Ok guys and girls,

somehow, I've managed to catch the ear of a federal MP who is very against the proposed Clean Feed.

I'm not interested in a debate over whether it is a good thing or not. I'm against it as is he.

As such, what I'm looking for are key problems with the proposal that you would like me to raise with him, be they technical, philosophical, whatever.

I can't promise to raise EVERY SINGLE issue, but I'll do my best.

Speed restrictions
our internet right to not be watched by big brother

those are the only two i care about

Philosophical: If we need to filter all peoples traffic, because clearly some of them might do bad things, can we please also completely monitor all federal MPs communications, because clearly they might abuse their position of power.

Technical: Why block? Why not just monitor and arrest?

Don't ask us, speak with the EFA.

Philosophical:

It is not the duty, responsibility or right of the police or government to prevent people taking actions or being able to through their own free will - it is only their place to punish those which might have done what is deemed illegal.

This issue is capturing attention worldwide, and Australia is being lined up with China and Iran for censorship of it's internet. Does no one care that we are becoming the laughing stock of the world when it comes to electronic censorship?

On a technical level though I have some serious concerns as to whether or not this will work. The 'we need to think of the children card' in regards to child pornography is being played here. It's my understanding that these kinds of people, while being socially disturbed are actually quiet intelligent. Blocking particular websites is just simply not going to work when there are secure ways of trading data through encryption etc. Shouldn't we be investing our money on monitoring usage and prosecuting instead - perhaps working globally as well to solve this issue.

A key point imho is that blocking won't do anything to prevent the kiddie porn users/abusers because they will simply go through proxy servers to get where they are going as they probably do already.

So the bottom line there is only the honest people will be getting f***ed as per every other blind as f*** stupid ideas are retarded governments come up with. Just like the only people to hand in fire arms were the honest people and not the crims. In this case he pedo's will simply find a work around.

As for this stupid thing preventing kids from seeing crap on the net they shouldn't all I have to say is what happened to responsible parenting? If the government wnats to toss money at a problem whats wrong with tossing it at education?

Raven +2
exo -1

We're over governed already, way way too over governed in fact
I don't need the government interfering with the way I raise my kids

Just fired off an email to Nic @ the EFA, hopefully he could give you a dickload more information than I ever could.

Blocking all the criminal stuff is all well and good but where will it end and who is to say what is criminal and what isn't? Will we suddenly wake up one day to find that any website talking about violent video games is off limits because it promotes violence? How about websites with ideas that oppose those of the current leadership even if they're logical and sensible ideas, will they disappear too?

the filter isn't going to be looking at peoples emails, its not going to be looking at encrypted data, its not going to be able to tell the difference between a good picture and a bad one, simply blocking access to sites will have no effect other than to force the people distributing kiddi porn to get smarter it'll force them to learn how to get around these systems if they don't already know.

the reality is, it will reduce internet speeds, it will cost alot of money and it will NOT stop any of the kiddi porn getting around. what someone has probably already said is instead of blocking these sites, the feds should monitor them log who access them and bring these people down.. you don't catch people by forcing them underground and you definitely don't stop them.

Their are several key issues to deal with:

1. It will not stop paedophilia and it will not protect children in any way shape or form, the money spent going into this filter project is ridiculous that money would be better sent to the Australian Federal Police to catch the paedophiles that are in the act of commiting the crime against the children. Paedophilic porn is not as bad as the acts in which partake to obtain the pictures/videos, and thats why the funding should be cut in half and sent to the AFP to deal with that issue of the physical actions that are causing harm as oppposed to the captured motions/images of acts.

2. The idea of a secret list, or even a published list is nonsense because there could be other sites that are blocked and not published on the list. It is akin to censorship and is nothing short of a totalitarian government. (Whether it be communist,mercantalist (capitalism, democracy, and socialism).

3. The technology doesn't work and kids can be quite savvy with technology and thus a way around it would be found and simply used and it would spread like wild fire as most information does with kids.


4. Protection is an illusion and this has been proven many times there are far-reaching limits on protection and I have concluded based upon much reading and data obtained that the protection is easily circumvented and doesn't work at all, it is also the job of parents to monitor their children's online access and not the job of the government to be a babysitter.

5. The websites that go on the list will be banned according to the ACMA content ratings definitions, so what has been presented in the media outlets as to what will be banned will not be correct. You would probably find that by looking at the definitions on the rating category that is said that will be applied to the banning process, that the definition is broad and will encompass a lot of other material and give the governing body far to much birthing space to include other items that are secretly on the agenda but haven't been mentioned.

6. The accusation media outlets have reported on either kevin rudd or stephen conroy accusing people of supporting or aiding and abetting child pornography is a tactic used in a logical argument when the logic doesn't hold up, which is otherwise known as a (red herring, strawman argument, personal attack) this basic attack on the australian people could be considered libel or slander and frankly and is judgement before any facts which could be considered (pre-crime).

Heres an example of the kind of argument that it would bring forth. Greenpeace says all factories must be closed and if you don't support this move you are an environmental destroyer. This is called hegelian dialectic basically you have. A left, right, and centre or Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. It basically thinking everything is black and white. If all factories were closed their are quite a few things to consider, economy, requirement of factories products and what they are used in connection with, loss of jobs. So its not all black and white.

Gesthemene I really hope you put forward my key issues i've spent about half an hour typing this up, and i've written it as best I can.

last edited by Corrupt at 23:54:21 29/Dec/09

Biggest point I see is a single point of failure, someone compromises the bad sites list to block everything, the government will have effectively provided the bad guys a way to Denial of Service all websites.

These devices will have the ability to interfere with all traffic regardless if it is encrypted or not. By design they will be a mongrel extrusion prevention system, to them a rule of "block any" will be the same as if it was set on a firewall. People assuming that SSL/encryption will be fine to pass are deluding themselves, small modification to load a module to detect SSL headers will let the filter choose to block or pass dependant on any particular details or signatures the government choose to put in the filter, ie: IP address, geographic location from whois data, known ports for traffic like bittorrent, etc.

Sure, this is a handful of scare mongering but this is also a perfect example of laying the groundwork which can be used to blindside people with another layer of filtering, then later another layer gets added. Soon enough there may be a login gateway to allow all australian users to get external access. I doubt they are smart enough to see things that way but later once this is deployed, it won't be difficult for some techno-fearing political monkey to just play the "think of the kids" again to push this till it gets passed.

Instead of hamstringing the users ability to use the internet, spend the money educating parents, educating the law enforcement groups and honestly, don't push too hard to educate the kids, they run rings around anyone online and already know what's out there. Parent's should be their guide online and shouldn't be just letting kids loose on the net as a plugin babysitter.

Parody you bring up an excellent technical point, gestehmene include that as another keypoint in my summary of the censorship.

Philo:

If someone wants a clean feed, should they be able to get one?

The definition of a clean-feed would include many things for different people and wouldn't be the same, and would be highly unpractical for said reasons. For instance I don't like advertisements how about we clean-feed them. :P Or one could just use a simple client program, wow f***ing simple.

I believe you guys have covered the main points - nice work. I've got nothing to add.

Should an ISP be allowed to decide what is right for it's customers, then? Should an ISP be allowed to decide, for example, that it is a Kosher ISP, and deny websites that are religiously or politically at odds with their view?

Thermite stop posting s*** please.

Taipan you bring up a somewhat relevant point, however its not the pornography that is that bad its the people doing the act, just looked like you left out a large key difference there.

Clear method of reporting false positives, I haven't seen anything on the filter as to what happens to site operators and or their respect users should a site be incorrectly added to the filter.

Education for parents, children, police and their respective law agencies, should be paramount.

I think that there are three main points to focus on. We (EFA) are currently redeveloping our campaign site with some new branding (moving away from nocleanfeed to something with wider appeal). Here are the three main points that we will focus on in the coming months:

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and only provide a false sense of security for Australian families.


1. The plan provides a false sense of security.

The filter will not prevent children from accessing inappropriate material. Material on the blacklist covers only a tiny fraction of all the material on the internet that may be harmful for children, and does not even include X-rated content. More importantly, the filter does not address the real risks kids face online, such as cyber-bullying and inappropriate contact with adults.

In order to protect their families, parents should install one of the many voluntary filters that are currently available and ensure that their children are aware of risks they may face online. No technological solution can protect children from interacting with strangers online; we need to ensure kids are adequately supervised and we need to invest in educating children about how to protect themselves.


2. The plan wastes money that could be spent on police and counsellors.

The filter will do almost nothing to prevent the people who are willfully making, trading, and accessing child sexual abuse material. This type of material is not distributed in the open and can only be stopped by trained police who are able to infiltrate and prosecute the underground groups of people involved. In terms of protecting our children, money spent on policing gives a much higher return than an ineffective filter would.

Groups such as Save the Children have pointed out that victims of child sexual abuse have to wait for months before they can access counselling. Wasting money on an ineffective technological solution directly harms Australian kids.


3. The plan is an unprecedented invasion in the homes of Australians.

Previous classification regimes have regulated what can be sold in public or displayed in public libraries, but never what material can be read at home. Only one-third of secret list of material that has been 'refused classification' is child pornography; the rest is material that is perfectly legal for adults to own and view. This includes websites about euthanasia, controversial movies such as 'Ken Park' and 'Baise-moi', a large range of non violent erotica, and many games that are designed for people over 16 years of age (although games have been excluded from the most recent articulation of the filtering proposal for the time being).


----

if you have any questions, or get any response, I'm happy to talk about this in more detail. Email me at nic at efa dot org dot au.

Cheers Nic

nic <3

i couldnt agree more with those 3 points, they are awesome, correct and the exact reason why we shouldn thave this lame filter thrust upon us

last edited by Spook at 12:27:37 30/Dec/09

Wikileaks had a pretty good article on the history of child pron from the last big internet filter debate, apparently written by someone involved in the "industry" explaining how it gets made and distributed, and listing a hundred different reasons why a filter will do nothing to prevent it.

I'd get the link for you myself but i have to go pray to jesus

They are trying to block the euthenasia sites, not really trying to stop porn. May be a religion thing.
Good information about euthenasia prevents the problems which come from people messing up their own untutored attempts.
Time to address this subject properly and not jam the whole internets for the sake of this issue.


The kiddie porn police have stated they do not want the clean feed as it makes it harder for them to track and arrest offenders.

further comments?

The kiddie porn police have stated they do not want the clean feed as it makes it harder for them to track and arrest offenders.

Source? You can't make a statement like that without a source.

The idea of a secret list, or even a published list is nonsense because

noobs will forever use IPs instead of urls

it s***s me to tears having to convince ISPs to give clients a clean IP on their behalf.

yes Telstra - I'm talking about you.

I hope such a thing still exists in 10 years

last edited by koopz at 18:07:59 30/Dec/09

type in the wrong keyword into any P2P program like limewire / kazaa / whatever and your in kiddy porn hell.

This sort of filter does nothing for even accidental perverted downloads. let a lone those who are smart enough to just google "how do i get past the Australian web filter".. maybe we should block google as well? just becaues it allows people to search for ways to circumvent security.

i don't have a problem with someone logging my browsing history however. and then you could always run a search on the logs to find the offenders. although even that is an invasion of privacy, but at least its not censorship.

Nic care to share some more detail about what efa are doing. Additionally what is your opinion on the the impact of your campaign

This sort of filter does nothing for even accidental perverted downloads

Which has happened to people in the US before. I remember 1 case awhile back where a guy was trying to download a girls gone wild video, and it turned out to be CP. He deleted it straight away and the cops still nailed him and he is now in jail if I remember right.

The way to solve all the issues that everyone seems to be having is such a simple one that it boggles the mind as to why it hasn't been proposed yet.

MAKE THE FILTER OPTIONAL.

Even if you want every home to have it fair enough. Bring it in as an opt-out program. Call your ISP, tell em you don't want it, ta-dah clean internet

he is now in jail if I remember right.

you'd think something important like whether or not someone is in jail, might stick with you

MAKE THE FILTER OPTIONAL.

i agree with the guy with pedobear as his avatar

Ugh... sick of people commenting on that so fine I changed it

here is an idea, stop calling it 'clean feed'

it sounds f***ing lame

yo pave, read nics post

Nic care to share some more detail about what efa are doing. Additionally what is your opinion on the the impact of your campaign

You can see a quick outline of what we're working on at the moment (and what we need help with) here: http://wiki.efa.org.au/censorship/filtering/index

As for impact, it's hard to tell. We're trying to gain more mainstream traction, and have done quite well on radio (lots) and some TV (sunrise and 7pm project most recently). More to come when everyone gets back from holidays.

Any updates gesthemen?