Let’s sing along with Senator Conroy! You’ve got to accentuate the positive / Eliminate the negative / Latch on to the affirmative…
Yesterday our Minister for Broadband was “encouraged” that lab tests of ISP-level internet filters showed “significant progress” since 2005, and The Australian had him declaring the trial a success. But if you actually dig into the full report, things aren’t so rosy.
Yes, on average filters might be more accurate than three years ago and have less impact on internet speeds — well, at least for the six filters actually tested of the 26 put forward. But it’s about them being not quite as cr-p as before.
The report pre-judges the results, saying filters show “high levels of successful blocking”. But even with “most” filters achieving over 92% success, that still means 1 in 13 naughty sites are not blocked.
Similarly, the “low levels” of overblocking (incorrectly blocking legitimate content) are, at best, still 1%. With more than a million registered domain names in Australia (a loose measure of “sites”) even a 1% false positive rate means 10,000 perfectly acceptable websites are blocked. That’s with the best product. Under ideal lab conditions. The least successful of the products tested was eight times worse.
One product only degraded internet speeds by 2%, maybe, but it was 22% to 30% for three products, and more than 75% for two of them. That’s up to 75% off your internet speed, or your ISP having to build 75% more capacity — with the cost passed on to you.
This was, remember, in a test lab. Filters were tested against a pre-compiled list of fewer than 4000 web pages (URLs). How they handle the massive, rapidly-changing real internet, and how that affects performance of a real ISP, are different questions.
As the report notes, ACMA wasn’t asked to look at the balance of costs and benefits for ISP-level filtering, or the implications for customers, or how easy it is to circumvent the filters (“Very easy,” some reckon).
And here’s the killer. None of the products could effectively filter instant messaging, streaming video, peer-to-peer file sharing like BitTorrent, newsgroups or newly-invented internet protocols except by blocking them entirely. Let’s count them again. None.
As the report notes, “Where such protocols are used to carry legitimate traffic and are widely used by children for study and social interaction, ACMA regards the absence of a more targeted capability as a deficiency.” Vendors mentioned development efforts but, writes ACMA, “Such capabilities may become available in the next few years.” Yeah, maybe. Until then, kids, go for it.
Hit it, Bing! You’ve got to accentuate the positive…
Or https: (aka secure sockets) If they can filter that, it makes the internet rather insecure. Or pretty much any of the tunneling technologies. Mmm. secure pron. 🙂 What happens when you drive something underground? Think Prohibition…
that’s a very restrained piece of analysis Stilgherrian.
The original proposal included an opt-out of the “censorship”. What happened to the opt-out options. There does not appear to be any provision for a full opt-out in that report. Without an opt-out or even an opt-in option, it plain and simple mass censorship.
Some action guys – there’s a minefield of disasters waiting to happen in that report.
Perhaps you could also have mentioned the other things that Deep Packet Inspection technology can be used for. Do a search for “NebuAd + Markey” in the USA and the “anti-Phorm” groups in the UK – currently fighting to stop having DPI used for forced advertising and datamining for commercial purposes. NebuAd and Phorm (previously 121Media) are only two of the companies eager to provide forced advertising using this method. Both have a background in major forced/stealthy spyware installations – funny that!!
https as a protocol can only protect you from sites that use it – very few. Even using proxies can’t escape this level of interception at your ISP’s equipment. Think of it as internet wiretapping of everything or, as an analogy, Australia Post opening your mail to insert “tailored” leaflets.
There is no protection at all from ISPs who choose to offset the cost of Senator Fielding’s crusade by using this technology for other purposes. DPI was intended as an aid to switching efficiency to get better network performance. Doesn’t even do that well.
I will eat my hat if some of our greedier ISPs are currently engaged in talks with this type of organisation.
What is the legal position of this sort of interception in Australia? As far as I can find out, we have no protection and the equipment will be sitting at Layer 7 in our ISP’s switching (thanks to Senator Fielding) waiting for the ISPs to use as a supplementary income stream. No you can’t opt-out, even your opt-out is intercepted on each access. Senator Fielding has ensured that the ISPs can’t re-route our data if we choose to opt-out.
In his naive anti-porn campaign, he’s opening the door to things that are far worse for everyone.
Was it 1.4% of Victorians elected this guy? God help him, he has no idea what he is doing!!!