I’m keen to put up a similar site aimed at people who very much want their own family’s internet access to be filtered and who have bought into the idea that Conroy’s filter is going to be the easiest way to do it (and that it will work). It needs to demonstrate in a friendly manner why the mandatory filter is such a bad idea and how alternatives that are voluntary but perhaps government subsidised/regulated could work so much better.

Any bright ideas on exactly what the site should cover? Any volunteers to help me out with the copy-writing side of things?

• The Government campaign against researchers who dared question income management

– “efforts by Minister Macklin and colleagues to undermine a study from the Menzies School of Health Research that casts doubts on the benefits claimed for income management in NT Aboriginal communities.”

• Youth privacy at risk under the Mad Monk

– “A recent legal case in Melbourne, combined with the increased likelihood of an Abbott prime ministership, has resurrected fears about young people’s medical privacy.”

• Privacy? Only criminals want privacy!

– “Don’t worry, though – I’m sure these extraordinary powers will never be abused. They’re just there to be used sparingly and appropriately by nice honest men who are above corruption and greed and the petty failings of us ordinary human beings. Promise. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

• Are we being governed by people who haven't read 1984?

– “Got that? I can’t get any information about the condition of a family member in hospital, but the government wants unchecked access to my browsing history. There you have the privacy laws. Due To Privacy, the individual is hog-tied but the government can do whatever it likes.”

• Don’t worry – I’m sure they’ll use this power for the betterment of mankind

– “It’s interesting to note how corporations get to pick and choose the good parts of being a person. They can own property but can’t go to prison. They can sue you into bankruptcy, which you have to live with for the rest of your life, but if you win a big case against them, you get nothing while they reconstitute their assets and arise, Phoenix-like, under a new name. If you misbehave, you are personally responsible; a corporation jettisons a minor component it says was to blame. There is no ending them. This is the kind of personhood you would choose, if you could. It’s what happens when people making laws about corporations are themselves beholden to corporations.”

• Crikey’s Unaustralian of the Year

– Boo Hiss to Scott Driscoll!

• What can you do to help?

– “ten things you can do to help the EFA’s campaign against the Government’s mandatory Internet filter”

• Secular help for Haiti

– If you want to make sure that all your aid money goes to material wellbeing

• Our ice is disappearing

– “Expect to hear the antiglobal warming crowd crowing over this, and the media misreporting this to sow more doubt about global warming. But the important point to remember is this: the Himalayan ice really is shrinking, and the same thing is happening in Antarctica.

Global warming is real. It’s also getting worse. You can shout, you can scream until you’re red in the face, and you can deny the facts all you want. But facts are pesky: they exist whether you believe in them or not.”

• On the fetish-ization of Haitian orphans (by skylanda)

– “Orphanages are not a neutral thing of good in the world. They contribute to the displacement of children, and detract from real family-building programs. They are a convenient target for charity, the kind of charity that conveniently caters to first-world aesthetics while devaluing real families.

So, resist the temptation. Don’t give to orphanages, and for the love of all things holy, don’t be one of those people who fantasizes about bringing home one of those wide-eyed darlings. Their country needs them: this is Haiti’s opportunity to rebuild, from the ground up, fast and strong. Working men and women are the backbone of that opportunity, but intact families are the meat on those bones. Haitian families need to be made whole, supported in their entirety, fed as units, given a economic future – not seen as another commodity for lonely first-worlders to get their charity-jones fix on.”

• There goes America’s democracy: I never thought I would be living in a dystopian cyberpunk novel!

– “At the root of the Court’s attack on popular democracy — and it is an attack, and it will promote if not guarantee rule by unaccountable corporate oligarchy — is the Court’s infamous 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision that said money equals speech. Left unaddressed in today’s decision — and others — is the absurdity of this formula. When money equals speech, outfits with more money have more speech. And that destroys the very principle of free speech.”

• I’ve got an app for that

– Linkfest: “So, readers and lurkers, what’s going on? How did this week treat you? What posts have you been reading and writing? What are your favourite iPhone apps? What is Pi to the 14th decimal place? Why does one of my kittens make little noises like a velociraptor? It’s Friday and I’m happy to chat.”

• Mari Ness – The Louvre, the gendered gaze, and artistic assumptions

– “When it comes to Egyptian and Assyrian art, the simple truth is, we don’t know. We have no idea if this art was created by men or women or both. Many scholars have assumed that Egyptian tomb artists were male, but these were often the same scholars who assumed that the pyramids were built by slaves, which turns out to be not so true.

It’s entirely possible that each and every piece of Assyrian art at the Louvre was created by a man.

It’s entirely possible that each piece was created by a woman. The final truth is that we don’t know.”

ABC Radio National: Conroy’s clean feed

It’s well-researched, and it explains the issue from square one, right back to Conroy’s fib that Kevin Rudd’s Labor government campaigned on the issue and therefore has a mandate to introduce it. The transcript should be up at the ABC site soon.

“I have heard no one argue that films, television, books and magazine should be a free-for-all. But somehow all of this goes out the window when it comes to the internet.”

There’s an obvious rebuttal to this that even Clive should be able to understand:

“The World Wide Web isn’t like ‘films, television, books, and magazines’. The World Wide Web is like films, television, books, magazines, speeches, lectures, meetings, soapboxes, panels, parties, coffee klatches, crafting circles, political rallies, noisy pubs, arts soirees, jam sessions, sports gatherings, fan conventions, and millions upon millions of people conversing with each other and showing each other stuff.

Unless you think the Government should be mandatorily and automatically filtering each and every one of these things, your analogy fails. Next?”

~~~

In other censorship news, two children’s rights groups have spoken out against the proposed Government filters. In “Children’s welfare groups slam net filters“, the SMH reports that Holly Doel-Mackaway from Save The Children, the largest independent children’s rights agency in the world, said that the filter system is “fundamentally flawed”. James McDougall, director of the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre, agreed:

“This is called a child protection measure yet the vast majority of all serious child abuse does not occur on the internet, it occurs in the home,” said McDougall.

“I take issue with the minister’s perspective that children are themselves the danger in a sense that we have to make this decision for them because they are not capable of making it for themselves – I think there’s very little evidence to support that and plenty of evidence to show that children are responsible decision makers given the skills and information.”

The latest entry is starting to show signs of a “Dangers of Alcohol” story beloved of PSAs everywhere.

My question: Real or fake? Pointless reality tale or mocked up morality fable? Will we see it all culminate in disaster, or fizzle out with a few Beroccas and an aspirin?

~~~

Audrey Apple has been in The Big Apple, and she spotted a violence-against-women PSA on the street.

[image via thesmileinn on flickr]

Audrey writes:

I was heading to meet a friend for dinner the other night when I passed an unexpected advertisement on the side of a bus shelter. Alongside a teenage boy draped in a jumper bearing the words ‘Awaiting Instructions’ was the following: “Eat your vegetables. Finish your homework. Respect women.”

I was astonished.

More about Audrey’s thought on the White Ribbon Foundation study over at her place.

~~~

As noted at Tech Wired Australia, the Greens have LOLcat 403 and 404 pages on their website. This amuses me.

~~~

Latest internet filtering links, as added to my Australian Internet Censorship Links Roundup:

The Guardian (UK): “The big business of net censorship: Clamping down on free speech on the internet has been a lucrative enterprise for software manufacturers“. 17 Nov 2008

ZDNet Australia: “NSW calls Conroy on Euro filter fudge“. 21 Nov 2008

Somebody Think of the Children: “With a public intellectual like this, who needs barbarians?” 22 Nov 2008

Somebody Think of the Children: “7:30 Report tackles filtering again this week“. 23 Nov 2008 (includes video of the 7:30 report programme, which featured many of the key players – except Conroy, who declined!)

Broadbanned Revolution: “A reply from Clive Hamilton – public intellectual“. 23 Nov 2008

Liberal Party of Australia: “Labor’s arbitrary internet filter plan misguided and deeply unpopular“. 25 Nov 2008

Australian IT: “Greens won’t back federal plans for internet filters“. 25 Nov 2008

Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy: “ISP Filtering Live Pilot – Questions and answers“. 25 Nov 2008

Libertus.net: “Statistics Laundering: false and fantastic figures“. 25 Nov 2008

Computerworld: “Gen-Yers will use social networks to bypass Internet filter, critic says” 26 Nov 2008

GetUp Australia: “Save The Net” email petition, Fact Sheet, and blog: “Colin Jacobs: Filtering at Odds with Broadband Revolution.”.

Syd Wakler: “Clive Hamilton & I: Getting Personal about Sex, Lies, Hate & Censorship“. 26 Nov 2008

Stilgherrian: “Live Blog: Internet censorship forum“. 26 Nov 2008

This is part three of a transcription of MMM’s Spoonman show on internet censorship, which aired 13 November 2008. You can download the podcast here.

Previous parts:

Part One, an interview with EFA Chair Dale Clapperton.

Part two, an interview with Steve Dalby from internet service provider Iinet.

~~~~

Spoonman: Now we’re dedicating the first part of the show tonight to, well, effectively wage war on the Government’s plan to censor the internet at the ISP level.

Now, just to be fair to the government here. Just a couple of things I will point out over the course of the next couple of interviews. One of them is some of the other things the Government is spending money on as a part of this package. They’ve allocated 128.5 million dollars for a comprehensive what they call “cybersafety” programme that focuses on a range of things: education, research, ISP filtering (which is what we’ve been talking about tonight, predominantly), and law enforcement.

Now some of the other things in this package include expanding the capacity of the Australian Federal Police child protection operations team to detect and investigate online child abuse. I will talk to an IT forensic investigator about how exactly that might happen shortly, and what are the shortcomings of introducing the kind of system the Government’s talking about, in terms of what alternate ways those producing child pornography might have to mask their whereabouts. They’re also going to add 91 additional AFP members to the online child protection, but that’s not until 2011. So a few years to go.

Obviously the ISP filtering is the bulk of the expenditure. They’re also going to develop education resources and a dedicated helpline, expand the terms of reference for cybersafety consultative working group to include all aspects of cybersafety (more political gobbledygook), and further Australian research. There will also be a Youth Advisory Group to ensure programmes are made relevant and on target. One of those advisory groups that the Government can discreetly ignore whenever they feel like it.

Now, when I mentioned that we were going to do this subject, I got a raft of emails from experts working in the industry who are listeners in their spare time. One of those is Matthew Black, who is an IT professional, and I gotta tell you has more letters after his name – he’s got an MBA, he’s got a Bachelor of Science degree, he’s got all sorts of diplomas, and he is a member, in fact he is a senior member of the Australian Computer Society website, which is www.peregrineit.net. [Ed note - I think something got muddled here!]

His name is Matthew Black. G’day Matthew, hi.

Matthew Black: G’day Spoonman, how are you mate?

SpoonMan: I’m very well, my friend. Now just for – I am not an IT expert by any stretch of the imagination. I get a general gist of how the system works and roughly what goes on. Tell me Matthew, specifically: what are the technical limitations with the plan the Government is putting forward?

MB: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Just before we do, let me point out that I’m speaking not on behalf of the ACS, or on behalf of say [?JU], which is the other peak body in Australia; I’m talking tonight as a private individual with knowledge in this area. I just want to make that quite plain.

SM: I understand, Matthew; no problem.

MB: Look, there’s a number of ways around the system. For starters, with the plan being put forward by the Minister at the moment, they’re going to be filtering only at this stage web traffic. Now web traffic only makes up about a third of the internet traffic that is out there at the moment.

SM: What’s the rest of it, Matthew?

MB: The rest of it is peer-to-peer sharing by say things like Bittorrent; it’s email; it’s encrypted web traffic which is different again; and things of that nature. The whole raft of different bits and pieces that we call the internet. And the World Wide Web – webpages – is only roughly about a third of that.

SM: So there’s a massive capacity for those who do wish to transmit material that the Government would deem inappropriate to do so beyond the scope of their plan.

MB: Oh, certainly. That’s one of the main faults of the plan that the Government’s put forward so far.

SM: OK. What about the effect on the speed of the internet, Matthew? And we need to background this with of course the concept that the Federal Government is spending ten billion dollars of our money to create a high speed broadband network, which they seem intent on choking before it even gets up. What sort of effect do you really think it will have on internet speeds, for example?

MB: Well, the Government’s own pilot report specifies that some of the filters that they’re looking at actually slow down the internet by up to 87%. So – call it 80%, call it four-fifths, that’s the first step. Now that particular filter, the one that slows down the internet the most, is also the one that’s the least effective at the filtering.

SM: What about at the most effective end, Matthew? What sort of slowdown are we talking about there, for the package, the process that manages to catch more of the websites that they’re looking for?

MB: Sorry, I just mixed [...] The filtering system that slows down the internet the most is the one that is the most effective. My fault.

SM: Oh, I see, ok. So – most effective, but slows down. That’s what I was trying to get at, that makes sense.

MB: Sorry, I misspoke. Um, so yeah. Even the most effective filter still lets through roughly two percent of the stuff it should be stopping; and it stops roughly three percent of the stuff that it should not be stopping. To put that in perspective, some estimates put it that there are two billion – that’s billion with a b – two billion websites out there. So three percent of two billion is sixty thousand legitimate websites that will be inappropriate stopped, or blocked, or censored, if you prefer that term. [Ed Note: it's actually sixty million]

SM: And they could be relatively innocent, say health-related websites, for example, that get caught up because of a key word?

MB: Exactly. I mean the classic example everybody uses is sites about breast cancer. Um, the word “breast” obviously can be used both medically and for pornographic reasons, and so that’s one word, one example of a potential site that will be blocked inadvertently.

SM: So clearly Matthew at the end of the day what we’re talking about here, in terms of the optimal system for parents or others concerned about the type of content appearing on their home PC, is a PC based software package like a Net Nanny that has nothing to do with blocking anything at the ISP level?

MB: That’s correct. And what makes this argument so interesting is that if parents want to have a filtered internet feed, that’s available in the market right now. There are ISPs out there that provide this feed. Webshield, for example, is a perfect example. Also, the last government, the Liberal government, made available free of charge – and it’s still free of charge, I might add – a whole bunch of PC based filtering that parents could download from netalert.gov.au. So no matter, if parents want to filter the internet at their own PC, they can do so for free. If they want to subscribe to a filtered internet link, it’s already available. Why is this being forced on the rest of us when there’s no call for it? That’s my question.

SM: And as I understand it, the one the Government developed last year that you’re referring to, there was roughly, if I’m not mistaken, around about 140 000 downloads of that, but subsequent figures indicated that a very small percentage of those people are still actually actively using it.

MB: That’s correct. Um, look, the bottom line is, the point of view I have and a lot of others have, is that there’s actually no problem to deal with in the first place; and there’s certainly no call for the problem to be dealt with. So again I come back to – why are we going down this path? Why are we spending millions of dollars to basically affect the internet in such a way as to make us less competitive in the world market – that’s one effect that the Government doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge – and a whole raft of other issues that are in a similar vein?

SM: Matthew, I very much appreciate your time, Sir, thankyou.

MB: Thanks, Spoonman.

SM: Good on you. That’s Matthew Black, who is an IT professional, speaking as an individual, although he is a member of a number of organisations that I and he mentioned.

Now, I mentioned a couple of email addresses before for Stephen Conroy who is the Senator and Minister for Communications responsible for implementing this plan, I’ll give you his email address shortly. Also Michael Atkinson, who is the Attorney-General in South Australia, who is the stick-in-the-mud at this stage for the creation of an R category for computer games.

~~~~~

But right now, I want to talk to a licensed investigator who specialises in IT forensics and security. I might have given you the impression before that he’s actually doing the forensic work chasing paedophiles. Obviously the police do that. But there are people who work doing exactly the same kind of thing that Adam Darbyshire does, who’s the director of eNinja, who have to preserve this kind of evidence discovered on computers.

Adam, welcome to the show, thankyou.

Adam Darbyshire: Thanks, Spoonie. Long time listener, first time being called. [laughs]

Spoonman: [laughs] Good on yer, mate. I appreciate you contacting the programme, too. Can you just explain quickly what an IT forensics and security expert does?

AD: Well, from the forensics point of view, the idea is to track down and find any evidence which can prove a case, be it in my area, which is civil cases, usually interlinked with property theft; or in the case of criminal investigation you’ve got the police who now search computers these days for murder investigations, or anything really, any major crime, they’ll do an investigation of a computer, if there’s one there.

SM: OK. Now what is the real risk in terms of child pornography for example, should this planned policy get up? What’s likely to happen? Because obviously the system as I understand it will only block websites. OK. Now is that likely to cause maybe some producers of child pornography who are currently using websites, to use some of the more clandestine aspects of the internet to continue doing what they’re doing?

AD: Well, in my understanding of everything at the moment, as far as that world goes, is that very few images, videos of that nature are actually on websites. As well as, the filter as it’s designed, only targets the major website ports – so they’re port 80, port 8080, and 8010, which web servers run on. Most of the nasties out there on the internet aren’t actually on web servers, they’re on different platforms like peer-to-peer mostly, IRC has got a little bit here and there, [...] on a few things, so it’s not really going to have much effect whatsoever.

SM: OK. Now, would it be fair to say that some of the child porn networks, if I can use that phrase, they are using encrypted protocols to transmit their material from one place to another?

AD: Some definitely would be using it. However the average person won’t have to worry about that as far as they’re concerned, they think “oh, maybe just once in a while, I’ll never get caught”, but thankfully they’re pretty stupid. So they usually do get caught pretty easily. But encryption is definitely a very large problem out there for these sorts of issues.

SM: Now am I correct in suggesting that if – and I won’t mention specifically, but I am aware of some encryption protocols that actually prevent the various law enforcement agencies, including the Australian Federal Police, to monitor and observe what they’re up to?

AD: Oh, there are heaps out there that do it. There are lots of programs out there which are designed to do this stuff, you can use some of the really old technology of the internet as well to hide stuff on, and to be perfectly honest the police are at this moment incapable of breaking through those encryptions to find what they’re looking for.

SM: One of the things I commented on when I first heard about this plan was the fairly obvious outcome, which is that preventing people that obviously have – sickos, for want of a better phrase – we would be far better off, would we not, putting the 128 million dollars that the Government has allocated in total to this programme, into greater law enforcement in a co-ordinated international fashion, rather than trying to prevent say end-users, if I can use that term, from accessing child pornography? We might stop people from looking at these sorts of images and videos, but it’s not going to save one child or arrest one producer of this material, is it?

AD: Oh, definitely. All the money which is being put toward the filter could easily be put toward different groups, like many of the Australian investigating groups, like Vicpol, the Feds, New South Wales has got a computer crimes department as well. They could really use the income, sorry, the cash from the budget to hire new staff, get better equipment… they really are screaming out for all this extra money.

SM: And it occurs to me that we’d probably have, at least at a global level, better outcomes if there was more co-ordination in this area, and certainly a lot more resources and hard cold cash thrown at it. It just strikes me as spending a huge amount of money to try to prevent people from looking at something that is being produced – children are being abused in the process of the production of that material – and there is, ok, notwithstanding the fact that some of the moneys allocated by the Federal Government will go to an increase in policing, it seems to me that at the end of the day the overwhelming amount of cash will go to the administration of the filter rather than active police action to shut these people down.

AD: Yeah, um, it’s – what is it, 44 million dollars, a figure I saw thrown around? I think that was just one year only.

SM: Yes, that’s right, that’s one year only, and of course you’ve got the maintenance of ACMA, you’ve got the maintenance of the blacklist, there’s a whole bunch of factors in here that are costly, I would argue.

AD: Yeah, and there are a lot better ways to implement a filter like that, which won’t affect the internet at all, than throwing 44 million dollars away per year towards creating some filter, when that money can really better be spent in a lot of other places. As you mentioned before, policing, international co-operation, that always works. There’s been a few major stings in the last year which have been the direct results of international co-operation.

SM: So it is definitely doable if the money and the resources are put to the effort?

AD: It’s never 100% doable.

SM: No of course not. But if we can save a handful of children around the world from being abused in such a fashion?

AD: Oh yeah, then it’s definitely worth it. I mean, if we can save one kid then throwing that 44 million dollars is definitely worth it. But, um, just towards police departments would be a lot better than trying to block the average sicko from looking at something.

SM: I completely agree with you, Adam. We’ve got a pretty crappy phone line here, which is unfortunate, so I’ll leave you there. But I do appreciate your time, sir.

Director of eNinja is Adam Darbyshire, and he is a licensed investigator who specialises in IT forensics and security. Let me just make the point I’m trying to make here.

The government is spending this money to ostensibly – and I use the term quite deliberately – ostensibly stop people from looking at child pornography. It’s painfully obvious that they might be able to prevent that 100% in an ideal world, ok, even if they could, it’s technically impossible – but if they could, it is not going to stop the images being produced. It will not stop the producers producing more of it. It will not stop the abuse of one child anywhere. All it will do is stop people from looking at the images, and again, as we’ve already discovered throughout the course of the discussions this evening, it’s likely, this type of net filter here, is likely to cause people to use encrypted protocols (when I say “people”, paedophiles and child pornography producers) to use encrypted software, encrypted programs, to mask what they’re up to. To hide even deeper inside the internet than many of them are hiding now.

The Spoonman on MMM last night hosted a discussion of Conroy & Rudd’s internet censorship plans. You can download the podcast here.

Here’s a transcript of the first part of the show, with EFA Chair Dale Clapperton. (errors are mine, bold are where words were spoken with particular emphasis or to pick out dot points). Stay tuned for more.

[click here for Part Two: MMM's Spoonman with Iinet's Steve Dalby.; and Part Three, with Matthew Black and Adam Darbyshire.]

~~~

Spoonman: Tonight, dear listener, we go to war. It’s ironic that just two days ago we paused to remember those who died fighting wars to protect our freedoms and our democracy, our rights to choose. But today the threat to those values and rights is not from any external force – no foreign country – but from our own Federal Government. In this case the battlefield is the internet, the trenches are our ISPs, and our only available weapon is your home computer. I’ll be urging you to take up the fight during tonight’s show.

Now as you may or may not be aware, the Rudd government set aside 128.5 million dollars to filter or block internet content that is, under Australian law, illegal. The Government claims the plan’s designed to prevent Australians from accessing child pornography. But in reality, once the issues have all played out, both technically and politically, it’s entirely possible that the bans would affect anything the Government deemed inappropriate, and we, the internet users of Australia, wouldn’t have a clue what we’re not able to access. It is possible that the blacklist that the Government’s going to draw up would apply to porn, websites advocating changes to voluntary euthanasia or indeed drug laws, maybe online gaming sites. Bloggers and independent journo’s sites could also be blocked, just to mention a few. And for those of you who get around the lack of an R18 classification for videogames by downloading them from the net, you’re gonna find those sites on the Government blacklist as well.

Now the blacklist of websites will be held by the Australian Communication and Media Authority, otherwise known as ACMA. It’s rumoured to contain around 10 000 websites. The list will be supplied to the 400-odd internet service providers; they’ll be forced to prevent you from accessing the sites on that list. The Cybersafety Plan, as the Government calls it, is in reality nothing more than a censorship of the internet.

Despite noises from the now Federal Communications Minister Senator Stephen Controy, during the last election campaign, there will be no capacity to opt out of the scheme. Instead there’s going to be two levels of censorship. The first is the blanket ban of sites the Government determines to be inappropriate. The second level will allow individual users to block access to ordinary porn sites, for example, to stop kids looking at them. Critics of the plan are making the following points:

* The Government simply has not made a case for the need for such a censorship of the internet.

* We already have the capacity to download free Net Nanny-type software at the user end to prevent children from accessing pornography. It cost 84 million dollars of your money to develop, was hacked in thirty minutes by a sixteen-year-old, and the takeup rate so far has been pathetically low. Most of the people who did decide to download it no longer use it.

* IT experts and the Government’s own figures show that internet speed, should this plan get up, will be reduce by at least two percent at best, and up to 80% at worst. Remember, Kevin Rudd’s Labor Government is spending another ten billion dollars of your money to develop a high speed broadband network, but seems intent on sabotaging it before it’s even established.

Those same experts also point to a number of flaws in the plan. For example:

* Peer to peer protocols, which account for about sixty percent of internet traffic, can’t be blocked under the Government’s plan.

* Other encryption protocols are already available which can render users invisible to any authorities including the Australian Federal Police. No doubt the disgusting child porn producers will be using these protocols already.

* Critics also claim that this censorship will put Australia in the same league as China, Iran, and Saudia Arabia.

So tonight, I’m going to dedicate a good slab of the show to finding out exactly what’s going on, and why we need to take a stand and fight this attack on our so far uncensored internet. In the interest of fairness, I made a number of approaches to the Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to come on the show tonight and explain his position. Late this afternoon I received a reply from his media advisor: “The Senator is not available to talk.” Not surprising, given how low-key the Government wants to keep this issue. But his reply did contain a background briefing paper, which is more damning than enlightening. So tonight, I’m going to speak to those spearheading the campaign to stop this stupidity, and then I’ll open up for a reaction from you, the internet users of Australia. Because tonight, gang, we are going to war.

The not-for-profit organisation spearheading the anti-censorship campaign is Electronic Frontiers Australia. Their web address, and I urge you to look at it, is efa.org.au. As I say, I urge you to check the website, make your comments, even make a donation, so they can take the fight up to Canberra on this one.

I have the Chair of the Electronic Frontiers Australia on the line now. Dale Clapperton, welcome to Triple M.

Dale Clapperton: G’day.

SM: Now the Government’s couched this internet censorship plan in very emotive terms, haven’t they, to prevent the distribution of child pornography online. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?

DC: It’s much more than that. Playing the child pornography card is something that the Government always trots out when this is on the agenda. It’s a fairly low and fairly transparent attempt to shut down debate on it. Essentially, they like to label anybody who’s against this as a child pornographer or paedophile. It’s pretty low, and it really is a demonstration of how weak their arguments are.

SM: There have been allegations published in the media recently suggesting the Government’s gone to the extent of trying to gag critics, alleging that anyone who disagrees somehow supports child pornography – which is just outrageous, isn’t it?

DC: It is. The Government, via one of the Minister’s media advisors, actually tried to exert political pressure on the employer of a bloke called Mark Newton, who’s been speaking out against this scheme. He’s a fairly technical person with Internode, a major Australian ISP. So he’s probably one of the people in Australia who’s best placed to be able to know that as a strictly technical matter, what the Government are proposing to do is just farcical.

SM: He has written a letter to his local Member of Parliament. Are you aware of whether he’s got a reply to that or not?

DC: I couldn’t tell you, off the top of my head, but so far what seems to be happening is that everybody who’s writing to their local members about this, or at least where those members are part of the Labor Party, they’re just getting a strictly form letter response. It’s completely canned, and it really doesn’t address any specific issues that the people have raised with the Members.

SM: So when you say “form letters”, it’s – “thank you for your reply, we’ll have a look at it and get back to you in due course” kind of thing?

DC: Well, it’s “thankyou for your reply, and here is two pages of spin and propaganda on how we’re saving the children and making the internet safe for everybody”.

SM: Mm-hmm, which is basically what I got by way of a background briefing paper from the Minister’s office today. Now we were originally told during the election campaign last year that we would have the ability to opt out of this filtering plan. That’s not the case now, is it?

DC: It’s very definitely not the case. So either they were lying to us then, or they’ve backflipped in between then and now. There is, as you said in your introduction, going to be a level to blacklisting to this system that adults will not be able to opt out of, and as much as the Minister likes to defend this scheme by saying that it’s either all child pornography or it’s all what he likes to call “illegal content”, that’s quite simply not the case. If you look at the Government’s own figures, for example, for the last annual report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, nearly half of the items that they’ve put on the blacklist in that year weren’t child pornography. They were just everyday run-of-the-mill adult material.

SM: And there are better ways to block access to inappropriate sites, and they’re already available, and that’s the type of Net Nanny software you download onto your home PC.

DC: Absolutely. It’s a useful tool for parents who want this type of thing to help them control what their children can see or do online. It’s not a perfect solution; supervision is obviously going to be part of the solution, as is education. But it’s available for people who want it, and we really don’t see a case for shoving it down the throats of everybody else.

SM: Is there any way we can verify exactly what websites are contained on this blacklist?

DC: No. The blacklist itself is super-secret. Back in 2001, shortly after the Commonwealth Government started maintaining this blacklist, although not forcing anybody to actually block access to what’s on it, EFA made a Freedom of Information request to the Government to try and find out the type of sites which were going on the blacklist. The Government denied the FOI request. We had to appeal it to the Minister of Appeals tribunal, where we ultimately lost. And along the way, the Government actually changed the FOI Act to make these types of documents specifically exempt. So it is, in reality, a secret blacklist.

Even when the Government bans or refuses classifications to films or computer games, that is actually on a publicly searchable database: you can get at it on the internet. So then you can see what it is you’re not allowed to see. Once this scheme goes into place, there’s just going to be a secret blacklist of websites you’re not allowed to see, and you don’t know what they are, and you don’t know why, and there’s no appeal.

SM: What sort of other sites, from your investigation into this issue, might be under threat from the censor?

DC: Well, on the blacklist as it currently stands, we believe that there’s a large number of X-rated websites. So that’s just ordinary, run-of-the-mill adult porn, the type of stuff that in some States and Territories in Australia you can walk into a shop and buy; and in other places, you can get via mail order from Canberra for example. So just regular, ordinary, run-of-the-mill porn. There is a decent amount of that on the blacklist. There’s also a smaller amount of R-rated content; that is, content which has been classified as inappropriate for children, because of sex or nudity.

SM: I guess there’s also the capacity for the Government, given the content of the list will be secret – for example, they could blacklist websites that feature things like changes to voluntary euthanasia to laws, changes or proposals to change illicit drug laws, those kinds of things – essentially anything the Government doesn’t want to have to deal with in an online capacity, that contradicts their line, could go on the blacklist, and we, the population, have no idea that that’s happened, or indeed what they are?

DC: There’s a technical capacity to do that, and really what we’ve seen to far is that a lot of the special interest groups in this debate are starting to come out of the woodwork. Labor needs the support of the five Greens Senators, plus Senator Fielding from Family First, and the Independent from South Australia, Senator Nick Xenophon, to get any legislation through the Senate, if the Coalition votes against it.

SM: I wanted to do the politics in a little while, Dale, after we’ve walked through some of the technical issues. Let me just walk through the process here. So the blacklist, once it’s created, and it could contain anything up to as I say ten thousand odd websites. That will have to be given to the 400-odd ISPs around the country, won’t it?

DC: Yes, it will. And it’s without a doubt going to leak, so to the extent that the blacklist does have child pornography sites on it – the blacklist is inevitable going to leak, they will have to distribute it to accomplish what they’re setting out to do. And then the Australian Government is essential going to be distributing a list of sites that contain child pornography.

SM: And as we’ve already seen, when there are leaks of sensitive Government documents, the person doing the leaking is often the subject of a witch-hunt, and the person receiving the leaked documents, by way of a journalist, can find themselves in front of a court.

DC: That is usually the case, but what invariably also happens in those cases is that the leaked material itself doesn’t actually get suppressed. It’ll end up on Wikileaks, or any number of the other websites outside Australia, outside the control of Australian laws. And once it’s leaked, there will be no getting rid of it.

SM: How practical will it be, from the Government’s point of view or indeed ACMA’s point of view, the Communications and Media Authority? Because they’re going to have to constantly update this list, won’t they, because those who find themselves on the banned list for whatever reason will simply change URL and away you go.

DC: Well, that is correct, of course, to the extent that they know they’ve ended up on the blacklist, because the Government doesn’t tell anybody about what’s on the blacklist…

SM: But I’m assuming the list will be leaked and publicly available daily …

DC: Once it’s leaked, of course people who want to get around it will simply change their domain name; so the Government will be having to try and hit a moving target in that respect.

SM: Now, is there any suggestion here of transparency? Do we know what the process will be in order to determine what websites will be on that blacklist and why?

DC: We know what’s currently on the blacklist. We don’t know what’s going to be on the blacklist once Labor implement this scheme. Because they’re sending all kinds of equivocal and mixed messages. In the Senate earlier this week, the Senator was talking about “unwanted” content as opposed to “illegal” content. So we don’t know what the blacklist is going to look like in future. But as far as the process: currently, content has to be submitted to what used to be the Office of Film and Literature Classification, and is now the Classification Board. They pretend that that piece of content is actually a film, such as you might see in a cinema, and they classify it according to the same rules. And if it’s classified either as “Refused Classification”, that is banned, or classified X, or classified R and it’s not protected by a Government-approved access control scheme, it will go on the blacklist.

SM: How easy will it be for users who are arguable far more net-savvy than me to get around the system? What sort of protocols are available to become effectively invisible as an internet user in Australia?

DC: It will be pretty trivial to accomplish that. What we’ve seen in recent years, where the number of countries with frankly fairly oppressive internet regulation schemes go – and I’m talking about countries such as China, Burma, and so forth here – countries which Australia will probably be joining if this goes ahead: people have developed tools that people in those countries can use to get around the schemes. And they work quite well. The same type of tools will be used in Australia. But even if you ignore those kinds of specialist tools, people will still be able to get “inappropriate” material via peer-to-peer services, or via email, or via anything encrypted. Which of course the internet filters won’t be able to filter – the best that they can do is attempt to block it entirely – which would break things such as online banking.

SM: Now, I’m quoting here directly from the media briefing paper that was sent to me from Senator Conroy’s office this afternoon. This is in response to a Q&A.

The question is “Has the plan been achieved in any other liberal democracies?”

The answer is “ISP filtering of this sort of material has already been implemented in countries such as the UK, Sweden, Norway, and Canada (amongst others).”

That is a lie, isn’t it?

DC: It is a lie. In those countries, only some ISPs do blacklisting. They don’t actually filter content, they only apply a blacklist. It’s done voluntarily, by not all of the ISPs, and that blacklist is only supposed to target child pornography. What the Government are proposing will be mandatory for all ISPs, and it is going to target a hell of a lot more than just child porn.

SM: OK. Some of the technical downsides of the plan as I understand them:

* Speeds will be affected

* Some innocent sites will be blocked

* Some not-so-innocent sites are going to be missed.

Is that a reasonable assessment?

DC: It’s a very reasonable assessment, and in fact it’s borne out by the results of the Government’s very own trials that they carried out earlier in the year. They tested six different filtering products. We’re not permitted to know exactly which six products they tested. But from the results that they released, only one of those products had anything approaching an acceptable speed impact, and that caused a two percent slowdown. The others were all into the double digits, and they averaged about 30 or 40% speed reduction from the maximum capacity of the network. And on top of that, they all let through several percent of material that they ought to have blocked access to, and they all blocked an even higher percentage of material that was legitimate, and they shouldn’t have blocked.

It’s looked as though, on the basis of those numbers and assuming that they carry over into the real world, that about one in twenty websites could be inadvertently blocked under the type of filtering system they’re proposing.

SM: Let’s have a look at politics, if I can.

DC: Absolutely.

SM: I notice the Coalition’s Bruce Billson, who’s the Shadow Communications spokesperson, has been virtually absent from this debate. How do you think the Liberals are going to vote on this one – the Coalition?

DC: Well, the public policy of the Coalition on this issue is that they don’t think it can be accomplished. Almost in their exact words, they’re saying that they remain to be convinced that it’s technologically feasible; and even if it’s feasible, they’re not entirely sure that it’s a good idea. They’re really waiting to see what the results of the live trial the Commonwealth is trying to enlist ISPs into carrying out in the next couple of months are.

SM: I’ll be talking to a senior executive from one ISP who has jumped on board a little later in the show. Now if – obviously, if the Coalition decide to vote with this, in the Senate particularly, its’ a fait accompli, isn’t it?

DC: It is. There’s nothing that could be done to stop it in that case. It would sail through both Houses of Parliament, and the Australian citizens, really their only recourse would be at the next election, when I’m quite sure they would make their feelings heard in a clear and unambiguous fashion.

SM: Judging from some of the postings on your website I can well understand that. Now, if the government though has to start horse-trading in the Senate in order to get this legislation through. Assuming the Coalition votes against it, then Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding – Xenophon the anti-gambling Senator who is from South Australia, and Steve Fielding from Family First – if they have to start horse-trading with these two, we could find all porn and all online gaming sites on that banned list, could we not?

DC: It’s entirely possible. Those two Senators have shown that they are not afraid to shoot down Labor’s legislation. Senator Fielding killed Fuelwatch just yesterday by voting against it in the Senate, so assuming Labor need the support of those two Senators to get it through the Senate, and they want their own little additions to the scheme, it’s entirely possible that material that those Senators want blocked… and remembering of course that Senator Fielding in particular is from Family First, a fairly right-wing conservative Christian party – it’s entirely possible that all porn could end up on the blacklist.

SM: He’s already stated publicly that he would like to see hardcore porn on that banned list, so he’s already making those kind of noises and the horse-trading hasn’t even started.

Now while I’ve got you Dale Clapperton, the Chair of EFA, you’re also campaigning, like I have for years on this show, to get an R18 rating for videogames. What effect is the lack of an R18 category having?

DC: Well, the lack of an R classification for computer games means that anything that’s stronger than MA15+ is automatically banned, that is, it’s refused classification. When you put that in combination with this blacklisting scheme, what it’s going to mean is that any computer game that’s stronger than MA15+, and I’m thinking about computer games such as the overseas versions of Grand Theft Auto for example, will probably end up on the blacklist as soon as somebody complains about them, because they are technically banned in Australia.

SM: Now, obviously young people who want access to those games have been able to download them from the net, so the sites they download them from end up on the blacklist, and therefore you won’t be able to get access to them. OK.

Now, the Government’s asked for expressions of interest from ISPs to trial the filtering over the next few weeks, as you indicated. Telstra Bigpond and Optus have not yet committed to it. Iinet has, but only to prove to the government that it’s unworkable at the technical level. Have you got any reaction to that? Should the ISPs at this point in time take a stand and say, “We’re just simply not going to play with this”?

DC: We don’t really have a position on whether the ISPs should do that or not. If all the ISPs refused to play along with the Government’s agenda on this, there’s a very real risk that they would just go ahead and do it anyhow. If at least some ISPs do participate, and the numbers do in fact show that it’s not workable, then that is probably hard evidence that might cause the Coalition to oppose it. So it’s not an entirely bad thing that ISPs are doing this; however, we would not want to see them forcing the filtering onto customers who haven’t volunteered for it.

SM: I should point out that Iinet is only getting involved to do just that – to make the case to the Government, and presumably to the Opposition, that this is a really stupid idea.

Now, just in conclusion, Dale, what’s the best way for ordinary Australian internet users to fight this stupidity, and I guess a hideous waste of taxpayer money as well?

DC: Well, it is, and the best way that they can do it is simply by telling their elected representatives how pissed off they are about this. Lots of people have been doing that already; we need lots more. People need to find out who their Federal Member of Parliament is, and who their Federal Senators are for their State; they need to get onto them, send them letters, send them emails, call their offices, try and get appointments to tell them face to face if you can. Really, if Labor can be convinced that the vast majority of Australians don’t want this, and I’m quite sure that that’s the case, it might cause them to drop it.

SM: Do you think that the Government is in any sort of mood to listen to the desires of the Australian people, or are they determined to push ahead with this.

DC: They are determined to push ahead with it. It is something that they have promised to do before the election, although as we’ve already discussed they were promising something quite different.

SM: Indeed, and I reported at the time that that’s what they were considering, and didn’t worry too much about it on the basis that there would be an opt-out clause for the whole thing for the average internet user in Australia.

DC: Which of course is no longer the case, but notwithstanding that what they’re proposing now bears no resemblance to what they were saying they would do if they got into power back then, they are saying that they have a mandate to do this and they’re going to go ahead and do it. I am, however, hopeful that notwithstanding their determination to do it, that they will have an eye on the next election, and if this does cause half of the damage that’s being suggested it could by EFA and others, that they will realise that if this blows up in their face it will be something that will come back to haunt them at the next Federal election. And it could quite conceivably cost them power.

SM: Is there any capacity for court challenges, Dale?

DC: It’s not impossible. It’s something that we’ve been looking into. Doing so would be hampered by the fact that Australian doesn’t have a Bill of Rights. We don’t really have any kind of guarantee of free speech except for a pretty limited implied right in the Constitution.

SM: That’s correct, yup.

DC: And that only really applies to speech on political and government matters. If the scheme, once it was set up, was in fact blocking access to political and government related material, it’s quite conceivable that a court challenge could succeed. I’m aware of at least one filtering programme or service which is sold by an overseas company that, as an example, blocks access to the website of the registered Australian political party One Nation, because it claims it’s “hate speech”.

SM: Interesting. Dale Clapperton, I very much appreciate your time. He is the EFA Chairman. Thank you sir.

DC: Happy to help.

SM: OK. Now I urge you to log on to the website: efa.org.au. They’re happy to take donations. It’s a not for profit organisation set up specifically to represent the interests of the average internet user in Australia, under the guise of freedom of speech and all those other freedoms that so many died for so many years ago for the rest of us.

~~~~

Part Two: MMM’s Spoonman with Iinet’s Steve Dolby.

Part Three, with Matthew Black and Adam Darbyshire

Dale Clapperton, Chair of the Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), appeared briefly on Channel Seven’s Morning Show today, discussing internet censorship.

I didn’t manage to record the introduction, as I was caught by surprise and there was a chainsaw buzzing outside my window; but it involved the host (Larry Emdur) talking about how the system has been compared to censorship regimes in Iran, China and other countries. They then talked about a poll that the Morning Show ran, and moved into the interview.

Edit 29 Oct 08 7:30 pm: Now with video:

Transcript:

Larry Emdur: Making news this morning: The Federal government will make internet censorship compulsory for all Australians. The Daily Telegraph says controversial websites on euthanasia and anorexia could be banned, and that would put our level of ‘net censorship alongside places like China, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.

Kylie Gillies: A poll on Sunrise this morning asked: ‘Should the government censor the internet?’, now 20% said ‘Yes’, and a whopping 80% said ‘No’.

Dale Clapperton is from Electronic Frontiers Australia, that’s a group dedicated to protecting online freedom. He joins us now from Brisbane. Good morning to you, Dale.”

Dale Clapperton: Good morning.

Kylie: Obviously you don’t think we need compulsory internet censorship for all Australians?

Dale: No. We’ve had the internet in Australia for about thirty years now. At various stages along the way, people have raised doomsday scenarios about what was going to happen if the internet was not censored. Most recently back in 1999, when the Howard government attempted legislation along these lines.

But what we really see now is people who have grown up with the internet understand it, understand its dangers. People who grew up with the internet as children now have children of their own, and they’re quite capable of making informed decisions about it.

Larry: Dale, do you have children?

Dale: No, I don’t.

Larry: Yeah, I’m just wondering: Do you think we need any kind of internet censorship at all?

Dale: Internet censorship for parents that want it is already available in the form of software that can be installed on their computers. It’s a useful tool that parents can use to control and monitor their children’s online access, in conjunction with appropriate supervision. This software is already available free of charge from the Commonwealth government, and has been for quite some time. We don’t see that there’s a case for forcing it on everybody at an ISP level.

Larry: Dale, my understanding of that is that people around the world spend their days and nights working out clever ways of getting around that. So kids can get round those pretty simply.

Dale: There are ample ways to get around these types of censorship systems; and, for that matter, children enjoy pushing boundaries. It’s something that they’re good at. And when children have got the degree of technical sophistication that they do these days, it will be fairly trivial to get around any kind of censorship system that the government tries to enforce. The only alternative would be making the system so restricted that it would really be unusable.

Kylie: OK. So why do you think the government is pushing for this, Dale?

Dale: Several reasons. First and foremost, they went to the election last year promising that they were going to do this, and now they’re determined to follow through.

There’s also the issue that the government needs the support of the Greens Senators and Senators Fielding and Xenophon, who’s an independent, and from Family First, to get any controversial legislation through the Senate. Senator Fielding from Family First has already said that, for example, he wants access to certain adult material, which would be most pornographic websites on the Internet, blocked for all Australians. And Senator Xenophon, who has an anti-gambling agenda, has said that he wants the system used to block gambling websites. So we’re really just seeing the start of the special interest groups weighing in on this debate with demands for their particular pet peeve to be banned.

Larry: Dale, thanks for your opinion this morning, appreciate your time.

Dale: Thankyou.

~~~

More: Sunrise has also tackled this issue, though, it seems, not with anyone who knows anything about it. They interview someone from Marie Claire and someone from Sky News, drum up tired culture wars instead of actually looking at the issue, and attempt to get a laugh by asking a woman why she doesn’t do the news naked.

Yet their audience is still voting 75% against internet censorship. Video here.

~~~

For background and further reading, see my censorship links roundup here.

[edited 24/25/27 Oct 2008 to update Further Reading list and keep the links roundup up to date.]

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has been trying to extract information on the new internet filtering plans in Senate Estimates committee.

Here’s the transcript, via the Greens website.

My notes:

* Internet filtering funding has been allocated $44.2 million over four years.

* Real life trials have still not commenced. Labor are “consulting” with “a wide range of ISPs”, the Internet Industry Association and the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association. They have contracted with a testing group called NX Test Laboratories to design a live pilot.

* Conroy confirmed that they are looking at two tiers, one mandatory, and one opt-out.

* Conroy thinks that the commentary by people concerned about internet censorship is “hysterical” (darnit, is my womb out of control yet again?)

Senator Conroy- Notwithstanding some of the commentary that borders on hysterical at times that you have possibly seen, we are just slowly and methodically working our way through and gathering information through this trial.

Senator LUDLAM-Some of the comments that I have seen did not approach hysterical at all. I think there have been some quite well thought through concerns.

- Senator Ludlam pushed on overblocking and underblocking benchmarks, and was shut down. The government hasn’t even begun to think about such things, apparently, and refuses to consider it at this stage:

Senator LUDLAM – What are the odds that the filtering software in that case is going to start knocking out content inadvertently and start returning fairly serious false positives?

Senator Conroy-Underblocking and overblocking are obviously issues. That is why we are engaged in conversation with the sector about it-to specifically try to minimise this sort of impact.

Senator LUDLAM-So what are your benchmarks or what is acceptable?

Senator Conroy-We are just at the very early stages. You are actually jumping ahead. I can understand that if you have been reading some of the wild and-

Senator LUDLAM-Some of it is not so wild, Minister.

Senator Conroy-enthusiastic commentary that I keep seeing both in blogs and in the media. But we are actually only in the early stages and we have committed to consult with the sector to work through these very issues. We have not set some of those benchmarks. What we are seeing is what is the impact, but we have not said, ‘Right, three per cent is acceptable and seven per cent is not acceptable.’ We actually have not done that.

Three percent? Seven percent? Now there’s a slip that reveals what he’s thinking. Not 0.01 percent or 0.001 percent, Senator Conroy? Three to seven percent is what immediately springs to mind? This is going to be a colossal disaster.

- Senator Conroy does not know whether euthanasia information and pro-anorexia information will fall under the mandatory filter.

Conroy’s responses on the matter are contradictory:

Senator Conroy-As I said, we are enforcing current law and ACMA determine this based on the existing law. [...] We do not believe that you should be able to opt in to child porn. I am sure you do not either.

Senator LUDLAM-What about, for another controversial example, euthanasia related material?

Senator Conroy-You would have to ask them whether that falls within their definition. There are calls for, as an example, banning pro anorexia websites. Again, it falls into that sort of category. So there are calls for a whole range of material to be included in the black list, but I do not think that they fall inside the existing definitions under the law.

[...]

Senator LUDLAM-[...] The black list, as the minister is rightly pointing out, can become very grey depending on how expansive the list becomes-euthanasia material, politically related material, material about anorexia. There is a lot of distasteful stuff on the internet.

Senator Conroy-Existing provisions under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 are able to deal with suicide related material that provides detailed instruction or promotion of matters of crime or violence. It is an existing law. [...]

Existing provisions under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 are able to deal with suicide related material that provides detailed instruction or promotion of matters of crime or violence, and such material would be refused classification and regarded as prohibited content currently.

* Senator Ludlam pushed Conroy on a very basic issue, the issue of where the software would reside, and Conroy refused to answer, on the grounds that they were testing an “objective, not a particular technology”. They are looking at both software and hardware solutions. Hardware based solution seems to be some sort of “black box” technology.

Dr Pelling: Typically a hardware filtering device will be a computer-sized box, for example, which will have built into it an underlying software platform that will assess the internet stream going through it against, for example, an extensive black list or a series of categories of sites which are often developed by the service provider. They will filter the internet stream against those sites which are continually updated. When we say ‘hardware versus software’, the hardware platforms would be typically an integrated platform in a small box which would be plugged in and can be customised to a certain extent.

* Senator Conroy on international consultation and “wild claims”:

This is not a problem you can solve with one jurisdiction. The internet is international. So we have been encouraging greater cooperation between law enforcement agencies across the world so that we can try, where possible, to combine black lists. That will stop us reinventing the wheel, so to speak. So different jurisdictions have a range of different black lists. They have not been coordinated at this stage.

[...]

When you say ‘block content from leaving the ISP’, this is to work with the ISPs-and that is why we have been consulting so much with them-to minimise any impact on the actual operation of the net. That is why we are going through the trials. We are going through the laboratory trial that you heard about and we are going to go down the path of a real world trial, because we have committed to consult extensively with the sector to ensure that we do not have the impact that some wild claims make.

* An exchange worth reading:

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.

Senator LUDLAM-No. That is why I was interested in asking about the law enforcement side of it as well.

Senator Conroy-No, we are working both angles at it. We are just trying to use technology to enforce the existing laws.

Senator LUDLAM-I am just wondering if I can put these questions to you without being accused of being pro child pornography. That would assist.

Senator Conroy-I was wondering if I could get the questions without being accused of being the Great Wall of China.

Senator LUDLAM-I have not-

Senator Conroy-Oh, okay. As long as you are allowed to have value in your questions I will have no value in my answers.

Scott Ludlam = my new hero. Go write a note to your local Greens, people. Get involved. Here’s the No Clean Feed link again.

~~~

References and Further Reading:

Hoyden About Town: The Great Firewall of Australia., 31 Dec 2007

EFA clean-feed site