As any farmer can tell you, fencing is bloody dangerous. The stretch-wire-between-posts thing, I mean, not the pointy-steel-pokey thing. One mistake and it’s THWACKKKK! Ten metres of barbed wire whipping into your face.
Senator Stephen Conroy is discovering the hard way that trying to build a Rabbit-Proof Firewall around the internet is just as dangerous. As Bernard Keane points out in Crikey today, the standard politicians’ tactic — lying — doesn’t cut it in today’s hyperconnected world. But even this morning, on ABC Radio National’s The Media Report, Conroy was still claiming it’s only about illegal content.
“There is illegal material on the Net, things like child p-rnography, things like ultra-violent sites,” intoned Senator Conroy. “What we’re seeking to do is take technology and actually enforce the existing law… We’re seeking to use new and emerging advances to block access to sites like that.”
“Let me be clear,” he continued. “We are committed to work with the industry to see if it is technical feasible — that’s why we have conduced a laboratory test and we’re moving to conduct a live test with ISPs, and that’s Labor’s policies.”
Thing is, we can all download the results of that lab test Closed Environment Testing of ISP−Level Internet Content Filters and read for ourselves, on page 2, that the tests covered “technology to filter illegal or inappropriate content”, and on page 21 how the test sites included those rated PG, M, MA… Despite Conroy’s repeated assertion, the tests explicitly included perfectly legal material.
Why conduct tests of something you don’t intend to implement? A waste of taxpayers’ money, surely?
Why continue with a “live” test when the lab test demonstrated such poor performance?
As Crikey has reported (Tuesday, 9 July 2008, “Internet filters a success, if success = failure“), even the best filter has a false-positive rate of 3% under ideal lab conditions. That might not sound much, but Mark Newton (the network engineer who Conroy’s office tried to bully last week) reckons that for a medium-sized ISP that’s 3000 incorrect blocks every second. Another maths-heavy analysis says that every time that filter blocks something there’s an 80% chance it was wrong.
Senator Conroy was back-pedalling this morning:
A whole range of people have said, ‘Hey, let’s expand this! That’s a debate that we will come to. We are no further than establishing at the moment whether it is technically feasible. In terms of what some of the Senators claim should be included on the blacklist, I’m sure that when we get to the debate down the track, if it proves to be technically feasible, there’ll be a whole range of people with a whole range of demands about what should be on the blacklist. But what we’ve committed to do is practically implement what’s on the blacklist at the moment.
Conroy justifies continuing the trials by saying Labor “made this commitment back when Kim Beazley was leader of the Labor Party.” True, they did. They also committed to a Coast Guard and a Department of Homeland Security — both well and truly dropped.
Whatever Conroy says, this is a-se-about policy-making. Surely the sensible way to proceed would be to decide what Australians should and shouldn’t see on the internet, express that in a coherent policy, and then ask the technologists and educators how to achieve that aim.
Mark Newton was spot on when he said:
Politicians assume that parents are ignorant about the Internet because politicians are ignorant. Yet parents came to grips with it years ago; the last remaining social group in our country who expresses difficulty with the Internet appears to be baby-boomer Federal politicians, whose child-rearing days are mostly well behind them.
Well, the Government is now getting a crash course in hyperpolitics. Those online are better connected, smarter, and faster. We can spot the lies.
If the proposed filtering does not exclude all of Facebook and party-crashing text messages it is pointless.
Yep, good article, good comments. What can we do to stop this idiot moving implementing this terrible plan? I don’t use the word “idiot” lightly – if Conroy is arguing that this filtering technology is ready, economically appropriate and morally acceptable then either he’s an idiot, or is covering up very some insidious undemocratic motivations… or, quite possibly, both.
absolutely spot on sir
maybe we should hit them with the whole – how much will this cost to maintain argument?
this just cannot be feasible on any accounts
technical, moral or economic
full blown jokers
Excellent commentary. There is a lot more opposition to this in the commercial media than I’d expected. I’m one of those baby-boomers, but I’ve worked in IT and with computers for 30 odd years and I’m in the grandmotherly age group these days. All communications with local members, senators and Ministers have demonstrated that many politicians are completely technically incompetent. I’m appalled at the ignorance of some of the comments from the elected members responsible for permitting this to occur. Can they not see that it could be them banned next if it suits the powers that be next time?
DPI is not trivial. It’s intrusive and complex hardware and software. Once in place it will be damn near impossible to remove. It becomes part of the infrastructure of your access to the internet. This is one example only of what this equipment can do. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21284471-Deep-Packet-Inspection-Plan-Defeats-Encryption-Compression Then google for Dephormation, nodpi and Phorm to see how the use of DPI can be subverted to far more sinister uses.
A commentary on the members of the Cyber Safety Working Group would be a good move. The membership seems to be restricted to interest groups and public servants. http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_consumers/funding_programs__and__support/cyber-safety_plan/consultative_working_group_on_cyber-safety Some of those interest groups may be subsidised by outside sources or government and be operating on the inside. What the hell are Microsoft and Google doing on the panel.
Well said, it’s disgusting that the politicians in charge have little idea of the technology they are trying to mandate. I wonder of Conroy has ever come across that “illegal” material by accident? We are already behind the rset of the developed world in terms of internet speeds and cost, why do we need a system to make it even slower to stop people looking at material that the overwhelming majority won’t ever look at?