The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) described as incomprehensible Joe Hockey’s announcement that the Coalition would do away with ISP level filtering of the internet.
“This announcement is incomprehensible on a number of levels”, said Mr Wallace. “Firstly to say it doesn’t work is to deny the trials that show it does. Secondly to have a system that orders takedown notices for Australian sites carrying Refused Classification (RC) material, but allow it to come in unhindered from overseas sites is simply illogical. And finally to imply that parents rather than the ISPs are best equipped to manage the technology by presumably introducing the discredited Net Nanny system, again simply defies technological reality.”
Mr Wallace said the anti-filter proponents have run a well funded scare campaign on the issue, beginning with claims it would slow down the internet by up to 87%, only to be proven it was less than 1/70th of the blink of an eye, and conspiracy theories that saw us all becoming like China and North Korea.
“On every level arguments against ISP level blocking of RC material have been disproved or shown to be illogical,” said Mr Wallace. “Even the much publicised statement by the US Ambassador that he was against it because he wanted to see the internet free “as the oceans have to be free”, conveniently overlooked the fact that the US blocks drugs been brought by boat from Central America to the US because of their harm to US society. ISP level filtering does the same with harmful internet product, and offends the freedom of the internet no more than the US does that of the sea in drug control,” he said.
Important to understand in the Government’s plan is that ISP filtering is only part of the solution to the problem of RC material on the internet, that it includes in particular additional funding of police efforts to intercept illegal peer to peer material and find the perpetrators of it.
“The Govt is absolutely right to retain its resolve on this issue,” said Mr Wallace, “and it is extremely disappointing to see the Coalition adopt a policy that, as the civil libertarians behind it intend, will establish a principle where this medium is beyond regulation – quite unlike the supposedly free seas.”
Media Contact: Glynis Quinlan on 0408 875 979.
Finally some sense from the Coalition!! You are free to monitor and filter the internet of your followers but leave the rest of us alone thanks.
A good decision by the Coalition. Even if you support filtering “in principle” you need to understand that it doesn’t work at blocking access to “nasty stuff” – but will block stuff it shouldn’t. Putting faith in a “secret blacklist” controlled by government is madness.
The blacklist used during the trial even included a link to an anti-abortion site… freedom of religious expression, anyone?
Common sense prevails!
Mr Wallace: What trial reports have you read? The ones I read said that it could easily be circumvented with:
A change of DNS server,
A proxy,
A VPN tunnel.
All very simple things to do with a quick search on google.
The plan was silly and needed much more thought and more investigation of what technologies are out there. For a scheme like this to work you need to apply not just a query based filter, but an IP filter, deep packet inspection, and regular policing form the AFP. All of which will cost millions and millions of dollars to implement.
I understand the urge to rid us of this plight in our society, we don’t want this behavior and material in Australia, but we need to be lobbying this on an international scale, because some countries are allowing this.
Please won’t someone thing of the children!?!!?! We must not let them get away from this. We must now allow pornographic material to be accessible on the internet by anyone.
we must have an internet filter.
As a Christian and an I.T Professional, I applaud this decision by the Coalition.
No-one denys that there is bad stuff on the internet, but pushing forward with a plan that will not work and has potential to be used to attack freedom of speech (including that of Christians) is pure folly.
Honestly, the only thing I can say to the credit of the ACL is that some of their intentions appear to be good.
“Firstly to say it doesn’t work is to deny the trials that show it does.”
Yes, the trials do indeed prove that this form of filtering will *work as technically outlined*. But, that does not mean it will be *effective* at achieving any goals.
I think that many technical people recoil in horror when they hear of the proposed mandatory filter, not because they are extreme civil-libertarians, or pro-abuse material, but because they have a grasp of the numbers involved.
The number of URLs that Google reported indexing in July 2008 is 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000). Let’s take this as a lower figure for the size of the web and the number we’ll work with (however, it’s probably actually approaching 2 trillion now). The maximum number of URLs that Telstra stated their trial network filter could block was 10,000.
To get our head around those numbers, and the effectiveness of the proposed filter, let’s do a simple thought experiment. Take one step (say this is 50cm). Pretend that each of your steps represents an access of a single URL – and this first step was blocked. Now, how far would you need to walk (at 6km/hr) to get to the next blocked page, based on the numbers above (assuming the blocked pages are equally spaced)?
From your house down to the shops? To the next suburb? From Melbourne to Sydney!? None of those. Try – around the the Earth. One and a quater times. This would be around 2 years of walking of you made a full time job of it.
This analogy is not to be tortured. Accessing URLs is not like walking. The numbers used can be varied slightly. But the point remains the same, no matter how many exact times the earth must be lapped. I bring it up to point out the extraordinarily large numbers involved here, that are hard to get your head around without some form of analogy to help.
The type of filtering as proposed might *work* (URLs will be blocked) but with blocking numbers like these it is *totally ineffective* at meeting any social benefit goal you care to set it.
So, an honest question: At what level of ineffectiveness would the ACL drop support for the policy? *Especially* considering that the millions wasted on this form of ineffectual filtering could be given to other methods and systems that have a chance of working.
I think that many Christians have been misinformed when it comes to how effective the proposed mandatory Internet filtering will ever be. I hope this example of the numbers involved helps. This is *by far* not the only problem with the proposed mandatory filter, but enough for one comment post.
I encourage Christians to read this article on internet censorship:
http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/ministry/technology/keeping_children_safe_cannot_be_outsourced/
Trying to filter the internet at a nation-wide level is like trying to modify the printing press to censor books — even if it did work properly, it cannot teach our children how to interact wisely with a world of adversity. I reckon it’s wrongheaded on both levels.
I think it’s sensible for the Liberal Party to oppose the Labor scheme.
So-called “secret” blacklists have been published in Finland, Denmark, Singapore, China, Italy, Norway and, last year, Australia. It seems odd to propose a system which relies on the infallibility of regulators when one tiny slip would result in publication of child pornography lists, victimizing children around the world, when our regulators have already shown that they’re as fallible as everyone else.
That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be some regulation. Just that regulations involving secret blacklists are ridiculous. There has to be a better way.
I understand what Jim is saying and agree with the idea that it doesn’t make sense to allow access to material that can’t be hosted locally. There is no reason why anybody needs access to child abuse material. None.
Yay for increased police resources towards interception and tracing of peer-to-peer material, especially since this is where much of the material of concern is circulated. It is effective when people get the idea that you’ll just get caught, provided they know what is legal and what isn’t.
As for filtering itself, There are different methods of filtering; Using the word ‘filter’ to describe both a number-plate-camera approach and a military-inspection-checkpoint approach blurs the issues a bit, as none of the tested approaches are both fast AND effective (although different methods have been shown to be one or the other).
I haven’t come across anyone who’s proposing to do nothing, just proposals of different approaches.
Hey Bill,
I have a suggestion for you. It’s 100% foolproof and will mean you never have to experience internet pornography again.
Unplug your computer and put it back in the box it came from.
Now you are free to spend more or your precious time in front of your bible and less time in front of morally questionable websites.
See how easy that filter was to install? Even people with no technical knowledge whatsoever can be porn free in minutes
The ACL does not understand this from a technical and business perspective! For starters it will slow down the internet! even if its 1/70th of a eye blind! As well as Gammers getting higher pings!
Secondly it will kill all of the small ISPs. These business may get funding for the initial equipment, however what about all of the other cost associated? For example customers calling up to get a falsely blocked site inblocked. This costs money for the ISP as it has to hire more people on the Phones.
The solution to this problem is education!
Good decision.
Bypassing the internet filter is as easy is slightly modifying the URL…..add a question mark at the end of the URL.
lol http://www.australianchristianlobby.org.au/?
No filter. Works great! How much are we paying for it – $44.5 million?
Alternative proposition.
1. Apply ISP filtering solely against child pornography. Nothing else.
2. Offer Australians households filtering programs that allow voluntarily blocking of sensitive content.
3. Offer periodic content upgrades for these filters – ensuring they maintain their effectiveness.
4. Build an IT policing group – targeting Australian users violating internet policy. ie. Downloading and Distribution of Child Pornography.
This will target the small percentage of Australians this internet filter is primarily targeted against (rather than for). It’ll protect those children actually BEING EXPLOITED.
-I could go on….but this makes sense.
Chris