Internet Censorship - Please Help!

[raistlin_kell]

Friends & Brewers Alike
The Government is attempting to implement a country-wide Internet content filter which, in concept I agree with, however has so far proven to be completely impracticable, totally unreliable, will grind internet speeds to a halt & sets a very very bad precedent. :angry:

If this is implemented we'll be all living in a Chinese-like censorship policed country. :icon_vomit:

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Save the Internet in Australia

 

[bum]

Haven't the ISPs involved in the testing of this pulled out because it is kinda shit?

So here's the thing - I didn't feel particularly oppressed back before I had the internet and my news has always been filtered through ONE ******* PERSON'S INTERESTS - why is this going to be the end of the world?

 

[manticle]

Partly because if it actually goes ahead it will fail at what it sets out to do (protect the children from online predators), cost a shiteload of money we all pay for and slow the internet down to ridiculous speeds as if this country wasn't behind enough already. Add to that the expenditure on trying to improve this country's broadband speeds and you have two very expensive government policies that are heading for collision. I'm not normally one to whinge about where my tax money goes because I have no say whatsoever and I'll probably never agree with the allocation but this just seems a bit ridiculous.

Add to that that you can find news sources with alternative viewpoints from alternative sources etc if you are prepared to look. They may be harder to find but they are not considered illegal. This will black ban certain websites that are contained on a list. Who knows what's on that list? Neither you nor me.

 

[Bribie G]

I've often thought that if I ever get diagnosed with a terminal illness I would seriously consider taking some worthless waste of space with me, to the benefit of humanity so I did not die in vain. Conroy would be well up on the list.

 

[bum]

Echelon will tell him about that.

 

[Adamt]

Not going to happen unless we lose a war to China or North Korea. No hate, it's just the truth.

 

[kram]

Haven't the ISPs involved in the testing of this pulled out because it is kinda shit?

The testing has been undertaken and is complete. I wouldn't call them real ISPs but, their customer base is tiny compared to any decent ISP where you would expect the performance loss to be significant, it was also opt in; so who knows how large the test was. The report is complete and has been handed to the government, nothing has been released on the outcome of this and was said to of been out in September.

And as you would've guessed, it's not just to 'protect the kids'.

 

[technocat]

When governments begin to cover the ears and eyes of a nation then the populace should be worried.
Democracy and the freedom of speech is a hard won right and when governments interfere with this right by censorship they are taking control of an individuals rights and the first steps to suppress the expansion of ideas and inventiveness of a nation. We have a policing, legal and correction system to weed out the individuals that try to live outside the boundaries of of law abiding society, why do we need censorship.
Censorship of the internet for children should be practiced by vigilant parents in the home not by some bureaucratic department of government. Every year government makes more and more inroads into peoples lives on the the pretext of security or safety of its citizens by treating us like mushrooms so respect for our privacy becomes more diminished by the day. We have come a long way since the Athenian democratic way of life and if censorship in any shape or form is an issue make it known to your local parliamentary representative or show your displeasure at the ballot box. That my rant for the day.

:angry:

 

[drsmurto]

Cant we just use web based proxys to get around firewalls...... h34r:

Or has this IT retard over-simplified things again?

 

[Airgead]

Cant we just use web based proxys to get around firewalls...... h34r:

Or has this IT retard over-simplified things again?

Yes. Yes you can. That's the real idiocy of this thing. It will hurt the average user but anyone with an ounce of IT knowledge can use something like an anonymising proxy (Tor anyone) or offshore VPN to get around it. It wouldn't even pick up P2P traffic which is where the really hardcore sleaze lives these days.

Stupid idea put together by stupid people.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Andyd]

Unfortunately this is an issue that has high political brownie points and very little technical or socialogical benefit (i.e. it's a way for certain ministers to crawl their way up to the next job at the expense of the general population).

As such, it seems likely that they'll force something through, spend a s***load of money building it, discover it's worthless, probably spend another s***tload of money trying again, until the population finally says enough and turfs them out.

Both sides of the political fence are as guilty as the other in various guises, so I'm not advocating either party - I'm just sick of bureaucrats spending my hard earned taxes to further their careers!

Andy (stepping down from the soap box)

 

[Fourstar]

The testing has been undertaken and is complete. I wouldn't call them real ISPs but, their customer base is tiny compared to any decent ISP where you would expect the performance loss to be significant, it was also opt in; so who knows how large the test was. The report is complete and has been handed to the government, nothing has been released on the outcome of this and was said to of been out in September.
And as you would've guessed, it's not just to 'protect the kids'.

The Satellite ISP i used to work for we would recieve plenty of e-mails from a NZ mob starting this filtering service up for testing for the AUS Govt. As you said it was an 'opt in'. SSH tunneling/VPN/Webproxy anyone?

Where i work now, it would be quite interesting to try and implement such filtering on a continent wide scale. You spend millions (maybe even billions) in building a Ethernet Aggregation Netowrk with 10 gigabit links for it to be locked down with bottlenecks tighter than the politicians sphincter whos implementing it.

 

[seravitae]

The initial testing list for which websites were to be blocked using the filter was leaked along time ago, and was shown to be incredibly stupid. Absolute URL's were being blocked such that owners of the site merely needed to change the name of the domain's index page and you would bypass the block.

Scary thought that the head guys running IT in the country are so retarded that they don't even understand wildcard based hostname masks.

Also as stated here previously there are massive bottlenecks in processing all the requests. It would be better (but still not really useful) to implement static IP blocks for offending websites however this still permits P2P traffic and the likes. And also generally causes the issue of ethical censorship.



Unfortunately though, the government loves to go after "hot topics" like this which will win them seats, all the while Mr Joe Blow, keen voter and hater of all things pedophilic, will never realise his stupid shallow hatred and hyped media will lead him to be doomed to slow internet for eternity and illegal websites will still roam the interwebs.



http://www.censordyne.com.au/

 

[blackbock]

This has been bothering me for some time, I am amazed that it's hardly getting any media coverage because it has the potential to really screw things up and inconvenience millions of people. I wish they would get their priorities right, surely with the NBN and splitting up of Telstra Conroy has enough on his plate, I bet he bumbles his way into those as well.

Get on with the real jobs!

 

[hewy]

IP blocks dont work - what happens when kiddy porn site A changes its hosting arrangement, its reachable again. Not to mention with the virtualisation of servers it would likely break a lot of valid web sites.

From what I am hearing the solution may be DNS based not be DPI (deep packet inspection) which means speed shouldnt be affected. Also this means if you have any knowledge of how the internet works you can browse round the filter using a web based proxy as mentioned above.

I am still concerned that the internet is going to be filtered - seems quite un-democratic to me. Using the notion that we are 'protecting the children' really doesnt cut it for me. Do we block all forms of chat? Facebook? etc?

Once you get the bueracracy involved in something like this the list of blocked sites will just keep increasing. God forbid we offend anyone... whos morals and ideals do we use to decide whether a site is 'good' or 'bad'? This is a big can of worms...

Cheers
Hewy

 

[bum]

I don't mind at all for one second if anyone is against this idea (I'm not for it myself) but I really want to hit the roof when people act like it has ******* ANYTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH DEMOCRACY! Democracy is not defined as "free and un-restricted access to everything". There is NOTHING un-democratic about this proposal.

Nothing.

 

[manticle]

I don't mind at all for one second if anyone is against this idea (I'm not for it myself) but I really want to hit the roof when people act like it has ******* ANYTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH DEMOCRACY! Democracy is not defined as "free and un-restricted access to everything". There is NOTHING un-democratic about this proposal.

Nothing.

I guess it depends on how strictly you want to define democracy and whether you're more interested in semantics than actual effects.

Democracy is simply rule of the people which is usually realised by the people voting for representation. If that's all it means to you then any elected Government can make any decision at all and it would not be defined as undemocratic. However that doesn't prevent it from being a kind of state censorship. No, democracy does not necessitate access to anything but there are levels of freedom given to adults to access certain types of material without being forced to explain why.

However the arguments against this system go far beyond 'zomg giv me my pr0n im 18'. If the system does slow Australian net speeds down by the suggested amounts it will affect businesses all over the country so there are economic factors to consider as well. Our internet service is already behind many other parts of the world.

On a free speech/information access level, the fact that blacklisted websites are decided by the state and that the list itself is not accessible to any bar those who put it together(at least last time I heard about the proposal it wasn't) has some dodgy potential that goes far beyond stopping kiddie porn or hate speech websites (kkkk for example).

The main other point is that the whole exercise is likely to fail in actually achieving what it sets out to do. That is - it actually won't stop kiddie pron, internet predators and so on.

So we have, (potentially) an unworkable, expensive, restrictive system that does nothing beyond be a pain in the arse at best or create a form of abusable state censorship at worst.

 

[jonocarroll]

the fact that blacklisted websites are decided by the state and that the list itself is not accessible to any bar those who put it together(at least last time I heard about the proposal it wasn't)

I'm not a supporter of the censorship, but I will point out a glaring misconception - I even felt sorry for Sen. Conroy during whatever public opinion show it was he appeared on when every second question stated the above as fact... facepalm was the result.

As was presented by Sen. Conroy, the list that was 'leaked' was a test sample of sites, and nothing more. Not a first-approximation to the actual list, not a pre-list, not a draft list. Just a list of sites to see if they get blocked properly. The actual list is intended to be submission based, controlled by the classification board (once they figure out how to classify teh internetz) and subject to review upon request.

Surely a submission based list implies that in order to block content you feel offended by, someone needs to find it first... in which case, what were they doing looking for it?

I've said it before, I'll say it again - the list is irrelevant. Even with some 'perfect' management of the list, it's still a ridiculous proposal.

I am yet to hear a single acceptable response from the government to the concerns that P2P and VPN networks are blatant work-arounds to the entire filter. We're talking about people who illegally share restricted/illegal content - I have no doubt that they'll be fast to share the method of circumventing the filter between themselves.

Oh, wait. It's just meant to stop the children from looking up pr0n. As if this is somehow a viable alternative to parenting.

hate speech websites (kkkk for example).

- "What's that extra k for?"
- "That's a typo..."

 

[bum]

If that's all it means to you then any elected Government can make any decision at all and it would not be defined as undemocratic. However that doesn't prevent it from being a kind of state censorship.

A kind of state censorship that, sadly, the majority of the the public is for. Hence it is not only semantically democratic but enacting the will of the people. Don't like it? Move back to Soviet Russia, hippy!

 

[jonocarroll]

A kind of state ██████████ that, sadly, the ████████ of the the ██████ is for. Hence it is not only semantically ██████████ but enacting the ████ of the people. Don't like it? Move back to Soviet Russia, █████!

In Soviet Russia, Internet censors you!