Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to contribute so far. I have read all the posts and have outlined some ideas as to how the policy could better reflect the original election commitment of a mandatory filter for children. I am very conscious that this direction will never satisfy those who continue to be ideologically and implacably opposed to a filter, and I respect their position. Nonetheless please understand I have responsibility as a government Senator (and member of the ALP) to make a constructive effort to address the major concerns and make the broad intentions of the policy effective in a meaningful and practical sense.
In summary, concerns raised traversed the disparity with the original election commitment and the policy released, the technical testing not reflecting the current and future network environment raising concerns about network performance impact, weaknesses of blacklist filtering creating a false sense of security, secrecy and lack of appeals and scope creep in relation to blacklist, loss of Australia’s reputation for openness and inconsistency with policy directions for ALP generally relating to the digital economy.
I take the criticism for not offering daily feedback to comments but I thought a more considered post in light of the views expressed would be a better way to express myself. Obviously, there have been some very strong opinions aired. I want to thank Pia for her contributions too!
So I wanted to start by reflecting on a key point that came up again and again: our original policy.
Our policy from 2007 was expressed as follows:
(http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf)
Provide a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will filter out content that is identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The ACMA ‘blacklist’ will be made more comprehensive to ensure that children are protected from harmful and inappropriate online material.
The way it was communicated publicly included reference to a capacity for adults to ‘opt out’. For example this news story (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm) states “Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.”
Many people have expressed their frustration and disappointment in the ALP for announcing the final policy to be mandatory for everyone, without reference to an adult opt-out option. As one comment read: “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”. Another comment says “My expectation is that Labor would deliver on their promise, which was an optional clean feed”.
In other words, there was an ambivalent reaction to the policy at the time of the election policy because it was not understood to be a mandatory filter for the general population. For example, 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.” The key word there is ‘offer’and people are very comfortable with ISPs being required to offer a clean feed service that individuals can choose to use. This is supposed to be the how it works currently. The document goes on to say “Provide a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children.” This was a stronger statement mandating filtering for internet connected computers accessed by children. It still does not say the whole population. Additionally people reflected on the small amount of time to absorb or analyse the policy prior to the last election because it was released just 5 days prior, so there was not a lot of time to understand, debate, clarify or discuss it to the level of detail that is possible now, hence the groundswell of interest (note the surveys showing massive discomfort with the policy).
Given the election commitment stated thus “Provide a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children” an ‘opt-out’ for adults appears to be consistent where children are not subsequently affected by the uncensored content.
As I mentioned in my first post, an adult ‘opt-out’ is far from optimal given the potential stigma associated with it. However, the feedback is overwhelmingly that having an adult ‘opt-out’ is far preferable than not. Far preferable still was an ‘opt-in’ approach.
Another idea was put forward which caught my attention was requiring home internet users to make an active (or mandatory) ‘choice’ when they initiate their ISP account, (or at the commencement of the filtered service) either for a filtered or unfiltered service. The merit of this approach may be that of itself, making an active choice informs parents of the fact that the filter is a part of a broader policy for internet safety, and has its limitations.
To satisfy the policy objective of a mandatory filter for children, active acknowledgement that the subscriber is aware the government strongly recommends a filtered option for homes where children use the internet could be a part of this active (mandatory) choice.
I note that a great deal of concern was expressed in comments about the practical limitations of a blacklist filter and how this could mislead parents into thinking all risks were mitigated.
As I said in my previous post, my preferred approach is providing parents with a range of tools to make the right the choices for the safety of their children, so from my personal perspective, an active (mandatory) choice creates a specific opportunity of engagement for the government with parents and internet users to consider the other risks that the filter cannot address, be it peer to peer (unwanted/illegal) content sharing, cyber-bullying or identity theft.
This pro-active engagement offers government a realistic and practical platform of trust with the citizens they are trying to assist by making the internet safer by setting clear expectations if they opt-in. ISP’s could, if they assessed there was interest in the market, offer a range of filter options, again providing an informed choice for internet users.
In addition, the government is also providing a platform of trust with people who are ideologically opposed to the filter, or for other legitimate reasons such as network performance, as they could, with no stigma, effectively opt out of the filtered service.
This takes me to the next major focus of comment: the credibility of the tests on the impact of the filter on internet speeds. Concern about degradation of the performance of the internet has not been allayed by the release of the report, given my reading of the comments about the testing. There is enough specific technical concern about the filter test report that a sort of peer review is occurring. Here is a summary of some of the technical concerns raised:
- The filter test was successful in blocking 1000 URLs without a significant impact on speed, however there is widespread concern that this is not enough to allay the concerns about performance. Here are some of the technical concerns with the test:
- The scope of the trial was too limited – to block all RC content would mean blocking millions of addresses, but the trial only dealt with 1000, and even the Telstra ‘independent’ analysis only tested 10,000 URLs. For some context, there are over a trillion web pages on the Internet.
- There is serious doubt the solution can scale, and questions as to the impact on the NBN, because the trial did not test 100Mb bandwidth.
- The trial only tested static pages, not dynamic content: online content is increasingly dynamic involving much more complex filtering systems which would likely have an increased impact on the speed of service.
- Websites delivering content that is RC can continue delivering content with relative ease through changing the URL of the content, the use of peer to peer networks, VPNs, HTTPS (secure HTTP), or through many other mechanisms. So even once blocked, content can be made accessible through other means from the providers end.
- The trial report explicitly stated that “A technically competent user could, if they wished, circumvent the filtering technology.” This raises the question of whether penalties for circumvention will apply even when RC content is not accessed, including for many young people who are technologically capable. It also raises questions about what, if any penalty would be applied to individuals who circumvent, opt-out or otherwise access material on the black list, even if the material is not illegal other than it is on the blacklist.
- The risk of “false positives”: the report indicates “filtering of innocuous content” was 3.3%. This is a very large amount of content to inappropriately block once you extrapolate to the sorts of numbers that would be necessary on a blacklist. Concerns expressed included that false positives could mean Australian businesses being blocked from their customers and market, without (at this point) any clear mechanism to check, appeal or overturn the addition of their webpage to the blacklist.
- This point also relates to unintended consequences of filtering. For example in the UK where a Wikipedia page was blocked as “potentially illegal” resulting in the ability to edit Wikipedia pages being completely inaccessible to the UK (http://apcmag.com/internet_filter_stuffup_cuts_off_wikipedia.htm).
So please let me know your thoughts. I haven’t been able to reflect on everything so bear with me. and thanks again to those who have taken the time to prepare thoughtful, comprehensive contributions in particular it is helpful. Obviously I will continue to read the comments through the Christmas break and I also intend to bring these concerns to the attention of my colleagues and pursue my ideas in the new year.
UPDATE: Please note – our office is closed as of the 18th December till 4th January for the holidays.
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I have been arguing about this internet censorship issue on this blogsite, and in each article the Herald runs (at least six so far, so it’s probably a bit unfair to say the media is ignoring the issue). The trouble is that we are winning every battle but making no impact on the war. The few people who come online to SUPPORT Senator Conroy’s censorship system know almost nothing about the internet, and they support the filter because they are completely unaware that the filter won’t work. I am sure they read our arguments about freedom and democracy as simply cover for “I want my porn”.
I hate to say it, but I believe we need to push more on “the filter won’t work” rather than on “this is a threat to our democracy”, and I say this as a person who has been posting regularly about it being a threat to our democracy. The sad truth is that we’re discovering that most people – AREN’T motivated by threats to their democracy, because they’ve never considered the possibility of their democracy ever being under threat. Not from that nice Mr Conroy anyway … he’s a Christian! They will happily give the government the ability to secretly put whatever website it likes on the blacklist, because at heart they don’t see protecting democracy being something that THEY are responsible for: they see it as something the government is responsible for.
We need to show how hopeless the filter is. We need to make clear point-by-point examples of the type of material that Conroy’s censorship will attempt to remove and how it will fail to do so. I’ve drafted up a few points for discussion.
1. You might think that:
Senator Conroy’s censorship bill will stop my child from accessing child pornography accidentally.
But actually:
It is virtually impossible to “accidentally” access child pornography. The people who make child porn are well aware it is illegal, and they cover their tracks as well as they can, to avoid going to jail. The idea that child porn is just hanging about on ordinary websites, or can be found by googling simple search terms is completely unfounded.
2. You might think that:
Senator Conroy’s censorship bill will stop pedophiles accessing child porn.
But actually:
Websites are only one way of accessing information on the internet. There are many other ways, such as peer-to-peer/file transfer protocol(FTP) methods. These methods establish a direct connection between one machine on the internet (the pedophile’s) and another machine (the server with child porn on it). Senator Conroy’s filter will leave these types of connections completely unaffected. What percentage of pedophile material is transmitted by peer-to-peer/FTP compared to websites? Over 99.9%.
3. You might think that:
Senator Conroy’s censorship bill will stop my child from deliberately going to porn sites.
But actually:
Senator Conroy has tested the filter with 1000 websites loaded in it. Later he says it might be expanded to 10,000. There are over a BILLION porn websites on the internet. Senator Conroy’s filter will prevent your child from accessing 0.001% of the porn. The other 99.999% will come through exactly as before. Your child will not even notice the difference. And at least a million porn sites are added to the internet each day. No amount of public servants, and no amount of concerned citizens can possible keep up with monitoring that flood of porn. To stop your child from accessing porn websites, you have to actually do some parenting.
4. You might think that:
Senator Conroy’s censorship bill will stop other Australians from accessing porn.
But actually:
The same arguments shown above apply: 99.999% of the porn will still be available. In addition, Senator Conroy’s filter is ludicrously easy to circumvent. Accessing websites with “http” at the start can be changed to “https” which makes it a secure connection and will completely bypass the filter. In addition, anyone can get a Virtual Private Network (VPN) which prevents external access (like from Senator Conroy’s filter) completely. And if you think VPNs should be done away with, you need to know that every bank, and pretty much every large company in the country has one: any organisation that needs to prevent people from tapping in on their information has to use a VPN. VPNs cost $5-10 a month.
5. You might think that:
Senator Conroy’s censorship bill will stop pedophiles from being able to “groom” my child for sexual purposes.
But actually:
Pedophiles “groom” children for sexual purposes through websites that CHILDREN hang around on: facebook, friend finder sites, chat sites. Not one of these sites will be affected by Senator Conroy’s censorship, because they are primarily sites for perfectly acceptable contact between children. To prevent grooming by pedophiles, you need to educate your child about the issue: you need to do some parenting instead of hoping that Senator Conroy’s filter will do it for you.
6. You might think that:
Senator Conroy and the Labor government are serious about eliminating pedophile activity in Australia.
But actually:
Introducing a filtering system that won’t work (for all the above reasons) will do nothing to curb pedophile activity in this country. Introducing a filtering system will alert pedophiles to the fact that the government can see what websites they go to, and will force them to use secure methods that defeat the filter AND police monitoring. Also, while the current government is spending 44 million dollars on this totally ineffective filtering system, it’s REDUCING the budget of the Federal Police’s child porn unit. Does that sound like they are serious about eliminating pedophile activity?
7. You might think that:
Even if the filter is that ineffective, surely something is better than doing nothing.
But actually:
Introducing an ineffective filter like Senator Conroy’s will help parents to lower their guard about how their children access the internet. They’ll believe they are safe because the filter is there, but the filter will be almost totally ineffective, so their children will be MORE at risk from child porn and pedophile activity. Also, the filtering system will enourage pedophiles to move to more secure methods of obtaining child porn, so they will be harder to catch. In addition, the money spent on this filter could have been used by the child porn unit to continue hunting down pedophiles.
8. You might think that:
You are doing some good for your child by supporting Senator Conroy’s filter.
But actually:
Senator Conroy’s filter will make things easier for pedophiles to hide from the law and will have virtually no other effect on their activities. It will not touch 99.999% of porn on the internet. It is ludicrously easy to circumvent and your child will need only a rudimentary knowledge of the internet to do so, or he will need to know one of the 90% of kids in his class who do have that knowledge. If you are serious about your child’s safety, you will oppose Senator Conroy’s utterly ineffective filtering system.
Martin C, spot on. I have taken the liberty of reposting your well considered piece on my machinegunkeyboard.com website. This is an ideal backgrounder for non-technical types.
Brian: Thanks for the feedback, and you are more than welcome to repost. On your website, you might need to change “this blogsite” in the second line to reference Ms Lundy’s blog though. Also, if possible, please fix the typo I left in there which will annoy me otherwise: in para 2, “people – AREN’T”, remove the dash.
All: feel free to repost my material wherever you think it will do the most good.
Done, thanks.
Superbly done, Martin! You’re absolutely right. There’s precious little in the mainstream media about this and unless we can get the message out in a way that the average voter can understand, Conroy et al will just be sitting back laughing at our fulminations, realising that no-one is listening.
I’m reminded of the episode of the Simpsons where the kids realise that that adults are engaged in a conspiracy. Someone says “Let’s post it on the Internet”, and Lisa replies “No – we have to tell people who matter!”
My I pass your excellent words on to the Australian Sex Party? (Read their policies, folks – these people are really worth voting for!)
Fred: Certainly, pass them on to any political party, any representative, any media source and any individual. I’m keen to try to avoid making this a party-political issue: I’m engaging in dialogue with both major parties. This is simply damaging legislation for Australia to implement.
One caveat: the eight points I made were intended largely as discussion points to stimulate public debate and ensure that people don’t base their support for Senator Conroy’s legislation on false premises. I deliberately said “You might think that” instead of “Senator Conroy says that” because I believe most people who support this legislation do so from a completely exaggerated view of what it even INTENDS to achieve. Senator Conroy is probably happy to get their support so is not going to go out of his way to disabuse them, but it should not be assumed that I am accusing Senator Conroy of stating each of the “You might think that” conditions.
Well it has been interesting but I haven’t seen much new about this proposition here or anywhere else on the sites I have visited recently. I say this because none of it seems to make the slightest difference to Senator Conroy.
It seems to me that most of the opposition has come from people technically competent and familiar with the way the internet works.
I find it inconceivable that the voting public can’t see the dangers of handing a mechanism to governments to apply censorship to the net in any form whatsoever. That is not to say I think that this government will misuse the facility. In the future who knows?
@Des Walsh and Stephen Collins.
I can’t believe you were serious in suggesting that contributors should give sufficient information about themselves to reveal their identity to all of the nutters out there, the use of aliases is common on most forums simply for this reason. The suggestion that people should “have the stones to name yourselves” is bordering on the offensive.
It is simply common sense to protect yourself from abusive mail and late night phone calls telling you that you are a fascist, a communist sympathiser, a Liberal voting idiot, a Labour apologist and now I suppose a paedophile would be a favourite, simply because you state a viewpoint different to theirs. I know because I have a name that is easily identified and I gave the area in which I live on one occasion, never again.
@Senator Kate Lundy.
I hope you have got something of value out of the replies you have received.
Whether you vote for or against the Filter is obviously up to you and what is more I respect your right to do so for whatever reason you feel is appropriate.
I am afraid we are all caught up in a situation best described in one of Winston Churchill’s aphorisms “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”
Ken, I said what I did as I believe that if our concerns as voters are available to those we vote for, they potentially carry more weight. I have no problem with pseudonyms generally, they have a good deal of value in some fora. I stated my position for this particular issue. What I was trying to do was ensure that Senator Lundy and her staff could take our concerns to the relevant Members and Senators. Without identity, that’s hard. That’s just how dealing with politicians, in their role as our representatives, works.
There was no intent to offend.
Like you, my name is pretty commonplace. On top of that, I’m around half the first page of Google results for my name. I have a pretty well established public persona.
I’ve been vocal for over two years on this issue, in several places including here, my own blog, ABC Unleashed, several other media outlets online and at the Centre for Policy Development. Nobody’s ever bothered to hunt me down and attempt to vilify me as any of the several things they could accuse me of being were they so inclined. Sure, they could, but I’d hardly care. And, if I did, I have the recourse of the courts if it’s bad enough.
Yes Stephen, thanks for your clarification, I understand and maybe I was too sensitive on this issue.
In my opinion an open forum of this nature is maybe not the appropriate place to do as you say, this I think should be done with a more direct approach to your local member and any other politician who can help. In my only other post, not the one you referred to, I was basically addressing my remarks to the other people on this forum, particularly those saying an optional form of censorship would be acceptable, which I believe to be wrong.
The letters are easy to deal with but phone calls, some late at night, are a different matter.
My wife and on one occasion a young grandchild had the misfortune to pick up the phone. Having been around for quite some time, the opening expletives were inconsequential to me but not to them.
The courts are no use because these letters and calls are always anonymous. I have no idea who it was but I am fairly sure that only one person was involved.
What they call me is irrelevant and almost amusing, to be called a fascist, a communist sympathiser, a Liberal voting idiot and a Labour apologist all from my comments on the same issue is, when you think of it, somewhat inconsistent
Anyway that was a long time ago.
So enough said.
“What I was trying to do was ensure that Senator Lundy and her staff could take our concerns to the relevant Members and Senators.”
The first issue with that thought is that the Senator and her staff are under no obligation to pass on specific posts (or, in fact, anything at all). If you send them a letter on paper in the post, then yes, they’ll act – a blog reply (even if meticulously and accurately attributed) not so much (and to be fair, there are some very good reasons why treating unverified web commentary as formal communication is a bad idea). Use the right tool for the job.
The second issue is that we all know the relevant Senator isn’t interested in what you have to say (unless your name is Jim Wallace). Senator Conroy’s lack of interest in what his critics or the Australian public want is well documented. He isn’t interested in any kind of discussion whatsoever. If Senator Lundy were to pass our posts on, they’d be binned without ever being read.
That’s the arrogance of Rudd and Conroy in a nutshell – yes, whatever Ms Lundy gives them in writing they will just bin without reading a word.
My family comes from a long line of Labor voters here and in the UK. We were burned by Thatcher closing the coal mines. But now I have left any Labor allegiance FOR LIFE. I repeat, for life. It’s not just the issue. Though that’s bad enough. It’s the attitude. It’s the arrogance. It’s the bunker politics. I commend Ms Lundy for the blog. However it only angers me more by showing how the Labor party SHOULD be handling matters and ISN’T.
If I want my private, law-abiding life to be controlled by a religious clique, then I will go somewhere else. Nothern Ireland maybe.
Conroy’s attempts to frame the debate as being about child porn are ludicrous. Of course it’s about child porn – the money being wasted on a filter that is needed by the AFP in the arms race against paedophiles. These sick people don’t ride the white knuckler all day in front of a PC. Rather, they run very sophisticated operations that employ the latest technologies of evasion and encryption.
Anyway, that’s it from me. I am bloody freakin’ fed up with all this. I’m getting hold of about 20 circumvention techniques. At least I can look after numero uno. No government’s touching MY internet surfing.
I love our ‘Totalitarian Democracy’ – ‘whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government’.
‘None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free’
Enjoy your new world order Sheeple (http://www.sheeple.net/Sheeple.htm)!
Work sets you free (Arbeit macht frei)
Well, I know that there’s a good chance that by expressing any opinion on this subject where feelings are running so high, I may annoy or disappoint some, but I’m willing to accept that and possible loss of respect or friendships as a result. Then again, if someone has a good reason, as you appear to have, for not using their name, I of course understand.
With this exception, that if someone enters the fray here in what I would see as a highly aggressive manner and – in the language of my younger days, employs “fightin’ words”, then I would expect them to be more open about who they are and why they would expect to be taken seriously.
To put it succinctly how this will poison my qaulity of life:
before filtering: I got a 404. It happens.
After filtering: Was it a 404? Or was it the filter? Will I ever know? Now Conjob has made up some “block” idea on the run to tell me. It sounds like balderdash. And for it having any chance to convince me, the Enex test has to be run again.
Sounds like we need a new status code in HTTP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_Client_Error
451 Blocked by contemptible Government
I’m going to email The Internet Society about it
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/contact.shtml
There is an interesting report on the filter here for those that may be interested.
http://www.inquisitr.com/52298/australia-confirms-censorship-plans-tells-fibs-on-the-filtering-trial/
Irene Graham’s page which compares-and-contrasts Conroy’s 15 Dec 2009 announcement with the policy “Fact Sheet” entitled “Labor’s Plan for Cyber Safety” released 5 days before the last election.
http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan-overview.html#comparison
In so many ways, on so many levels, the 15 Dec 2009 announcement represents a breach of an election promise.
I am so, so disappointed with Labor right now. In every meaningful way that matters to me, the new Government is no better than the old one they replaced; and in particular issues like this, they’re far, far worse.
At the core of our American (Washington) and English (Westminster) hybrid political system is party loyalty.
Pia may be able to verify this for me, but from what I understand Kate would be pretty close to quitting her job if she stands against the party, or at least not plan to have any future involvement.
The essence of our political system is allegiance to a party, thus the people we vote in to represent us have no real inclination or even capacity to do so, they are merely along for the ride with whatever the figure head says.
Here for more; http://www.peo.gov.au/students/fss/fss38.html
I suggest you all get a hold of;
Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia; 7th edition
John Summers, Dennis Woodward, Andrew Parkin – ISBN 0-7339-9900-X
Riddle me this;
Australia has local government, reporting to state government that are responsible for their own revenue generation (parking fines, speeding fines, pokies). This state government reports to the federal government, who drip feed taxation funds to the states, and where funding is insufficient, are forced to further extract money from the citizens.
This occurs in a ‘1st world Western society’ where we work harder and longer than our European breathren.
Why? Could it be the micro-managed oversight? The fact that we don’t care about being political as a duty of the citizens? Maybe that we have a ridiculous hybrid political system that enshrines party loyalty as opposed to REPRESENTATIVES that are ELECTED to support THE PEOPLE.
Local government could report directly to the federal level and DISSOLVE the state governments. Redirect the taxation into ESSENTIAL SERVICES and remove party loyalty as a requirement of joining a group.
Until we empower independence in our political system, or at least true represetnatives of the people as opposed to a gang of rhetoric spewing groupies who echo the sentiment drawn up by the figure head in a room somewhere lest they get fired… what kind of democracy is that.
How much longer are you going to be taken for a ride Australia?
Apathy is destroying our great country, and unless we act now, by bringing our passion forwards, spreading the word, speaking with everyone we can and alerting them to this act of subversion and ethical control – well you don’t deserve your country and you should be subjugated.
“First they came.. then I cried out, because when they came for me, their was no one left.”
** In the past week I have written 4 letters, had 15 minute discussions with 10 people i had not met before and pursued understanding what legal capacities we have to have Stephen Conroy cease and desist by order of the governor general **
Do you care enough to join in co-ordinated action? Get in touch.
The past couple of weeks have been interesting for me, because this issue has made me “politically active” for the first time in my life. I find myself actively seeking out new people, to talk about the Senator Conroy’s flawed filtering legislation. In my normal circle of acquaintances, instead of being the perennial “commentator from the sidelines” in any discussion, I am now actually opening the discussion and urging people’s opinions towards my own. I’m finding out how to influence hearts and minds by different strategies for different listeners: addressing democracy concerns with those who can see what a threat this legislation represents; addressing the legislation’s inability to actually do any porn filtering (and how it will thus help lower parent’s guard) with those who might otherwise think that the filter is a good idea; speaking of the slowdown of the internet to those who use it for business; and speaking of high cost vs. zero effectiveness to those who don’t otherwise see the filtering issue as a big one. While I can’t claim to have convinced each listener to the point they will change their vote, I’m pretty sure I have left each one aware that Senator Conroy is planning to introduce some very poor legislation.
I just wish I had been as effective in my dealings with politicians, not one of whome has responded.
An amazing handbook for us all, including the politicians;
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/what-matters-now-get-the-free-ebook.html
Senator Conroy has stated that he is determined to push ISP filtering at any price. Presumably the next step is to fight the Mafia by removing names from the phonebook.
Why not make the RC content list absolutely public? Australians won’t be able to go to those sites (if their ISP has configured the filter correctly) and it would enable the whole community to monitor what is banned and whether it is reasonable to ban it.
I’m pretty cranky with you. Let me tell you why:
Firstly, you aren’t just some member of the public with no interest in this matter, you are the Deputy Chairman of auDA (amongst many other potentially conflicting and vested interests. Your website is a veritable laundry list of organisations and companies you represent). You don’t explicitly declare any of those affiliations. Who exactly are you representing with your comments? I think, given that you seem to represent so many, that you should be more forthcoming in that respect.
Secondly, as someone associated with auDA, the EFA and the ACS, and at a very high level too, I find your suggestions about making the blacklist public to act as a balance to be disingenuous to say the very least. You know that your suggestion is a loaded question, that filtering cannot possibly work 100% and of the issues surrounding security through obscurity. You aren’t writing this as a hypothetical question, or disclosing the fact that you are fully aware of the absurdity of your statements – in short, you are acting as a shill when you could just as easily disclose who you are, and what you really think of filtering, in an explicit and transparent way. I think what you’ve done is a fundamentally dishonest way of addressing the issue.
Thirdly, given that you are the Deputy Chairman of the auDA board, and the EFA’s representative at auDA, I would think that we’d all be more interested in your explanation of auDA’s recent actions in regards to the swift take-down of the stephenconroy.com.au parody/political activism website than loaded questions from someone who should know better. At the moment it looks for all the world like you are Stephen Conroy’s best mate (which paints your shill comments in an even more unflattering light).
To summarise: You didn’t adequately disclose who you represent, you asked shill questions, and you are on the board of an organisation that has just committed an act of political censorship. To say that I have concerns about your motivations in commenting here is a gross understatement.
I’m totally against the filter, but I won’t stand for deliberate dishonesty in opposing it either. If this sorry censorship debacle has taught me anything, it is that we aren’t going to get anywhere until we demand better conduct from those in positions of authority, and to hold them to account when we don’t get it.
Flammage aside, what’s disingenuous about insisting that the RC content list be public? EFA went to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to have the RC content list released, and while the AAT refused the application on the basis that the blacklist could be used to access illegal material, that excuse doesn’t wash if the sites are blocked. This will show that the RC content list will comprise, over time, only active sites that are legal in their host country and which are not by any means “the worst of the worst”. The transparency and accountability mechanisms for this silly idea are still important, and Conroy was unable to answer the question from the interviewer from iWire on why the RC content list should stay secret.
For those who came in late – I’ve been campaigning against ISP filters since the Dept of Communications tried to foist it on the Labor Government in 1995. My views haven’t changed since my speech to the Perth rally in 1999 , online at http://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/may28/perth/kh.html . I’m pretty sure that by posting under my own name and email, and citing my personal website, that anyone with a clue can discern my affiliations. Easier than with a Gmail address, anyway.
I’m not authorised to speak for AUDA, it’s not the Deputy Chair’s role and this blog is scarcely the place for the CEO of AUDA to debate any individual dispute. As a private individual all I can note is the eligibility rules for .com.au names are online. If the protest site had registered fightstephenconroy.com.au or stephenconroysucks.com.au it would have been ok, but you can’t register a person’s name (on its own) in .com.au unless it’s your name or your business’s name. This was decided by public policy panels years ago, and an application for any person’s name as a .com.au address will have the same rule applied.
My core problem is that you know how complex these issues really are, and you’ve chosen to pose a logically fallacious question instead of openly addressing them. You know what a shill is – so presumably you either reject my assertion of shilling or you consider shilling to be valid (because I’m not objecting to the suggestion of making an RC content list public – that is a very complex issue and a valid topic of debate in its own right, even if it is nowhere near as trivial as publish or don’t).
Much like the EFA going to the AAT with a deliberately flawed request, your question is designed solely to indirectly point out flaws in the censorship proposal. Much like that question, it is designed to cause problems rather than debate. It doesn’t even make sense if you read it literally – publish the blocklist because the blocklist will block the blocklist so we can check the blocklist? That’s fine if it is plainly declared to be a contrary question – but it wasn’t, and that’s the part that bugs me.
To be honest, to most people what I am complaining about here is utterly irrelevant. I can respect that, but I think shilling, even when it is in aid of a cause I believe in, is both wrong and counter productive. I expect that kind of behaviour from Conroy and his ilk – not you.
Still, as you say, I’m just a clueless person with a gmail address. What do I know?
I still find Kimberley’s question to be a valid one.
It makes perfect sense if you assume that the published list of sites is on an Australian government server and that it is exempt from take-down requests and blacklisting.
Now, if we assume that when the Minister says “blocked” he means inaccessible (a seemingly reasonable assumption, but you never know what he’ll mean tomorrow), then it is perfectly valid to ask why the list of sites itself can’t be published?
If the Minister’s answer is that blocked sites can still be accessed, then our assumption about what he means by “blocked” must be discharged. The Minister should now clarify what, exactly, it means for a web site to be “blocked”.
Let’s not blame the question for leading to the paradox, let’s determine the reason for the paradox.
(It seems similar to the reaction of the GSM spokesperson upon publication of details of their cryptosystem, who said: a) it would be illegal for the German security researcher to conduct his research in the UK or the US; and b) that there were no known attacks in 21 years so GSM must have been very secure. Clearly, the problem was with the cryptosystem and not with the laws in Germany.)
@Ken
If you look at this post http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/21/further-thoughts-on-the-filter/#comment-14116 you can see some of the issues surrounding publication of the blocklist (as I see them).
The key assumption that you (and Kimberley) rely on for this thought experiment to work is that Conroy is both honest and acting in good faith. He’s neither. All his statements are suspect as far as I’m concerned. The paradox evaporates the second you factor deception into the experiment.
When Conroy says ‘blocked’ he is speaking as a politician, not a technician. The word ‘blocked’ has about as much real world meaning as any other political spin (ie. none).
We all know for a fact that a filter cannot work 100% (or, if you take trivial circumvention measures into account, at all). We all also know that Conroy knows this, and will *never* admit it – welcome to basic politics. People in politics say a lot of things they know to be false, that doesn’t mean they believe what they are saying is true, or that you can expect them to act like it is true (except when it suits them to do so).
He won’t release the blocklist to public scrutiny, and he’ll do his damnedest to limit it to the smallest, most sympathetic (think senior public servants) group possible. Not because he gives a damn about the actual content of the list, but because there is no political advantage to releasing it. Is anyone here seriously suggesting that if Conroy did release the blocklist that would pacify any of his critics? The very first thing we’d all do is pick the list apart and beat him up with it (because this has already happened with the first leak). Does anyone seriously think that Conroy is unaware of that?
Whilst legal annoyance and nitpicking has its place as a strategy, from my perspective it is like a kipper nipping at a whale. Conroy is not going to play fair – the real world definition of ‘blocklist’ is ‘whatever the Government feels like, and you’re never going to see an officially sanctioned list of that, because we say so, regardless of whatever fine words we used to mollify you’. Pretending that isn’t the case, and acting like we aren’t all aware of it, is a pointless waste of time and effort.
Additionally, trying to score political points against a politician is just about the dumbest method of combating this possible. Never attack your opponent on their terms, in their areas of strength (at least not if you expect to win). Find their weaknesses and exploit them (it worked for Jim Wallace – he saw that the party was willing to betray fundamental democratic principles in exchange for votes. That’s a smart strategy on Jim’s part. Credit where credit’s due – he’s gone from being a political nobody to having his bum kissed in Conroy’s office and with the ALP’s cracking its neck to give us Iran’s internet. All whilst maintaining the disarming public appearance of your slightly vague grandfather. I’m impressed).
@Stuart Anderson:
I find this discussion fascinating, partly because what you say about spin is completely true, but also partly because you’re doing the same thing yourself
Your assertions about whether or not the list will be open for public scrutiny rely on another convenient fiction, which is that the Government is even remotely capable of keeping the list secret.
It’s going to be open for public scrutiny, picked apart by critics, published across the world whether Conroy likes it or not. That was true when I started talking about it in October 2008, it was true when it was actually leaked (3 times) in March 2009, it’s true today and it’ll be true tomorrow.
It was also true in Finland, Denmark, Italy, China, Thailand and Norway, and it’ll eventually be true for the IWF blacklist in the UK. It’s plain for anyone to see that a standard feature of ISP blacklisting systems is the publication of the list, and you can’t have one without the other.
So I’m not terribly inclined to care very much about safeguards and accountability, because I know that publication automatically leads to accountability, and safeguards occur out of embarrassment, and that the safeguards will be illusory and the next leak will be every bit as embarrassing as the previous one. Lather, rinse, repeat, whenever Conroy gets in front of a microphone to talk about the NBN he’ll never know whether the next question from the assembled press will be about the latest malfeasance uncovered by the most recent blacklist leak.
Bureaucracies are terrible at keeping secrets like this. We’re living in a world where the UK Government almost routinely leaves DVDs full of its citizens personal information on back seats of taxis on a bimonthly basis, where credit card companies experience almost weekly headlines about tens of millions of customer records accidentally lobbed into a dumpster, and where ISP blacklists are routinely leaked.
Does anyone reading this believe that the Australian Government owns some kind of magic pixie dust it can sprinkle over a blacklist to make it uniquely secure, unlike all those other blacklists? I don’t think so, that would assume competence and understanding, and if they had any of that we wouldn’t be having a discussion about mandatory ISP censorship for adults in the first place.
– mark
@Mark Newton
If you think that I am deliberately distorting information for my own ends, well, that’s your privilege to believe that. There’s little point to me denying an accusation of spin (and to be fair, I’m human and I have opinions and biases. I’m not aiming for journalistic impartiality and equal representation, and I’m under no onus to make the opposing side’s arguments for them either). I’m happy enough for people to make up their own minds on the subject, they can accept or reject, in part or in total, any (or all) of my statements.
My post is a response to the hypothetical scenario of releasing the blocklist in a perfect filtering environment, and why I think that thought experiment is flawed. In my opinion, it doesn’t work hypothetically, let alone when translated back to the real world. It relies on a bunch of assumptions, that if they were to be true, would invalidate the experiment – the paradox is not a true paradox, it only arises from flawed assumptions. Given that is what I believe, it is not difficult to see why I think it is a waste of time – others are free to disagree with my conclusion (or any other aspect of my statements).
At no point in my post (or the post linked at its head) do I claim that security through obscurity is possible. From the linked post:
“The problem of course, is that security through obscurity is a terrible strategy. The list has already been leaked, and it will be leaked again without question. The Government might have a remote chance of ensuring their own internal security, but good luck on all the censorware vendors, all the ISP’s, ACMA, the classification board, and the rest of the hands this must by necessity pass through.”
And:
“Regardless of the official position the Government takes, the simple fact is that for all intents and purposes the list is already public. It’s still on Wikileaks (and “wikileaks australia blacklist” is the second autocomplete in Google’s search box, with over 1 million results. What does that tell you?).”
The point of Conroy not officially releasing the blocklist is not to prevent the blocklist from being available, it is merely to allow the Government the possibility of denial. It is a political measure only – the fact that the list is unofficially available makes little difference when it is all about face saving gestures.
Mark Newton: “the Government is even remotely capable of keeping the list secret.”
I don’t have the same confidence as you. There are any number of techniques making getting it dammed difficult. They could for example distribute the URL’s as hashes, or as a bloom filter. I don’t know whether they are planning to do this, but given Telstra said in their independent evaluation the list was never revealed some are obviously thinking about it.
If they do that the leak can only come from one place: from with the ACMA itself. It seems unlikely that will happen too frequently, if at all.
I quote the conclusion of a blog post which questions the necessity of the mandatory filter. The blog post is entitled:
“Smut brought to you with the implicit blessing of the Australian Government”
It concludes thus:…
“Given that abdication of responsible use of the Internet by adults is unacceptable, the only option left (by definition) is for the Government to assume, and indeed, require that all adult Australians who are inadvertently exposed to potentially “Refused Classification” material must act responsibly and decide for themselves whether it is appropriate to remain exposed to such material.
What, then, is the point of the mandatory filter?”
http://broadbannedrevolution.blogspot.com/2009/12/smut-brought-to-you-with-implicit.html
“What, then, is the point of the mandatory filter?”
The filter doesn’t have to work at all to be a politically effective bargaining chip. The Government’s stated aims for this censorship proposal are simply untrue – its sole purpose is to be a pound of flesh for certain conservative factions in exchange for votes at the polls and votes in parliament. That’s all it is, and all they care about.
I think you’re spot on Stuart,
Stuart,
I think the logic behind the suggestion from Kimberley to publish the RC list is the same logic that is currently used for other censorship in Australia. It is public knowledge what films are banned due to RC. We can see the list, and so we can also see that we are not being censored for something other than excessive violence or sex depiction as opposed to say, political views.
If we are going to have a censored Internet (and The Reich Fuhrer for Censorship Conroy seems determined) then we MUST know what is being censored and why. Any other option leaves the censorship open to abuse. We have already seen so many different definitions of what will be censored from The Reich Fuhrer for Censorship Conroy that I don’t trust him an inch to do the “right thing”.
I don’t know what Heitman’s logic is, however, let’s take a trip down the RC/Classification disclosure road and see where that leads us.
The biggest problem with listing banned internet content, and then disclosing which exact content you have banned, is that circumvention of the filter is trivial. You then effectively have a publicly index of banned content, which people can go straight to. If you are in the business of being a censor, this is clearly an undesirable outcome.
If you don’t disclose your blocklist, then at least people who are circumventing the filter don’t have an index to the content that you consider so objectionable (they just have the entire internet. Whoops).
The problem of course, is that security through obscurity is a terrible strategy. The list has already been leaked, and it will be leaked again without question. The Government might have a remote chance of ensuring their own internal security, but good luck on all the censorware vendors, all the ISP’s, ACMA, the classification board, and the rest of the hands this must by necessity pass through.
Regardless of the official position the Government takes, the simple fact is that for all intents and purposes the list is already public. It’s still on Wikileaks (and “wikileaks australia blacklist” is the second autocomplete in Google’s search box, with over 1 million results. What does that tell you?).
As a (scant) face saving measure (and as demonstrated by Conroy during the earlier leak), if you don’t disclose the list you at least have the possibility of denial. “No, no, no, this isn’t the real list – we don’t arbitrarily ban dentists and tuckshops”. We all know it was the bona fide list, and that it was full of bad data. However, you’ll sooner get Conroy to erect an altar to the Liberal party in his office than admit the list is genuine. Politicians seem to prefer being worldwide laughing stocks to taking ownership of their own problems – I have no idea why that is.
Some other issues with disclosure:
* You must be accountable – the Government was (quite rightly) pilloried for obvious mistakes and deliberate acts of political censorship on the list. If people see a list, they’ll want to know why you’ve banned a particular thing, and they’ll argue with you about it. The only thing the Government gets from disclosing the list is more grief.
* People can reverse engineer the ACMA complaints process (and the filtering mechanism itself). By submitting sites, and then seeing what makes the list and what doesn’t, you can learn exactly what sets them off and what kind of things they ignore. By having a known dataset that the filter blocks you could easily DDOS it (and I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other nasty things that a list would make easier to do).
* The hypothetical scenario where the filter is 100% effective makes releasing the list pointless. A list that cannot be checked is as good as a list you cannot access. Acting like this is a valid scenario in the real world is pointless – it cannot possibly occur any more than a 0% effective filter can in the real world.
So in short, they’re damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
We don’t need an accountability mechanism for the filter, because we don’t need the filter. Bolting a bureaucratic system of disclosure and appeals to it is utterly pointless when the fundamental idea of internet censorship is flawed. Lending the idea of censorship credence by seriously discussing accountability in the system is counter productive – there is simply no way this system can work, or be fair and accountable. It’s just not possible, not technically and not even in principle.
Stuart, well said. Your highly cogent comment deserves wider distribution and preservation, so I’ve reposted it on mgk.
I agree with Mark Newton that Wikileaks is a reliable friend, and that the Government leaves databases in taxis. Also, that we’ve had a national firewall built on ISP filtering since 2000 (which is largely mitigated by the wink-and-nod deal with the IIA that it’s not necessary to implement it so long as NetNanny is available for download).
However, as we’re now having a real filter like all the other autocracies, I still reckon it’s important whether the blocklist is public as in Singapore or secret as in China. It’s whether the Government is open enough to bear scrutiny, and symbolic of whether Labor has really burnt the flag.
Well isn’t that just dandy we now have 3 opponents of the Filter arguing amongst themselves.
Surely the only stance should be “No Internet Censorship applied by the Government”.
If genuinely intended to protect children give parents the wherewithal to do so at the client end by all means but do not put in the hands of Politicians, no matter how incompetently it will be carried out, the means of covering up mistakes, blocking dissent etc.
In view of the current state of our print and TV media the internet could finish up as the only way someone with new and revolutionary (not in the sense of violent overthrow of Governments) ideas could get their message across.
I can honestly say that I have never come across an offensive site, of the type suggested, by accident or deliberately for that matter, in the many years I have been using the internet.
My stance put simply is:-
NO FILTER OF ANY KIND TO BE IMPOSED ON US via our ISPs.
And this is the one I put to all my family, friends and acquaintances whenever possible.
ken
It is safe to say that our disagreements are trivial, we all want roughly the same thing.
Senator Lundy’s office reopens on the 4th, and we’ll all be able to return our attention to her at that point (and away from peripheral issues).
What is lacking from this discussion is any realisation by anyone involved that the internet is a PRIVATE communication medium. You send a message from your particular computer to another particular computer, and that computer decides what to send back to you, individually. It is very much more like a phone conversation than like any form of broadcast medium such as TV or newspaper.
I explain this in more detail here:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/australias-freedom-draws-close
For god’s sake, everyone can see this policy is terrible. Even Senator Lundy, who is only supporting it because it’s what the Labor caucus is doing.
Frankly, Senator Lundy needs to “grow a pair” and support the Australian people.
This policy is not about the children. It is about the government being able to arbitrarily censor anything online.
A free democracy cannot work with the government having such totalitarian control.
But hey, that’s what Australia gets for voting Rudd in. Frankly, I cannot wait for him to be booted out.
Rhett, I don’t think Rudd per se is the issue. The Coalition first mooted ISP level filtering many years ago. They were at least persuaded in the end (ironically by Sen Lundy among others) that it would not work. Frankly, I don’t think online liberties would do any better under Abbott/Liberal control.
The problem is politicians in general, pursuing votes via ‘law-n-order’ furphys, fundamentally misunderstanding the actual needs of parents (and citizens in general) for filtering, as well as the nature of the internet.
The pressure should not be put not on the well meaning Lundy but on Julia Gillard, the sole hope of rescuing the ALP from its authoritarian and conservative policies. I have suggested to her that unless Conroy is exposed as stupid or sinister , the ALP will no longer have my vote for the first time in over 50 years. Conversely I have advised Abbott that I will vote Liberal for the first time ever (actually as a Green first preference) if he opposes mandatory censorship and proposes only opt-in filters.
Considering that Gillard relied on Rudd’s factional support to become the deputy in the first place (admittedly, in 2006 and whilst in opposition), there is little reason to assume that she would act against the very interests that support her. She’s a smart politician, she’s not going to challenge for the leadership based on this issue (because like it or not, it doesn’t appeal to the masses or the party factions).
As for Lundy – this is her job. To her credit, it appears she is trying to do the right thing. However, she cannot reasonably expect to get the benefits of being in the ALP (something her career and position is entirely dependent on) without having to answer for its policies.
Which draws the line between politicians with integrity (let me know when you see one) and politicians who place their own wellbeing above the wishes of the people.
We haven’t even heard the call for a referendum on this issue. And what happened to the bill of rights?
When a paycheck and a pension > finding out what the other 21 odd million Australians you’re supposed to be “public servants” to want, it’s time to change the system.
The opposing sides on this issue are NOT Labor and Liberal, or Rudd and Abbott. The opposing sides here are the people and the politicians. This legislation will give a power to POLITICIANS that in any functioning democracy is rightly held by the people: the ability to decide what information they can access. There ARE types of information – child porn being the most obvious – that I would prefer no-one had access to, but saying (as Conroy seems to be doing) that we should allow the government of the day free rein to decide in secret what information the citizens of Australia can access because then the government will be able to use that incredibly wide-ranging power to just filter out the child porn is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And given that Conroy’s filter is child’s play to circumvent and is not addressing the main sources of child porn anyway, this is throwing out the baby while KEEPING the stinking bathwater.
It would be the height of political naivety to assume this government and ALL governments that follow it will only use this power for the good of the people instead of for the good of their own party. Passing such a powerful and secretive instrument of control to the government would be signing away a part of our democracy, and the instrument would be too useful to politicians for any future government to ever hand it back. Any government of the day will be able to pull the wool over the eyes of the people, and we won’t even know the wool is there.
The fact that this issue comes down to “people vs. politicians” rather than “party vs. party” is why I consider it so important to our democracy, and why it is frustrating that so many people are unaware of or indifferent to Conroy’s proposed legislation. When a political issue is “party vs. party”, everyone has SOME representatives in parliament, either in government or opposition, so nothing can pass in secret. That’s the power of democratic representational government. The danger of issues that are “people vs. politicians” is that the entire citizenry effectively have NO representatives in parliament, because all those in parliament are politicans. It is a red alert that democratic representative government has gone badly off the rails.
The Conroy censorship proposal is a case of massive over-reaction to a stimulus, where the proposed cure is much worse than the disease (and will do nothing to stop the disease). The most similar political example I can think of is the McCarthy witch-hunting in 1950s America. It’s not at all the same issue, but the political methodology is the same: scare the people about a problem, state a “solution” that is much worse than the problem itself, and then loudly label anyone who points out glaring flaws in your “solution” as being part of the original problem.
Because this issue may not ever be debated in parliament on “party vs. party” lines, it is going to require politicians of strong moral fibre and a sound understanding of democracy to stand up and oppose it despite their party affiliations, to BE those representatives in parliament of a citizenry without a voice on the issue. Do we have politicians that strong? Do we, Ms. Lundy?
Senator Lundy’s in an interesting position now. Having actually addressed the issue – in any fashion at all – in front of voters, her political effectiveness – her career capital if you will – will ultimately be judged, whether or not it is appropriate to do so.
A lot of voters say that they’ll abandon their past political affiliations to fight this one issue, and I wager that they’re wondering if Senator Lundy will do the same.
She seems to have put her career on the line, in more ways than one. Apparently because that seems to be the expectation we have of our representatives. Perhaps unintentionally, Senator Lundy seems to be in a bind, and it’s going to be a tough one to navigate out of.
This week, I’ll be trying to schedule some face-time with several representatives, but even as a former expert to the government on Internet filtering, I seriously doubt even my local representatives will give me fifteen minutes as a constituent on this topic. I don’t think any of them will want to wind up in the position that Sen Lundy is in right now.
Good luck with getting face time. I suspect the politicians who have any understanding of this issue will run a mile from face time, from media questions and from public scrutiny, because they all know they’ll have to vote for this dog of a policy saying “party unity” but no-one wants to have their name associated it when – golly gosh, what a surprise! – porn fails to stage an overnight disappearance after the policy becomes law. After a month or two of “teething troubles”, the blacklist will have been leaked to all and sundry too many times to count, police will be interviewed and will state bluntly that pedophile activity is unchanged, Conroy will be blaming the filter’s failure on the internet industry for assisting the pedophiles to escape by “publishing” the pathetically simple ways to circumvent it, a few Liberals will stand up in parliament and say that while they fully support curtailing porn and pedophiles Labor’s implementation of it was flawed and incompetent etc. etc. ad infinitum. Success has many fathers, failures like this are orphans. But no-one will actually bother to repeal it, and the government can then start slyly adding whatever they want to the blacklist.
It’s so hard to see what Labor are seeing as a positive in this legislation. Jim Wallace’s votes are a drop in the bucket, are not reliable, and will reverse field once they realise that the filter doesn’t deliver them the Peter Pan online cloud-cuckoo land they were expecting. The Netalert fiasco made the Liberals look like Luddite fools hopelessly out of their depth compared to the average 12-year-old, and the Conroy censorship method is going to perform exactly the same service for Labor. Sure, its failure won’t be a vote-changer for many people after it is in place and ineffectual, but it will undermine Labor in a place that Labor could have claimed to have an advantage over Liberal: awareness of the digital economy.
What does Labor see as a positive in this proposal?
A perpetual means to lock in ACL votes.
Since the filter will _never_ be effective at controlling access to anything, the Government will always be able to buy ACL votes by offering to “improve” the filter by extending its scope.
Of course, extending the scope of the filter will make it even less effective at the purported task. However, that doesn’t matter: members of the ACL will be able to delight in self-righteous glee at having their moral standards codified in law and the ALP will happily count the votes it thinks the ACL can deliver its way.
From the ALP’s perspective an ineffective filter is a perpetual vote stream. They are in no risk of ever implementing an effective filter and hence will always be a position to throw fresh promises of even stronger censorship in the ACLs direction.
Precisely nothing will be done about any of the actual problems the filter is purportedly created to solve, but when the itch you need to scratch is the need to bathe in a self-righteous glow, does that really matter?
jon.
The problem with that strategy strikes me as fairly obvious: it gives the ACL massive leverage in both current and future negotiations. They have a permanent threat of defection to party with the most repressive stance.
As both parties are currently sympathetic to their position, the ACL can argue that either party will deliver them the result they desire, and that the only point of contention is which party is more willing to go further. Whilst both parties participate in this it becomes a race to the bottom to see which party is willing to prostitute themselves to the larger degree.
Clearly, that is a contest that cannot be viable beyond a few cycles of negotiation. The only way to appeal to them is to offer ever more severe sanctions on the rights and privileges of others. They don’t stand for anything positive or constructive, the only way you can appeal to them is with offers of negation. The two problems inherent in that are that at some point there will be nothing left to give, and that the population has its limits for what kind and number of abuses it will tolerate. Being voted out is neither the only, nor the worst method for a government to be removed from power.
As demonstrated by the Republican party in America, when one courts the ultraconservatives one quickly finds that the core demographic acts to filter out any intelligence or prudence in their ranks, and you are left with a mob of people so utterly irrational, reactive and incensed that they cannot be managed. Like any angry mob, all they are looking to do is burn it all to the ground. They cannot do anything constructive, they can’t even conceive of any future other than the one where they have destroyed everything they oppose and erected a mythic (and entirely impossible) nirvana in its place. Chasing their vote leads only to ruin.
Another serious issue with putting your stock with ultraconservatives is that you marginalise real conservatives. The intelligent, rational, educated, constructive and reasoned voices of conservatives that you need as part of a healthy democratic system are drowned out by the baying and screeching of the insane mob – who are madly competing with each other to make the most irrational and inflammatory statements to whip themselves into frenzy. Whether you agree with conservative stances or not, their voices are both valid and important to real debate – mob insanity of ultraconservatives isn’t of any value to any debate, they only serve to diminish the conversation. These people cannot even have a simple political discussion without turning red as a beet and foaming at the mouth.
Now, were it I in Government dealing with the ACL, I would simply remind them that the legislation covering the tax exempt status of Church organisations may need review. Especially in instances of political interference. Their greed outweighs their desire to interfere in the lives of others.
Really, what is the point of politicians in Government if they are going to be so guileless in their actions? Letting the ACL (or any lobby group) drive the political process so freely, and for so little gain, is a huge political failing of the ALP. They are supposed to manage people and their expectations. Why is the ALP being so weak?
+1 Insightful
Thanks Stuart, a brilliant post that makes a little too much sense for comfort.
I don’t agree that this is a perpetual means to lock in ACL votes. I think it is a one-off means to lock in ACL votes. Because what the ACL actually WANT from the filter is so far from what it will actually deliver that they are going to feel frankly cheated once the policy is implemented. The ACL will want to see VISIBLE change in how the Internet works. Specifically:
- Kids who want to see porn unable to see porn (actually: virtually unaffected)
- Adults who want to see porn having difficulty in doing so (actually: virtually unaffected)
- Prevention of “accidental” exposure to child porn (actually: non-existent problem)
- Complete elimination of deliberate access to child porn (actually: filter doesn’t address methods that make up 99.9% of it)
- Sizable reduction in incidence of pedophile “grooming” (actually: filter doesn’t address it at all).
All of these will be virtually unaffected by Conroy’s useless legislation, and the package is completely undeliverable without a police state. The only VISIBLE effects Conroy’s censorship filter is likely to have are a slowdown in Net access speeds for ordinary usage, and a trashing of Australia’s reputation as a free (and clever) country internationally.
But when the ACL find that after the filter is implemented, their cloud-cuckoo land “porn-free internet” has not been delivered, they are hardly likely to keep voting for Labor! This filter is going to fail so spectacularly that Conroy is not going to be able to pretend it works. What would his selling point be? “Removing access to one out of every million porn sites doesn’t win your votes? Well, with some extra funding, and with slowing down Net access just a little more, we might be able to ramp up the filter so it removes one out of every hundred thousand porn sites!” … even people as technologically clueless as the ACL will not be falling for that one.
That’s why I’m not inclined to agree with Stuart’s scenario of the main parties indulging in a censorship auction to buy the ACL votes. The ACL will see after one election that regardless of how much the parties trumpet “we’re even MORE Christian nutter than they are!”, neither party actually have anything to sell.
The ACL are too clueless to work out BEFORE the filter’s implemented that it won’t work, but they will work it out AFTER it’s implemented. But Conroy DOES have access to people who understand the internet (though he spends most of his time accusing them of protecting pedophiles and/or misleading the public), so surely he should be able to see the shit heading for the fan. What is driving him? Can it really just be blind zealotry? Has he pushed the filter so hard he is actually starting to believe his own absurd statements? And why do the Labor party allow him to continue driving this bus toward the cliff?
The really sad thing about all of this from a Labor perspective is that my pet rock could beat Tony Abbott at the next election, so Conroy’s prostitution of core Australian democratic values in order to win a handful of Christian nutter votes by deception is completely unnecessary.
The one thing that the ACL gains with certainty from internet censorship being signed into law (or otherwise implemented) is tangible evidence that their concerns are placed above and beyond those of the electorate by the Government. For a lobby group, this is a spectacular success (and another example of a political goal not being contingent on whether the filter works at all).
It is fundamental to understand that for the majority of players in favour, the filter is symbolic. It doesn’t have to work at all (and it can even cause major problems and still be thought of as a success). The Government knows it cannot work, but they are selling it to the ACL. The ACL probably knows that it is unlikely to work too, but they are treating it as phase 1 rather than a finished product.
This internet censorship proposal is all about political goals, not technical ones. Technical impracticalities won’t be enough to prevent it happening. Anyone who thinks that where common sense and politics intersect that common sense will prevail need only to cast their mind back to the anti-terrorist fridge magnet of the previous government.
I have been reading this discussion with much interest. Senator Lundy’s reflections on this issues are thoughtful and generally well considered and quite frank given the constrains she has working within a party political system.
I would like to make a few points.
Firstly the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in its FAQ section on the filter states the following;
What are the new cyber-safety measures the Government has announced?
The Government has announced three new measures to enhance its cyber-safety program.
- Introduction of mandatory internet service provider (ISP) level filtering of content that is rated Refused Classification (RC) in order to reduce the risk of inadvertent exposure.
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/funding_and_programs/cybersafety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot/isp_filtering_-_frequently_asked_questions
From this statement, it is clear to me what the Government’s policy is in relation to filtering, its is mandatory. There is no ambiguity. If the department has misunderstood the government’s policy, then I urge you Senator Lundy to speak to your colleagues immediately and resolve this misunderstanding and this issues can be quickly be resolved.
Secondly I believe the comment Senator Lundy’s comment is unfortunate;
“Additionally people reflected on the small amount of time to absorb or analyse the policy prior to the last election because it was released just 5 days prior, so there was not a lot of time to understand, debate, clarify or discuss it to the level of detail that is possible now, hence the groundswell of interest (note the surveys showing massive discomfort with the policy).”
I hope the senator did not quite mean to imply its public fault for not reading and reacting to a proposed policy five days out from an election. If she did, how then do the public engage in any policy development a meaningful way before its implemented ?
It would appear to me that there is no ambiguity from government policy and its actions.
Given this discussion board is managed by Senator Lundy ( For which she is to be very soundly congratulated) my responses are directed at her rather than the government. Even as an energetic back bencher she has limited capacity to manage the government.
Within party structure you can advocate strongly for change or you can cross the floor. I believe that you must cross the floor on this issue.
The reason I believe this is that you have established a online participation structures and actively encourage engagement with the citizen. You have also articulated strongly at a policy level that participatory democracy needs news ways of working and engagement with the citizen to make services citizen centric. People on the discussion board have clearly articulated there views about the ethical, policy and practical problems with filtering.
I believe Senator Lundy the time has come to put your articulated values to the test.
Andrew
I understand that there are differences in the implementation but here is an example of a type of filtering intiated by a government that went wrong.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/canada-says-no-to-yes-men-website.ars
I feel that filtering will be forced upon the Australian public no matter what.
A great concern of mine is a repeat of the Canadian example here in Australia and what course of actions are available to the common citizen if their website was affected by something similar.
Even if the filter doesnt work, I just dont like the idea that potentially all / any of Australian internet traffic could be actively monitored by the government (albeit via an automated process) outside any warrent / legal process already currently in place.
It feels that the monitoring option is just too juicy of a carrot for any government to ignore.
There are many significant issues that are likely to stymie attempts to monitor communication on the internet. Just as there are freely available off the shelf technologies that can trivially defeat filtering, so too are there solutions for flawless end-to-end encryption.
On the matter of over blocking, I fully expect activists, pranksters and griefers to exploit such a vulnerable system as the one proposed. What better way to embarrass the Government than with their own tools? Who doesn’t want to see a class action against the Government for defamation? Remember, if it’s on the list it’s supposed to be the ‘worst of the worst’. It doesn’t get much easier to argue libel when you get falsely lumped in with child porn.
“Provide a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will filter out content that is identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The ACMA ‘blacklist’ will be made more comprehensive to ensure that children are protected from harmful and inappropriate online material. ”
There’s no point in claiming the Australian Citizen didn’t or doesn’t understand what was written in relation to this paragraph. It merely states the party wishes to provide a censored service for all computers used by Australian children. It makes no explicit claim of that service being the only available to those computers – only that provision of a censored service would be obligatory. It makes no mention even of minors being obliged to use it. It makes no mention of every Citizen being obliged to use it, or that existing services would be forbidden.
That the labor party envisaged a censored service being the only damned service all Citizens were permitted to use is clearly *not* stated. IF the Labor party has the unhealthy inclination to insert itself between the citizen & every other individual on this planet & style itself as some sort of sole conduit through which we shall be allowed conduct our discourse with each other, I suggest the Labor party should spell that out clearly & concisely at election …next time.
The state &/or the party is overstepping itself by seeking to arrogate its authority over mine to protect my children …to ‘groom’ them to be what the party considers model ‘cyber-citizens.’ To equate not having a state-censored internet connection with drunken driving in your policy document is pathetic.
-
PS if you click your heels three times & wish hard enough that what labor wrote before the election means exactly what labor insists it does now, after the election, you’ll note that labor promises very clearly in that first contentious sentence you quote, is that every single computer in every single home, school & public place available to children MUST have an internet connection. You are mandating forced internet connectivity for the sake of the children. So how do you intend to enforce that promise… detector vans roaming the streets followed by crack teams of internet installers breaking down the door?
“There’s no point in claiming the Australian Citizen didn’t or doesn’t understand what was written in relation to this paragraph”
I think a more accurate claim is that the majority of Citizens were entirely unaware of both the policy, and how vigorously it would be pursued.
I certainly heard nothing about it prior to the election (and it didn’t factor into my voting strategy, obviously).
“I think a more accurate claim is that the majority of Citizens were entirely unaware of both the policy, and how vigorously it would be pursued.”
Well, it’s certainly more accurate that it wasn’t well advertised, than the statements labor now makes about what they want to do. But since we must accept that 100% of Australian Citizens neither could be aware or conversely unaware of their writings, we must take labor’s claims about understanding to apply only to those who did read it.
They do clearly state labor will require every single computer in Australia that minors have access to, to have an internet connection. They don’t state every single internet provider, internet connection or computer in Australia can only provide or avail themselves of a state censored service. And they’re very different things.
Everyone here and in other forums of discussion seems to be concerned about their rights being violated by an internet filter. While I am not a fan of this and have grave concerns about the whole proposal it worries me less than the real problem – the ALP is perpetuating the violation of children’s rights and doing nothing to hamper the activities of paedophiles by not addressing the real issues.
The ALP is insisting this is a measure to protect the children. Numerous technically minded people have described simple measures to circumvent the filter and also highlighted the fact that the people committing these crimes do not even use the web, they opt for alternatives such as peer to peer and so forth. So in my mind it boils down to ignoring the elephant in the room. **
By bringing in a filter Conroy and his crew are essentially putting up a bed sheet so they can’t see the ugly goings on in the corner and pretending it isn’t happening, out of mind out of sight. All this despite the rhetoric sprouted by the ALP, Christian lobby groups, etc., detailing how they care about the wellbeing of our young ones and spruking that they want a better future for them. In my mind it highlights the complete lack of morals held by these groups and the disgusting politicking that goes on all the while ignoring the real problem – kids being sexually abused. Seems to me that Conroy, and anyone else who supports his proposal, don’t give a toss about truly protecting children, they’d rather just throw it in the too hard basket and apply window dressing instead. How can anyone with even the slightest level of moral conscience support such a policy?
** PLEASE NOTE: A sentence was removed from here as it graphically depicted child abuse, and it contradicts our website code of conduct. The comment has been otherwise unchanged. Pia Waugh – Office of Senator Kate Lundy
@Michael M
Great comment. I hope you don’t mind but I am going to link to it on Whirlpool with a quote.
Don’t mind at all. Cut and paste it in its entirety if you want to. In fact this might even be better given its life here could be cut short of someone sees fit to remove it!
Hi Michael,
Just to be clear, our code of conduct for this website is at http://www.katelundy.com.au/website and we pretty much publish all posts. We don’t take them down unless they explicitly contradict the code of conduct. We are encouraging an open and frank discussion, and are not in the practise of removing comments just because they may be a little uncomfortable. The ~600 comments from this and the preceeding post on the same topic should demonstrate that
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Michael, while I agree with your position on the filter. You are ignoring that the ALP has indeed increased the resources for tracking down and prosecuting these sick people.
It unfortunately isn’t simply a case of the filter and only the filter, there is action happening outside this breach of our freedom.
Kev, On resources for OCSET: the ALP *reduced* funding from $51m to $48m, and pushed back 90 additional staff by 12 months.
refer: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan-p2.html#s_38
I would much prefer the money for the ineffectual filters go to the police.
Hi Lucas,
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately that link only shows very outdated sources and fails to mention any of the governments more recent commitments to extending funding to law enforcement.
The government if we like it or not has actually increased funding.
Kev, good to hear it. Care to provide any links to more recent announcements? I’m sure Irene (owner of the site) would love to update.
Kev, just a quick note, the DBCDE FAQ question 24 mentions $49m over four years (in the 08/09 budget), which is still less than the $51m the coalition (in the 07/08 budget).
This is consistent with my original post (even if I did get the $49m wrong).
Hi Michael,
Completely separate from the filter discussion, it is worth remembering that a large amount of funding is being allocated to other areas such as law enforcement, education and resources. You may disagree with the filtering policy, but it is unfair to ignore the other work going on, and deeply offensive to suggest that people don’t care about child abuse.
I have edited out the graphic depiction of child abuse from your original post, but left the rest unaltered. I hope you and others can understand that whilst we need to have a robust and constructive discussion on this topic, graphic descriptions of child abuse contradicts the code of conduct on this website. See http://www.katelundy.com.au/website/ for more information.
The DBCDE FAQ talks about some of the other projects being funded as does the announcement. Please read through them. Your concerns have been noted.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Ah, the irony. It seems my post must have struck a nerve. By describing the reality that this whole policy ignores I was censored! I guess this just goes to show what will happen next.
I am not sure what part of the code of conduct I violated here. I simply described the emotional state of the poor child subjected to such crimes and created an ugly picture of the person carrying out the abuse. Being censored for simply saying that a child got raped and cried as a result is reinforcing the views of many here. Maybe these views are, by ignoring and preventing people from discussing it through the use of censorship the ALP can pretend it isn’t happening in the first place?
Hi Michael,
The single sentence removed from your original comment was an illustrative depiction of an awful act, not just the emotion felt. It was inappropriate to this website. It conflicted with the code of conduct as it was inconsiderate of others and it was not respectful of this forum. We haven’t prevented the discussion of the policy at all since the blog posts went up, however this is not an appropriate forum for discussing the detailed abuse of children. It is particularly inappropriate to make the statement that people you may disagree with on one policy don’t care about child abuse, and then paint a graphic scene to make your point. It is emotional blackmail, and completely disrespectful to actual victims of child abuse.
In spite of this, we left the rest of your comment untouched and published as your perspective – along with many others – is still important to us.
Hope that helps you understand where we are coming from.
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Nope, I don’t understand at all. It seems quite odd to me that Clive Hamilton can use 271 words in a national newspaper to explicitly describe in detail the sexual acts viewed by a little boy on the internet yet I can’t simply state in more broad terms the ugly obscenity of an adult raping a child.
If you want to debate what is considerate and what is not then why not think about the ALP policy. Is it truly considerate to restrict choice and the freedom of speech in a country like Australia?
In comments I made earlier on this page (http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/21/further-thoughts-on-the-filter/#comment-13417) I suggested the ALP was acting in a hypocritical manner as it allows us to act as adults and vote them in but then treats us like kids by restricting choice and our freedom to view certain content on the internet. Your censorship of my comments is simply reflective of this criticism.
You raise an issue about internet censorship, one that is argued by your party as being there for the protection of children against paedophiles. Encouraging debate on a topic and expecting never to hear a word about the underlying subject matter is naive and offensive in itself.
In essence you are saying, “Let’s discuss the issue of paedophilia without ever discussing paedophilia”. Like the policy itself this is absurd.
Paedophilia is offensive. The thought of any rape let alone that of a child is offensive. There is no real way of thinking about rape in any form whatsoever without thinking about some poor defenseless soul being barbarically overpowered by some depraved monster. Any mention of any of these acts should be offensive but hiding from the reality and not allowing people to see the real issue is offensive too.
Go read Clive Hamilton (see link below) and then you might realise that provoking thought about a poor defenseless child is not offensive, it is our moral obligation and one that the ALP is seeming to ignore.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/web-doesnt-belong-to-net-libertarians/story-e6frgakx-1111118869227
[quote]It is particularly inappropriate to make the statement that people you may disagree with on one policy don’t care about child abuse, and then paint a graphic scene to make your point. It is emotional blackmail, and completely disrespectful to actual victims of child abuse.[/quote]
100% agree with this. Which is exactly why Clive Hamilton is a complete Hack, because these are the same tactics that he employs. Michael, you don’t need to stoop to Clive’s level, it really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. While I’m all for free speach, this is a moderated forum, just like any other, including Whirlpool, and as such has rules to be followed.
How Clive manages to get graphic descriptions of sexual acts published on national news websites and printed papers is beyond me. (acts that I’d never heard of and actually had to google, then search on redtube for examples…)
As someone who works for a Government that routinely accuses its critics of being sympathetic to, and allies of child molesters, don’t you dare claim offence. I don’t see you speaking out when that happens, why do you warrant special consideration?
This filter is going to be a massively expensive piece of junk, instilling a false sense of security (and thereby actually increasing the risk to children on the internet).
I don’t think anyone’s ignoring other efforts, we can all agree that budgets for child protection activities with proven efficacy have been cut, whilst no expense is being spared for the ridiculous white elephant of a censorship system.
If the Government is wasting money that is purported to be for the purposes of child protection, solely for transient political goals, that is an act that directly endangers children. Given that is the case, the assertion that the Government is uncaring about child abuse is totally accurate – what other conclusion are we supposed to draw from the Government’s actions? This isn’t hypothetical, the Government is already pouring money down the drain with garbage like the unscientific Ennex report – that’s money that could be used to prevent crimes against children right now.
Critics have made solid arguments that the Government’s policy will at the very least do nothing to prevent child abuse or the trafficking of child pornography – and the Government has done nothing of validity to address those concerns. None of the measures proposed in the DBCDE FAQ or announcement are demonstrably superior to actual policing. If you, or the Senator, would care to explain how this censorship system is going to protect a single child from actual harm (let alone the thousands of children endangered by the funding cuts to actual policing measures, that would be required for the filter to merely maintain parity with those measures, and not be in any way a superior solution) I’m sure we’d all be delighted to hear what you have to say. If you don’t like claims as to the Government’s indifference to child abuse then prove them wrong.
Hi Stuart,
I understand your point. I would like to point out that on the DBCDE FAQ it does talk about actual policing:
24. What resources have been provided for law enforcement in this area?
As part of the Government’s cyber-safety plan, $49 million over four years was allocated in the 2008–09 Budget to the Australian Federal Police for the detection and investigation of online child sexual abuse. In addition, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions received $11.3 million over four years to help deal with the increased activity resulting from the work of the AFP.
As a result of the extra funding, the AFP has delivered significant operational outcomes including:
* Operation Furious, which commenced in December 2008 and has resulted in more than 30 search warrants resulting in 16 arrests and seizure of hundreds of thousands of images of child abuse
* Operation Centurion, which commenced in mid 2008 and has resulted in 341 warrants with 141 people arrested—one of the largest investigations ever conducted into online child sexual abuse.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
It’s great to see affirmitive action. The AFP is exactly where the money being wasted on the filter should be spent.
The filter itself will do nothing to stem child abuse. By the time a complaint has worked it’s way through the beuracracy at ACMA the site in question will have already pulled the content because of actions of the govt where the site is hosted. Less than 1/3 of the of the leaked ACMA blacklist had content that was even remotely related to child ‘depiction’. The ALP needs to stop wasting MY tax dollars on an inneffective filter that will be routed around with ease and spend it on funding the AFP.
how many child abusers will the filter lock up? 0
how many child abusers will the AFP lock up with more funding? dozens, hundreds even?
pretty bl__dy obvious where the money should be spent in my opinion.
I stand corrected.
With that in mind, 49M / 4 = 12.25M per annum on demonstrably effective policing measures (157 arrests) versus the unknown annual costs (yet certainly > 12.25M) for a filter that the Government knows for a fact to be obsolete even before day one (by virtue of the ease of circumvention as specifically indicated in the report commissioned from Ennex).
I can easily envisage the costs of censorship to blow out beyond 100M per annum. Whilst that is a cost that wouldn’t exist without the desire for censorship in the first instance, the point remains that the Government can find vast sums of money for this, yet cannot scrape together more than 12M per annum for actual child welfare policing. How much did the Ennex testing report cost again?
I am asking very simple questions (again): How is this proposal going to justify the money spent in terms of objective child protection outcomes? How is this proposal in any way superior to additional funding for conventional policing in terms of objective outcomes?
I’ll have to go with Stuart here. The party has used some quite offensive terms to describe opponents of the policy.
A number of family groups have told the press that they believe that the policy is harmful to children in the long-term. That is, that the amount of harm-reduction is reduced, and Sen Conroy implies (though granted does not directly state, but is widely understood to mean) that the policy substitutes for a slice of parental supervision online.
It’s not much of a stretch to logically deduce from the statements made that children, and the safety of children online is not a major concern of the policy. If it were, the policy would be in a form other than it is — because what it is and what it claims to accomplish are not aligned.
The reasonably logical position, as I see it, is that the policy is independent of any caring about child abuse. Either that, or the minister for Communications is not communicating very effectively. I hope you’ll pardon my excluded middle.
Ms Waugh:
Firstly, thank you for responding. It is good to see someone from Ms Lundy’s office is reading the comments, and is willing to enter the discussion.
Secondly, I appreciate that you have routinely NOT censored comments from these pages that are clearly unsupportive of the Labor position on the filter (though I guess if you did, the 600 comments would be down to about 2). Interestingly, the one piece of censorship you DID do was ultimately ineffective for anyone who has posted on the board already, because we receive an email notifying us of the original post, along with its full content, and that email is a permanent record stored offsite from your board. It’s an interesting sidelight on just how difficult it is to censor effectively.
While Stuart’s language might be a bit precipitate, the core of what he is saying is true. A government that proposes legislation to introduce a filter on child porn that simply won’t work can’t be immediately accused of being soft on child porn, but a government that proposes legislation to introduce a filter on child porn that simply won’t work and then promptly ignores or ridicules every Net expert in the country who tells them it won’t work CAN and SHOULD be accused of being soft on child porn. That’s one of the reasons why ordinary citizens like myself are so upset and single-minded about this, and talking about it to our friends. Sometimes governments fail to get information on legislative proposals for one reason or another, but in this case, expert testimony has been pouring in a torrent on Senator Conroy and he has chosen to ignore all of it, and continue to press ahead regardless.
I voted for this government because I considered it would be a “common sense” government, working for the Australian people. Senator Conroy’s “damn the torpedoes” approach to expert opinion (and indeed the general population’s opinion – see the Herald’s poll: 2% for the filter, 96% against) reminds me of the Howard government’s introduction of WorkChoices.
Hi Martin,
I completely understand your points. In relation to being “soft on porn”, if the filter was being done in isolation then the point would hold a lot stronger, however there have been, as mentioned many other initiatives begun, so I think it would be much more constructive for people to discuss the part of the policy they disagree with rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Regardless of the email record existing (and note that it had already been copied onto Whirlpool anyway) we still didn’t feel the sentence was appropriate on this blog, and surely an individual can choose what they do or don’t want or their own blog?
His point, and yours is still something we are taking into account, hence why we specifically chose to leave the majority of Michael’s comment up and untouched. Also, in making the modification we were completely transparent about it, and stated it in the comment and a subsequent comment. I don’t think it could have been handled much more openly than it was. The alternative would have been the moderation queue picking it up prior to publishing.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Hi Pia,
This is a point that Senator Conroy has made a few times. The filter is not ineffective since it is only one of a number of measures in place.
This is a clear fallacious argument. The efficacy of other measures does not change how effective the filters are. If you gave me a box of mangos with one lemon, I still don’t want to eat the lemon, even though I’d prefer to take the whole box than nothing at all.
So while it’s great that more funding is being provided to law enforcement, the internet filter still won’t achieve any of its goals and will consume money that would be better used elsewhere (maybe even *more* funding for the AFP?).
Hi Pia
Kate most emphatically has the right to determine what will appear on her web site and that includes the right to remove part of a post if it is believed necessary for what ever reason.
Thank you for being up front about your actions although I have some reservations.
One of my concerns with censoring the internet is that those nasty things and offensive things that happen in the real world every day are not challenged or addressed because we don’t know they are occurring.
If we look at the history of domestic violence in this country it is easy to see that little or no action was taken to address this issue until it was publicised in the media. Exactly the same thing can be seen in our treatment of child abuse. It is well known in both instances that the vast majority of perpetrators were themselves victims.
History, I would suggest, clearly shows that hiding unpleasant reality behind censorship doesn’t fix the problem. All it does is hide it and extend the time in which it is allowed to fester and poison our community.
Hiding the existence of child abuse behind an ineffective filter doesn’t fix the problem. It needs our police in concert with overseas police to go out and arrest the perpetrators of the abuse. We need to be stopping the perpetrators and giving proper long term assistance to the victims because this problem will grow if we don’t.
This is where the Labor Party policy gets a big resounding FAIL because you are putting our valuable resources into a filter which is not a silver bullet and not where they are most needed, into law enforcement.
Pia: Thanks for the reply. I have no problem with the censoring you did; I only mentioned it because its ineffectiveness was relevant to the broader discussion on censoring. Actually I think censorship IS valid on “owned” spaces: this blog is identified with Ms Lundy, and that gives her and her staff every right to censor when required. If commenters feel that any censorship being done was overzealous (I don’t) they always have the option to post elsewhere. You have every right to apply your OWN standards to the censoring too: you own it, so you can define the line of acceptibility. This is completely the opposite of the type of blanket censorship Senator Conroy’s ISP-level filtering would attempt, which applies one person’s opinion of what is right and wrong to the entire population.
Re your “other funding and programs” information, perhaps that might invalidate some of our comments that money is being removed from genuinely effective anti-child-porn measures, but the central glaring question remains: since the ISP-level filtering and the “other programs” are completely independent of each other, why not just drop the embarrassing filter, and go with the other programs? You’d have $44 million extra to fund them too, and you wouldn’t have the filter becoming the sort of media train wreck that Netalert became.
Given that the filter will be easy for anyone 10 years or over to circumvent, why not just make it an optional filter?
Otherwise you’re just making voters angry for no reason.
(We’ll bypass it anyway).
PS: Yes the policy document on cyber safety was released 5 working days before the election.
That’s not much time to digest or respond, even if people were aware of it. The policy was unknown to the Australian public outside of that document.
What a democracy we live in where people vote without knowing what they are voting for, it’s very sad.
[quote]I have responsibility as a government Senator (and member of the ALP) to make a constructive effort to address the major concerns and make the broad intentions of the policy effective in a meaningful and practical sense.[/quote]
Incorrect. You have a responsibility as a government Senator to listen to your constituents and fight for them. This of course is a direct violation of your responsibility as a member of the ALP to tow the party line. When was the last time anyone from ALP crossed the floor on a controversial issue? When was the last time an ALP Senator fought for what they believed in, when it was contrary to ALP policy?
I know it can’t be easy, and it would be a career ender within the ALP, but it’s about time somebody within the ALP had the courage to act DEMOCRATICALLY and voice their own opinions publicly. Last time I checked this was a democratic society, despite a socialist party being in power.
Many thanks for the opportunity to comment.
I am insulted by the notion that I, and Australian adults as a whole, are considered by the Rudd government to be so dumb that we cannot be trusted to make a decision on whether or not out internet connection should be censored.
Opt in or opt out I can barely accept but not mandatory.
I will vote accordingly at the next election.
I’ll firstly say that it’s great that Kate is at least willing to listen to the people directly affected by this censorship policy.
As many here have most likely noted, the policy cannot ever hope to achieve its intended aims. The current rationale for the filter is to ‘minimise the risk of inadvertent exposure to RC content’, which is pathetically weak. The government has no such evidence that there is any risk of accidental exposure to any form of harmful content, let alone singling out RC content.
Another point to consider is that every single URL which will be censored will be content which is legal to view. Blacklist leaks around the world have shown that child abuse material, the type of content which is frequently isolated for these types of systems, is not caught because 99.999% of the content is available on anything but HTTP.
Furthermore, the government clearly isn’t interested in targeting illegal content through these systems, as they would realise that distributing a blacklist of the content to hundreds of ISPs, and expecting it to remain a secret, is to live in a world absent of reality.
When it leaks once again, we can all be sure that it will be controversial and embarrass the government, and not because it contains illegal content.
Imagine how much more effective our police forces will be if they were allocated all the funds for this censorship policy. That is what will further benefit society, not funding a policy which all evidence suggests will be worse than useless.
Pia,
When is someone from the party going to answer our questions?
The list is quite long now.
Hi Philip,
I’ll chat to Kate today and see what we can do. I think realistically, there will be some questions that are best directed at Minister Conroy, some questions we can try to help with, and some questions that have already been answered.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy`
Hi all (in particular Martin M),
Just a quick last note about the deletion of a sentence from one of the comments on this blog. A few people have suggested here and on other forums online that we could have handled it differently. Normally the comment would have been caught in the moderator queue and we would have emailed the person to talk to them about any concerns we had, and we have successfully done this on several occasions.
Unfortunately we did not have this opportunity as the comment wasn’t caught in the queue, and rather than unpublishing the comment, we removed a single sentence (which didn’t change the meaning of the comment), and flagged it both within the comment itself, and with a follow up comment. We tried to be as open and transparent about the action as possible.
Our apologies for editing the comment, but given a raft of uncomfortable options, we felt it was the best one.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Great to hear, thanks Pia (re chatting to Kate today).
Could you please provide;
* The time and date we can expect a response by
* Which questions are being directed to Minister Conroy
* What time and date he has stated he will respond by
I am happy to revise both comment streams and sort the key questions posed by the audience for your office. I say this as I have watched some clarifications been made by your office on points brought up by people, but in my opinion, extremely little direct response to the intelligent and basic line of questioning re;
“I’ll chat to Kate today and see what we can do. I think realistically, there will be some questions that are best directed at Minister Conroy, some questions we can try to help with, and some questions that have already been answered.”
Author: Pia Waugh
**
Thank you for your contribution to the well being of our country.
Hi Philip.
If you could sort of the key questions posed, that would be a wonderful contribution. Posting them here as a comment would be great because then others can respond if they think anything has been missed, and we’ll try to deal with them all in one bunch. We have been reading all the comments, however responding to each one individually (particularly over a holiday) has not been feasible. We can’t reply on behalf of Minister Conroy in terms of time commitments, but we can let you know which of the questions you post should go to his office.
Thanks!
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
OK, had some thoughts and concluded.
Supporters of the filter are advocating harm of children!
Given that children should be supervised when they use the internet.
The proposed filter will NOT block pornography of the general sort, ie double penetration, orgies etc etc. None of that is RC. It’s also what you normally stumble across on the net, NOT child porn.
Given when the filter is implemented, I can see parents thinking, “The internet is safe now, I don’t have to watch little Jack or Jill anymore”. Their kids will then be less supervised on the net and STILL seeing this sort of imagery.
Therefore, the filter, as proposed, will actually probably increase the amount of porn kids see on the net.
The only way to stop that, is the sort of end-user based filter that the Howard Govt introduced but Labor dumped.
So, Labors proposed filter will increase harm done to kids.
It’s current proposed format will do ZERO to change what kids see now. So why introduce it? The only thing I can think of is to try and bring internet law equivalent to book, film etc law classifications.
If so, that will be a serious failure too, as most of those items are distributed via P2P and not HTTP. The filter won’t touch those.
So, in summary, this filter will harm children and achieve nothing other than annoy people and increase internet costs.
Iran has just published a list of the sites they ban.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/6655001/iran-publishes-banned-websites-list/
At least now Australia won’t get mentioned in the same sentence as Iran anymore, we officially have a more oppressive regime in power.
I thought I wouldn’t live to see the day that Iran or a similar nation has a more transparent government than Australia. What a sad sad time in our “free” country’s history.
Pia,
| reposted with name correct
If the ALP is attempting to establish the absolute necessity of implementing a mandatory ISP-level filter for the purposes of minimizing “inadvertent exposure” to Refused Classification material, might I suggest that it attempts to provide convincing answers to the following 10 questions (from my blog post @ http://tinyurl.com/gr8wallofkrudd-10q).
If the policy is well-founded and not a cynical attempt to shore up senate votes it should be extremely easily to provide answers to these questions.
jon.
1. Has the probability of inadvertent exposure to Refused Classification material by adults been quantified? If not, is this probability judged to be: low, moderate or high?
2. Have the consequences of inadvertent exposure to Refused Classification material by adults been measured? Are these thought to be minor, major or serious?
3. Has the quantity of potentially Refused Classification material in existence on the Internet been estimated in either absolute or relative terms?
4. Does the Government have an estimate or measure of the percentage of potentially Refused Classification material on the Internet that is currently Refused Classification? What is that estimate?
5. Does the Government have a coverage goal for the Refused Classification list in terms of the percentage of potentially Refused Classification material that is actually refused classification? What is that goal?
6. Is the Government concerned that in exempting X-18+ material from the specifications of the mandatory filter that it may be implicitly condoning the consumption of X-18+ rated materials by Australian adults?
7. Does the Government believe it is acceptable for Australian adults who encounter X-18+ or potentially Refused Classification material on the Internet to treat such material as not Refused Classification until such time as ACMA makes a definitive decision otherwise?
8. Does the Government believe that Australian adults who encounter such X-18+ or potentially Refused Classification material should use their own judgment to decide for themselves whether they should remain exposed to such material?
9. If the Government does believe that all Australian adults should retain for themselves the responsibility of deciding what material is, and is not, acceptable to view, why is the mandatory filter required?
10. What political benefit does the ALP gain by successfully sheparding enabling legislation for the mandatory ISP-level filter through both houses of parliament?
As Pia said Kate “intends to bring these concerns to the attention of her colleagues.”
How? When?
Why has Senator Conroy never faced an organised Q and A session with technically competent people?
The questions are not being answered by Senator Conroy – He just hides behind media statements
This whole debacle smells rotten to the core.
Filter policy released 5 days before election.
Filter Test clouded in secrecy no results released.
Imposed Mandatory Filter with SECRET Blacklist.
This is NOT about and does not help fight Child Pornography.
There are a lot of voters who feel deceived by the ALP and whom are arrogantly steaming ahead with this legislation in a deceitful manner as if it some part of a master plan to deceive the ignorant masses.
You know the truth Kate! Tell us what/how you are going to answer the people NOT your caucus!
As Pia mentioned on 7 Jan, the DBCDE FAQ claims that the Labor Govt’s $49m for the Australian Federal Police over 4 years from 2008/2009 year has “delivered significant operation outcomes including”…”Operation Centurion”.
However:
* Labor can’t (truthfully) claim funding credit for Operation Centurion – it began in December 2007 and arrests were first publicly announced in early June 2008, about 3 weeks after Labor announced its first, 2008/2009, Budget.
* Operation Centurion is, however, an example of apparent need for much more funding for the AFP’s online child protection team, given the very low level of arrests (by 2 years later), i.e. 141, as compared to the number of AFP identified alleged Australian offenders, i.e. 1,517.
Operation Centurion began with a referral, from Interpol in December 2007, to the AFP of “2883 Australian individual IP addresses” from which the AFP said they identified “1517 alleged offenders”[1]. The operation concerned downloading of images from a hacked web page in Croatia in September 2007, discovered and disabled within 3 days by the site hosting service provider who noticed abnormal traffic levels. The first AU publicity was on 5 June 2008 when the AFP announced about 90 arrests, and more were announced during the next month or so.
By March 2009, 333 warrants had been executed nationally, and 136 people had been arrested, according to AFP Platypus Magazine [1].
Now DBCDE’s FAQ says there’s been 341 warrants with 141 people arrested, i.e. apparently 5 more since March 2009.
Questions arise:
* Why does it take 2 years to arrest 141 people out of an AFP claimed “1517 alleged offenders”?
* Have police yet finished investigating all the others. If they have – why so few arrests? If they haven’t – why not?
* How many, if any, additional AFP members, dedicated to online child protection investigations, have been appointed by the AFP since 30 June 2008 (excluding any replacements for officers who have left the AFP), as distinct from how many have been funded/budgeted by the Government?
If the Labor Govt wants members of the public to believe that the Govt has adequately funded the AFP’s online child protection team, then imo the Labor Govt needs to answer questions such as the above.
Operation Centurion is also a prime example of the useless of a ‘blocking’ list even of Web pages. There is no way the hacked page would have got onto an ACMA blacklist distributed to ISPs in the 3 days before access was disabled by the hosting service provider who discovered it.
The other AFP operation mentioned on the DBCDE FAQ page, Operation Furious, concerned one video file being shared via a peer-to-peer network, discovered by German police in late 2008. The AFP announced on 1 June 2009 that 15 people had been charged, and seven months later on 6 January 2010 announced a further 2 people had been charged, a total of 17 to date.
Obviously neither operation provides any justification for the idea that ‘blocking’ is going to reduce, let alone, solve any problem, but both operations certainly raise questions about the adequacy of AFP funding, given how long it apparently takes to arrest/charge identified alleged offenders.
[1] AFP Platypus Magazine – March 2009
http://www.afp.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/106712/11_ChildProtection.pdf
On this forum and on every forum I have seen, public opinion has run massively against the filtering proposal; in fact I don’t believe in all the time I have been online and reading media I have ever seen such a unified response from the public. While I recognise that what I see represents a biased sample (because all the content is from people who can and do use the internet), that biased sample probably needs to carry more weight than other opinions in exactly the same way pilots and air travellers’ opinions would carry more weight in discussion on air safety legislation.
The question has to be asked: do genuine supporters of the what the filter is going to do actually exist outside Senator Conroy’s office and Jim Wallace’s immediate circle of friends? For what it’s worth, among the hundreds of people offline I have spoken to about this issue, I am yet to meet a supporter of the filter who had even the remotest understanding of what it was actually proposing to do: without exception, all supporters made some sort of comment about “it’s good that little Johnny won’t have access to porn”, or “we need to stop the pedophiles getting to our children”, neither of which even the proponents of the filter claim it will do. And that’s why this will be a post-election media train wreck: the actuality of the post-filtering internet won’t be compared with what the legislation STATED it would do; it will be compared with what the filter’s supporters THOUGHT it would do. You’ll get the same sort of standard punch-a-politician pieces on each of the evening “news lite” shows: little Johnny typing “porn” into Google, and blurred-out images of the results, accompanied by stern voiceovers of government failure.
I haven’t seen a single comment on Ms. Lundy’s two posts on the issue that could be considered to support the filter (which from 600+ comments, speak for itself). In other forums (mostly Sydney Morning Herald comments on opinion pieces in December), where there HAS been the very occasional supporting comment, it’s again been very clear that those posting have no idea how limited the intended scope of the filter is. They support the filter because they’re generically “against child porn” (i.e. they haven’t even considered arguments about its lack of effectiveness), and they assume it will do all sorts of things even Senator Conroy is not claiming.
This is the biggest problem opponents of the filter face: we can’t find anyone actually arguing FOR the filter, as opposed to arguing for undeliverable ideals of filtering.
The Labor Party must bear some responsibility for this. The release of the policy a bare five days before the election, Senator Conroy’s constant hyperbole rather than detail, and his ad hominem attacks on anyone pointing out the glaring flaws in the filter have left an open field for the naive to believe whatever they want about the filter. Whether this was planned or just lazy is ultimately irrelevant: the simple fact is that there is a huge disparity between what the filter will deliver and what its supporters support it for. That’s a ticking time-bomb for the party implementing the filter. I have been unable to find anyone who understands what the filter ACTUALLY does and still supports it, with the exception of Senator Conroy himself.
My question to Ms. Lundy’s office is this: could you tell me whether the one-sided response on this forum is an accurate reflection of public feeling as perceived by your office (and indeed Senator Conroy’s) in general, or are you receiving thousands of snail mail letters saying “please censor the internet” that those commenting on this forum are not aware of?
I disagree that a referendum is the correct call. There are a number of issues where it frankly doesn’t matter what the majority of people think:
Slavery.
Universal suffrage.
Freedom of expression.
Equal rights for sexual minorities.
If Senator Lundy had lived in NSW at the time of Federation, she would not have had the right to vote, let alone represent anyone. That this situation was ever the case is shameful, and it doesn’t matter how many people thought it was a good idea. It was always wrong that certain classes of people were denied freedoms granted to others. It is still shameful that sexual minorities are denied the same rights as the rest of the population.
In many ways, that is what we’re seeing here. One group of people (conservatives) are trying to decide what rights another class of people can have. Considering religious texts like the Bible have special classification exemptions, this is even more confounding.
As long as everyone involved in the production of the material are consenting and there is no third party harm, the government really has no business getting involved. Knowledge itself does not cause harm. Any chemist will know how to create explosives, any pharmacist drugs. Any bank worker will know ways to commit fraud. Any forensic scientist will know how to get away with murder.
This proposal is exactly like the radically increased Airport ’security’. It does very little but breed annoyance, but it is being seen to be doing something. The reality is, it’s a waste of time and resources, and creates far more problems than it solves.
Kate, can you please provide an update on your response to Labor’s Internet censorship plans? The lack of response from local MPs and relevant ministers, apart from copy-and-paste press release style emails, is deeply worrying. Is there nobody in the Labor party even slightly concerned about the proposed legislation?
Above all, the fact that the government seems completely resistant to even an opt-out of the filter suggests something more sinister than it’s stated aims of protecting households with children. What about the rest of us who don’t have kids? What is Labor hiding? What are it’s real reasons for wanting to enforce mandatory control of the Internet? Is this the first step in many of Internet censorship? Why can’t Labor be reasonable about this? they could please everyone if they simply made it opt-in or opt-out.
Anyway, Kate, please let us know where you stand on the government’s proposals and any plans you have to help your party see reason.
So Pia,
Is it true Kate has been given detention by Chairman Krudd for opening up discussion on this issue?
Quite ironic if the rumours are true – given the topic at hand.
Umm Pia,
Where is my post in reference to kate being cited by her boss in respect to opening up this discussion to the public sphere? It did appear as passed moderation but now seems to have been taken down.
Hi Daniel, it went straight to the moderation queue, so apologies for the (3 hr) delay.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Also we need to add how poor Enex testing was, for Enex to say that filtering works 100%.
Has anyone read it?
Kate what is your response?
No other ALP members are engaging in discussion!
I think Democracy just died in Australia.
So will this filter block access to the NSW Government website? It contains information on safe drug use, something that Conroy has openly admitted will be blocked. Furthermore, the last time I checked NSW had a Labor government. Or does this simply mean they will let it slide because a different set of rules applies to the government, politicians and political parties like the Do Not Call Register?
Visit http://www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/download/zcard.pdf today, you probably won’t be able to in the near future if Conroy, our great protector, has his way.
$100 million for a piece of technology that won’t work. I’m dumbfounded this has gotten this far.
To be clear, as big a number as that may seem, given the nature of the goal, I’d have no trouble adding another zero to the end with no delivered product if the money were being used to try and develop realistic options for parents and caregivers to realistically have some level of content control over the access of their dependents.
I’d have no trouble with it, because the garbage claim of Australians being willing to pay $5 a month more for a clean feed is just that – garbage. Given the money in this industry, if it were as practical as the ENEX report *tries* to imply, then there would be an ISP doing it NOW – and they’d be the most popular and profitable out there… $5 a month by itself is going to return the 100 mil faster than a mortgage if parents want it that badly.
If the gov spent 100 mil on that – ESPECIALLY complimenting the NBN – there might be a real chance of success. It’s a whole seperate rabbit hole with a whole different host of concerns, but would at the very least acknowledge this would be a very long term project which can only succeed with continuing financial support.
The current plan instead seems to be to take the biggest piece of technology in the world – the ‘net – and start trying to fundamentally change it on the fly. An open ended transformation project with no feasible endpoint. Given the recent example of Telstra (among many others), or even Y2K a bit farther out, if there aren’t many alarm bells ringing in the Labour Party over the planned methodology, one can only question the competence to lead in this area – this is why there isn’t an ISP out there raking in the $$$ from a clean feed already.
By attempting filtering in the method proposed, and lacking an opt-out (and this is a point of CONFUSION? Come on, that is a VERY shift…), the Rudd government shows a disregard for the industry, whose input is being ignored. I can be argued it also demonstrates a disregard for Australian opinion on issues, by indicating they clearly don’t believe this will be an election deciding issue.
I would have hoped Rudd had learned his lesson in this regard from the Koala Road.
The Labour party will not be receiving my vote again.
There is someone doing it right now.
Anthony Pillion’s WebShield has been doing it for years. And, despite two years of free publicity arising from the prominence of this issue, they have less than 3500 customers Australia-wide.
There is zero interest in ISP filtering in the Australian marketplace. Lots of ISPs have offered it, and they’ve all canned it either due to negligible take-up or because they’ve gone broke trying.
Conroy likes to say take-up is low because consumers aren’t aware of their options, but ACMA research consistently paints a different picture: Every report ACMA has ever commissioned into attitudes towards Internet content in the Australian marketplace has always shown that Australians understand what their options are and choose unrestricted access, preferring to use their own expertise to implement non-censorious means of bringing up their kids.
Examples:
kidsonline@home (2005) http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/1001/pc=PC_311301
Australia in the Digital Economy Series – Report 1: Trust and Confidence (March 2009) http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/aba/about/recruitment/trust_and_confidence_aust_in_digital_economy.pdf
Australia in the Digital Economy Series – Report 2: Online participation (May 2009) http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/aba/about/recruitment/online_participation_aust_in_digital_economy.pdf
Media and Communications in Australian Families (2007) http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_311396
Open challenge to anyone: find me some ACMA research which says parents (or anyone else) are living in fear due to uncontrolled Internet content. It’s a made-up problem, a movie-plot threat. The development of our digital economy is being strong armed by whoever happens to have the biggest, scariest, most pathologically extreme imagination, and the Government is exhibiting a failure of leadership at every level by buying-in to the psychosis instead of dismissing it.
Evidence-based policy development, ignoring all the evidence one report at a time.
I might be more comfortable with the Labour stance if I had some indication that GOOD research had been done to arrive at the proposed policy.
The ENEX report is garbage – it reads like a Sales proposal, and I question their ongoing position in this. Throwing out a quantifiable like $5 per family when there’s demonstrably market, product and uptake to be investigated is fishy at best.
I’m more than willing to grant that those behind this policy sincerely wish to have a positive impact on the Australian culture, but both the methods used to introduce the policy and subsequent clearly apparent lack of open dialogue with industry is concerning.
Senator Lundy comes out against mandatory internet censorship
Well done, Kate. You do indeed have your work cut out for you with your Labor colleagues, if they catch the tiniest clue about just how unpopular mandatory censorship will be at the ballot box, perhaps they’ll be persuaded.
While ‘opt-out’ is hardly ideal, as Sen Lundy points out in the linked story, it’s better than mandatory censorship with no escape.
Most interesting that this announcement comes today, when Google has indicated that it will no longer cooperate with censoring search results on Google.cn.
Senator Lundy,
While ‘opt-out’ would be an improvement, it would still be entirely unacceptable in the absence of the Labor Government publicly providing evidence for a belief:
1. that the proposed legislative measures are reasonably appropriate and adapted to achieving a legitimate end (and what that end actually is); and/or
2. that the proposed legislative measures adequately meet Australia’s international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) – Article 19; and
3. that the Government believes that it has constitutional power (and on what grounds) to mandate that ISPs ‘block’ access to information on Web pages, on a non-optional basis:
(a) for all end-users of the Internet,
(b) that is information that approx. 90% of adults in Australia (as at June 2009-ABS statistics) are currently free to lawfully possess and access online.
In relation to point 3(b):
(i) the reason that the overwhelming majority of sub-sets of “RC” material are not illegal/unlawful to possess and/or access is because most State/Territory Governments decided such material should not be an offence to possess, as a result of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s recommendation that mere possession of information/material (other than child sexual abuse material) should not be an offence and advice that banning/crimalising possession of other types of information, specifically information/material classified “Refused Classification” (“RC”), “would possibly be inconsistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (ICCPR). Since then, the breadth of “RC” has been extended (including three times during 2000-2007) in a manner that makes it even more likely than previously that banning possession/preventing access would be inconsistent with Australia’s international obligations under the ICCPR.
(ii) while the former Coalition Govt/Parliament enacted criminal law amendments in approx 2004-05 making it an offence to use a carriage service (telecommunications service inc. Internet) for child abuse material purposes, no such Cth criminal offence applies to other types of “RC” information/ideas that the Govt now wants ISPs to ‘block’, on the government’s behalf.
If the Federal Govt truly believes that all, or any, other sub-sets of “RC” information are of such harm to society that it is necessary to criminalise access (after some two decades of public online access), and believes that it has constitutional power to criminalise end-user access to such material and can do so in a manner that is not inconsistent with Australia’s international obligations under the ICCPR, then obviously the Government could seek to obtain the Parliament’s agreement to doing that.
That the Federal Govt apparently has no intention whatsoever of so doing, strongly suggests it does not consider it has either a right, or constitutional power, to so do.
In summary, all indications are that the Federal Govt is trying to turn ISPs into the government’s hand-maidens, for an illegitimate purpose that it believes it cannot otherwise achieve by, e.g., a more clearly constitutionally valid method.
While the above continues to be the situation, even making the ‘plan’ opt-out would make no difference to my opposition. There is a huge issue with the Govt’s plan, and in my view it has vastly more to do with human rights in a democracy and the powers the current Federal Govt appears to consider it has, than the detail of whether something is opt-out and/or has technology related problems or anything else.
Whether or not Australia ever has a Bill/Charter of Rights, governments and opposition parties ought already be capable of scrutinising proposed legislation to ensure it adequately meets Australia’s international obligations under the ICCPR (and freedoms/rights therein are not absolute). I suggest the Federal Govt (and/or its Senators) scrutinise its own proposed legislative measures using the internationally recognised tests for such purposes, and/or ask HREOC to do so and provide a report to the Government (which should be publicly released). I would be quite surprised if the outcome of any such scrutinisation was anything other than a conclusion that the proposed legislative measures should be abandoned, just like the Labor Govt has abandoned all of the ‘commitments’ in its associated 2007 election policy.
I read the following Crikey article this afternoon:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/01/13/labor-senator-kate-lundy-speaks-out-against-mandatory-internet-censorship/ (Behind paywall, unfortunately)
“The former Labor front-bencher and passionate advocate for open IT has told Crikey she believes ‘the majority of caucus’ wants a mandatory filter in place.”
I think Kate is wrong. I’ve heard from varying sources that most of the ALP are actually privately against the filter and that only Rudd and Conroy want it.
“Late last month Lundy wrote Conroy’s proposal left ‘little room to move’, but she suggested allowing ISPs to offer adult customers an ‘opt-out’ from the filter. This week she has begun canvassing support for the option among Labor colleagues.”
Why not lobby for the filter to be opt-in? An opt-out filter is not desirable for many reasons (such as the stigma that’s mentioned in the Crikey article, Internet infrastructure reasons, will still make censorware implementation a nightmare for ISPs, increased costs to consumers, etc).
Better yet, why not just lobby to scrap the filter altogether? There’s a plethora of evidence that shows even voluntary filters are very problematic.
“Lundy backs Conroy and the process he has gone through in testing filtering technology”
How can Kate back a process that has shown to be completely and utterly flawed?
“She never believed a filter was feasible but she says the government’s testing has proven that false”
The government’s testing didn’t prove anything due to the poor technical conduct of the trial and the trial’s failure to take into account many elements (such as the NBN, IPv6, etc). IMO Kate is seriously hurting her credibility by making such remarks.
From the Crikey article:
“Lundy acknowledges the flaws in her own plan: there will be a stigma attached to requesting access to an unfiltered internet, and she admits it may “lead to interest by the authorities, even though individuals may simply want to ensure they are not having legitimate content filtered”.”
Could the Senator please clarify why the existing privacy legislation wouldn’t apply in both those instances?
Could the Senator also explain why would an individual’s filter status be disclosed, either individually or in aggregate, to the police without a warrant?
I’m not convinced that there’d be any stigma associated with opting-out at all.
This whole thing has been so poorly handled that everyone who cares knows full well that it’s a total disaster, and there’s no shame whatsoever with opting for the status quo we’ve all enjoyed for the last two decades.
Will there be a stigma associated with the circumvention option the Enex report confirmed is always available? Of course not. And there won’t be any stigma with partaking of an option that’s functionally equivalent to using circumvention methods all the time.
My advice to Sen. Lundy would be to forget about the “stigma” argument, it’s much ado about nothing.
Mark Newton’s spot on as regards Conroy making such a dog’s brekkie of the argument for mandatory censorship that no-one trusts that it’s about the claimed purpose of preventing children from accessing porn; but this relies on the idea that everyone, even non-avid ‘net users, has gotten the message that Mark illustrates.
However, there certainly are some underinformed people who are still labouring under the false impression that this has anything whatsoever to do with porn of any kind, starting with the editor of news.com.au and alleged comic Dave Hughes…
Quote Stuart Anderson: “I don’t think it is reasonable to assume the Government is blind to the online criticism, I think it is more likely that their own polling either supports the filter or (and I believe this more likely) that most voters are indifferent to the filter.”
I also believe this is the case. A large proportion of the population does not value the freedoms they have because they have never before lost those freedoms. Whilst this is a sad situation it is understandable. The only solution I can see is for the enlightened (Most people here) to educate the masses, and fast. We need to grasp their attention and clearly spell out the treacherous path Reich Minister Conroy is pushing us along. Once the filter is in place is can be abused far beyond any currently voiced or legitimate agenda.
This of course is intolerable is a society where free speech is assumed if not embodied in our Constitution. So people, those of you who support freedom of speech, freedom of access to information and the right to make your own decisions about what you view on the Internet, turn to your right, introduce yourself to the person next to you and explain how those freedoms are about to be lost. Do this at every opportunity, make the time, and make the opportunities, it is that important!
I personally want some opt in filtering to save my time. I want filtering to stop me going to sites that are “dangerous” as they contain trojans and other nasties that might get downloaded. I want filtering to stop me wasting time on sites that want my “eyeballs” and have no real information. I want filtering that gets rid of “dead pages”. I would like a list that remembers those websites I do not want to visit ever again and I would like that combined with websites that people I trust have also said are a waste of time. I am sure there are other lists that many people would like to have.
It seems to me to be unfair that the government is not providing the resources to satisfy my needs and are only considering those who want to stop visiting places with particular types of images.
Lists and filtering are not all bad. However, it is how we implement the lists and the filtering that is the issue.
If we have to have mandatory filtering of one list let us also have optin filtering of other lists. That is, if the community is going to spend a lot of money on mandatory filtering of one list let it also spend money on a system to do multiple lists and on optin filtering. That is let us implement a system with many lists – of which the mandatory black list is but one – and there are other lists which can be community generated.
Let us make the items that go on the black list transparent so we can see that it is not being used for censorship.
Let us make opt out anonymous.
Let us make optin anonymous
Let us not just have one list but lots of lists.
Kevin, the Firefox browser already has a warning system built in that alerts users to ‘reported attack sites, which contain malware as you describe.
There’s no reasonable way any filtering system could be devised to filter out sites that are a ‘waste of time,’ as you suggest. I’m afraid that will always be the purview of the user.
Further, there’s no way opt-in or opt-out could be anonymous. Your choice will always be connected to your account with your ISP. Whether that information is secure or is subject to access via FOI or by law enforcement remains to be seen. Lists as such are always bad.
There’s nothing wrong with the status quo. I’ve raised a child who has had internet access with no filtering system since 1995. Her now 24-year-old brain has not in any way been poisoned by unfettered access to anything she wanted to see.
Brian the Firefox browser is what I had in mind. There is no reason why this functionality could not be extended to many different lists and we could choose from them. We can deploy the filter at the browser or at the ISP.
Filters can be built by users in the same way that google builds its email spam filter – from user reports. There is no reason why filters cannot be built in the same way – not by an “authority” but from the community. The issue with lists is who creates them and knowing what is in them.
It is my belief that if this alternative is demonstrated then it is likely to be adopted.
It is possible to do things anonymously – as we do with secret voting. We can devise ways for who is filtered and not filtered to be hidden.
One of the difficulties with legislation is mandating HOW things are to be done. Legislation should state its purpose. It the purpose is to stop children being exposed to certain images then let the legislation state that – not the mechanism to achieve it.
Kevin, the Firefox malware alert system is based in community reporting. It also allows flexibility for the user in determining whether a warning should be ignored. Systems based at the ISP level may not be quite so configurable.
Anonymous voting for blockages of sites isn’t desirable because it’s open to abuse by those with a vested interest in suppressing speech with which they don’t agree. In a small example, scam artists spruiking bogus fuel-saver devices for cars on YouTube frequently mark whistleblower comments as ’spam’ to hide them.
The right place to do any sort of filtering, if required, is at the user level. It is at that point that it is most tailorable to the user preferences and distributes processing load across many machines instead of a few. This is effectively the status quo.
Brian I am advocating community based filters as a solution that offers benefits for all users. We all agree that there are some sites – the ones with malware – that should be blocked. Most in the community think that other sites are of no interest to them and they never want to see them and are happy for them to be blocked. That is, we want automated methods of having filters so that as far as we are concerned these sites do not exist. Unfortunately we cannot do it on our own.
Your argument is that if enough people think the same way as I do then filters – like the Firefox filter – will evolve. The fact is that they won’t because most people will not pay for something that they perceive as a minor inconvenience while on the “other side” people creating sites with what I consider to be noise or worse have a financial or some other incentive to keep producing such sites. It is exactly the same problem as email spam filters.
We have a marvellous system that allows us to communicate freely and widely and we want to preserve it. However, there are others that want to take advantage of the openness of the system and are parasites whose activities take advantage of openness but have the potential to destroy it unless they are somehow controlled.
I understand and agree that we need to preserve openness but there is no point in ignoring and hoping that the parasites who take advantage of openness are not somehow stopped.
There is an excellent book “The Future of the Internet” by Zittrain which discusses this issue.
Your approach (and most other comments on this blog) appears to be that the best solution to preserving openness is to stop any change that – for whatever reason – reduce openness.
What I am suggesting is that perhaps there are approaches that can allow us to act as a community and control those who take advantage of openness to our collective disadvantage. Rather than simply say – filters have the potential to destroy openness – let us come up with positive steps to help us protect ourselves against those who take advantage of openness.
We can build community filters that are controlled by the community and do it in such a way that we can protect ourselves. The Firefox filter is one model for how it can be done but the functionality embodied in that filter can deployed in other ways and be done in ways that do not compromise our privacy or allow others to dictate what we can or cannot see or do.
Let us not just throw up our hands on the idea of filters but let us see if the idea can be directed so that they protect openness.
what you want (blocks basically all ads, which are the main source of malware) is the list provided at http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/ which can be used with adblock plus for firefox, with the built in list filter in opera, and with several other browsers as well. If you want to block more, use “opendns” and create a profile (for free) which is a dns-based option which offers malware/scamming/phishing site protection as well as the usual category-based filters for eg adult material, gambling etc. These options are both free, provide more (and more customisable) protection than the governments proposal, and are both home-based. Easily bypassed by a competent user of course, but then ALL filters are.
Kevin, I think you misunderstand what people have said to you.
One of the foundation principles of the Internet is what’s called the “end-to-end principle,” sometimes referred to as “dumb core, smart edge.”
This idea is baked-in to the architecture of the Internet: Intelligence (whether in the form of services, applications, etc) should be implemented on servers and end-user systems, leaving the “core” of the network (i.e., that part that’s operated by ISPs) relatively dumb. A dumb network core can be more efficient because if it isn’t trying to implement complicated services it can spend more of its effort focusing on its real job, which is to deliver packets from point A to point B.
As soon as you take a service (such as “filtering”) and try to implement it in the network core, you break that principle. Because the principle is so fundamental to the structure of the network, when you break it there are all kinds of poor results related to scalability, performance, reliability, and all that other good stuff we typically want. Services in the network core tend to be hyped as flavour-of-the-month with annoying regularity by equipment vendors, but they always fall by the wayside shortly afterwards when everyone realizes how poorly they’ll work.
The “correct” place to implement these services is actually in your browser, or on some other “network edge” server which has been specifically deployed to run the service, or both.
A good example of that style of architecture is opendns.com, which actually offers what you’ve said you want, malware filtering, right now. The OpenDNS edge systems offer the service, you configure your end-user PC to make use of the service, and you end up with malware filtering without your ISP needing to do anything at all. Oh, and the whole service is controlled by the community, just like you’ve requested. Browse around their site, I think it answers all your concerns.
Note that under the proposal tested by Telstra and endorsed by Conroy, nobody in Australia would be able to use OpenDNS.com because third-party DNS resolvers would be blocked by your ISP. Which is a shame, because one of the other services offered by OpenDNS.com is the exact style of “opt-in additional filtering” for non-RC porn sites that Conroy has said everyone should be able to use. Under the Telstra model, everyone would be able to use it except Australians.
– mark
Mark I understand what you are saying and agree with you. What I am suggesting is that we should try to think of methods which will achieve the objective desired without involving ISPs and the underlying internet protocols. We should suggest the legislation be written in terms of the objectives not the method of implementation.
However, to do this we have to show that there are alternatives and there are ways of achieving the objective without involving underlying Internet protocols and ISPs and this will be more effective than the government’s proposed implementation.
It is not good enough to say – parents and schools can implement browser based solutions and control their children. So far that has not worked.
Another method may be to implement filters that are community defined and are deployed outside the underlying protocols but in a generic manner where people can optout in an anonymous manner. I am sure there are other solutions but to find them and to implement them we need assistance from the community – including the government.
This issue of blocking access to undesirable content would seem to be an excellent one to try a different approach to solving this and similar problems. That is, the government specify the problem and objective and ask and assist the community to come up with solutions.
One thing we know is that the proposed implementation will not achieve the desired objective and will only interfere with legitimate access to content.
Lets break that down.
Firstly: Schools already do their own filtering, so it’s a bit of a red herring to include them in this discussion.
Secondly: “So far this has not worked,” is an interesting statement, because it includes an implied value judgement about what “worked” means: Namely, it relies a view of the Internet that says the normal default state for internet provision to children should ideally be a filtered service, and that it’s somehow deficient (“hasn’t worked”) if kids have widespread access to unfiltered internet access.
Interestingly, ACMA has done quite a lot of research into the validity of that attitude over a great number of years. I linked to some of it in this post: http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/21/further-thoughts-on-the-filter/#comment-15225
That research strongly suggests that most people don’t agree that the “normal” kind of Internet access that should be provided to children under their care ought to be filtered. Indeed, its results confirm that a very large proportion of parents are aware of filtering systems, understand exactly how to install and use them, and have chosen not to.
So I remain mystified about why certain figures within the ALP have chosen to believe fairytales about the incompetence of parents needing a Government rescue. Normally when you call a politician “out of touch with the community” you expect a pretty defensive reaction, but in this instance it seems like some of them are absolutely flocking to prove that they’re so absolutely disconnected from their voters that they believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that Australian parents are as ignorant about the Internet as they are.
This policy is pretty clear: It’s an ALP Government saying to me, “Whether you like it or not, we think the Internet’s normal state ought to be filtered. And because we think you’re too incompetent to manage to do it yourself, we’re going to do it for you. Suck it up, sunshine.”
To which my answer is, “No.”
– mark
Kevin, I reject the notion that what you suggest is in any way necessary, or wanted, by the majority of Australian internet users. You speak of crowd sourcing your blocklist, but you flatly ignore the fact that the community has already made the decision to reject censorship.
I also reject the idea that the responsibility for what you see lies anywhere other than with you as an individual. I far as I can see, your entire argument rests on other people being responsible for protecting you from offence. The suggestion that anyone should be able to dictate what other people can view, solely to bring it in line with their own standards of desirable content, is morally bankrupt.
Stuart the difficulty with generative technologies (those where the users can change the system) is that they can be highjacked and disabled by people who do not act in “the common interest”. Email spam is an example. These systems work well while most obey the rules of behaviour. Some people do not obey the rules and communities will react to protect themselves. This is NOT censorship but is self protection.
I am against government control over content but I am advocating enlisting others, including the government, to help me protect myself. You presumably do not object to sites with malware being filtered? I am also happy to let google arrange my search results, and I am happy for child pornography sites to be filtered so I cannot access them. There is nothing morally corrupt in any of this.
I am not happy for an anonymous government agency to make these decisions for me. But, unless we propose other solutions to restricting access to some sites then governments will go down the censorship path.
Kevin, as pointed out many times, by many people, the solutions to your problems already exist, and you could be using them right now. You simply don’t want to hear to that (for whatever reason).
You are personally responsible for what you view, and for what you choose to expose yourself to (and you can even delegate those choices if you wish). You don’t get to decide that for others. That is the basis of free speech – on which our democratic society is predicated. For whatever reason, you reject that idea.
If you want someone else to fix it all for you, good for you – but the rest of us believe that we are responsible for ourselves, and that we are capable as adults of making our own decisions. We flatly reject this censorship proposal as both unnecessary and unwanted. Once again, for some reason you cannot accept that majority position isn’t the same as your own (which is particularly bizarre when you consider that you are suggesting that these same people are going to endorse and run your crowd sourced blocklist. Why would they do that? I think you are mistakenly assuming that ‘community’ values are closely aligned to your own personal values).
If you want censorship for yourself, I have no objection to that whatsoever (because I respect your right to self determination). If you think you are going to be able to force it on to others without their consent, then think again. I (and many like me) don’t take kindly to people eroding my rights (especially on such specious reasoning).
Kevin Cox: “You presumably do not object to sites with malware being filtered?”
I do. I purposely didn’t run any sort of malware protection in my household when the kids became computer “aware”. As a consequence the computers around the house became infected on a regular basis for a while. As it happens, I know enough about computers to be able to fix this at the cost of a few hours, but it pissed me off nonetheless.
So why do this? Well the other thing I did is logged who downloaded what, and when something untoward was installed I figured out who did it and when. This was usually discussed over Sunday dinner. Boyfriends were asked not to be tricked into downloading malware to get at porn, girls were told were not at all love hearts and sparkling lambs were as innocent as they appeared. It took about two years as I recall. After that time we haven’t had a single malware or virus infection, either on the computers in my house or on the computers the kids later installed into their apartments when they moved out. None use anti virus software, so they aren’t up for paying for it and they don’t have to put up the ancillary problems such software causes.
You want to handle this stuff by hiding behind some sort of shield. Fair enough, that is your choice. But you evidently believe this is how everyone would want to do it. Wrong. There some of us out there who think being exposed to porn and the like is inevitable, there are lessons to be learnt about it and the best place to learn those lessons is in the benign environment of the family home. So most young males that passed through my house came to have a very clear idea of what the girls thought of porn, primarily because the girls, being girls, made it very clear. It was also made very clear to them while I didn’t care what they did or looked at in private, they had to respect the sensibilities of others they shared the same space with. Merely making it clear doesn’t work of course, as no adolescent listens a thing their parents tell them. It seems the lesson is only driven home when they cross the line, and get to wear the consequences. As I said, in my case the consequences were usually just a discussion about their latest transgression over Sunday dinner, which was usually shared with some of their friends. That is why giving them the opportunity to cross the line is so important.
So now we come the bit that annoys me. As others point out, you are perfectly free to install a filter, hide behind a filtering ISP, use anti-virus scanners and so on. But apparently you aren’t happy with just being able to do it yourself. You want to force me to do your way.
I wonder if Labor could have just done this to fix the Libs net alert idea.:
* On signup to an ISP the customer gets asked if they would like free (or subsidised, or at cost or even retail) PC filter software allowing install on 3 PCs.
* The customer receives physical media with the software + a regular DVD with some education material. This could include practical tips on installing and using the filter (parental unblock etc) but also information on risks of identity theft, bullying etc.
* The ISP hooks into the Netalert registration database so that a customer doesn’t have filter double spending when the customer churns.
It provides a solution to the perception that the filters were too hard to set up (Conroy was pushing that idea despite evidence to the contrary from the ACMA in a related survey). Also works for the argument that people just didn’t know about NetAlert.
Politically it doesn’t help Labor with the likes of the Australian Christian Lobby, Family First, or media companies but it does look like a more honest attempt at helping families and kids. (the current filter proposal does zip in that regard. Less than the old net alert).
Unfortunately Conroy ridiculed PC filters for circumvention when in opposition and is moving towards something that is now just as easy or easier to circumvent.
Ive looked into my crystal ball. I see –
This law is passed and ISPs have 6 months to comply!
The national and international technical press throw their hands in the air. Many non-technical outlets make some sort of comment, for or against, informed and non-informed. However interest is generated and press expectations aroused. After all this is a simple concept, easy to grasp – ‘There will be no more porn, pedophiles or child at risk from the Internet, in 6 months’.
6 months later the ISPs comply.
There is no noticeable performance impact, it just seems like a slow day, every day. Unless your on a country ISP, with limited resources who could only afford to use the box that was propping the kitchen door open. They will notice the performance hit (every day) .
But, within 10 minutes of implementation.
A child stumbles onto porn, another is groomed in a chat room.
A Current Affair (ACA) goes ballistic, they ask for any stories of ‘your child being exposed to porn on the Internet’. The press smell blood in the water. Articles appear saying “I typed in ’sex’ and got 10 gazillion hits- the filter is a failure”.
The discussion has now gone from ‘technical’ to simple, so that anyone on the street or the press can comprehend the complexities. The complexities being, you said there would be no porn. You lied or failed, which is it?
More and more cases appear of children at risk. ACA start a regular segment showing upset parents, bewildered children and blurred out breasts. Wonderful television. 7:30 report interviews the Senator asking about duping the public and the cost to tax payers. This is the perfect opportunity to raise all of those geeky predictions and ask why they have come true. Which they do. Not a good look on National TV.
The Governments answer will be – spend more money on it, tighter filtering.
As these things do, the story starts to fade from importance and public, in a few weeks. Then from one of the hundreds of ISPs the list will be leaked.
1) There will be Government threats against the leaking news outlet, possibly even legal action, or doors being broken down by police. This particular face of repression they understand – the press will go wild.
2) The contents are publicly discussed.
2a)Surprisingly more dentists or equivalent are on the list and this explains their recent downturn in business. Legal relief is sought.
2b) Its illegal to know the contents of the list. This goes all the way to the hight court. Legal process are so slow, my crystal ball cant see that far, so I cant comment on that little headache for the Government. But it may be just in time for the 2014 elections, dredging up the whole mess again.
3) Interestingly there are Christian sites on the list. ACA smells blood again. Indignant ACL representatives are interviewed.
I see that there are two responses in the Australian Christian Lobby.
Back when the filter first failed the leadership talked about it being early days and giving full support. The members nod and keep quiet.
As the avalanche gains momentum, the Leadership bunkers down. The members become more vocal and disillusioned. They start to leave. A core of very vocal right winged members vie for control. They advocate more and stronger filtering until the promise is delivered. “Beatings will continue until morale is improved”. The ACL will become more aligned to the Libs and less inclined to lobby, more inclined to brow beat the Government.
There will be a continuous background of stories. Every pedophile story will reactivate the filter in peoples mind. Every time a child sees a breast it will be obvious that the Government has failed again. This general background of dissatisfaction will continue, it will be beaten up by the Libs in the run up to elections. Their only question will be ‘when do we release the pedophile stories’ never ‘do we release’.
My glass clouds over..
Does the Senator keep his job? or is he relegated to the back bench, away from nasty questions. Maybe Kate could take on that port folio, she understands technical stuff? (and she does what the party decides) (sorry, I couldn’t resist) .
What will the now retired (after encouragement) ACL leadership do?
Will the High Court allow publication of the list?
Will the High Court say that there is no such thing as Government information that can be withheld from the public?
Will the Dentists get compensation and legal costs go to the Government?
Will future economists point to the ‘implementation’ as the date when we lost global business and technical credibility and our economy bottomed. As students and technical businesses left in droves.
Does your crystal ball show the same as mine?
Andy
Here’s a suggestion; Why not give the money directly to the Police to protect our children instead of wasting hard-earned taxpayer money on a filter which will never work.
Brian: interesting figures.
In other words, internet filtering has already been concretely rejected by at least 99.875% of eligible households.
Well, to put it in terms used by Senator Conroy on 31 December 2007, The Rudd-Labor Government disagrees with 99.875% of internet users who want to watch child pornography.
Common argument’s against the filter are to focused on technical limitations, the problem with this is that technology evolves as we can see in modern society. Arguing from a technical stand point is poor form. The suppression of free-speech is a moral issue, not a technical issue.
Free-speech is a fundamental requirement for any democracy and a fundamental human right. We must not allow the government any control in what conversations we can or cannot have. Because as soon as we do our democracy is gone.
Kevin Cox wrote:
Actually, you can do it on your own. If you find a site disinteresting or to be ‘noise,’ don’t visit it. If you can’t stop yourself from clicking, put a filter on your own computer. Not everyone will agree with your assessment of any given website. To install a filter based upon your assessment will be a nuisance to those who don’t share your views. This is a personal responsibility matter. It’s not the job of others to keep you from seeing what you don’t like, nor is it your job to keep others from seeing what you don’t like.
If anyone has any need for content filtering, it should be accomplished at the local PC. As I previously said, this spreads the processing load across many machines instead of a few or even one, reducing the possibility of breaking the system and improving the configurability for each individual user.
Brian I guess this is where we differ.
I know I cannot protect myself from those who would do me harm without the help of others.
No-one is doing you any harm that you cannot mitigate with local filtering.
Use anti-virus & anti-malware apps, like everyone else does. Problem solved.
Exactly. I can get “filtering” assistance from others.
Why do you object when it is the community/government that offers to assist? You (and I) might not like the way it is proposed they do it but I am suggesting we take them up on their offer and suggest other ways to achieve the result – not simply say we do not want your help.
I have no problem with the government offering a solution that is effected at the local PC, i.e. the previous govt’s NetAlert.
I do have a problem with filtering done upstream, regardless of who is proposing or sponsoring it. Refer to Mark Newton’s comment about ‘dumb core, smart edges’ for the reasons why.
http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/21/further-thoughts-on-the-filter/#comment-15366
http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/21/further-thoughts-on-the-filter/#comment-15404
http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/12/21/further-thoughts-on-the-filter/#comment-15225
You presently have all the tools at hand necessary to resolve your complaints, most at no cost to you. Why must you insist that government spend a packet on a system that won’t work, and impose it on the vast majority of users who clearly don’t want or need it?
If it was just an ‘offer’ to assist us, none of us would be having this conversation at the moment. The primary objection here is that the goverment is shoving the assistance down *EVERYBODIES* throat, regardless of wheather they need it or not.
The previous government had the ‘offer’ to assist us in the form of free PC-based filters. The community offers to assist in the form of ISP that do filtering like WebShield (and no, I don’t have any affiliation with WebShield). Both these measures are sufficient for those people that seek assistance.
The argument seems to be that because I can do something about “filtering” or removing sites in which I have no interest then there is no need for the community as represented by the government to do anything for me because the government may use this help for other more sinister activities. This sort of argument will not achieve what both the respondents to my comments and I want – which is an open generative communications mechanism.
Whether there is a real problem or not the politicians (of most persuasions) sense that there is an issue in the publics mind and are reacting to it.
I believe there is a problem with the fully open internet because I believe there are people who will take advantage of that openness to my disadvantage.
Pornography is not the issue. The issue is do we want a communications mechanism where we can protect ourselves from “bad people”. Pornography just happens to be the catalyst that everyone can understand.
I do not know the solution to the problem but I know that ad hoc filtering is not the answer. I also know that the proposed government solution is not the answer.
What I am suggesting is that the government write some legislation that says something like:
“There are those who would do us harm by putting up websites that can harm us. It is our objective to provide citizens with the tools to protect themselves. We will assist anyone and support initiatives to do this and we will allocate fund to that end”.
The issue then become what is “harm” and one person’s harm is another benefit so clearly the system we adopt has to be at a granular individual level.
Problems arise with legislation in these areas when it becomes too prescriptive. In effect legislation is trying to define the system to solve the problem and that is not the most effective way to build any system.
Rogue websites are a problem and politicians believe we have to have a community response. This desire for the government to do something about what may or may not be rogue websites is a great chance for us to set in place legislation that will address this broader problem. The optout amendment is one idea that moves it partly in the right direction. I am suggesting we get rid of the details of how filters are to be implemented and indeed any mention that filters are the solution but phrase the legislation in terms of the community being able to make rogue websites “invisible” for those who want them to be invisible and for those who do not have the means to make invisible. Also the legislation could put in place funding and a process for the “community” to come up with solutions.
I know I cannot protect myself from those who would do me harm without the help of others.
As Mark aluded to in another post, most people that use the internet have evaluated, and rejected the help of others (in the form of censoring the internet). The government’s own research emphasises this point. Most people have chosen to self censor, rather than using the options below.
For people, like yourself, that would feel more comfortable with the extra help there are:
1) PC based filters;
2) ISPs like WebShield.
I still don’t see the need to make filtering mandatory for everyone when most people have already rejected the idea.
There are those, I suspect, who are asking to be protected from themselves…
Hi all,
Short update. I am back from holidays (I’m in NZ at a conference atm) next Monday and just wanted to let you all know that we’ve been waiting for the compilation of key questions that Philip Bateman offered to do in this blog and that way we’ll try to answer all the questions in one go. Responding to everyone individually is simply not going to be efficient or effective.
If anyone feels anything is missing they can respond with additional questions, and we’ll get as many answers as possible, or where appropriate let you know where other questions need to be directed. We’ll try to get everything answered by the end of next week.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Hi Senator Lundy,
I’ll try to be as objective as I can be in this discussion and hopefully I can offer some helpful questions.
Given the enormous amount of focus on protecting children was there a study that conclusively proves that internet filtering will protect or save children? I am aware that most of the studies being funded revolves around the impact of the filter in regard to internet speed, but I have not heard any study that involves children.
It is a fact that most people are not convinced that the filter will protect children and keep citing that slogan without the backing of scientific study will not help to convince the skeptics.
I am also confused with the idea/term of “protecting children”. What are we protecting them from? Child abuse, adult pornography, child pornography, spam, phishing, virus, trojan, worm, abusive parent, bullying, cults, discrimination, ideology (eg. nazism, communism)? A clarification on how will the filter go about and protect children would be appreciated by the tech community.
Why the blacklist have to be kept secret? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for it to be open and widely available so the concerned parent can check for themselves whether their ISP do the proper job of filtering those nasty sites. It will also give parents the opportunity to implement the filter in their own home network and get alerts everytime the children tried to access the site on the filter so they can actually educate the children.
I would appreciate it if you can point me to sites which answers any of my question.
Australia could quiet easily have been included in this speech.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/secstate-clinton-on-net-freedom-tear-down-this-virtual-wall/
The Australian Government is now on a crash collision course with the government of the United States over this issue.
If the filter is introduced, many of us will be conceivably using American Anti-Censorship VPNs (, designed to assist Chinese and Iranian dissidents,) in a move of mass civil disobedience against our own government.
Interesting times indeed.
Pia,
I’m not in a position to summarise the entirety of responses in the comments;
The fact that our systems suffer whilst state governments take every opportunity to revenue raise from the citizens, and a mixture of municipal, state and then federal government piss away our tax money in their own CITY for a population of 21 million stupifies me.. added to that party loyalty and you have a totally and utterly unrepresentative political system. It’s a farce and having watched this all unfold I’m struggling to engage.
I would like to add a question to the pile;
Now that the position of your party stands in direct opposition to Barack Obama and Hilary Clintons position on censorship, as well as Googles mandate to ‘do no evil’ and thus remove themselves from China should censorship continue, on what basis are you continuing?
Thank you.
Thanks for that Philip.
We will collate the questions, and post here along with answers in the coming week.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Pia,
The EFA has a good list of questions here.
And Mark Newtons letters are a good source of queries that have not been answered. The most poignant one I would like answered is in this letter:
Hi Lucas,
I’ll see what we can do.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Hi Pia,
Let’s for a minute step back from the obvious technical problems and the huge moral problems in a democratic country unilaterally deciding to censor the largest communications network on the planet against the wishes of it’s constituants using a secret list. I’m yet to hear the government actually prove that there is a problem to solve. In fact, I’m yet to hear them give an actual definition of the problem they are apparantly solving.
Senator Lundy, exactly what problem is the Minister trying to solve with this ridiculous plan? And, if you can actually get the Minister to define one, where is the proof that the problem actually exists?
Cheers,
Justin.
Justin,
Everyone – I think – agrees that filters of websites is a good idea. That is, we simply do not wish to visit some websites (For example those that contain malicious downloads or are scams).
The issue is how the filtering is to be done. There are many (most commentators here) who say the individual or family can take responsibility and they can install local filters and join with others in setting up filters that make certain website invisible.
There are others – myself and probably the majority of the general population – who would like government assistance in filtering.
People believe that the way the government is proposing to do it can lead to censorship and will not work. I agree that is possible but I also think that the government can come up with a system that would work well enough and satisfy all parties.
It is based around the extraordinary successful email filters that Google (and others) use to get rid of spam email.
I would like the filters to be installed on the network before the traffic gets to me (why should I have to pay for bandwidth to examine something I do not want). The filters could work in the following way and they would be community driven.
There would be a set of filters that are automatic and I can choose to unsubscribe from them if I wish. Some filters could be – sites with malicious code – sites with child pornography – sites with scams that ask me for money for nothing in return – “hate sites” etc.
It is how sites get on and off these lists that is an issue. The user based filters on email work by individuals reporting that such and such a site has child pornography and should go in the filter. If enough people report it then it can go in, the site can be notified if they want to and they can appeal against it.
The problem that people appear to have with the government’s proposal is that we have no say in what goes into the filter and that once we have such a system set up then an authoritarian government can set up filters that say “filter any site critical of the government of the day”. I would argue that that is a different problem to be met when it occurs. The argument against government filters uses the so called “precautionary principle” which says if there is a chance that some action may cause harm then we should not do it. This is sad argument because it does not attempt to measure or consider the good that might come from doing something. There is a lot of good that comes from filters. I do not waste time visiting places where I have no interest and it costs me very little. If something bad comes out of it like unjustified censorship or persecution of people who opt out of lists then let us face that problem when it arises not try to stop government assisted filtering.
The main argument against government filters appears to be that I can set up my own filters now and that if there is a true demand for such filters then someone will provide them. While that might be true the community (with the help of the government) can solve the problem much more efficiently and for a lot less cost than if I and everyone else does it themselves.
Kevin, you can stop fooling yourself that your views reflect the majority of Australians right spanking now, because they don’t.
Filtering should be done at the local PC and nowhere else. To do otherwise breaks the network. You’ve been told this REPEATEDLY by the most qualified experts working in the industry, right here on this blog, and you don’t listen.
If you feel this out of control in front of your own computer, you probably shouldn’t have one.
Brian
You are arguing about the implementation. I am trying to discuss the principle of whether it is appropriate and desirable for the government to assist us with filters or some other way of protecting ourselves from websites that we never want to visit.
The implementation may be a filter that automatically downloads to my PC or it could be a service offered by the ISP or it could be a redirection service or building the filters into browsers and search engines …….. There are other options than putting filters on the PC and requiring everyone to work out how to do it and then to take the conscious decision to do it.
If you asked people – do you want all sites with malware to be blocked from your computer and do you want the government to help provide that system – then the answer by the majority of people would be yes.
If you asked people – do you want the government to be able to censor your web browsing – then the answer would be no.
The government went to the elections with a promise to try to do something about automatically restricting access to undesirable websites. It is up to the IT community to offer suggestions on the best way to define undesirable websites and how to implement ways of protecting the general population.
The political parties believe there is a problem and everyone installing filters themselves on their own PC’s is not the best or the only way to address the problem.
It is up to us (and yes I am in the IT industry) to come up with suggestions on how it might be done better rather than simply say – it can’t be done and besides there is a solution already – or to say I don’t see the problem hence let us not do anything.
It is neither desirable nor appropriate for the government to apply filtering upstream from the user. The ‘political parties’ (actually only Labor) at this moment DO think that upstream filtering is desirable, but that flies in the face of about 96% of the Australian population’s view.
Last time, Kevin- if you need a filter, you do it at the local PC. The previous govt’s NetAlert does precisely what you want whilst not limiting any other users nor subjecting them to your peculiar requirements.
You obviously want protection from yourself. If that’s what you want, a straitjacket would be helpful. That’s not the job of government, unless you’ve been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Brian
I have tried to point out the self interest we each have in ridding the Internet (or at least hiding websites with malicious content) but you do not seem willing to listen to those arguments and potential solutions.
I have not used the main argument for ridding or at least hiding some websites but here it is.
There are some websites that are evil. These websites are ones where some people exploit the weak and vulnerable for their own purposes. People who subject men, women and children to degrading acts and even to taking their lives in snuff movies should not be allowed to profit from those activities. Websites that portray such images where there are real victims involved in their creation should not be allowed on the Internet. That is my belief and accordingly I have an ethical responsibility to try to remove or at least hide these websites so that evil people, who exploit others, cannot profit from them.
One of the ways this can be done is through some form of filtering. This is not the only thing necessary to rid the Internet of such websites but it is a start.
The arguments that I hear are the “precautionary arguments”. They go along the lines that if we impose some form of filtering this may cause governments to impose censorship in other areas and lead to an intrusion on my life. It may come true but, in my opinion, it is a small risk compared to the fact that millions of people have already been victimised and exploited and millions more will.
If you agree that some websites should be hidden then it is up to you to help find an acceptable way to remove or at least hide them so that it becomes more difficult for the bad people who put them up to profit from their acts.
Voluntary filters on home PCs will not do the job. If we do not think of acceptable ways of solving the issue then sooner – rather than later – solutions will be imposed on us that are not as good as they could be.
I would like the legislation written in terms such as
Some websites should not be allowed to be on Internet. If they do get on it then they should be hidden. The community should be involved in deciding and policing what should not be on the Internet and the government will assist the community in these endeavours.
Attacking the proposed legislation on the basis of a potential misuse by governments of filters is not going to get very far with the politicians. If you do not like the solution proposed you must try to come up with an alternative that addresses the issue of people with exploitative websites being able to profit from their actions.
Kevin is clearly a troll – arguing something totally unrelated to the discussion. Feeding trolls is one of the things we all learn not to do in Internet 101, isn’t it?
Paul if you do not think the issue is about hiding websites then what do you think the legislation is about? Evil is also done to people who inadvertently view such sites. I once viewed a snuff movie that at the time I thought was fictional “and just a movie”. Later I discovered it was real. I still feel ashamed and ill.
What are you doing that you would actually come across any of this stuff. Snuff film puleeasse.
I’m now 35. I’ve had access to computers since I was about 7. I’ve had a computer since I was 10. I’ve been online since around 1989. I’ve been using the internet almost daily since 1991 (Electronic Engineer). I have NEVER inadvertantly come across anything that would appear on the RC list and have never met anyone who has. I have NEVER seen or heard of anyone seeing an actual Snuff film.
Every single one of us has the best filter you could possibly get available to us now, and it’s free. It’s called your brain. Try engaging it once in a while.
Kevin, going from “we simply do not wish to visit some websites” to “Everyone – I think – agrees that filters of websites is a good idea” is a complete non sequitur. I for one do not agree that filters of websites are a good idea. I have yet to see any evidence that a government or any other body makes better choices on what I should see than I do myself. There are indeed sites I don’t want to visit, but I execute that desire by simply not going to them. I don’t understand why you think the government needs do anything about this. In similar fashion, there are TV shows I don’t want to watch, but I don’t need the government to take them off the air. There are people I don’t want to telephone, but I don’t need the government to bar those numbers on my phone. There are restaurants and bars I have no interest in, but I don’t require the government to institute and police a ban on my attendance at them. I execute all of these “filters” by simply being a functioning adult in a free society.
Everyone does not agree that filtering is a good idea. If they did NetAlert wouldn’t have had the miserable uptake it did. Your views are not representative of community views in my opinion, and certainly not of those of internet users.
There is little point debating implementation issues for an idea that is fundamentally flawed. If the technology you want could exist, it would already be being sold to China, Iran, the UAE, etc. – this technology would be worth billions, and there are no shortage of companies that want that money and don’t care about human rights. There are many factual examples worldwide that censorship, even with full Government support backed up with imprisonment and torture for circumventors, simply doesn’t work.
The other major issue with your argument is that the filtering goals you have your heart set on have no relationship to the Government’s – you talk about malware, the Government’s filter has no intention of blocking that at all. This blog, and all the comments, are responding to the ALP’s actual proposal, not some hypothetical scheme that you are proposing.
As for your statement: “why should I have to pay for bandwidth to examine something I do not want”, why should we have to pay for your censorship (that we don’t want)?
Kevin,
Even though everyone else has been quite eloquent and even handed in their replies to your comment, I should say something as you were replying to me.
As with others here, you lost me in your first sentence. I do not agree that filtering of websites is a good idea so your sentence is false. In fact, I’m yet to actually meet someone who believes this though they are apparantly out there (after all, you believe it). Please point me to a study which supports your assertions. I and others can point you to many which disprove it, including the Minister’s own report from the ACMA.
This effectively negates the rest of your response, however what you’ve written here bears no resemblance to what the government is proposing so adds little to the discussion.
Hi Pia,
Comments coming through via email are not appearing on the blog since January 17th.
Could you please let us all know when you plan to make public the last week or so of correspondence from people that have been in touch?
Thanks
Philip B
Every benefit of a mandatory filter can be enjoyed in full by the provision of optional filters.
Please justify why Australians should be not granted a choice. There have been no such justifications made by any proponent.
If there’s no gain to be made by forcing it on Australian adults, why must we do so?
Ken
Kevin, by now you should have realised that the principle of censorship is abhorrent to most of those who’ve posted here. Therefore, raising possible ways for the Government to legislate any kind of filter is merely wearing out the keys on your keyboard.
As you’ve been told many times, if you want a filter, go and get one. What’s the problem with that?
Geez, there are times when I think you’re a Conway mole.
BTW, I’ve been in IT since the mid-60s, so take my word for it that the Conroy filter is infeasible. I for one will work around it without difficulty, but I still object to its imposition on philosophical grounds. The Internet is a truly democratic means of communication and it belongs to the people, so keep your sticky hands off it, Senator Conway et al.
At risk of being persecuted by those who wish to restrict my choice and inhibit my freedoms…
Get Google Chrome and install Proxy Switchy – (Google it for more info).
Pathetic attempts by any government to stifle free speech, restrict access to information and remove our freedom of choice will always be overcome by people much smarter than those we elect to represent us (and who I might add, fail to do so).
Kevin
Whether or not you, and/or “probably the majority of the general population” (as you suggest, but I think you are wrong about the proportion) “would like government assistance in filtering”, the fundamental problem with the Labor government’s ISP blocking plan is that the government intends (if it can get majority support in the Senate) to impose a one-size-fits-all and mandatory-for-all-adults ISP blocking system.
As I’ve remarked here before, the Australian Government is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (an international treaty) and therefore has an international obligation to protect the human right to freedom of expression set out in Article 19 of the ICCPR.
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm
Australia is also a party the first Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, which enables individuals to complain to the UN Human Rights Committee about a breach of their civil and political rights, if they have exhausted all options under Australian law for having their complaint heard and been unable to obtain a remedy. The UNHRC may recommend remedies for any breach of human rights but these are not legally binding on governments.
Government mandated ISP blocking violates Article 19 of the ICCPR, and the government cannot justify its mandatory blocking plan in terms of the internationally agreed tests applicable to the circumstances in which a government, that is a party to the ICCPR, can lawfully limit such right. The relevant tests are outlined here:
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/Human_RightS/briefs/practitioner_checklist.html
My research and analysis of application of relevant tests to the government’s mandatory-for-all-adults ISP blocking system results in the same conclusion as that succinctly stated in the ‘Joint Declaration of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media and the OAS Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression’, adopted on 21 December 2005, which states inter alia:
“Filtering systems which are not end-user controlled – whether imposed by a government or commercial service provider – are a form of prior-censorship and cannot be justified. The distribution of filtering system products designed for end-users should be allowed only where these products provide clear information to end-users about how they work and their potential pitfalls in terms of over-inclusive
filtering.”
http://www.osce.org/item/26809.html
The Federal Government’s intended additional/optional ISP-level filtering, which it intends to encourage ISPs to offer by partial Government/tax payer funding, would not violate the ICCPR provided the conditions/circumstances mentioned above are met.
The sooner the Federal Government decides to uphold its existing international obligation to protect, rather than violate, the human right set out in Article 19 of the ICCPR (never mind its talk about an Australian Bill of Rights), and supporters of some kind of “government assisted” filtering start talking about this in terms of optional services, not mandatory for adults, the sooner controversy and debate about the Labor Government’s blocking intentions will end.
Kevin, you seem to be a dab hand at finding snuff movies on the net (I’ve never come across one despite being a constant user). You also claim that millions have already been victimised, which is certainly news to me. If you are beseiged by nasty websites, report them to the AFP – it’s their job to close them down. I’m sure they’ll be grateful to have someone like you scouting for them.
I’m perplexed by your statement that local filters won’t work yet a “precautionary” filter will. A filter is dependent on a blacklist, regardless of where that list is located.
In general, you seem not to have understood, or do not want to understand, the advice given to you so far, so I’m inclined to agree that you are a troll.
The statists really can’t help themselves can they. They just *have* to go in and fiddle around. No clear goals, no clear understanding, no clear thinking.
To all the readers, please ensure you are keeping a backup of the emails you are receiving and sending, should we need to publish the last 20 days or so of intelligent response, which appears to have been a lot of well justified research and commentary.
Don’t just post your thoughts here, consider sharing them as commentary on the IT wire links or similar that follow;
This sentiment is the driving force and intelligent response that destroys the concept of this being a logical, useful, legal, warranted, insightful or requested imposition on the Australian public.
Maybe consider this speaking to people about the filter? http://www.itwire.com/blogs/the-big-house/australian-government-ict-blog/30538-why-the-anti-filter-campaign-is-failing
Hopefully the EFA releases a much more relevant statement than ‘no clean feed’ as their spearhead into the public consciousness;
http://www.itwire.com/telecommunications-news/policy-and-regulation/30630-efas-anti-filter-campaign-dumps-no-clean-feed-slogan
I find it quite amazing that people accuse me of all sorts of things because I suggest that filters (or some other way of hiding websites) could be useful both to myself and to others less able to look after themselves and may prevent some people becoming victims of antisocial acts.
I am insane, a troll, not understanding or listening to what anyone else is saying, of searching the Internet for snuff movies, am a Conroy mole, and am in favour of censorship
I find it highly amusing.
I have never said that the government’s filtering proposal is sensible or the right way to do things. What I have been trying to get people to understand – and do something about – is the following.
There are bad people in the world and we should not let them take advantage of the rest of us. The government believes it has a duty to try to do something about anti social people. Most people in Australia would agree that they expect their government to do something.
The government has made a proposal which is unacceptable and unworkable to most of the people who comment on this blog. The reaction of most is to condemn the government and to accuse the government of leaving the door open to wider censorship.
My approach is to try to understand what the government is trying to do – which I believe is to protect victims and potential victims. On reflection and on reading the book “The Future of the Internet and how to stop it” I realise that unless we set in place ways to isolate bad people without draconian censorship we will get draconian censorship.
The government has come up with the idea of a filter implemented in a particular way. Making it opt out is a start to making it a better solution. Another idea is to work out a way to involve the community in deciding what goes on the list and what doesn’t – along the lines of google filers on email spam. Another is to frame the legislation in terms of what is going to be done – not how to go about it. Another is to find ways that people can opt out without anyone other than the person themselves knowing they have opted out.
Those of you who say I can look after myself and hence there is no problem ignore the fact that this is not a practical option for many people and is not an option for the victims shown on some websites. Many of us believe that if we see a wrong and can help others without imposing our will on them then we should try to do so.
I happen to believe that we can hide bad websites and hence cut off the incentive for people to create them and do it without censorship.
Kevin, the idea that “that is not a practical option for many people,” is a common theme which has always come through in these debates.
The idea is that the speaker themselves is perfectly capable of dealing with all kinds of content without any disconcerting harm, but that there’s some mythical underclass of psychologically vulnerable “others” who can’t. In order to protect these hapless, helpless victims, we need to impose censorship on everyone.
There are a number of problems with that line of reasoning.
Firstly, the paternalism it represents works against the Government’s stated desire to bring about a “civil and confident” online society. Civil societies don’t violate the civil liberties of people who are perfectly capable of responsibly exercising them; Confident societies don’t impose onerous limitations on themselves out of irrational fear that someone, somewhere, unbeknownst to anyone, might be suffering some kind of harm. A Civil and Confident Society is one where those who can’t cope are identified so that we can empower and uplift them, so that they can be removed from the underclass and take the full benefit of our civil and confident society.
Secondly, I’m yet to see any convincing evidence that the rumoured underclass actually exists. My observation and experience is that at this late stage, after 20 years of the Internet’s mainstream existence in this country, we’ve never been more empowered, informed, or educated about the nature of the communications. Although I see a lot of people fulminating angrily about online content, I’m yet to see a single person anywhere who has actually been harmed by it.
Thirdly: You speak of “isolating bad people.” Censorship doesn’t do that, it simply throws a blanket over them and pretends they don’t exist. Meanwhile, our society has a fully functional, mature, and effective means of isolating bad people, which is to arrest them, prosecute them, and convict them of crimes. This Government tells a merry tale about its law enforcement credentials, but in the cyber safety arena it can’t get away from the fact that it’s shaved nearly $3m off the budget for the bit of the AFP that’s specially tasked with “isolating bad people” online, namely the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce, OCSET.
As to your wider argument, Kevin: You come along with us about half way, then depart. We agree with you that there are bad people out there, and that there’s a role for Government to help us to deal with them. Where we depart is that you think one of the legitimate Governmental roles is to censor, whereas many of the rest of us in this thread don’t. I’m all for the Government continuing to chase-down and prosecute abusers, and where the authorities claim that it’s “difficult” to do it internationally I’d fully support provision of additional resources to remove the difficulty, to make it easy.
But I don’t support throwing a blanket over the problem. That’s frankly idiotic, and the Government deserves everything it’s getting for proposing it and continuing to move towards it.
– mark
Kevin, we’ve all heard what you have to say – do you have anything new to add? It seems to me that we are just going over old ground here. The proposition you bring has been noted and rejected by the majority of commenters here – and I see nothing different in this post to convince them otherwise. Whether you are a troll or not doesn’t matter to me, from my perspective your proposition is a dead end – I just don’t see how it is going to go anywhere (either as a debate topic, or practically).
The only effective tactic against the asinine censorship policy may be to force individual ISPs to survey their subscribers on the acceptability of the mandatory approach. I have asked my ISP if they support compulsory censorship. If they do, I have advised that I shall transfer to an enlightened ISP.
As someone who works in an ISP, I can assure Denis and others that some ISPs exist that do favour filters – places like Webshield and others who already offered filtered internet. The remainder do not favour them, and several leading opponents of the filter plan are well known owners or operators of ISPs.
ISPs across the country though – large and small – are coordinating their efforts to both oppose this policy, and work out the practicalities of how it would work for the ISPs if it were to be implemented.
Obviously, ISPs will comply with the law of the land, and if the legislation is passed, they will do what they must.
It’s interesting to note that Webshield, an ISP which markets itself to be the solution to parents afraid of their children accessing information on the internet, is a non-profit.
That’s telling.
What’s even more telling is, as Mark Newton pointed out earlier, that after two years of free publicity on this matter, they have only a tiny customer base.
And if that doesn’t tell you enough about the actual public demand for filters, this should remove any doubt.
From Senator Conroy’s DBDCE FAQ:
I think quite simply that a better tool for parents to install on PCs that will actually work is the best option. The idea of mandatory filtering that intercepts every packet is quite frightening as a gamer. Playing online, an extra 50 or so ms in your ping can make a difference. I’m older than your average gamer and have voted labor every chance I’ve had, but if this plan goes ahead unchanged I can guarantee my last vote will be the last one labor gets.
Even so, the allowed-that-should-not-be sites, of which there was only a minor percentage but even at .1%, that means if everyone in the country requested the same banned page at once, about 1/4 million people would still see it.
“Those of you who say I can look after myself and hence there is no problem ignore the fact that this is not a practical option for many people and is not an option for the victims shown on some websites. ”
Why isn’t it a practical option, Kevin?
Perry of course optional filters is a practical option for people who can install them and feel the need to do so. However, we know that even if they are free people do not use them – particularly if it involves effort on their part.
I know you will say – people do not use them even when they are free hence they are not needed. The problem with this line of argument is that it does not work when it comes to community goods (and the internet and websites are community goods).
Conroy is charged with the task of representing the community and protecting the common interest it is similar to the issue of compulsory seat belts.
Your approach of requiring the individual to be responsible for their own welfare would treat seat belts as follows.
If you want to protect yourself with seat belts you can always buy them and install them. When seat belts were optional and you had to pay extra and install them yourself very few people installed them. However, we know that seat belts save lives and help prevent more serious injury. They do not stop all accidents and they do not protect people from themselves and others but overall it is worthwhile for society to make them mandatory in motor cars and to make it mandatory to wear them. Overall the benefit to the whole community is positive and so we go along with mandatory seat belts.
“Hiding” some websites on the Internet is a similar issue. As a society we should try to hide some websites because they add nothing to society.
The other argument is that when the content of some websites is created it victimises some people. Some people do not participate in creating the content on a voluntary or full consent basis. The people who create these websites make a profit from them because some other people are willing to pay to view the content. I believe – as I am sure most people would believe – that we should try to stop people making money from other people’s suffering. One way to do this is to hide these websites.
Those are the issues. There are websites that do not advance the common good. If those websites are tolerated then we as a society lose. I do not know how many websites have unacceptable content but I do know that google reports that 10% of ALL websites contain malware.
This is an issue that will not go away and if the IT industry does not come up practical workable solutions to hiding unacceptable websites then we will get even more unacceptable restrictions imposed upon us.
Whether we like it or not there is an issue with many websites having unacceptable content. Simply saying individuals do not have to look at them is not a solution.
[i]Perry of course optional filters is a practical option for people who can install them and feel the need to do so. However, we know that even if they are free people do not use them – particularly if it involves effort on their part. [/i]
Kevin, there’s no effort involved in installing filter software. If a PC user can’t whack a CD into a CD drive and follow simple instructions, they’re probably incapable of using the net anyway.
Hear Hear Kevin!
Kevin, I applaud you for your seat belt analogy. I was thinking almost the very same thing myself. The Internet needs more people like you — what do the so-called experts who claim to use it every day know? It’s us, the people who use it maybe once a week, who have the real knowledge and experience.
I would only make a slight modification to your seat belt analogy. I suggest that the censorship policy is more like enforcing seat belts on lounge chairs.
I’m sure we can all agree that the vast problem of people falling off lounge chairs is something a free and confident society cannot allow. It ranges from old people breaking hips as they fall from their chair to babies rolling on to the floor. Clearly it is an area the government NEEDS to act. Whilst such seatbelts are optional, who bothers buying them? Experts tell us how many lives they could save. And parents are crying out for them.
Furthermore, I think the government should bring back blackout curtains. They proved their worth during the war, my house was not once bombed! In my suburb there is much street violence and rapes and murders and other terribly bad things. The police can’t seem to control it. Blackout curtains will make that problem go away.
I’ve had 50 murders and 5,000 rapes committed in the last 15 minutes on my street, and the government MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Once someone reports a murder or rape on my street, they can report it to the appropriate government agency who, after a month or so, can send out a letter to us all, telling us to lower the blackout curtains. Not only will this keep us safe and free from violence, but it will help the victims of crime.
Kevin, I salute you and your forward looking approach to getting us back to the 1950s where, this time, we will quake in fear of paedophiles under the bed.
I will sleep well in my bed knowing that my children can still be groomed, but may have trouble seeing their dentist’s or dog washer’s or school tuckshop’s home pages.
Three cheers for Kevin!
Kevin, what a weak comparison – seat belts and the filtering. With seat belts there was a problem. That problem being that when people have a ding in their car they get injured or killed. Seat belts do indeed save lives. Why? Because they address a REAL problem with a REAL solution. Same with airbags, traction control, etc.
As Mark said – where is the problem? I have never come across a person that has been inadvertently exposed to content so tirelessly that it has grossly affected their ability to function as a human being.
The problem here is the people that touch kids. This filter does nothing to protect them. By supporting it you are essentially saying you condone this activity as long as you hide it.
I support your proposition that we need to protect the vulnerable, what person in their right mind wouldn’t? But when you say, “One way to do this is to hide these websites” you fail the most important test of all – credibility.
Firstly, as has been said time and time again, the content doesn’t show up on websites very often. When it does the authorities tend to act swiftly (when they have been resourced appropriately that is) and have it removed, etc. Secondly, if we pretend for a moment that it does show up on the web this legislation does nothing to protect the real victims.
Perhaps my views are extreme but I strongly feel that supporting this policy, supposedly designed to protect our children, is akin to supporting the most gruesome of crimes against kids. As I said earlier, ‘protecting’ kids by simply sweeping the evidence under the carpet and pretending it never happened is, in my mind, condoning the illegal activity to begin with.
Kevin Cox: “Whether we like it or not there is an issue with many websites having unacceptable content.”
Unacceptable to who? You? Who died and made you the arbiter of taste?
Another Cox up: “Simply saying individuals do not have to look at them is not a solution.”
Why not?
Websites don’t leap into your computer and jump into your eyes without assistance. If you don’t like a particular kind of site, don’t search for them. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to look at anything you don’t want to see. Websites DO NOT appear on your screen inadvertently.
Your arguments are weak, riddled with fallacy, have been debunked numerous times. You don’t like the answers you’re getting so you just post the same rubbish over and over. Do you think you’re changing any minds? You’re not!
The supporters of this legislation sometimes seem to suggest “oh well, maybe it won’t be very effective, but every little bit helps.” I think it is important to nip this one in the bud, and prevent those people from claiming the moral high ground. The “little bit helps” attitude is not just a fallacy, it is the reverse of the truth: Senator Conroy’s legislation will ENCOURAGE pedophile activity. How? Because:
* Resources that could have been spent on child protection law enforcement will instead be spent on trying to maintain an unmaintainable list of “bad” websites
* The change in political impetus from “get pedophile websites taken down, and prosecute the people who put them up and the people who downloaded from them” to “hide the pedophile websites” will see many pedophiles remain at large in the community
* If a pedophile website becomes “hidden” by being added to the blacklist, pedophiles who would otherwise have been technologically naive enough to download directly from these websites will be forced to discover the ways around the filtering, which are multiple and pathetically easy to find, and then their actions will no longer be visible to law enforcement either
* Pedophiles seeing huge wads of resources spent on filtering WEBSITES, when they get all their illegal material from FTPand P2P rather than websites, will be re-assured that there is no effective government prescription of their actions
* As the censorship list grows and grows to include other (non-pedophilic) sexual material any wowser finds objectionable, it will send a clear message to pedophiles that what they do is only as bad as other sexual kinks consenting adults engage in
* A lot of non-technical parents will assume that the filter will somehow prevent their child being “groomed”. As grooming occurs on ordinary contact sites like Facebook, the filter will be completely useless for this – as even Conroy acknowledges – but these parents will then have relaxed their guard, and not taken the necessary parenting steps required to educate their children against potential grooming
* The abject and obvious failure of Conroy’s censorship, the derision it receives from the experts, the ease with which it can be circumvented, and the zero reduction it will have on pedophile activity will make it difficult for later governments with more of a clue to fund and gain public support for new pedophile-fighting initiatives, because the public will be able to say “yeah, yeah, Conroy said that too!”
* The leaking of the blacklist will provide a complete list to potential pedophiles of all the sites they might want to go to … and if you think it won’t leak, 1) it DID leak even in the TRIAL; and 2) there will be at least 500 people working in the ISPs around the nation with access to the list, and I reckon at least 490 of them will be anti-censorship … you do the math.
The net effect of national mandatory censorship will be to ASSIST pedophiles. Anyone supporting national mandatory censorship is supporting a system that provides an active benefit to pedophiles continuing their activity, victimising children all over the world.
Further to Perry’s post:
“Those of you who say I can look after myself and hence there is no problem ignore the fact that this is not a practical option for many people and is not an option for the victims shown on some websites. ”
How does the filter do anything to protect the victims shown on the websites? I mentioned the elephant in the corner earlier in these posts, seems people are still ignoring it.
I read with interest this morning that a Labor minister in NSW, Verity Firth, said this in relation to the new Schools website:
“Parents know best what is right for their children…”
Sure, it was in relation to choosing a school for their children but if a parent can be trusted to make decisions that affect the education of their children then can’t they be trusted to make decisions about educating them on internet use?
I am no conspiracy theorist by any means but this contradiction within the party (albeit between state and federal) makes me think they can’t be trusted. If they think we can look after our own kiddies on the one hand but can’t be trusted on the other, I can’t help but think I’m being conned…
People make the assumption that because I suggest there is a need to hide some websites that I am for government censorship. I am against government censorship but I am for stopping people who seek to harm me or my community. We all know that there are websites with scams, with malware, with lies, with slander, with child pornography etc. There are bad people in the world.
I do not think packet filtering is going to work anymore than free filters worked.
Michael M asks me how does a filter help victims portrayed on websites. If we can find an acceptable way of hiding bad websites then this will help victims. The reason is that the market place is cut off from those who profit from misery and if the market place is removed then people will stop creating such websites.
The solutions of filtering and of censorship are going to be no more effective than ignoring the problem. Those who say ignoring the problem because there is none ignore the fact that 10% plus of the Internet websites have malware.
I repeat there are bad websites on the Internet and we will get more of them while-ever people think they can earn a dollar from them. We have to find a way of hiding them that does not involve censorship by government. There is a solution out there that involves us being able to hide websites on a selectable individual basis (that is I choose what I want to censor) but I get help from the rest of the community. I think once such a system is established then there can be a default set of hidden websites that everyone gets automatically.
That is what I am trying to get people to discuss instead of saying “there is no problem” , “this is only a plot to censor the internet”.
The fact is there are bad websites.
The fact is that voluntary filters do not hide them from most of the population and while they remain visible people will keep putting them up.
The fact is that unless we find another solution to what is real problem then we will get government censorship.
The government is trying to do something to what is a real problem. We should take advantage of that and try to get them to move in a direction that is acceptable – not condemn them for trying.
Kevin, it’s almost impossible to discuss this rationally with you.
It seems to me that you’re pointing out that there are “bad websites” which “seek to harm me or my community.”
Okay, fine, lets acknowledge the theoretical possibility, even in the absence of actual evidence of practical harm. I’ll give you that one…
You then go on to propose that responding to that issue becomes a choice between “filtering” and “ignoring the problem.”
This is in an environment where virtually everyone who has engaged with you has pointed out that that’s a false dichotomy, that censoring the Internet is actually indistinguishable from ignoring the problem, and that if you want to really do something sensible and workable against the proposed problem then the way to do it is to empower law enforcement.
(instead of doing what the Rudd Government has done, which is to cut their budget by nearly $3 million)
Now, if you could get past the censorship thing and start talking about real solutions, it might be possible to have a sane conversation with you about practical alternatives to “doing nothing.”
But you can’t, so there isn’t.
Regards,
– mark
Mark,
I have been attempting to get a discussion going on solutions. The first step in such a discussion is to acknowledge there is a problem.
It appears you, and many others on this forum, do not think there is a problem. I think there is.
I have been talking about malware websites as an example of “bad” websites as something on which we can all agree. If we can agree that it would be best for some websites to be hidden and made inaccessible then the questions become.
What determines if a website should be hidden and how best to hide them.
The problem of defining bad is the one that seems to generate the most passion. Here is a possible definition of “bad”.
A bad website is one that seeks to harm the viewer or whose production has resulted in the victimisation of another.
There will be differing definitions of harm and interpretations of victimisation but most of us can agree for most websites.
Google has reported that 10% or more websites contain malware of some form or other. If we can find a way of solving the problem for one form of bad then we can apply the same solution to other forms of bad.
Search Engines protect us from bad by warning us that a website may contain malware and we can visit at our own peril. They get the list by examining websites and by searchers reporting suspect websites.
A solution to the general problem of isolating and hiding all “bad” so that we are not even asked the question may be found in this approach of engaging the community in the definition of bad and in the community reporting suspect websites. Next step is to find ways of automatically hiding websites so that once they are found they will not bother us again.
I believe the government is attempting to come up with a solution to a real issue and is not trying to censor the Internet. I doubt the solution being legislated will work and it will have unwanted side effects.
We can find ways of working with the government to try to solve the problem or we can beat them around the head with their proposed solution. The first approach is likely to be more productive.
A suggestion (I have previously made) that would enable the government to fulfil its election promise and is likely to lead to a solution is to change the legislation so that it states the objectives of the legislation without specifying how the objectives are to be achieved. The legislation could also specify that a process be put in place and funded to work with the community to evolve a solution.
Kevin, I’ve already granted you the point that there could be “a problem”. If you want to talk about malware as an example then that’s fine, pausing to highlight that the ALP doesn’t seem to care about them…
But, again, where we differ is in the proposed solution. In a world where virtually every hosting company hates malware, I can’t see how society benefits from chucking a blanket over it instead of, say, having the malware taken down (something ACMA has singularly failed to do with child abuse material — Remember, it was online for MONTHS on the Dentists’ website. Couldn’t they have picked up the damn phone and called the hosting company? No, too busy tut-tutting over Kyle Sandilands and Alan Jones…)
You keep bringing up this “bad website” idea, and suggesting that the only way to move the “debate” forward is to acknowledge that Government blocking of those bad websites is a legitimate action… even though Government blocking of websites never solves any problem at all, but other less-controversial and lower-impact actions can be 100% effective.
This is why several people have given up on you in this thread: While saying that you want to talk about solutions, you keep fabricating problems then proposing the same dumb idea as a response. “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” only your hammer happens to be one of those foam-plastic squeaky ones found in toddlers’ toolkits.
The other thing that you’re not getting past is this “victimization” meme. You appear to want everyone to believe that 2010 Internet users are powerless, directionless, hapless, helpless victims, recoiling under the assaults of sophisticated attackers.
Can’t see any evidence that that’s true.
Who are these people? They don’t appear to be appearing in ACMA’s research. I don’t know any of them. You claim you aren’t one of them. Pretty sure there aren’t large numbers of them complaining to politicians. Are we down to a “friend of a friend of a friend’s second cousin, who saw the internet once and didn’t like it?” Or do you have someone more concrete in mind?
You can’t talk about a victim underclass until you’re able to prove that it actually exists. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not interested in being censored to protect a mythical bunch of quivering, terrified victims who aren’t real.
– mark
Well there doesn’t seem to be anything much that is new appearing now.
So maybe I can ask a question that has been bothering me for a while, not just in relation to this subject.
Put simply the question is; What is there about the human race that we can’t stop tinkering with good things until we break them?
Here we have what is probably one of the most magnificent developments to have emerged in recent times, perhaps ever. We have a repository of knowledge and beauty unmatched in history and now people are emerging who want to impose their version of what is acceptable. The web is a creation of millions of contributors, some good some bad, some benign some malicious, but this is an image of how the world is.
In reality you can’t protect people from themselves, people swim outside the flags and drown, people stay too long in the sun and develop melanoma, drivers speed, people smoke, people drink too much and take drugs I could go on forever but I won’t.
Think about it, you can’t even protect your own children, all you can do is instil in them the necessary caution and understanding of the world around them. You can’t be around them all the time and do you really want to stifle their development anyway?
This post may seem to be outside the topic but is it really? A lot of discussion about the viability of the proposal has gone on and has established to my satisfaction that the whole idea is ridiculous.
The real question for me is why is it even being suggested? Protection against “bad people”? No way bad people are too ingenious.
Is there some sinister underlying reason? I doubt it.
So why is it being pushed so stubbornly? Has it now become a matter of “Face” and Senator Conroy now finds it impossible to back down?
Getting away from all of the emotive statements about Iran and China you can’t get away from the fact that it is CENSORSHIP and a start in the wrong direction. As such it should be opposed just for this reason if no other.
In response to those who feel that the Government can protect them from “bad people” please be aware that they CAN’T. If you are that vulnerable you are too wide open and one way or another the “bad people” will get you. If you are cautious and adopt the proper procedures when surfing the net then you should be reasonably safe and if not the Government will not be able to save you.
If you are saying that the Government should protect you from criminal activity then I couldn’t agree more, they should try, that is why we have police forces. Give the police more resources, get behind them and help them in their efforts but realise that you can’t be cocooned against all harm, the idea itself is preposterous.
Finally I have no doubt that clever people could develop systems which would appear to protect us just as I am equally sure that people just as clever, if not more so, would develop ways around the protection. So there you would be, vulnerable again and thinking you were safe.
I’m sorry I haven’t produced a number of highly technical reasons why this proposal won’t work, this has been done by people far more competent than I am in this area, all I can say is that the proposal is a bad idea and should be quietly forgotten.
Just for the interest of those reading here, a few days ago, I received from an automatic “no-reply” mailserver at the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy a document called “ISP filtering.PDF”. It was simply the press release Senator Conroy put out in December. Someone else has put up a copy here:
http://www.family.org.au/qld/Recent%20Update%20from%20Government%20on%20Cyber-Safety%20Plan%20including%20the%20filter.pdf
This was presumably in response to the email I sent to my local member, Peter Garrett, about the proposed Conroy censorship legislation. I have to say, despite the warnings I received from others who had emailed politicians in the past, that I was pretty disappointed. Not only did I get a form letter, but I get the form letter stating exactly the things I was complaining about in my letter! I had taken the time to write the letter myself, and I didn’t cut-and-paste anything from other sources. I went to quite a bit of trouble over it, and I think it’s a great pity that this just resulted in a “brush-off” email from someone who didn’t even seem to address the fact that I had clearly already read what they were sending me, and that its content was what I was complaining about!
I’ve included the text of the letter I sent below.
“Mr Garrett:
As a Kingsford-Smith voter, I voted for you at the last election, and indeed I have voted for Labor federally for the entire 25 years I have been eligible to vote. I have voted Labor because at each election I have simply felt that Labor would do a better job of managing the country than the Liberals. However at the next election I will not be choosing which party would be better at managing the country, because as long as one party is making a fundamental attack on our democracy, it is my duty to vote against them. I refer to Senator Conroy’s lunatic internet censorship plan. This legislation:
* Will not filter out child pornography because child pornography is not obtained from websites: it’s obtained from FTP and peer-to-peer networking;
* has already – even in closely watched trials – managed to include in the list of banned sites ones that should not have been there, including tons of material that is perfectly legal in Australia;
* has already had the blacklist leaked;
* Will slow down internet access in this country in a constantly increasing way;
* Has seen Senator Conroy blatantly lie to the public about it being 100% effective when the very trials he quotes show both failure to filter what was intended to be filtered, and filtering of material that should not have been filtered;
* can be easily circumvented in many different ways by anyone with an average schoolkid’s knowledge of the internet.
On these technical grounds alone, Senator Conroy’s decision to go ahead with the policy despite the abject failure of the trials and the 100% recommendations against that decision by anyone with any technical nous has left IT professionals like myself open-mouthed. However all these issues pale into insignificance when compared with the Government’s potential to use this unseen and unmonitored blacklist for its own purposes. Democracies do not work this way. Democracies do not allow a government to dictate to the people what they can and can’t see, and what they can and can’t do. Some people might argue “laws prevent people doing what they want”, but laws in a democracy are codified and published and open to public comment and scrutiny, not arrived at and implemented by fief in quiet back rooms by a government which apparently considers the opinions of the public irrelevant. This is a policy that faceless government apparatchiks in grim Soviet-era police states would be proud of, and one which our country would rightly criticise them for implementing. We used to have a reputation as a country leading the fight for freedoms like this; now we will join the likes of North Korea, China and Iran – how embarrassing.
Where is the Peter Garrett who wrote songs about Government interference with the lives of citizens a decade or two ago? How can you stand to be a member of a government making the worst attack on this nation’s democracy in my lifetime? With your background as a spokesman for issues of liberty and commonsense, how can you support a policy which says “government knows best, despite all the citizens and all the competent advisors disagreeing with us”? Do you really want your music career legacy as a fighter for the rights of the individual to be completely undermined by being associated with a vote to implement this Big Brother legislation, which will go down in history as truly “a setback for your country”?
I urge you; stand up to Mr Rudd and Senator Conroy. Tell them that this policy violates everything you have ever stood for as a person, and as an advocate for individual freedom. Tell them to get some polling done, and not just in churches. This is a policy that has enraged a huge majority of this nation’s ordinary citizens. The comments page on the SMH story of the policy’s “green light” had 469 comments, despite the server being down for some time … and less than 10 were in favour, and all of those handful showed a “think of the kiddies” technical ignorance of how filtering, the internet or peer-to-peer works. The Herald’s poll on Conroy’s internet filtering had received 23934 votes as I write – a record – and of those votes 2% are in favour, 96% opposed. 2% to 96%! Even the set-up punch-a-pollie votes like “should Della Bosca resign after the Iguana Joe’s incident?” only get 91% agreement. While an internet poll is obviously biased toward those wanting to use the internet, that’s balanced by the fact that these voters are the young, the technically literate, and those who represent the future: movers and shakers. A government bunkered in, and refusing to listen to either the people it purports to represent or the experts who understand the issues and the effectiveness of the legislation is a government that has badly lost its way.
Make it clear to Mr Rudd and Senator Conroy that this policy will cost votes, but above all, it may cost this nation much more: our international reputation as a land of freedom, of commonsense, of government that represents the will of the people instead of one of those shady autocracies dictating what the people can see or have access to. Make no mistake; this legislation will be our Patriot Act: an albatross hanging around our neck, signifying to ourselves, other nations, and the historians who assess our legacy the point at which we took our first fatal step away from our democratic traditions. Do you want your name associated with it?
I feel far more strongly about this issue than about any other I have ever looked at as a voter. While I personally respect you as a parliamentarian, I hope you understand that I cannot give you my vote as long as you support this appalling police state legislation.
I would appreciate a reply. I would be more than happy to discuss this issue with you at any time or in any forum, public or private. I will send this message to you in email and in writing to make sure it gets through, and I will send similar messages to Mr Rudd and Senator Conroy.”
@Michael, it was Kevin who made that point. I was merely querying his assertion that it was not a practical option.
Perry, I realised they weren’t your words and was trying to reinforce your point. Sorry if it wasn’t clear.
Sorry, too, as I should have located your post first and seen it was a reply to mine, but the posts are out of sequence.
Kevin, no-one disputes there are bad websites, but pulling the bedsheet over your head won’t make them go away. Use a filter to protect yourself, and if you do come across any, let the AFP know.
Oh, and stop worrying about the rest of us – we can look after ourselves.
Kevin,
you keep saying: “I am clearly not making my point.”
What IS your point – you talk round in circles,
first your saying its to save us from snuff films (which are already stopped by the AFP) – This was proved completely wrong and has no statistical backing as i know noone and have never heard of anyone “bumping into” one in their travels, even people i know who watch a little too much porn.
then you say it is child pornography (which you can’t prove how many people ‘accidentally’ bump into on the net because the reality is it is shared on P2P and other methods and this filter won’t help it, as blocking it won’t stop it happening)
then you say it is to protect the people who can’t fend for themselves – ACMA has proven this demographic simply DOESN’T EXIST!
now you say it is to protect us from malware (which the filter won’t do)
You never defend your arguments when proven to be fanciful, and simply change the subject of your attack. You have nothing new to add, and are simply creating “white noise” that is misdirecting attention away from the real conversation.
My mother once told me:
“Never argue with a fool as they will lower you to their level and beat you with experience”
Your argumentative points seem to fit this bill perfectly as you are doing nothing more than drawing people into pointless merry-go-round arguments over problems that don’t exist and won’t be fixed by the filter.
Please discontinue, for the good of the country.
Hi Pia,
Do you have responses to any of our questions yet? There are quite a few here, some technical, some not.
Cheers,
Justin.
I have a big list of questions compiled from the many asked. We’ve put together most of the answers where we could, and we are just preparing the blog post. It’s a pretty big writeup, so just another day or so. Sorry for the delay.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Malaysia’s “no censorship” Internet Policy
It is good to see this important discussion has not died over the silly season. The last time I was embarrassed over the issue of Internet censorship was in 1997. Let me explain.
In 1996/97 my company was contracted by the Government of Malaysia to advise on what the new convergent forces of the digital revolution might mean for traditional telecommunications and broadcasting policy, and to draft what effectively became the world’s first convergence policy and legislation. This was against the backdrop of Malaysia’s huge push through its Multimedia Supercorridor initiative to fast track the development of Malaysia as a knowledge-based economy. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Act came into force in 1998. This also established a single communications regulatory agency, something which did not eventuate in Australia until 2005 with the establishment of ACMA.
The then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir instigated only one major change to our legislative drafting. This was to include a new clause, right upfront in the recital of the objects of the Act, which reads, baldly: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting the censorship of the Internet” (Laws of Malaysia, Act 588, Section 3(3)). This extended to the whole country one the special provisions of the “Bill Of Guarantees” initially provided only for the special development zone of the Multimedia Supercorridor. This clause has never been rescinded, despite the active and effective use of online media by opposition political parties and groups. This contrasts dramatically with the regulatory posture then and since in Singapore and, of course, more recently in China. Tun Dr Mahathir is, of course, routinely belittled by Western critics, but in this instance the contrast between his commitment to a free Internet and the current debate over Internet censorship (“filtering”) in Australia could not be more marked. I have only been embarrassed to be an Australian when visiting Malaysia on two occasions. The first occasion was in the aftermath of our eager involvement in Iraq. Then I felt a palpable antagonism, actually not from government officials, but from senior industry and business leaders. Now I sit on a university board there currently chaired by the former secretary of the communications Ministry with whom I worked on the 1998 legislation. So far he has been gracious enough not to comment on this recent policy divergence between Australia and Malaysia.
Terry Cutler
Principal, Cutler & Company
I hope Mr Conroy has been reading his daily newspaper. If South Australia is anything to go by the fallout from his plans will cost the labour party their leadership of this country.
You have been warned labor.
Funny thing is, in all the coverage I heard or read about the fall in poll ratings yesterday not once did they mention that internet filtering was a contribution.
Yet there have been many, many people (I’m another one) who have stated they will not vote for labour while this policy still forges ahead.
It’s like everyone is just ignoring the existence of the filtering policy. Not a single word from Kevin Rudd and meagre press coverage.
What’s going on?
I think we have to accept that this policy issue is NOT highly visible on most Australian voters’ radar, either for or against. While it’s clear that a huge majority of those aware of the policy oppose it, and perhaps more than any other policy issue, many feel strongly enough about it to actually change their vote, that “many” does not necessarily translate into a percentage point on the popularity polls, and is thus not visible to the media.
It’s that “vote-changing” aspect of the policy that we need to hammer home to Labor: those who OPPOSE the policy will change their vote because of it; those who SUPPORT the policy will NOT. Buying votes is a chancy political strategy, because once you’ve “bought” the ACL’s votes with a policy like this, you don’t get to accompany them to the ballot box to check that they “pay up”. Once they have achieved their policy aim of getting Labor to put up this legislation, why would they bother moving their votes from their conservative mindset to Labor, especially with Tony Abbott leading the Libs, as conservative and religious a party leader as Australia has seen in decades? The ACL and people like them will not deliver votes to Labor specifically on this issue alone; they will decide based on a swathe of issues, and as they are core Liberal party (i.e. conservative) voters, I suspect Labor will not hold many of those votes in the privacy of the ballot box. On the other hand, we who are horrified by this legislation WILL desert Labor in droves regardless of our feelings on any other political issues, and I suspect a majority of us would otherwise be Labor voters. This is a core issue to many of us, an issue of principle.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: I actually believe Kevin Rudd will be a better Prime Minister than Tony Abbott, and I also believe Labor will be overall a more effective government than Liberal. But as long as Labor insists on National Mandatory Internet Censorship, I cannot in conscience vote for them. However much I look with foreboding on the possibility of Mr. Abbott as PM, if four years under a Tony Abbott government is the price that has to be paid to kill this awful policy (the worst policy I have seen in 25 years of voting) then I will pay it.
Conroy keeps adding to his blatant twisting of the truth as well on every interview, “I’m not deciding what is RC, the government is not deciding what is RC, ACMA is!”
Hang on Mr Conroy, ACMA IS government controlled, even worse is that changes to censorship laws in this country require unanimous and fundamentally undemocratic agreement of all Attorney Generals, this is the reason why we don’t have an R18+ rating for video games in this country still either, because ONE man can oppose it.
So basically this means that changes to classification rules are held at ransom by one man in this country, but hey Conroy don’t let the facts get of shifting away the blame for what ends up being censored.
Labor you are the worst bunch of liars ever to come into politics!
Yes imo hiding the total truth about these fact is STILL lying!
Google weighs in with common sense and facts:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/02/google-voices-its-concern-over-the-governments-mandatory-internet-filter
Shouldn’t parents be responsible for their children using the internet.
We would have issues with parents letting their children playing in public park without supervision or smoking/drinking in front of them. Why does the state need to dictate what sites can and can’t be seen AND more importantly what guarantees are in place that a future is going to be so benevolent as our current glorious leader!
Aside from the fact that this filter and it’s ilk are justifiably compared to Iran and Chinas policies (which humans rights issues are widely commented and reported on).
I am happy to have my media classified – all of it – people over 18 vote and play computer games Kate, and you might be surprised to learn that this includes a growing portion of the population and the voting public.
I wonder Kate, if your political party site/blogs/and supporters where all “refused classification” by a government in the future as being decisive etc…
What would your stance be?
Your laws today have the power to inflict untold damage to those of us left to live in the mess you leave behind
As as ALP Member, I thank you Senator Lundy for your thoughtful post. You know the issues. Good luck in Cacus!
As the Rudd administration is clearly intent on eliminating freedom of information, the only recourse for those concerned about Australia’s future as a democracy is to adopt a principled policy of civil disobedience. This will entail widespread dissemination of VPN and other means of subverting censorship regimes. We might study programs designed to break similar internet restrictions in countries such as China and Iran. We may be branded as paedophiles by the virtuous Rudd and Conroy but I am sure that only we non-paedophiles would thus attract attention to ourselves.
The sole possibility of the bill being amended would be if the unpredictable Tony Abbott sees political advantage in opposing a law, considerably more extreme than previous Liberal Party policy, because of the blunders and embarrassments which will inevitably result from its implementation. I have emailed him reminders of such problems, eg those emerging from similar legal action in Germany.
My comments are not meant to underestimate the energy and integrity that is displayed by Ms Lundy, a shining light in the wreckage of the Rudd administration.
Denis Sullivan
We have been told time after time that this filtering will not be used for political purposes with its only purpose being to ‘protect our children’. All the technical issues aside, I think we have seen the true intentions of the policy today.
Stephen Conroy is ‘filtering’ his own website such that any mention of ISP filtering is censored. I know, I know, this is his website and he can do what he wants and so on but seriously, when the minister is censoring any political discussion on the topic of filtering alarm bells go off in my mind.
Conroy and the Labor Party just demonstrated their willingness to prevent discussion on a political issue. Still think they won’t use the filter to stifle political discussion more broadly in the future?
http://www.news.com.au/technology/conroys-website-removes-references-to-filter/story-e6frfro0-1225834474153
What I find the most worrying about this proposal is the shroud of secrecy involved from the secret blacklist to the fact that almost no media outlet seems to ask any meaningful related questions or give the issue more than a 2 second sound bite. If they do, they just accept the garbage that Conroy spits out and move on.
I see this as the most serious threat to freedom of information to date and I am horrified that it is labor policy. It even makes Howard look good in retrospect.
In my personal educational campaign against this horrid filter, I speak to as many people each day as I can and about 90% of these people, who are a random cross section that I meet in shops, restaurants, cafes or wherever, know absolutely NOTHING about this censorship plan. Many don’t believe it is happening they are so shocked.
I challenge the Labor party to tell the truth and put it up as a referendum. Yes it would fail to get up. But Labor would still keep pushing the fear based child protection farce wouldn’t you? This does fool a lot of people, but not all of us.
To me, the filter has nothing to do with child protection as most thinking Australians can see it will be less than useless in this regard. It reeks of a veiled attempt for political control of information.
Redirecting the money Labor is wasting on this to the federal police is a far more effective method and a vote winner, even mine (which sadly, you have lost if this goes ahead)
So many of us are completely over the two major parties and are begging for some meaningful alternative that has the guts to enshrine in law, a basic bill of rights with something like the USA’s first amendment which would effectively block any future government from attempting such draconian policy as this blatant attack on free speech.
Some free advice to Labor, stop listening to Jim Wallace and start listening to the majority.
Oh, and Senator Conroy, arrogance is not attractive nor conducive to votes.
Thank you so much Kate for standing, at least somewhat against this filter.
I was also impressed with the reply to my letter, especially in contrast to the impersonal policy riddled and patronizing response I received from Senator Conroy’s office.
Expectations
In their busy days, have your colleagues given any thought to how this filtering business is going to cost them political capital when we badly need it for the NBN?
Naive parents and, there are millions of them (Australia Talks on RN), think it will completely block permitted content which offends their special standards. After all, Senator Conroy keeps beating this aspect up and parents are not listening to the fine detail about “RC”. Those against censorship generally, many of whom remember the Lady Chatterley’s Lover censorship battles, will be looking to magnify every slip.
After GroceryWatch, FuelWatch, home insulation and rumblings about expensive school halls, this will be just another issue to beat the government about. You say: “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 wish I shared your confidence. Having just won “Best for the Economy” will you now get labelled “Worst for the Communications”? And “I will always be committed to realising our ICT-related social and economic potential.”, but you aren’t Prime Minister! It is issues such as this that can distract a party from important work like hospitals and retirement issues AND NBN.
Why take this huge political risk for such dubious political rewards?
According to the ABS Household Use of Information Technology Australia 2008-9 report p 3
“In 2009, an estimated 3% of children who accessed the internet were reported to have had some kind of personal safety or security problem on the internet (or approximately 72,000 children).”
Does that sound like justification for a universal filter?
“In 2009, an estimated 3% of children who accessed the internet were reported to have had some kind of personal safety or security problem on the internet (or approximately 72,000 children).”
I’d love to see the numbers on what percentage of that three percent’s personal safety or security problem was RC material magically popping up on their computer screens. I suspect the number would be a big fat 0.
Thanks Richard for posting info about the ABS report, I hadn’t heard of that before.
PDF containing info about the ‘personal safety or security problem on the internet’ experienced by estimated 3% (72,000) of children is here:
8146.0 – Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2008-09, released 16/12/2009 (2.3 Mb)
It says:
“In terms of type of personal safety or security problems experienced, an estimated 33,000 children accessed inappropriate material, 15,000 experienced bullying or threatening behaviour, and 15,000 had strangers asking for or gaining access to their personal information.”
“Inappropriate material” is not defined, and given the age group is children of 5-14 years, it would no doubt cover vastly more than “Refused Classification”.
The report also indicates why the % is so low:
“Supervising or monitoring children’s use of the internet is the most common action taken for personal safety or security of children using the internet at home (89%), followed by educating children about safe and appropriate use of the internet (83%). Other measures include placing the computer in a public area of the house (77%) and
installing an internet content filter (47%).”
Those statistics are pretty much the same as the ACMA has been finding and reporting, as a result of research it’s conducted, several time during the last 6 or more years.
Australian parents are far more competent in looking after their kids online than the Rudd Labor Government likes to think, and a mandatory ‘RC’ only ‘blocking’ system won’t be of the slightest help in reducing the 3%.
“Inappropriate material” is not defined, and given the age group is children of 5-14 years, it would no doubt cover vastly more than “Refused Classification”.
Yes, it also doesn’t state what percentage is intentional access.
Irene,
Your further analysis of the ABS material is indeed helpful. Surely grooming is more likely to take place in chat rooms which won’t be filtered. And if they won’t (and can’t) be filtered, how long till the Opposition says, yet again, “The Rudd Government is all talk and no action”?
Australians already have a high, and often unrealistic expectation, of Governments’ ability to save us from harm…often that which we inflict on ourselves. Why on earth does a government, which already has a heavy reform agenda, gratuitously raise expectations when its powers, voluntarily assumed as “saving children”, are limited?
So much debate about the fact that this filter will not protect children from a very small threat of accidental exposure.
We all now know, this filter will be as, or less effective than prohibition of illegal drugs.
History has told us, that to suppress something, forces it underground and usually increases the incidence of it as well. Politicians know this, but get lots of votes from those simple folk who tend to believe anything based on its face value. These unquestioning people believe their kids are safe from drugs because there are drug laws and will soon be safe from online pedophiles because there is a filter and sadly, they will be wrong on both counts.
I believe this filter has nothing to do with protecting children and is aimed squarely at controlling the freedom of adults as is evident by Conroy’s favourite argument, “refused classification”.
This category is dynamic, in that it is constantly being refined as political correctness and moral panic bites deeper into what is so called “accepted norms”. Previously accepted acts in films are now considered fetish and refused classification.
In the near future, who knows what will be considered by the moral minority to be too dangerous for us to see.
Back in the seventies, many teenage girls walked bare breasted on our most popular beaches, I know this, as I was a teenager myself then and none of my girlfriends ever seemed to wear a top. It was no big deal at the time. My own kids were naked on the beach up to about age six and that was the nineties. Today, I would hate to think where this “outrageous” behaviour could get you.
Once this hideous filter is in place, the fun for Conroy will really begin, as the scope will continually expand to include currently legal content and of course blatantly political content. We won’t know what this is though, as the list is secret and protected by very heavily enforced penalties.
I am not a conspiracy theorist but a realist and it is not hard to extrapolate based on the current trend of thinking that demands governments protect us from everything considered dangerous, just as we expect teachers to raise our children for us.
We need to get off our collective bums and take 100% responsibility for our thoughts and actions before it’s too late. I fear it is though.
I too believe that the filter is about political point scoring. I was particularly disappointed to hear Abbott’s tacit support for the idea in the media recently – there are virtually no parties or candidates left that are acceptable voting options.
I also believe as you do that there will be massive scope creep with the blacklist. Why would people who have no respect for others self determination ever stop? If the basic premise is that they don’t trust you to make the right (ie. same as their) decisions then the logical point for them to stop is when you have *no* decisions at all – anything short of that would be a failure to them. As you quite rightly point out, prohibition invariably fails.
As for the blacklist remaining secret, that’s a farcical idea. It won’t remain secret at all. We have just had a major world power, with resources and manpower that dwarf our own, being caught out in a cover-up of a giant massacre of civilians – all due to leaked video. If a country as big as the US, with that much at stake, cannot suppress that information, when what hope do Rudd and Conroy have? We’ll just get the same old denials we got the first two times the list got leaked, it is embarrassing and juvenile – they can’t even admit something everyone knows.
The blacklist will need to be distributed to a number of employees in every one of the hundreds of ISPs in the country. That’s perhaps a thousand people with access to the list. These ISP employees are highly likely to be opponents of the legislation, as not only are they in the group of IT-aware citizens who have opposed this terrible legislation from the start, but they are also the ones who will have to do extra work to implement the filter and deal with complaints from their customers when things start to go wrong. So … the Australian Government has something they need to keep a secret, but they have rely on having a thousand people who oppose them politically – and who are well aware of the embarrassment potential of leaking the list – keep the secret for them. Good luck with that.
The list will leak. It will leak regularly, internationally, completely, and like a colander. Forget about Wikileaks: this thing will be all over the net. The Australian Government will effectively be responsible for publishing internationally a list of all the websites any budding pedophile might require, and updating it regularly for the convenience of the pedophiles.
It staggers me that anyone in Government is still supporting this internationally embarrassing and fundamentally naive policy.
The other issue beyond the security of the source blacklist is reverse engineering. It is trivial (if time consuming) to brute force the list – for companies like the large search engines, they are going to have a hard time not getting a copy of the list via the default action of their businesses even if they don’t want to know.
There’s also no specific implementation for ISPs, which is a pretty big deal from a security point of view – I wouldn’t have much confidence in the lists staying secret for long given that fact alone.
The New York Times http://is.gd/blwJ2 reports on how China, whence Stephen Conroy seems to get inspiration, and with more experience, handles internet censorship.
“Pitted against this are those who argue that government chokeholds on the Internet cannot succeed. Bloggers like Mr. Zhang argue that growing restrictions on Internet speech only inflame ordinary users, and that bit by bit “people are pushing the wall back.”
I have no problem with child porn being filtered out, although, as you say, there will be false positives which will amount to censorship of the net.
I read an article today which said that 68% of all items on a received copy of the blacklist were not child pornography, but were political sites such as WikiLeaks.
My fear is that the ideological driver for the blacklist is not to remove child pornography but to censor political thought to which the government objects. Like many others, I believe that Sen. Conroy has a hidden agenda and we’re giving him the ability to implement it.
Everyone interested in this debate should check out http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/no-minister-90-of-web-snoop-document-censored-to-stop–premature-unnecessary-debate-20100722-10mxo.html?autostart=1
I think that the best filtering is done on the user computer, either in the home, in the institution, or in the business, under the authority of the computer owner, who may elect to continue or discontinue filtering. The government can assist by providing a file or subscription to the list of current blocked sites. The contents of the list should be made available to any affected adult.
Filtering on an ISP basis is ineffective, and interferes with commerce. The Obama Administration is on record as advising the then Rudd Australian Government of not implementing Internet filtering at a national or ISP level.
I have viewed Senator Conroy’s ACMA list on Wikileaks, and it contains sites which do not contain child pornography, but political information objected to by The Australian Labor Party, and the Roman Catholic Church, and that is why I believe that there should be requirement to provide the list to any affected adult requesting a copy. The list should not be secret, and possession of the list should not be criminalized.
Robert: For reasons I have detailed elsewhere, the idea of having a public list of blocked sites is unworkable. Senator Conroy has stated this, and he is quite correct, rare though that is. If you publish a list of banned sites, you will INCREASE traffic to them overall. It is so easy to get around the filter that anyone in Australia will be able to go to them, and so will citizens of most other countries. In addition the Australian Government will be put in a position of publishing internationally what will effectively amount to a Pedophile Internet Usage For Dummies … and updating it every month. This is not going to make us popular with other governments and citizens. This risk still exists with a secret blacklist, because the list will always leak, but actively publishing the list makes it worse. A published list is untenable. The single best method to limit accesses to criminal websites is “security by obscurity”: most people don’t know where pedo websites are, so don’t publish that info! ACMA currently passes information on accessing banned websites to the police … which is effective, because it doesn’t publish the banned site/s at all.
Small correction, Martin:
If you accept that the list is going to leak, then actively publishing it makes no difference to the result.
(indeed, it could be argued that it produces a better result, because it won’t undermine the credibility of the whole thing by making the government look foolish every time it happens)
The single best method to limit access to criminal websites is to shut them down and arrest the criminals. Our vacuous political class seems to think there’s some kind of difficulty with that; By and large it isn’t a view that’s shared by our law enforcement agencies.
Mark: Hmmm, not sure I agree with that. A government that accidentally leaks objectional material – even if it leaks it like a sieve – probably has better “deniability” than a government that actively publishes objectional material. And as to shutting down criminal websites, many people have stated that many of these websites are in countries where law enforcement is simply not up to the job. I don’t have any direct knowledge of that, so I am loathe to state that it is true, but it certainly seems reasonably likely. And if not, if “shut down and arrest” began to be highly effective in countries where it WAS possible, criminal websites WOULD move to the countries where such policing WASN’T possible.
Perhaps I should state what I actually WANT in this filtering idea. I want:
- Access to criminal websites tracked and reported to the police.
- No publishing of criminal websites
- No slowdown of access to NON-criminal websites.
- No tracking of access to NON-criminal websites.
- Users given the opportunity to filter their own content.
- Minimised cost of implementation.
The above points can all be delivered; and in fact, the cost mentioned in the last point is zero. Because the above is what we currently already have (users can get filtering by using a filtering ISP like WebShield), and it can be implemented by the Labor party simply dropping Stephen Conroy’s massively unpopular internet censorship scheme entirely.
Martin:
Whether the govenrment has “deniability” goes back to whether or not it’s credible. Whether kiddyporn URL is leaked or published by the government makes no difference at all to the abused child. By arguing that leaking is different to publication you appear to be making a statement about the superiority of spin over substance (which, I’m certain, is what underlies the Government’s entire proposal right about now).
As for “countries where law enforcement is not up to the job”: Poppycock. The Danish and Norwegian lists have been exhaustively examined, and almost all of the URLs on them were hosted in Western Europe and the USA. The problem here is that the INHOPE system used for reporting URLs to blacklisting agencies is so mired in its own bureaucracy that it effectively isolates the blacklist maintenance process from law enforcement.
i.e., reporting a URL to ACMA makes it less likely that it’ll be actioned than, say, picking up the phone and calling the police in the country hosting the URL, or the webhost itself. Why doesn’t ACMA make that phone call? Because it’s following INHOPE processes instead, and INHOPE processes instruct it to do otherwise.
I’m quite confident that you could go to literally any ISP or web hosting company on the planet and say, “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but you have child abuse content at this URL…” and they’d nuke it in a New York minute. Saying that law enforcement isn’t up to the job is a bureaucratic copout which is only entertained by unimaginative dolts who can’t think outside the box enough to work differently to the status quo, and anyone interested in this debate should be made angry every time they hear it.
I also find it hilarious that you still believe that all your requests are possible _right_now_
it has been shown what a joke the “study” done by Conroys office was. He states it is 100% effective, but then doesn’t define what effective is. The technical limitations/hurdles of a filter still exist. Additionally his statement on it only slowing down things by “2 tenth of the blinks of an eye” are idiotic at best (is that his technical terminology?)
Mark:
As I said above, I am not aware of where these sites are hosted (I accept you obviously have better info), so to some extent I assumed that any sites that COULD have been easily removed WOULD have been easily removed. If you are right and that is not the case, WHY is it not the case, presuming most law enforcement officers are pretty keen to crack down on pedophilia?
I still believe that publishing the list is worse than leaking it, because I think more people will see a published list than a leaked one (I note from some of your published letters that you may not agree), so ultimately I feel it will lead to more accesses to the criminal sites, and ultimately more demand and therefore supply of pedophilia. In addition, published lists encourage other national governments to assume that publishing lists is a good idea, which exacerbates the problem.
However, lest it get lost in the wash, let me make it clear I think ANY internet censorship list is a foolish and unworkable idea … I posted to this discussion to point out that publishing is not the solution some people think it is, even were the government to countenance it.
Doug: Sorry, I don’t understand your post, was it addressed to me when you said “I also find it hilarious that you still believe that all your requests are possible _right_now_”? Perhaps my little bit of sarcasm was too obscure … my list of desired dot points IS delivered “right now” i.e. before Conroy or anyone else starts filtering. My position is that all filtering is bad.
I believe you are being very naive in your view of publishing the list.
If the list is secret it will leak onto wikileaks on somewhere similar and will be accessible by those that want it anyway.
Hiding from something is never an answer and is part of the problem with the filter as a policy as a whole.
If the list is published then countries around the world are being made VERY aware of the sites that cause problems – this will draw extra attention to them by governments and police forces around the world. (i’m not saying this should happen, but it would get better results than hiding it)
Hiding it from the general public is like hiding it from someone who doesn’t exist because the general public doesn’t go looking.
- people(general population) don’t go looking for child porn
- child porn is not easy to find on the net
Hiding it doesn’t stop it. Hiding the addresses doesn’t stop it. Public awareness and international police intervention stops it.
If you don’t want the list published – don’t make a list (ie don’t filter it and spread the list to ISP’s all around the country) as there is nothing else that will stop this.
Ultimately, the filter list will keep being leaked to the public so long as there is at least one person with access to the list (or physical access to the filtering hardware) that thinks that there is something wrong with the contents of the list.
Martin I agree with you, that making the list available to the public will defeat its purpose, and that is the intended result.
I have seen two versions of the list, and less than half of the entrees were sites, which contained material which would be illegal in the USA to possess, store, or distribute (but not illegal to view).
This other material was adult and/or political material that most of the established religions and some political parties would want to ban. (The Roman Catholic Church of course created their own child pornography, except for one branch – the Russian Catholic Church, which is under the Pope in Rome, but in which all members of the Clergy (up to Cardinals) are married.)
I would have thought that censorship of unclassified material would be unconstitutional in Australia. And that is the point:
Who is the list maker? And,
Who checks the list to ensure that the list is not being used for political purposes?
A secret list by a few in government is unworkable in a democracy. The process used for military and state secrets is tenable because it is generally viewed by a large number of people, and has an unclassified recipe for determining classification levels and markings, but even here classification is abused to cover up errors which result in the deaths of people killed in covert missions.
There will be friends abroad who will provide Australians with the content of the list anyway. And, the USA has removed the ban on alcohol, marijuana is now legal in some states, but not yet federally, and some argue that there would be less deaths in Mexico if cocaine were legal, but regulated, in the USA. As for military classification, the Chinese are now known to be in possession of design details for every thermonuclear weapon in the US arsenal.
To expand awareness of the threat, I copied the following from another url.
Aside from destroying personal documents and helping hackers steal identities, computer viruses can also land innocent people in jail.
Recent findings now prove that pedophiles can exploit virus-ridden computers to view child pornography without the fear of getting caught. In fact, pranksters can use the virus to download hundreds of illegal child porn images and videos onto an infected computer.
Most people who are victims of this virus do not realize they have child porn downloaded on their PC until police officials knock on their door. In fact, journalists from the Associated Press investigated this matter and found cases in which innocent people were labeled as pedophiles after their co-workers or family members found the illegal content on their PCs.
It is extremely difficult and costly for a victim to prove his or her innocence. One case involved a Massachusetts man by the name of Michael Fiola.
His boss became suspicious when he came across Fiola’s internet bill for a state-issued laptop. The bill revealed that Fiola had used 4 1/2 times more data than his colleagues. When a technician took a look at the laptop, he found child porn in the PC folder that stores images viewed online. Officials were immediately contacted and Fiola was arrested.
Fiola and his wife liquidated their savings, took a second mortgage, and sold their car to fight the charges. After spending a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees, Fiola was able to prove his innocence. But the ordeal ruined his life.
According to The Huffington Post:
“An inspection for his defense revealed that the laptop was severely infected. It was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half.”
Prosecutors were able to confirm the findings and dropped charges against Fiola. However, by the time the trial was over, he had most of his friends and his life savings.
“It ruined my life, my wife’s life and my family’s life,” he says.
Although it was beyond difficult for Fiola to prove his innocence, cases like this are not rare. According to security software maker F-Secure Corp. about 20 million of the estimated 1 billion internet-connected PCs worldwide are infected with viruses that could give hackers full control to utilize the computer from a remote location.
Where do these viruses come from? There are some adult porn sites that are saturated with harmful bugs. For instance, if a person downloads images and videos from a legal adult site, he or she may also unknowingly download a virus along with them. Computers are also easily infected when a person opens a suspicious email attachment.
The only real way to protect yourself is to be cautious and avoid opening email attachments that seem suspicious. Another good strategy is to have updated anti-virus software on your computer. Also, avid porn consumers should not depend on the internet for their racy content. Take a trip to your local sex shop and purchase a DVD or magazine! It beats taking a risk that can ruin your reputation and your life.
Martin:
I agree with everything you say. I expect that Sen Conroy knows that everything you say is correct. What, then are his motives?
To win an argument, you need to consider not only what he says, but what are his goals? As an example, can his goals be achieved by a superior approach, or must his goals be replaced by alternative means? And, can that be done? Or, should his goals, as well as his approach be scrapped?
Robert
Hi Ken,
I have not said that the filter is not ineffective because there is funding also going into other programs, I only pointed out the other programs being funded as some people mistakenly have commented on this blog that there is nothing else being done.
We understand your point and appreciate the input.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Thanks for that Martin, you make some compelling (and constructive) points.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
I agree in the general case, that hiding child or indeed any abuse is not the right thing to do. However, the comment was an illustrative point, and was put forward in order to make a point, which we believe is inappropriate and disrespectful. This forum is not the right place to meaningfully discuss such issues, nor to meaningfully expose them as can the media. There are many appropriate online forums and communities to discuss them constructively.
Thank you for your contribution. We agree that improving funding to policing and support are important parts of the strategy.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
The comment was an illustrative point and was definitely put forward to make a point, it would be stupid otherwise. That said, the point was not to offend but to highlight the fact that this policy, regardless of anything else being done, ignores the reality that it will do nothing to prevent harm to children. As I said earlier, sexual abuse of children by its very nature is offensive so it is hard not to offend when talking about it, you should be disgusted when someone mentions such abhorrent behaviour. However, we should also keep in mind the context in which such topics are discussed and the intention behind discussing them, that’s what adults do.
Denis mentions that I stooped to Hamilton’s level, I think not.
What Hamilton, the “hack” did, was describe in intricate detail a range of sexual acts. He gave very specific particular using descriptors of genitals, actions and the articles used in these acts. He purposely used confronting language and expletives to invoke a response and even mentions illegal acts.
What I did was describe, using a single sentence, a scene in which a child rapist is doing what they do best, ruining the life of a child. There was no mention of the actual acts beyond saying rape, just a description of the participants, both willing and unwilling and a mention of the poor child’s emotional state. Confronting? Of course it was, it was an ugly scene but lets stop beating around the bush, there is nothing pretty about it. Same as what Hamilton did? Hardly.
There is also mention of other moderated forums such as Whirlpool and I note the comments are still in place there. At this point I am not going to debate whether the comments are inconsiderate or otherwise but I will point out this.
The very fact that the comment remains on one of Australia’s most active forums and was removed from this one highlights the dangers most people here are arguing about – discretion. There has been support for my comments as well as other comments supporting its moderation. At the end of the day Kate has the right to remove my comment as she owns the website. I don’t agree with the decision but I respect it, if it was my website I would expect her to do the same. The problem here is the rules are vague, what I (and some others) think is inconsiderate is clearly different to what Kate (and again, some others) is inconsiderate. Despite this, Kate is holding the reins and has the final say.
By allowing this policy to go ahead we are effectively handing the reins of the entire internet to the government, we are granting them ownership in a sense. They now have a right to choose what we do and don’t see. They are exercising the discretion, not us. Furthermore, the descriptions given by Conroy and co have been vague, much like the use of the word “inconsiderate” in the rules of this site.
Conroy has flip flopped all over the place on the subject of what will and won’t be included. The previously released lists have demonstrated there will be some dodgy inclusions. And governments lie to us, look at the pre-election descriptions of the policy vs the post-election descriptions.
There is also much room for inconsistency to apply and the subjective nature of the rules of this site also highlight this. For example, the rules clearly state that we should not allow frustration to turn into personal attack. In his post Denis expresses great frustration with Hamilton’s behaviour and my comments and then suggests I have stooped to his level. One could easily infer that because Denis has called Hamilton a hack and likened my commentary to his that I am therefore a hack. Personal attack? I am sure it wasn’t intended to be but nor was my comment intended to be inflammatory. And no, I am not asking for his comment to be censored, simply highlighting a point.
The process of moderation on this site demonstrates with acute clarity the conflict that can ensue when censorship takes place. Some people would have preferred to read my comment in its entirety while others suggested they would prefer not to. The point is, they had a choice and could elect to no longer read my posts or even switch off from the site altogether, that choice was removed.
Introducing censorship is a lot easier than removing it. Look at video games for a current and very relevant example. This filtering policy is removing our rights, costing a bomb and being completely ineffective in protecting the children. Censoring comments on a site like this does nothing to get rid of the elephant in the room, the fact remains – the Government is misleading us and using deception to implement an ineffective policy at great expense to taxpayers and young, at risk children.
Thanks for the largely contructive comment Michael. I’m glad you have now differentiated between an individuals (in this case Senator Lundy) right to moderate their own personal website, and what the government as a whole does. It is also a good point about personal interpretation of content, and what different people take offense too. Every website will have someone holding the reins who has the right to do as they like on that site.
Your core concerns of centralised control over what is accessible to Australians, and the question about the actual effect on child safety has been echoed on this blog by many people, and we are certainly taking these concerns into account. As has been said by the Senator in this very post, she intends to bring these concerns to the attention of her colleagues.
Thanks for the constructive input everyone, it really helps.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Does it really help? And by ‘help’ I mean ‘does it really help the Australian citizens get the outcome they are seeking?’
What is being expressed is basic, intelligent response to an archaic, short sighted, flawed and largely unworkable IT implementation.
The question is, HOW does it help? Because from what I can see of party-loyalty and the very fact that no one else is jumping up and down in parliament about this, I don’t think it helps at all.
As per my previous question;
DEAR PIA
WHEN IS SOMEONE FROM THE PARTY GOING TO ANSWER OUR QUESTIONS?
THE LIST IS QUITE LONG NOW
I agree that the owners of any system like this forum have a right to decide what is and isn’t appropriate if they have some feedback mechanism. I have no problem with the particular sentence in question being moderated out on Senator Lundy’s personal webpage. I would object if it couldn’t be published anywhere in Australia, however.
Although, if you want to talk emotional blackmail, a certain colleague of Senator Lundy is the master:
“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm
and in a Senate committee:
Senator LUDLAM – “Of those countries that you have named, I am not expecting that they are all identical in form, because I understand that your proposal is not opt in or opt out. It will be mandatory content blocking across all Australian ISPs.”
Senator Conroy – “We are-”
Senator Ludlam – “Just let me finish. In terms of the countries that you have just listed for me, it is mandatory or is it an opt-in system that, for example, concerned parents could take advantage of?”
Senator Conroy – “Illegal material is illegal material. Child pornography is child pornography. I trust you are not suggesting that people should have access to child pornography.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S11346.pdf
and, of course, actual blackmail:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/23/1224351430987.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Why is this man still a senior minister?
Coming back to the crux of the new proposal, however: Refused Classification. It is simply far too broad a category to be used as the basis for censorship. Almost everything in this category is legal for most Australians to posses and view. Those that aren’t have wide global acceptance as being abhorrent.
I think we’d all agree that it is far better if the abhorrent stuff were removed from the internet rather than just blocked. Indeed, this is what already happens as soon as law enforcement, or the companies that are inadvertently hosting such material discover the content online. The half-life of truly illegal material online is so short that censorship of it is pointless. Even if it wasn’t, hiding the material and keeping a list is about the most unethical way I can think of to handle the problem.
The Classification Board itself is a matter of contention in Australia. It really should have no business refusing to classify legally produced material for an Australian audience. Material such as instruction to crime, fetish or other sexual material should be available to Australian adults who wish to see it, whether they be researchers or simply regular citizens in a sexual minority. Perhaps the solution is to introduce a new rating above R and X for highly confronting material.
Members of the Labor Party expressed frustration with the Classification Board before the previous election. It still contains several Howard era political appointees, and is certainly not reflective of the community at large.
There was a remarkable court case not too long ago that highlighted the non-representative nature of the Classification Board. Federal Court judge Peter Jacobson decided that large majority community opinion was not necessarily the same thing as a reasonable adult for the purposes of the classification code. A reasonable adult is not defined in the code, so what this legalise actually means is very grey. This is precisely what you want to engage in stealth censorship.
The fact is the entire classification system in Australia is broken. No one really cared too much before this mandatory filtering business came up because stuff the Classification Board rejected could easily be imported from overseas. The biggest example of this is the vast numbers of Refused Classification (or at least unedited) video games that are imported from overseas. Other routine importations include books like ‘The Peaceful Pill’, art magazines on graffiti, US or European releases of films and televisions shows otherwise banned or edited for an Australian audience, and, of course, pornography, particularly sexual fetish material. What is particularly strange with the pornography example, is the acts in the banned material are perfectly legal for consenting adults to engage in anywhere in Australia.
No one is talking about making confronting material available in every bookshop or cinema. It should be hard to find. Certainly the internet makes it easier to locate such material, but it does not jump out users. The internet is a pull medium. You have to instruct your computer to specifically request something from another computer. Search engines have gone to a lot of effort to remove confronting material from their default search results, while making it available to those who are specifically searching for it. The point is, unlike television where someone else decides what you should be watching, the user has to specifically seek out the material they want on the internet.
If we are going to be concerned about children seeking out age inappropriate material on the internet, perhaps it is better to ask why this is so. Certainly there is an element of seeking out the forbidden, but it is more likely a result of not being given enough trustworthy information at home and school. This is particularly true for sex education; the fact that it is taboo. Parents try to offload this responsibility to schools, and schools don’t want to touch it because they risk offending parents. The result is that children go to seek answers about their changing bodies from peers and fantasy. This does not lead to good long term healthy attitudes towards sex.
We should also be careful about also setting up a situation where parents feel the internet can be used as a babysitter. It is bad enough some parents feel television can be used for this purpose. A false sense of security instilled in parents about the internet with such an expensive lemon will lead to even more children being exposed to age inappropriate material than is currently the case. It will also distort adult views on what the rating systems mean. Any of the millions upon millions of websites that would be considered Refused Classification if they were reported to the ACMA, must be assumed to be a lower rating by casual users. If they were to be Refused Classification, the assumption will be they would already be on the blacklist. Thus, the government will be seen to be endorsing sites that have yet to come to its notice.
Ultimately, it will be the edge cases that will cause the most trouble for the government. As with everything in life, there are very few solid black lines. Everything is a multi-coloured continuum, and large segments of the community will disagree on which side any particular media should fall on. As the various incarnations of the new Refused Classification blacklist are leaked, the government will be opening itself up to ridicule as the media brings to light the various edge cases that are found on the list.
If the government want to do something real on the policy front, I would suggest fixing the classification system. If the government wants to do something real on the child front, I would suggest better sex education, and critical thinking courses in schools. I would further suggest diverting funds from a mandatory filter to law enforcement and support services where a real difference in the lives of those who are victims can be made.
Hi Arved,
Thank you for the thoughtful and constructive post. In particular, your concise way of differentiating between the Internet and other modes of content delivery in Australia was very appreciated. Your comments and recommendations are all practical and very useful.
Cheers,
Pia
Office of Senator Lundy
Perhaps it would be for the best to remove the “RC” (Refused classification) non-category. Everything should be classifiable. Not every classification should necessarily be available — what classifications should be available should be up to the body politic as a matter of democratic process. Perhaps a referendum or two would sort things out.
A referendum would result in 95%+ of the population voting against the legislation, the other 5% being of course the ACL, Censor Box Vendor employees and other wowsers with vested interests. The reason the government would never happen?
1. The result would be embarrasing for the government
2. Where would we lock up all these paedophiles and child abuse sympathisers? Since disagreeing with this policy we clearly are labelled as above.
I think in a sense a referendum has already taken place. Check out the statistics and associated spikes in internet traffic associated with this topic:
internet filtering – http://www.google.com/trends?q=internet+filtering&geo=aus&sa=N
internet censorship – http://www.google.com/trends?q=internet+censorship&ctab=0&geo=au&geor=all&date=all&sort=0
Given the massive ground swell and almost unanimous opposition to this archaic policy it’s not a stretch to assume these huge increases in traffic are from concerned individuals and not supporters of this return to medieval rule. Looks like a lot of people are interested in this and hopefully that translates into votes, or lack thereof…
I also found it interesting to see one of the events noted in the Google data was a speech given by Obama to some Chinese students.
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Obama_criticizes_internet_censorship_in_China-nid-62946.html
I love this comment where Obama says the internet forces ['him to listen to opinions he does not want to hear']. It’s a shame the arrogance of our parliamentarians didn’t give way to such an introspective and transparent attitude. Think Rudd and his mates will listen to Obama’s opinion? I’m hopeful but pessimistic.
There are reports today that the US Government is going in to bat for Google’s right to offer an uncensored search facility in China, with many quotes from senior US officials about the strength and importance of an uncensored Internet. If there’s a war of ideas, which side will Australia be on – the US or China? It would be amusing if the provisions of the US-AUS Free Trade Agreement locked Australia in to allowing Google, Amazon and Microsoft to continue to offer uncensored services to Australians.
And another good one today – Canada’s venerable history magazine “The Beaver” has had to change its name to “Canadian History” because the old name kept getting blocked online by (chorus) “stupid keyword filters”.
Whilst the prevailing mood online is strongly against filtering, the problem with that is that it doesn’t necessarily correlate to the electorate.
I don’t think it is reasonable to assume the Government is blind to the online criticism, I think it is more likely that their own polling either supports the filter or (and I believe this more likely) that most voters are indifferent to the filter. Clearly the Government doesn’t think this will cost them (and given some of the data gathered off-line this idea has some merit).
This is exactly why the EFA’s anti-filter campaign manager is saying that the message must reach the general public (and he’s right). Whether they are internet users or not, they need to be made aware of just how damaging this idea will be to Australia if it comes to pass (the economic losses alone should be sufficient grounds to reject this idea).
Consider that internet users in Australia are only 55.7% of the population (Data source: World Bank, World Development Indicators). That means that there are 44.3% of the population, that regardless of their opinion, are not active stakeholders in the matter. Most of those people simply wouldn’t care – and I think the Government is counting on that.
Either way, the Government is not about to put their political machinations to the popular vote – they’ll be stuffing this down our throats whether we like it or not (and regardless of the obvious costs).
Michael, there already was a referendum of sorts- the public’s need for filtering was abundently demonstrated by the near-nil take-up of the Howard Government’s ‘NetAlert’:
I think a lot of voters simply don’t know about the proposed filter.
Until I told people in the office about it, I think perhaps 95% were unaware of the proposed filter plans. (Office has about 70 staff).
Now, most are against it except for a couple of strongly religious people, even the GM is against it.
Too right- and that’s why nothing will ever be done ‘for you’ in that manner.
Local filtering is the way to go because you’re not going to get filtering the way you want it to happen. Again, refer to Mark Newton’s comments re/ ‘dumb core-smart edge.’
Brian, I am clearly not making my point. I am not against local filtering. It may be the solution to preventing rogue websites hurting me and others in my immediate community – but in its current form and implementation that is highly unlikely.
We are going to get legislation on this matter.
I would like it written in terms of the objectives rather than the details of how to do it whether it is censorship, ISP bases, local filtering or community filtering.
I would like to see the legislation put in place a process that will help the system to evolve to meet the objectives and to fund that evolution.
We should not write legislation that specifies HOW things are to be done but write it in terms of WHAT and WHY. We should then implement our systems that meets our objectives.
Brian, not only are we not comprehending what you are trying to get across, but you also seem to not get our point.
For example, what does your internet connection (and safety meausures) have to do with the rest of your community?
The *best* way of preventing rogue websites (?) is not to visit them. Unless you are actually looking for *bad* (or dubious) stuff, it doesn’t just pop up.
Why not? I’m assuming you mean PC-level filtering here, as your post wasn’t clear. It works well enough for those people that need it. Anti-malware and anti-virus works well enough. They usually come in the same software package these days (and usually pre-installed on new PCs).
If you feel the need for additional remote (server or ISP-level) filtering, have a look at Webshield. Their webfilter has 72 catagories, fully customisable. There are others out there, as well.
I would support the government *subsidising* some of these ISPs so the prices are competitive. Another resource you may wish to use the services of an ISP that is accredited under the IIAs family friendly ISP program. They can help you with filtering options (installing/activating/maintaining etc).
I don’t support the government molestation of *every* internet connection.
The government will introduce legislation on this matter, but they are not listening to anyone (glares at the ALP policy of requiring members to represent caucus, and not the electorate). The only way of stopping/modifing this is for everyone to voice there oppinion to all MPs and MLCs that are suppose to represent you. Maybee they will get the idea that very few internet using people need or want this.
Brian:
I have seen copies of previous ACMA lists, and over half the banned sites do not contain child pornography, but could be classified as political material.
The USA tried to ban the making, distribution, and use of alcohol, but gave up as the ban was much worse than regulating it.
The USA currently bans growing, possession, and use of marijuana, but it is legal in some states. (How that works is interesting).
The USA kept some of its most sensitive secrets: the detailed design of strategic and tactical thermonuclear weapons under ARMED GUARD, with access restricted to a very limited number of US citizens (NOFORN Caveat), and it is now known that the Chinese government has full knowledge of this material.
The message is that restriction of interesting information and materials is difficult.
However user computers in homes, libraries. and businesses can be successfully blocked if they are kept under supervision. The government could provide a service to (automatically) update the list are available today, eg from Microsoft. But, the list won’t be secret for long.
Robert
Lucas, Kevin Cox is the one who wants filtering of things that should be dealt with with local PC filters, not I.
Sorry Brian, that one was supposed to be directed at Kevin.
Lucas:
While not visiting “rogue” websites is a good policy, it is not sufficient. These sites are always trolling for business, and come up without new ways to penetrate and lodge themselves in on-line computers, often with the computer users being aware. I have spy, virus and malware detectors running, and their detection lists are updated daily.
Sometimes these invasive programs convince the protective software that they are “permitted”, and sometimes they disable the protective software.
An example is the Play Sushi software which infects computers, and
installs regenerative software, and also escapes protective software sweeps, and requires manual effort and “insider” knowledge to dislodge.
A basic problem with any filter is that the rogue sites can change their parameters, including urls, faster than the filter lists can be updated. The best defence against this is to configure your computer to only receive traffic from specified urls and email addresses, or even only specified Media Access Control (M,A.C.) addresses. Most general purpose users would find these limitations too constricting.
Mr Cox, you have demonstrated that you have no interest in discussing this matter. You’ve come here only to billboard your views, not to have a conversation.
Well, you know, I can do that, too.
Let me tell you how it’s going to work:
* The Labor Government’s 2007 election promise never included mandatory censorship of internet feeds to residences without children and they thus have no mandate to implement such.
* It is not the government’s responsibility to protect you from yourself. That’s your job. Get your own filtering software if you think you need it.
* It is not your responsibility to impose your views on other internet users. We will not suffer living under your judgments.
* Websites are not email. Upstream censorship of websites won’t work, simple as that.
* Hiding websites from Australian browsers won’t make them go offline nor stop unscrupulous operators from publishing them. We’re 20 million people out of billions of internet users worldwide.
* As has been demonstrated by the debacle in South Australia, government have clearly demonstrated that they WILL use the force of law to criminalise political speech with which they don’t agree or that which embarrasses them. You’re deadset naïve if you don’t think this will be extended to the national mandatory censorship scheme- and probably sooner than later. If government can enforce suppression of political speech, they will one day suppress speech with which you agree. Censorship is in no-one’s best interest in a free society.
* People like me will actively defy ISP level censorship if it is enacted. I’m setting up a VPN service as we speak to circumvent censorship, on principle alone, which I will onsell at my cost or very close to it, to anyone who wants it.
If there’s any ’solution’ to contentious or controversial content on the internet, it is to publish it all and allow the reader to sort it out.
* The Government will kow-tow to underinformed and willfully ignorant people like you at their peril at the ballot box in 2010.