Comments on: High-level report which found filtering flawed kept secret

By: University of Sydney filtering seminar - April 3rd - Somebody Think Of The Children

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:52:52 +0000

[...] guys. This popped up on the radar today: Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt will speak at a free University of Sydney seminar on the Government’s Internet filtering [...]

By: Mickzie

Mickzie — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:56:44 +0000

(sigh) Of course, any filtering scheme that may be introduced will be trivially bypassed. How? By purchasing an encrypted VPN service from a US ISP. Costs AUS$60 per year (software is free and open-source, Mac+Windows+Linux). Adds around a 20% overhead to your monthly data quota. Overall, it slows down access to Asia-Pac sites, but actually improves speed for some US + Euro sites.

Can this be blocked? Yes it can, but only if Conroy violates his own stated “rules” and adds the IP addresses of legitimate, inoffensive ISPs to his “blacklist” (thereby inviting legal action). Furthermore, once every citizen has their own encrypted SSL VPNs, the job of detecting real criminal activity will become that much harder. Oh, and of course any 10+ year old is capable of setting up such a VPN.

I’ve pointed the above out to the terminally-intransigent Conroy and Rudd, but the baptismal water seems to be blinding their eyes.

By: Icaria

Icaria — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 04:33:45 +0000

I’ve not read anything which indicates that 10k is anything other than an arbitrary number for testing purposes, nor would it be a magic threshold number at which point the system ‘breaks’.

By: Phillip Molly Malone

Phillip Molly Malone — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:55:55 +0000

@Icaria
Isn’t the (Australian) list like 1400 now? I don’t know that they have said it definitely would grow, I thought the point was they were told any more the 10K would kill the system and that’s why they are testing it.

By: Icaria

Icaria — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:26:53 +0000

Alright so I’ve finally found some details on the UK system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_system)#Technical_implementation

It’s basically a two-pass process, where all traffic only passes through a preliminary ‘filter’ with a more basic list of suspect IPs. So you wouldn’t likely see a network performance drop in the range of 80%, however, the total URL list in the UK is supposedly in the upper range of 1200 URLS (number of suspect IPs is unknown), which wouldn’t even come close to satisfying the Aust gov’t ambitions.

By: Icaria

Icaria — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:09:26 +0000

> the way Skeptic is carrying on , i would be be spurised if it is actually Senator Steven Conroy himself posting this information under an assumed name

You’re giving Conroy way too much credit (since when does he answer questions or know what he’s talking about?) and Skeptic far too little.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:22:09 +0000

@Dez

I’m offended that you think I’m a politician! No, I’m not Sen Conroy – just a guy who knows a bit about Internet filtering who likes to take an opposing side to the mainstream!

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:19:20 +0000

Mike

Here’s the report – I’ll read it over the holidays.

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_consumers/funding_programs__and__support/cyber-safety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/

By: alphamone

alphamone — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:19:49 +0000

personaly, the blacklist will be leaked sometime, but I bet a whole lot of sites will be revealed early on. I can think of a number of sites that are legal that will probably be on the blacklist due to being “unwanted”.

By: Dez

Dez — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:33:11 +0000

the way Skeptic is carrying on , i would be be spurised if it is actually Senator Steven Conroy himself posting this information under an assumed name