will stifle the overall development and growth of the true open internet and provide the opportunity for those inclined to maliciously bend policies in their favour.
Kate, as a long time reader Im deeply disappointed. Au voir.
As you say, the intent of the policy is defensible. But as you also suggest, and as the excellent comments here attest, in practice the proposed filter would fail in many ways. So… I wish you well in your work of building a killer case against!
Imagine a United Nations meeting in the future…
UN sec gen: any motions?
French delegate: I move a motion to impose sanctions against Australia for their gross restrictions of free speech and expression, in particular in their internet filter.
Italian delegate: I second the motion
30 minutes later:
UN sec Gen: the motion being passed 105 to 15, sanctions will be imposed upon Australia starting in a week.
As many have made clear here and elsewhere, what is being proposed is not what was taken to the last election. Additionally, we’ve had it demonstrated that the proposal as it currently stands will not achieve the goals outlined for it. So, this voter and grassroots member of the ALP would like to know why we’re spending tens of millions of dollars pursuing it? Can’t find something sensible to do with the money?
Kate,
I had previously thought you had a clear understanding of the issue of internet censorship. Your comments clearly shows you are dancing around the issue and watering down on principles. You should take a look at the stand that your collegue Penny Sharpe has taken.
The real evil of internet censorship is NOT that it is unworkable, or it slows down access, or it is costly, or it can be circumvented or any of the usual arguments. The real problem is that it is information control on a massive scale, Kim Jong Il style. You think I am exaggerating? I don’t think so because I really don’t see the difference.
Proponents of censorship ask why content on the internet shouldn’t be restricted just like content on films, video, TV, print, etc. The difference is this: Restriction of content on the traditional media is largely transparent – we know or can easily find out what is being restricted and why. While we may argue about whether it should or should not be restricted, at least we know what we are arguing about.
Internet censorship is completely opaque. We won’t know what we are not allowed to access, let alone why. We won’t even know that it exists. This is a massive erosion of our rights. Australia is now the laughing stock of the world. Even in highly regulated societies like Singapore, where the government controls many aspects of citizens’ lives, they have free access to the internet because the government realises that any attempt to cure the internet of its evils by censorship will be worse than the disease.
I thought it was only the conservatives who caved in the religious right. Now I’m not so sure. I’m a Labor voter but if the opposition can come up with a good policy on this, this issue alone is enough to make me swing.
Australians have been too complacent. I have dedicated myself to telling everyone I meet about Labor’s betrayal of trust. Conroy has proven himself to be this administration’s most incompetent minister. Kevin Rudd can do himself, your party and the country a great favour by removing him. Does he need any more excuses?
Kate,
There was NEVER going to be a mandatory filter for all. Check these quotes:
Nov 07: A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a “clean feed” internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.
Note the words “offer” and “accessible by children”.
Dec 2007: “Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm
Sounds optional to me. Businesses never mentioned. Universities?
Dear Senator Lundy,
You may be familiar with the internet phrase of: “Pics or it didn’t happen”. I’d like to paraphrase that and say to you: “Stats or it shouldn’t happen”.
I challenge you to publish the results from independent and statistically valid studies that show the MAJORITY of ALL Australians (and not just a influential minority in some key marginal seats) say they want Internet filtering / censorship as was proposed by any reasonable person’s reading the ALP’s 2007 election platform, and / or the laws recently proposed by Senator Conroy.
I honestly am not aware of a general outcry from the non-IT savvy part of the electorate for a filtered internet. In fact, I am willing to bet the level of outcry will be about the same as the take up rate for the free client-side filtering software offered by the previous Federal Government.
BTW a valid “study” is not the results of the last election. The ALP would have been voted in with or without the Internet filtering policy.
I voted Labor in 2007, but this is a vote-changer, unfortunately. RC is a broad, eclectic category & banning it all means blocking political content such as euthenasia information and anti abortion images. It also gets regular porn that happens to involve things like latex or spanking. And it can catch all manner of random things from lower classifications that aren’t behind an access shield.
Had the government wanted to target illegal content, it could have – there are categories within RC for that. But Conroy cast a far broader net, & then tried to conflate RC content at large with “illegal material”. That kind of spin is toxic because it’s so dishonest, and disussions about censorship have to be be honest because censorship is ultimately a trust exercise. The secretiveness and outright refusal by Conroy to even be interviewed about this has cost the government the chance to build that trust.
Incidentally, the trial produced virtually nothing that wasn’t already known – I’m surprised that it would motivate a change in the Senator’s position.