Jim Wallace wants you to believe filtering will work
January 27, 2009 – 12:51 pmManaging Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, abandoned his mainstay argument of Christian morals when he wrote his SMH opinion piece about mandatory ISP filtering, preferring instead to tackle the Government’s net censorship plan primarily from a technical standpoint. The equivalent of a five year old offering advice on how to build a space shuttle — Fun to listen to but not something you take to the drawing board.
Wallace says opponents of filtering have mounted a shamelessly misleading campaign to exploit user fear about performance degradation. He writes:
The activist group GetUp!, for example, has raised a petition with the alarmist statement that filtering “will slow the internet by up to 87 per cent”, but the claim is based solely on the worst results of the products trialled.
It conveniently omits to advise would-be signatories that the trial results released in mid-2008 showed another of the filter products tested slowed internet performance by less than 2 per cent, and three products slowed it by less than 30 per cent. As one commentator has noted, GetUp!’s selective use of figures is like reporting on the first trial of refrigeration and writing off the technology because one freezer failed to cool the meat.
If GetUp! had drawn attention to the filtering product which slowed performance by less than 2%, they’d have also drawn attention to the fact it was unable to accurately identify what content was appropriate and what wasn’t. Of the filters tested during the Tasmania Enex trial (results available here) those which successfully blocked ‘inappropriate’ content without blocking innocent content reduced network performance by much more than 2%.
You might expect Wallace to mention this, but he doesn’t:
Internet service providers and the sex industry would want us to believe it would, and have commissioned at least one study full of expressions of woe. But isn’t that why we’re having a trial?
The latest Australian Communications and Media Authority trial report, published last year, showed the proportion of illegal and inappropriate content that was successfully blocked averaged above 92 per cent. This was a significant improvement on the 2005 trial, and we would expect more improvements in future.
Just as importantly, the rate of “over-blocking”, or preventing access to acceptable material, was in most cases less than 3 per cent, also a dramatic improvement on the 2005 trial. And again, unless you are a technology sceptic, this is inevitably going to improve.
Jim Wallace
Wallace fails to see the gravity of incorrectly blocking 3% of web pages. As Stilgherrian draws attention to in his post about Wallace, ‘Mark Newton reckons that for a medium-sized ISP that’s 3000 incorrect blocks every second.’ Whether the technology is going to improve is irrelevant when Government trials have shown it doesn’t work. You don’t introduce something now because it may become effective down the line.
His claim that it’s ‘Internet service providers and the sex industry’ who want us to believe blatantly ignores the countless politicians, industry leaders, scholars and families who have expressed their own concerns about the plan.
Wallace also gets it wrong when he says ‘from the outset, it has been clear this system is not going to stop any adult from viewing anything that is legal’. As many of us have pointed out the ACMA blacklist contains material that is legal for Australians to view and own.
The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) know this. Their pro-filtering campaign site, Keep IT Clean, says ‘Despite fear-mongering about censorship, adults will be able to opt in to view some forms of legal porn.’
They also describe claims political and religious comment will be censored as ridiculous, but only last week ACMA added an anti-abortion website to their prohibited content blacklist. In 2008, Senator Conroy told Sky News you can’t opt in or out of prohibited material (via Libertus).
The Australian Christian Lobby may insist that we need ISP filtering to protect children and women and that sections of the Internet industry and ‘porn lobby’ are opposed to the plan because it ‘threatens the money they can make through the trade in exploiting women and the lucrative download of pornography, including child porn’, but where are the facts?
If the only evidence mandatory filtering advocates like Jim Wallace have to show for support of this plan is a 2003 survey commissioned by the Australia Institute which found 93% of respondents ‘Would you support a system which automatically filtered out Internet pornography going into homes unless adult users asked otherwise’, what’s left to debate? None of the filters being trialed can automatically filter out Internet pornography effectively, the plan doesn’t allow for adults to opt-out, and at least 95,000 people said they don’t want what the Government has proposed in 2008.
Jim Wallace wants you to believe filtering will work and that there will be dreadful repercussions for not introducing it. He just doesn’t want you to research the facts.
Other blog posts on Wallace’s article:
Jim Wallace is wrong – Geordie Guy
Jim Wallace’s pro-censorship lies and distortions – Stilgherrian
Response to Jim Wallace’s puddle of misinformation – Websinthe
15 Responses to “Jim Wallace wants you to believe filtering will work”
I hate it when people who purport to represent a moral position deceive to further their own cause.
I don’t understand religious zealots that think forcing their beliefs on others will somehow make them a better person in the eyes of their God.
I always worked under the assumption it was the person’s own adherence to the faith that mattered – isn’t turning one’s back on temptation the very point of the exercise? There will always be temptations – I don’t recall any of the ten commandments explicitly requiring an internet connection. I didn’t see Satan offering Job fibre to the curb and a trial pass at Girls Gone Wild.
Nobody has a gun to Jim Wallace’s head or the head of any of his supporters, forcing them to look at smut. If they don’t trust themselves, their families or their congregations to exercise appropriate restraint, then they have far bigger problems than smut on the web.
His position is about as rational as saying anyone who lives near a pub is going to become an alcoholic, even without seeing or setting foot on the premises. If you know that you have a problem with alcohol, and you cannot live in a world where you can buy liquor, that is your problem, not mine. If you can’t walk past a pub, your problem, not mine. If your behaviour is the problem, that’s your problem, not mine.
If Jim Wallace wants a filtered internet for himself and his family, then he can do that with my blessing. If he wants to force it on the rest of us, then I would ask him to reconsider his motivations for doing so in a more honest light. It also wouldn’t hurt if he spent some of the ACL cash on a technical advisor before his next statement.
By Stuart Anderson on Jan 27, 2009
> I hate it when people who purport to represent a moral position deceive to further their own cause.
Couldn’t have said it better, myself.
> I don’t understand religious zealots that think forcing their beliefs on others will somehow make them a better person in the eyes of their God.
Colour me cynical but when people push their beliefs into the political arena with such vehemency, it seems to be less about a genuine interest in the issue (a genuine interest would demand educating one’s self beyond serving one’s immediate agenda) and more about people attempting to legitimise their overall world view by strong-arming and marginalising those with dissenting opinions. It’s not about common ground, real discourse or a particularly high standard of truth; these, “family”, organisations are mostly just about intimidating those they disagree with by attempting to turn popular opinion against their enemies with simplistic, fallacious arguments.
By Icaria on Jan 27, 2009
Can’t we find a more unflattering picture of this man. He looks like a kindly uncle rather than the despotic zealot that he is
By Sean the Blogonaut on Jan 27, 2009
Mike
You state the following: “None of the filters being trialed can automatically filter out Internet pornography effectively”. What information do you base this statement on? If you are referring to filters trialled in the Enex Tasmanian lab trial then you may have an argument. However, many of the ISPs who are on the trial shortlist will be trialling technologies that were not tested by Enex, and in fact, two of these were expressly excluded despite them being offered to Enex for the purpose. Both of these filters are being used by the largest ISP filtering installations in the region – so even more reason for the live pilot. No sensible ISP would install a filter for mandatory blocking of illegal content that had incorrectly blocks 3% of Web pages. Many of them who have chosen to be involved in the trial have chosen filters that do work and have been proven to do so in a number of countries around the world.
By Skeptic on Jan 28, 2009
Sean the Blogonaut asks “Can’t we find a more flattering picture of this man. He looks like a kindly uncle rather than the despotic zealot that he is”
I don’t believe there are many images that would fall into the “despotic zealot” class although the phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing comes to mind” as many bad ideas come from those who appear to be “kindly uncles”.
I believe the election poster found in the following article is more pertinent although the name “Australian Christian Lobby” isn’t mentioned although it should be remembered that politicians fell over themselves attending as many Christian events as possible in prelude to the 2007 election.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/08/03/howard-and-rudd-preaching-to-the-choir/
“Howard and Rudd Preaching to the Choir”
There’s been little reporting of this upcoming event in the national media, but a lot of it in the religious press and online outlets. The webcast has been organised by the Australian Christian Lobby, and will feature questions from “Christian leaders; churches will “use the event as a platform to pray for the election.
(poster featuring Howard and Rudd in regards to a Webcast seeking their responses from a Christian perspective – it’s possible the image may be in the public domain)
The article continues…
Rudd seems to be winning the war for religious voters’ esteem, according to recent online qualitative polling conducted by The National Forum. Rudd identified the need for Labor to neutralise the Coalition’s perceived advantage among devout Christian voters early in this parliamentary term, and has obviously made no secret of his own beliefs in a series of carefully timed interviews and articles.
Noting that Australia is an increasingly secular nation the article continues:
It’s intriguing then, that the first time Howard and Rudd will meet in debate this election year is a pitch aimed directly at church leaders.
—————
The church has great influence on government and the church is generally opposed to ALL forms of sexual expression which it regards as “filth”. Why the processes of human reproduction should be regarded as “filth” is something that continues to amaze me. This is the word Jim Wallace used to describe sexual images. This is the word Senator Conroy used to describe sexual images.
In the view of the Christian church sex = filth = sex = filth.
By Bob Bain on Jan 28, 2009
@Skeptic Can you please list which filters accurately and automatically filter out pornography? Can you also please list their false positive and negative rates?
By Mike on Jan 28, 2009
Skeptic is more than likely just a Netsweeper booster, like “Technology vendor guy of Melb” & “Mike the Observer” that seem to popup in the comment sections of any story that criticises net filters.
I sometimes think it’s just the one person, different name.
By Big Pete on Jan 28, 2009
@Mike
There are a number of filtering technologies that will filter URLS on a blacklist with 100% accuracy and no false positives or negatives. The best example of this is the hybrid BGP and URL filtering system as used by NetClean in their Whitebox Internet filter. This type of technology was first used in BT’s Cleanfeed system but their use of proxy servers can cause issues related to the changing of IP address requests as happened in the recent Wikipedia problem in the UK.
@Big Pete
No, I’m not a NetSweeper booster. I think that their technology has limitations that other technologies have addressed.
By Skeptic on Jan 28, 2009
@Skeptic
My question was in relation to filtering pornographic material automatically, as was the statement in my post. With respect to the 2003 survey being touted, I believe ‘automatic’ refers to on the fly or dynamic filtering. Not a blacklist where material is manually added.
A blacklist is rarely 100% accurate as it requires human processes to add items to the list. Especially a blacklist of pornographic or ‘inappropriate’ websites.
By Mike on Jan 28, 2009
@Skeptic: Of course, if the only filtering is the extremely limited goal of blocking the 1300-odd sites in the ACMA blacklist — or even the totally made-up number of 10,000 sites that Senator Conroy has used — that goal may be achievable. It’ll allow someone to tick a box and hang a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” But it’ll do SFA to actually protect children online — which is what I thought this was all supposed to be about.
Just for once, I’d like someone to confirm, unequivocally, what the specific aims of this filtering project are. At the moment it just appears to be “pfaff around with some activity or other so it looks like we’re doing something until the public’s attention turns elsewhere.
By Stilgherrian on Jan 28, 2009
@Skeptic
When Michael said:
“None of the filters being trialled can automatically filter out Internet pornography effectively”
Two key words he used were: “automatically” and “effectively”.
Name a blacklist filter that will automatically block ALL pornography on the Internet!
No such thing exists.
Even if such magical thing did indeed exist it would require human interaction to:
1. Search for “prohibited content”.
2. Block it.
Now imagine the infinite work involved in doing so…
Effective? No.
You think the Australian Government has the budget for that?
Secondly, is there going to be a classification panel, and if so are they going to be working 24/7 reviewing and blocking prohibited content from ALL over the web?
Surely they will miss content.
Blacklists are full of fail, and you know it.
Any filter is full of fail.
Regards,
Ben Grubb
By Ben Grubb on Jan 28, 2009
@Skeptic Not quite sure why you have now decided to use a pseudonym since your own posts tie your pseudonym back to a post you made in your own name not so long ago, but anyway….
Suppose the Australian Government is successful and 8e6 and NetClean filters are installed everywhere and only block against a blacklist. Suppose they block against that blacklist 100% accurately, measured with respect to the list they are configured with.
What stops the Government using a Bill of Parliament to replace the manually compiled ACMA blacklist with a “more effective” “dynamically compiled blacklist”, refreshed say, once a day? This will be justified, at the time it is done, because it is “more effective” at “protecting the children”.
Peter Mancer has previously stated that Net Clean can only be used to block strictly illegal material (enforced by vendor licensing terms), yet NetClean suggests on its own website that NetClean is suitable for implementing filtering against the ACMA blacklist (which includes otherwise legal X18+-rated material). This is a contradiction that has not been resolved to my satisfaction.
Will NetClean refuse to supply technology to the Australian ISP vendors if the ACMA-blacklist stays as broad as it is. And anyway, what precedence will a Swedish vendor’s licensing terms have over an Australian act of Parliament in the High Court of Australia?
It is not clear to me that we can rely on vendor licensing terms to prevent politcal abuse of a technology. It is not clear to me that a mandatory censorwall initially configured with a manually configured blacklist will always be so configured.
We need to resist technology such 8e6 and NetClean now, because we don’t want a single act of parliament to be between us and political tyranny. NetClean and 8e6 may be fine pieces of technology but, despite what NetClean’s founders say, they merely enable political tyranny. Any claim to the contrary needs to be judged against the vested interests of those making it.
By Jon Seymour on Jan 29, 2009
@Skeptic
We’re all aware of 8e6 and the argument moved on a long time ago. It’s useless for two reasons:
1) Tit is only as effective as advertised against a blacklist, which is only a part of what the Government plans to filter
2) A blacklist can’t keep up with illicit content, so all you’re doing is using the world’s most efficient BB gun against an elephant.
No ISP filter vendor has made ANY arguments as to why their filter is better than increased police resources. Neither has the government for that matter.
The opportunity cost of ISP filtering is the protection of children. I hope you lot are proud of yourselves for setting the fight against child porn back 20 years.
By Websinthe on Jan 29, 2009
Colour me cynical but when people push their beliefs into the political arena with such vehemency, it seems to be less about a genuine interest in the issue (a genuine interest would demand educating one’s self beyond serving one’s immediate agenda) and more about people attempting to legitimise their overall world view by strong-arming and marginalising those with dissenting opinions. It’s not about common ground, real discourse or a particularly high standard of truth; these, “family”, organisations are mostly just about intimidating those they disagree with by attempting to turn popular opinion against their enemies with simplistic, fallacious arguments.
Bingo. Well said.
I hope you lot are proud of yourselves for setting the fight against child porn back 20 years.
I agree with that. Their campaign is just one huge self-indulgent PR posefest that will not reduce real child abuse. Put the money into actual police and child protection services instead.
By skeeter on Jan 29, 2009