No opt-out from ISP filtering: Two black lists and you can only opt-out from one
October 1, 2008 – 6:22 pmThis is as close we have come to confirming early information that no Australian will be able to completely opt-out of the Government’s clean feed.
Mark Newton, who works for one of Australia’s largest ISPs Internode, writes on Whirlpool that there will be two black lists: One list that contains content that is unsuitable for children and another that contains content unsuitable or illegal for adults to view (of which you can’t opt-out from).
That means even if you opt-out, your connection will still be filtered.
Newton says:
‘The Government’s plan is for there to be two blacklists, one for “unsuitable for children,” and another one for “unsuitable for adults.”
The much-touted “opt-out” would merely involve switching from blacklist number 1 to blacklist number 2.
Under their current proposal, there’s no scope at all to switch to no blacklist at all. Regardless of your personal preference, your traffic will pass through the censorship box.’
‘If you hadn’t opted out you’d get both filters, if you had you’d only get the second filter.
There’s no indication from anyone at the Dept about how any of this is supposed to work, which, I think, answers your second question. In particular, the test last week showed that even the absolute best filtering package they looked at couldn’t reliably distinguish between illegal and legal material.’
With no real opt-out provision, all Australian Internet users will suffer from the performance loss and overblocking that was found in the Government’s Tasmanian filtering trial.
Remember to visit NoCleanFeed.com to find out how you can take action. If you haven’t written a letter, it is now more important than ever that you do.
Thanks to Ben on STOP for the tip off.
Update 2/10/2008 10:30AM: Contacted DBCDE for comment. Standard form reply expected.
Update 2/10/2008 12:54PM: I’ve had some emails from people asking me who they should contact. Start with Senator Conroy, Senator Minchin and your local member. NoCleanFeed has an example letter here, but feel free to add your own objections to it. An original letter holds more weight. Fax, post or email — just remember to include your full name and postal address so it is taken seriously.
Don’t forget to contact the media as well.
39 Responses to “No opt-out from ISP filtering: Two black lists and you can only opt-out from one”
This is not looking good. I’ll be damned if they get away with this.
By Jarrod on Oct 1, 2008
I for one cant wait for the next set of real world trials. Then the world will have hard real world evidence of how expensive and completely beatable such a system will be.
The government will look so very stupid.
It can’t work perfectly period. It is impossible to identify highly encrypted traffic.
It can’t work well for under a few billion dollars and massive obvious privacy implications.
What it can do is cost 10’s even 100’s of millions and do not much at all. Except of course make those ignorant of how such things work feel safer all the while they arn’t.
By Adam on Oct 1, 2008
So, is this how the Matrix got started?
Oh wait, that was a movie, this is real life, even scarier.
Hopefully this absurd attempt at censorship will fall flat on its face and be rapidly abandoned.
By tyga on Oct 2, 2008
We could always request overseas users to engage in a massive distributed denial of service attack on the censoring servers or their gateways. When all else fails you can always burn down your own house. Once Australian online businesses start to suffer I imagine the whole thing would be reversed quick smart.
By JF on Oct 2, 2008
@JF: The problem with something as large as this is once it is implemented, it’s hard to reverse it. Factors like price increases from ISPs to cover the costs can’t be turned back. The Government considered there lab trial a success when nearly everyone else called it out for what it really was. I expect they’ll call whatever they run with next a success as well.
By Mike on Oct 2, 2008
Yeah, I was thinking about the whole DDoS idea too… Might work.. Who knows.. However, This internet cencorSHIT wont work.
By J on Oct 2, 2008
As far as I’m concerned, this already has massive privacy implications associated with it. Who gets to tell me what’s unsuitable for adults? What happens if the government decides they don’t like a particular website that goes against what they stand for? It’s just one more way that they’re “dumbing down” and controlling the general public and I won’t stand for it. If there’s a way to bypass it (which there no doubt will be) I’ll be one of the first to get around it…
By Ben on Oct 2, 2008
This is such bullshit. I don’t want my internet performance to be lowered because the government wants to filter content that I don’t even look at. As an adult I make my own decision to NOT look at illegal content and the Government should recognise that I CAN make that decision for myself. The Government does not need to play at being net nanny.
By Laura on Oct 2, 2008
I need clarification on this. The terminology is a tad confusing. So it’s not just a “black list” as such for the adults (i.e. the “unsuitable for adults” opt out) - there’s still a list where it blocks you if you go to the site, but in addition to that there is still an actual filter. This is what Newton seems to be saying. This is correct, right? You still get filtered even if you opt out.
If this is right, what the flip?! They’re seriously doing this? I was hoping it’d just fade into the background like everything else the Rudd government does or end up like Fuel Watch or whatever.
I’m going to have to get broadband now so I can have the same service as my current dial up. I know damn well from work that the filters don’t work. A ton of stuff I should legally see is blocked because the filter only looks at words, not the context that they’re in.
This is going to stuff up a lot of debate as well such as trying to find info about euthanasia etc. This fucked because it’s going to stifle debate on many “taboo” topics because we cannot research this stuff as easily as before. Sure I can rock up to the library, but using google is so much easier, quicker and I can find many view points at the one time on a topic.
By Matthew on Oct 2, 2008
lol i hope the governemtns servers die and fail and/or get ddosed by some underground russian hacking community. (p.s dont hack me). ahaha lol
does this also mean that the government will monitor interstate data/packets/
By eXile on Oct 2, 2008
Jesus christ, such a progressive country sometimes yet so backwards other times.
I hate this kind of stuff, I’m so lazy when it comes to writing letters and complaining, yet it clearly needs to be done here, this is a god-damned outrage, what I browse is none of their business and my internet performance should not be hampered because these morons born 7 decades ago don’t understand the internet, free speech and of course just how easy it will be to get past all this.
Next thing you know there’ll be an overall ban on all torrents in Australia or something.
Idiots.
By Scott L on Oct 2, 2008
Reality is, ISP’s will loose sales over this, think about it
Currently, we have a good performance from our ISP’s we have access to whatever we want when we want. We download like theres no tomorrow.
Then after the feed
Internet slows, especially to international destinations, consumers think “what’s the point of the internet who cares, every time i go to a website it times out during peak hours” they drop broadband and go back to dialup if they don’t drop it at all.
If I was an ISP I would be protesting the hell out of this, I’d be emailing my customers to let them know the full implications of this and I’d be making as much waves in the press as I can.
All this so Conroy can impress a Family First Senator.
Holy Moley
By Dan on Oct 3, 2008
I have seen replies by Conroy’s staff along the lines that adults will not be blocked from seeing anything that is currently legal.
The problem is in all areas but the ACT porn is not classified so it is illegal. This is why you can’t buy x rated stuff, but the folks in the ACT can.
So likely the filters will block everything that isn’t allowed at present. All this is based on a handful of letters from fanatics who want to control what everyone does.
This is why it is important to write a letter, the few fanatics do, and then government’s make
knee jerk reactions and we all lose our freedoms, whereas people rarely write to ask for more freedom.
By Terrence Valter on Oct 3, 2008
@Terrence Valter: Exactly.
The ‘adults will not be blocked from seeing anything that is currently legal‘ is the only response I’ve been able to get from Conroy’s office to date, and it’s what worries me. It fits in perfectly with there being two block lists.
File sharing websites, terrorism related websites, and adult websites that the ACB would classify as RC (or even X) could also be ‘illegal’. The list goes on.
I should note though, it is legal for everyone to buy X-Rated stuff, except for those in special areas of NT. It is illegal to sell it outside of ACT/NT.
With that said, the thousands of perfectly legal pornographic websites that are fine for Internet users worldwide could be blocked in Australia because of our strict classification system. Not just blocked to children, but also to adults because they would be considered RC.
By Mike on Oct 3, 2008
The part of this article the really scares me is the part saying websites “unsuitable for adults” to see will be blocked.
How the hell do they think they can define something like this? What is suitable for an adult to see is for the adult themself to decide, as something could be “unsuitable” for one adult and be completely enjoyable for another. It’s completely subjective.
Do these politicians actually have the implicit mentality that because they have been democratically elected into office that they are effectively our parents in some weird way?
By Fermista on Oct 3, 2008
Why you would even suggest for people to contact the media?
Traditional media (Television and Newspapers) is not capable of handling such an issue on basis of merit and personal freedoms of this nature.
Like it or not, the general public has not yet been deemed smart enough to make their own informed decisions which is one of the reasons this bill is being implimented in the first place.
Yes i realize that it is starting to look as if Western Democracy is taking a leaf out of China’s book when it comes to net censorship and that my friends is the crux of the whole dilemma.
By P0lyM0rpH on Oct 3, 2008
Not all IT journos are as ignorant as those at Fairfax. If they hear from more of us, they catch on that a story exists.
I understand that most mainstream press simply don’t understand, but to not alert them to it is being lazy on our behalf. It’s only an email.
By Mike on Oct 3, 2008
vpn anyone, eg
https://www.relakks.com/?lang=en
lets see em filter that.
By storg on Oct 3, 2008
Ah good we’re becoming more like China. I can’t wait to they decide to filter things that criticise the government.
By Shane on Oct 3, 2008
I suppose it stands to reason that with a large number of chinese citizens living here in Australia, that our Government would adopt similar censorship policies that the Chinese Government has had for many years.
PS: This is not intended as a racist comment, and I hope it is not taken as such.
By Kym on Oct 3, 2008
@Mike: The adult filter was enabled on the plan of government shifting all emphasis to the child filter in the traditional media.
They managed to convince a nation to go to Iraq through manipulation of information and collusion with the media, what makes you think this will be any different. I personally don’t want to give them a leg up just yet.
@Shane: As far as i am concerned China already has the software and filters already in place and the adaption to Australia would be pretty simple considering their level of filtering.
I’m not sure how long Rudd spent visiting there since entering office.
By P0lyM0rpH on Oct 3, 2008
Other VPN sites worth checking:
https://vpnout.com
http://www.secureix.com/personal.shtml
http://blacklogic.com/home.php
http://strongvpn.com
http://www.trilightzone.org
By Gnu-guru on Oct 4, 2008
This is absolutely insane, for several reasons, not the least of them performance-related.
It’s easy (enough) to imagine that were there the one blacklist which we were told about from day 1, and the ability to opt out, that a majority of people would opt out, keeping the load on whatever boxes the government mandates low enough that nobody would really notice much in the way of a problem.
If every single packet received from an ISP’s access layer has to be filtered by one of these devices before hitting ‘the internets’, then this is going to cause serious problems, both for the ISPs themselves as their general quality of service winds up in the toilet, as well as for the general punter who has (let’s face it) very little interest in extreme fish-on-horse bondage porn (or whatever it is which may be deemed RC in this nanny state we live in.)
I haven’t read the entire report from July well enough to be able to quantify the kind of effect on latency which the trialled devices had, but one would presuppose that the best-case scenario would be in the order of 3-4ms per packet (most likely in each direction). If we figure an additional 8ms RTT latency, then this starts rapidly becoming inexcusable.
As another network engineer in another (earlier) post on this subject noted, TCP performance (roughly 80% of the internet’s traffic is naked TCP, or thereabouts, and significantly more is tunnelled TCP, which is just as sensitive to latency) is governed by bandwidth, delay, and jitter. Adding delay has an adverse impact on the bandwidth-delay product, which is a rough metric used to model theoretical TCP throughput on a link with given qualities.
If you add 4ms e2e (8ms RTT) latency to a TCP connection which already HAS 200-300+ ms RTT latency, you’re going to make the throughput of that connection just that much lower across the board.
To say nothing of VoIP, where both the additional latency and obvious additional jitter introduced by such a device will mandate deeper jitter buffers at each end, increasing the perception of delay (the so-called ‘walkie talkie’ effect that you get on some VoIP, satellite and bad GSM calls now.)
Remind me why the government has the right to subject ordinary, law abiding CITIZENS of this country to such abuse? Last time I checked, ‘because this other senator from a third party asked me nicely’ wasn’t a good enough excuse.
Go to hell, Conroy.
By Fantastic Sid on Oct 4, 2008
Oh, I forgot to note in my previous post that something like this is inevitably going to create favourable market conditions for the VPN services mentioned a few posts back, most of which terminate in sensible places such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc.
These market conditions, and the situation which they will create of a significant amount of LOCAL traffic being routed out SCC1 or a similar sub cable bound for Europe, encrypted, stands a chance of significantly changing the economics of being an ISP in this country, especially if your base is already comprised of largely tech-savvy users (Mr Newton and Mr Hackett especially should perhaps take note here.)
With the exception of peering between a ‘big four’ member (Telstra Internet, Optusnet, AAPT and MCI i believe) and a non-member (which the ACCC ruled some years ago may be tariffed by the big 4 member), most domestic IP traffic is settlement-free cold-potato routed. In other words, the originator pays for the carriage to the closest interchange point, where it transits to the destination network essentially free of charge (save equipment hosting costs, obviously.) The biggest single cost of domestic IP transit is physical carriage from point A to point B. If, all of a sudden, a non-trivial amount of traffic INTO the country originates from such VPN services, and a similar non-trivial amount of traffic OUT of the country is destined TO such VPN endpoints, this pricing model is going to get seriously screwed in the eye.
Just one more thing that Conroy and his merry lads failed to consider.
By Fantastic Sid on Oct 4, 2008
You get the government you deserve.
The tactics toward governing the masses hasn’t changed, they know what’s best, they have their two-party dictatorship, their foreign wars, your blind submissiveness.
There’s no hope, they’ve been filtering sites for years. They edit wiki articles, censor criticism, and browse youtube.
G
By Freedomexplo on Oct 8, 2008
You get the government you deserve.
The tactics toward governing the masses hasn’t changed, they know what’s best, they have their two-party dictatorship, their foreign wars, your blind submissiveness.
There’s no hope, they’ve been filtering sites for years. They edit wiki articles, censor criticism, and browse youtube and remove all videos which don’t accept Australian mass Immigration and multiculturalism.
Good luck. You won’t win. They took away your guns, remember. That was for our protection as well.
By Freedomexplo on Oct 8, 2008
“Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
Maybe that should be the new default comment when you search for a site which is now going to be “filtered”
“Your search is awaiting moderation.”
Hypocrites. Let me guess, its to stop “spam” and to insure nothing “naughty” gets posted which will burn our eyeballs?.
Ciao.
By Freedomexplo on Oct 8, 2008
@Freedomexplo: When you get over 50 spam attempts per day, comment moderation goes a long way. It sux I know, but once you’ve posted a few times it is usually bypassed.
By Mike on Oct 8, 2008
Why don’t they spend their money on improving our broadband system - making it faster and more accessible, and most of all, cheaper……..!
By Mika on Oct 21, 2008
“… If you can be told what you can see and read, then follows that you can be told what to say and think.”
By Kweeg on Oct 28, 2008
I run a gaming clan which is called the Xtreme Terrorist Group. We have been around for a long time, we started back before terrorism was actually a threat in Australia. My clan website will be blocked under the new big brother policy. May I ask why? Probably not, well at the moment I can ask, but don’t expect an answer. In the future maybe I won’t be able to even ask (welcome to China). For those who think we can criticise what our government does, your wrong. They call that sedition, or if its bad enough, treason. I don’t think I deserve this treatment from our duly elected government as I didn’t vote for the KRUDD labor party. I’m hoping they form a committee and just forget about it, like everything else. In the meantime, I’m going to be writing letters on a weekly basis. Why is it that if people can’t be bothered to supervise their own children on the net, which is the only way this will get through without a fight, by making it about protecting children and get the ignorance/lazy vote, that the rest of the country, who don’t have children and can make an informed decision about what is appropriate for themselves, should be punished with impunity? Yes there will be ways to get around the filters, and yes those of us who plan on using them will have to pay for it. BUT WHY THE HELL SHOULD WE. This has made me mad as a cut snake, time to write some nasty-grams!
By Justanoob on Nov 2, 2008
This is just Rudd sucking up to the Chinese.
By Dan on Nov 2, 2008
I’ve been doing this stuff for over 8 years and can categorically state that the content filters are only ever approximate. They are ok for corporate use where personnel are subject to employment contracts and the threat of fair dismissal for breach. Also, in a corporate situation, there is both a reasonable subset of web information that is most useful, and a way to whitelist sites if the need arises. This simply does not translate to the public at large. Censorship will hamper innovation, research, independent thought and all things fundamental to the long established and cherished ideals of freedom. Unless the government imposes the same level of control as a corporate employee to an individual member of the public, then there are no penalties for overriding the block. Even with penalties, there will be many ways to circumvent it. The most obvious is encryption. Less obvious is steganography time and or space displaced transports, bandwidth stuffing, covert channels, & data piggy-backing. These kinds of bypasses will get put into canned procedures and products so that all our kids need to do is ask their mate on any one of 20 different on-line chat tools how they did it.
Content filtering at wire-speed demands big iron. Latency will always be introduced, and to keep it to a minimum, the cost of equipment rises sharply. The most effective way is at the application level (notwithstanding the above bypass methods), but that will need even more grunt, and will generate massive log files coupled with the age-old problem of what to do with such a huge store of data.
On top of all this, the ISPs should be quaking for fear of potential litigation:
“So and so died because he got a web page that told him how to top himself. The ISP is supposed to stop this.”
“I should have had that information yesterday, Now I’ve lost a 10 million dollar contract”
- hypothetical I know - but you get the picture. To avoid this, then the ISPs will need to adopt the Wilson’s parking stance: “All care - no responsibility”. Which of course adds to the inherent technical problems of meeting accuracy levels. It’s not fair or correct that a carrier be responsible for the content. As has been pointed out many times - the post office will never be subject to this kind of scrutiny. Why the internet?
Much better would be legislation for web sites to encode their own classification byte and let the end-point filter it. Then a spider could keep some kind of eye on things, and public-reporting of breaches could target offending operators at the source where it belongs.
By someoneWithExperience on Nov 28, 2008