Somebody Think of the Children
Posts tagged "isp filtering"

Filter vendors smiling, ready to cash in

Like vultures hovering over the soon-to-be-dead body of Australia’s Internet industry, filter vendors are lining up at doors of ISPs around the country ready to cash in. According to Colin Jacobs at NoCleanFeed.com, Communications Day (subscription required) reports today that ISPs are already being lobbied by filtering companies and that small providers will be hit...

Will your blog be banned in Australia?

Pornographic websites won’t be the only sites blacklisted in Australia if mandatory ISP filtering is introduced. Your blog might be as well. The recent trial of ISP filters in Tasmania showed that at best 1 out of every 100 websites were incorrectly identified and blocked. That’s bad news for bloggers. The very nature of how...

More flaws surface in clean feed trial

Network engineer Glen Turner has voiced his concerns about the Tassie filtering trial. In the comments section of my earlier post, Glen says a critical flaw exists in the trial’s testbed design: ’80-90% of Australia?s Internet traffic goes to the USA, a considerable distance and a large amount of latency. This is not simulated in...

NetAlert.gov.au wants your feedback on filtering

The Government is seeking feedback about their online safety initiatives (including filtering) at NetAlert.gov.au. The survey will take you no more than 60 seconds to complete, so head on over and let your voice be heard. Cheers to Bob for the tip off.

Why the Tasmanian filtering trial is a failure

Senator Conroy’s office could spin a thread of gold from a lump of crap, I’ll give them that. But if you’ve read the Tasmanian filtering report, it probably didn’t take long before you noticed red flags. I decided to compare the report to what Mr Conroy says in his press release and show why the...

Clean feed trial complete

A laboratory trial of the Government’s ISP filter has finished and a report is now in Senator Conroy’s hands. Conroy’s office says it’s too early to comment on the Tassie trial, but we do know live field trials are next and that letters circulating suggest the Government plans to coordinate with other countries who have...

7:30 Report removes filtering video from website (watch it here)

The 7:30 Report has taken down video of their mandatory filtering story. Thankfully, I downloaded it last night and have uploaded it so you can see just how bad it really was (the transcript doesn’t do it justice). Why did they remove it? It might be because some viewers found the dreadfully racey images shown...

Australia will filter Internet

Senator Conroy has given the green-light to ISP filtering, acknowledging it could affect internet speeds. In his speech to the Internet Industry Association last evening, he confirmed that the Rudd Government?s election commitment to introduce ISP level filtering would go ahead.Secure Computing Magazine reports: ?Labor has never argued that ISP filtering is a silver bullet...

Kiwi company may help Rudd filter net, but it won’t be easy

New Zealand company, Watchdog, says that filtering out child pornography at ISP level in Australia is possible, but admits that the Australian Government’s attempts to rate websites for violent content and other objectionable material will be extremely difficult. Watchdog currently provides a filtered ISP service to NZ and Australian customers, claiming to block harmful and...

Ovum report finds Australian ISP level filtering will cost the customer and give big biz advantage

The Howard Government commissioned a number of investigations into the effectiveness of Internet content filtering, including filtering at an ISP level and at an even higher Government/Internet backbone level. One of these investigations was conducted by Melbourne telecoms and software consulting firm, Ovum, in 2003 on behalf of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and...