The Australian Minister for Censorship has said in an interview that those opposed to the Government’s proposed mandatory internet filter want golden showers.

Stephen Conroy made the claim when questioned about popular support against censorship, arguing that only refused classification content would be banned under the scheme:

“If people want to argue that golden showers shouldn’t be contained in RC, or that bestiality or pro-rape websites [shouldn't be included] … I invite you to put in a submission to the independent process so that you can have your say” Conroy told ZDNet Australia.

The claim follows a long standing pattern of the Minister, who has also accused anti-censorship supporters as being in favor of child porn.

The proposed filter is unlikely to ever be implemented in Australia with the major opposition parties stating that they will not support the Government, with the Liberal and Greens parties having the numbers in the Australian Senate to block any supporting legislation.

Australian Minister Accuses Anti-Internet Censorship Supporters Of Wanting Golden Showers is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Australian Government is moving closer to a full blown police state with a proposal to force ISP’s to retain the data of all internet users, including browsing history and all emails.

Currently under Australian privacy laws, ISP’s only retain web browsing history where a warrant is issued by a judge on behalf of State or Federal Police.

The introduction of data retention policies is being justified, as with compulsory internet censorship before it, as offering protection against pedophiles and terrorism.

ZDNet Australia, which broke the story, noted industry representative stating that the proposal was “would be scary and very expensive” and that Australians should “be very f%&king afraid”.

The move won’t surprise many in Australia, with the existing Government increasingly seeking to control and monitor the activities of its online citizens, and attacking those who disagree with it, including Facebook and Google.

Australia Moves Closer To A Police State With Compulsory Data Retention Proposal is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you live in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane, a big reminder that if you can spare an hour or two tomorrow (Saturday March 6) there are Stop The Filter rallies in each city.

Each rally is being held between 12pm and 3pm local time, with the venues Forrest Place Perth, State Library Melbourne, and the Myer Center Brisbane.

Unlike previous rallies, this one has united a big cross-section of the anti-censorship movement (and it’s the most eclectic list you may ever see.) Supporting the rallies are The Australian Greens, The Australian Sex Party, Electronic Frontiers Australia, Exit International, Pirate Party Australia, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, and more more, including smaller groups and individuals.

If you can bring a sign to show Conroy and Rudd that we will not sit quietly in the dark and allow free speech in this country to be taken over, all the better.

For details on Stop The Filter here.

Reminder: Stop The Filter Rallies in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane Saturday is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Australian Government today confirmed that it would proceed with broadscale internet censorship in Australia following a trial into ISP based internet filtering.

Delivered pre-Christmas so as to minimize debate on the plan, Reichsminister for censorship Stephen Conroy spun the decision by selectively quoting parts of the trial report. Conroy claimed among other things that banned material “can be done with 100 per cent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed” and that the filter would apply to all RC (Refused Classification) content.

It’s an interesting line, because the reports findings don’t actually say that the filtering of RC content is either 100% accurate nor would it necessarily have a “negligible” affect on internet speeds (we’ll get to “negligible” in a moment.)

Filtering accuracy: an inconvenient truth

The study asked the nine ISP’s to trial several forms of internet filtering. The first test was based on the flawed ACMA blacklist of approximately 2,000 sites, which as we know from earlier in the year blocks dentists, poker sites, and other legal sites along with illegal sites. The second was based on a broader “child safe” filter which attempted to filter more sites (although the exact figure was not disclosed.)

The tests found that 100% accuracy was obtained with the ACMA blacklist only, a list of 2,000 odd sites that would only be a small sample of sites blocked under the scheme.

The tests found that when the list was expanded to the bigger child safe list, that accuracy dropped to between 78.8% and 84.6%.

On those results, the study claimed “Enex considers it unlikely that any filter vendor would achieve 100 percent blocking of the URLs inappropriate for children without significant over-blocking of the innocuous URLs.”

Notably a full list under the implementation of censorship would be significantly larger than what is currently in the blacklist, a point even Conroy concedes. Depending on the estimation, the real world list could total anywhere from 20,000 sites to hundreds of thousands. So how can you claim a future filter is 100% accurate when the report itself notes that accuracy will never be 100% on a bigger list?

What Is Actually Being Filtered?

While Stephen Conroy claims the filter will apply to RC content, the report didn’t just consider RC content, and actually goes as far as noting that the blacklist includes “prohibited” content.

The Online Content Scheme (the Scheme) introduced in 2000 under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Cth) (the BSA), regulates content on the internet. The Scheme is contained chiefly in Schedules 5 and 7 of the BSA. Under the BSA, ‘prohibited content’ and ‘potential prohibited content’ include content that has been classified or is likely to be classified Refused Classification under the National Classification Scheme.

Better still, the report actually discusses how prohibited content will be added to the blacklist:

Where content is not hosted in Australia and is prohibited, ACMA will notify the content to the suppliers of approved filters so that access to the content using such filters can be blocked.

It should be noted that prohibited content in Australia is broader that RC alone; content may be prohibited if it doesn’t adequately have age verification for example.

So which is it Senator Conroy? And if the study was accurate, why wasn’t it testing RC content alone? At the same time if the report is based on Government specs, why does it talk about prohibited content?

Define Negligible?

The most blatant sign of bias in the terms of the study is how the Government, and by extension the study decided to define negligible. The report defines it as such:

Negligible impact on network performance

10% and below: individual service performance impact is negligible to the end-user. It would be difficult for the test to distinguish the impact of the filter from any other factor potentially affecting network performance.

Yes, a drop in speed of 9% is considered negligible in a country where internet speeds are at times third world.

But here’s where it gets better: the findings on speed were all over the place, with some results even questioned by the study, like the ISP who reported that speeds were 17.32% FASTER with the filter (WTF doesn’t begin to explain it.)

Some highlights: the biggest decrease in speed is reported to be 44.15%, with other ISP’s reporting speed cuts in various tests of 36.45% and 27.2%. A range of results came in at 0-10%, with some others reporting small increases on some tests (where a proxy to deliver some data was used.) But even those reporting increases of speeds in some tests also reported decreases in others, for example participant 9 reported a small increase in streaming speeds, but a 10% decline in web page speeds.

While you can concede that the average decreased speeds aren’t as bad as some may have feared, to suggest that the results were negligible is grossly disingenuous; Wikipedia defines the word as referring “to the quantities so small that they can be ignored (neglected) when studying the larger effect.”

Circumvention, and a ban on Proxies?

The report also details the circumvention of blocked sites. It notes in its summary that “A technically competent user could, if they wished, circumvent the filtering technology.” The stats: on the ACMA blacklist, circumvention was blocked at a range of a pathetic 8.1% to a high of only 16.2%. The broader list (with the tests of the broader filter being opt-in by customers..so basically those wanting to block stuff from their kiddies to begin with) saw results from 37.8% to 94.5%.

The note there is that it’s the stuff on the blacklist (in theory currently, and the expanded version) which is what the Government really wants to block (dentists with kiddie porn or something like that.) That the best result of circumvention blocking was 16.2% on the hard stuff really highlights what a sad and pathetic joke the filter is; those who want to look at this stuff will still be able to and the filter isn’t going to stop them, and that’s before we consider that the report notes that they can’t block IM or P2P.

But the other strange assumption in the report is that circumvention is only in the domain of a “technically competent user,” a suggestion that implies that it is somehow difficult to use a proxy to bypass the filter. The problem is that it’s not. I ran proxies a few years back for a brief time, and the most popular site accessed via my proxies (this is before Facebook got big) was MySpace: proxies are popularly used by non-technical people to bypass work and school filters, often by kiddies, and you don’t need to be a genius to use one; type proxy into Google, or visit a directory site like Proxy.org.

Likewise the report then seems to accept that proxies aren’t that hard to use to some degree, and this is where it gets into scary territory: the report suggests that proxies should be banned:

Filtering of additional categories of content enabled ISPs to implement measures which made some common circumvention techniques difficult. For example, a third party website which hides the origin of the requested content (proxy site) can be included in a wider list of URLs to be blocked.

and on the broader (not ACMA blacklist) test that delivered better anti-circumvention results, the study notes that proxies were being filtered as part of the test:

The testing for circumvention generally indicates that filtering of additional categories of content, enabled ISPs to implement measures which made some circumvention techniques more difficult to use. For example many commercial lists have a “proxy” category; proxies are a common form of filter circumvention.

Anyone for adult computer games?

Conroy claims that adult computer games will not be initially included in the filter as the Australian Government has started “a public consultation process into whether there should be an R18+ classification category for computer games.

One small problem with that: censorship power in Australia resides with the States. All the states have to agree to support an R18+ rating for computer games for any Federal application, and South Australia isn’t about to change its mind. WA has also banned possession of RC computer games as well, so there’s no surety that the WA Government would support a change either.

Conclusion

It’s a sad day for freedom of speech in Australia when the Government delivers a slanted report that when you actually read it doesn’t back everything it is claiming. It’s not dissimilar to Iran: you don’t get the result you want so you ignore the results you don’t want, you stuff the boxes in other places, and you deliver a result that was always predetermined to begin with.

Conroy claims again that the filter is all about kiddie porn (which is already illegal to view and host anyway) but at the same time will ban euthanasia and abortion sites, along with adult computer games as well. The dark clouds of totalitarianism are descending on Australia; remember, history shows that Governments who start on the road to censorship usually expand the regime with time. The can is open now, and who knows when the madness might end.

Australia Confirms Censorship Plans, Tells Fibs On The Filtering Trial is a post from: The Inquisitr

A document tabled by Stephen Conroy, Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy today shows that the Australian Government is considering crippling infrastructure competition in an attempt to make its National Broadband Network (NBN) viable.

The “Assessment of Proposals, National Broadband Network Process” document compiled for the Government’s NBN Expert Panel by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) recommends that parts of the Trade Practices Act, the primary law in Australia regarding competition, be amended to allow for “an express statutory prohibition against overbuild in the roll-out and cut-over period.” That is, that no private provider could lay FTTN cable in Australia that competes with the NBN during the 8-15 years it will take for the NBN to be built.

The report notes that the requirement to prohibit competition is necessary so as to assure that the AU$42 billion NBN is commercially viable. Page 111:

However, if access seekers in metropolitan areas have no other option but to purchase access services from the NBN operator — that is, if there is no possibility that the NBN will be bypassed — averaged access charges may be sustainable.

Ironically perhaps, the report argues that prohibiting infrastructure competition by creating a universal wholesale monopoly of next-generation internet access should be coupled with new regulations to encourage retail competition. Pg 245:

One of the Commonwealth’s objectives for the National Broadband Network (NBN) is that it:
Facilitates competition through open access arrangements that ensure equivalence of price and non-price terms and conditions, and provide scope for access seekers to differentiate their product offerings.

The concept of Government owned infrastructure combined with multiple retail suppliers isn’t unprecedented in Australia, for example in some states consumers have a choice of retail suppliers for water and power. The difference though is simple: the deregulation of those markets occurred with the infrastructure already being owned by the Government, infrastructure that was not already subject to competition.

The formerly Government owned telco Telstra is often labeled the monopoly wholesale provider, and to many homes that remains true. But the telecommunications industry in Australia has been deregulated for years, and already some markets offer competition away from Telstra’s copper to the home network. Anything from Optus Cable through to smaller scale cable rollouts in places like Geelong on Canberra. It’s not just Telstra who is unable to compete with the NBN, it’s anyone with a cable in the ground who wants to upgrade it over the next 10-15 years, on the grounds that forcing everyone onto the NBN is the only way to make it viable.

What the report does overlook though in its consideration of forcing NBN uptake is that it presumes that the only delivery method is a competing FTTN network. As noted many times previously, technology is already starting to turn existing infrastructure into high speed alternatives, such as the next generation of ADSL tech. As much as cutting out competition in FTTN infrastructure may seem harsh, it may be irrelevant in the years ahead as technology bypasses the Australian Government’s attempts to force everyone onto the heavily censored NBN.

Australian Government To Prohibit Infrastructure Competition for National Broadband Network is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Australian Minister for Censorship has today confirmed what I’ve been reporting for nearly two years: online adult games including Second Life will be banned in Australia.

A spokesman for Censorship Minister Stephen “Goebbels” Conroy confirmed to Fairfax newspapers that “under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.” In Australia, the MA15+ rating means that the content is restricted to those aged 15 and above. Australia does not have a R 18+ or similar rating for computer games, with all adult games automatically being classified as RC (Refused Classification.)

I wish I hadn’t been right here, so I take no delight in being so. However I was derided by more than a few bible bashing ALP voting Conroy lovers (in a platonic sense of course, cock sucking will be banned under the censorship regime) as being extreme and wrong in the past, so here’s two examples of things I’ve written previously about what Conroy was planning to do:

December 2007
To be censored by the Australian Government is “pornography and inappropriate material.” X rated pornography is illegal online in Australia, as are casino style internet gambling, certain forms of “hate” speech and R rated computer games.

January 2009
We know that among other “unwanted” things, the following falls into the censorship regime: porn, R rated games, certain types of political speech (for example discussion of methods of euthanasia) and possibly copyrighted content.

I am though surprised this is news today, as the policy was ALWAYS THERE in the fine print from day one. Conroy has waffled and avoided ever giving a direct answer about until now, but he’s also very good at that.

That at the half way point of 2009 this is even still on the agenda in Australia is a fucking disgrace, and the more the Government confirms the details, the more totalitarian the proposal becomes, and even China starts to look more open and free.

Confirmed: Second Life, online adult games to be banned outright in Australia is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Australian Government has committed AU$43 billion (US$30.4 billion) to rolling out a national broadband network (NBN) that will be redundant before it’s finished in 2018.

The NBN will be rolled out by the Australian Government directly, after it decided that private companies who had applied for the work weren’t up to scratch. The network itself was a policy promise made by the Australian Government in 2007, and was due to start originally in 2008.

The NBN rollout will now start in 2010, and take 8 years to complete. The fiber to the home network will provide “up to” 100mbps internet access to 90% of Australian homes. The remaining 10% will get lower access speeds through other technology including wireless and satellite. The network will be managed by a new company, The National Broadband Network Corporation, and will eventually take private investment, although the Government will maintain a minimum 51% controlling stake.

The problem with this huge investment is that the network will be redundant before it is completed. Australia’s largest telco Telstra is already rolling out a 100mbps network in capital cities, beginning with Melbourne this year. Technology in use in Japan offers 160mbps internet access over existing cable networks (details here); Telstra does have the largest cable network in Australia, although there are competing systems in large cities. Notably the cost of rolling out this technology isn’t excessive; in Japan, it has been rolled out at the cost of US$20 per connection.

But those are before we get to the holy grail: telephone lines. 100mbps over copper with DSL is already a possibility. 500mbps VDSL2 over copper (that is, the telephone connection into a home) is already being tested (details here)

By 2011, most Australian’s will already have access to a 100mbps connection via a variety of technologies, while the Government will only be one year into the NBN rollout.

Imagine the competing technlogies and services on offer by 2018? South Korea is rolling out 1gbps over 3 years today; with some advances in technology, 1gbps or even faster may be the norm in Australia when the NBN finally finishes its 100mbps rollout 9 years from now.

Australia commits $43b to network that will be redundant before it’s finished is a post from: The Inquisitr

Under the Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Act 2007 sites that link to content that is Refused Classification (RC) are considered themselves to be RC, and if hosted in Australia, site owners can be ordered to remove the link(s), or fined AU$11,000 a day.

The problem is that the provisions potentially make most sites on the internet illegal. Take for example the leaked Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) blacklist on Wikileaks we wrote about earlier. Given that the list was published after ACMA banned a similar list from Denmark, it’s fair to say that linking to the Australian list will be illegal as well from Australia. Note at this point that the content in the list consists entirely of URLs and does not in itself publish pictures or video; under the act, the links in the list are illegal content (RC) because of what they link to. Likewise, linking to that list is illegal because the list itself is now illegal. Any site that links to the list of links then becomes prohibited content. Most sites would have a front page with internal links, so any page on a site that links to the post that links to the list of links becomes illegal. Keeping up?

If I was linking to XYZ blog, and XYZ blog was linking to ABC blog who had linked to the list, all the pages in the chain are illegal, because each one links to prohibited content. Any site linking to me then becomes illegal, and so on.

But it gets better, because it took 1 second for me to bring up a page in Google which links to the Denmark list. If the Denmark list is prohibited content, then Google is in breach of the act as well, and could well end up being banned. And that’s before you even consider that Google itself takes copies of pages through Google Cache (I’m not allowed to link to it, but it is there, in full in Google.)

This is the stupidity of what is essentially a thought crime: criminalizing a list of links which are text and do not in themselves constitute child porn or other physical illegal activity. The law sets off a chain that could potentially result in most, if not all of the internet in Australia being banned by the Government.

Sounds extreme? well so is making laws that say sites are refused classification for a link and not content. Fascism in Australia has a very wide bow.

Google soon to be banned in Australia under draconian censorship laws is a post from: The Inquisitr

While some ISP’s are participating only to prove that the filter is flawed, it’s the testing procedure itself where things are completely wrong. The number of sites to be filtered in the trial: 10,000.

While 10,000 may be 10,000 too many, it’s also no where near close to how many sites the filter will have to block to comply with the Government’s guidelines.

We know that among other “unwanted” things, the following falls into the censorship regime: porn, R rated games, certain types of political speech (for example discussion of methods of euthanasia) and possibly copyrighted content.

We can’t count every category, in part because we simply don’t know exactly how the Government will define what stays and what gets blocked, but we can estimate block rates for porn, because we know R and X rated porn (R Rated stays only with strict age verification, which 99.99% of sites won’t meet) is out.

According to Netcraft, there was 182,226,259 sites online in October 2008. “Active” sites (not defined) come in at around 73.6 million.

Estimates of the number of porn sites online vary from 1% through to a massive 35% of all sites online. The most common figure used is 12% (one ref, but common figure)

12% of pages to be blocked by the Great Firewall of Australia would total:

All sites: 21,867,151
“Active” sites: 9.12 million (est).

Even if we take the minimum figure of 1%

All sites: 1,822,263
“Active” sites: 736,000 (est)

Do any of these figures sounding anything close to 10,000 sites?

I’m told that the more sites listed on a blacklist, the slower the filter becomes because each website requested must be checked against the list. 10,000 sites vs 21.9 million: there is no way the trials can give a representative result of what the implementation of the Great Firewall will do for internet speeds in Australia.

The Government may well say in response that they will not be filtering that many sites, and that may be the case. But if true, how will the firewall be effective if some sites are blacklisted, and others aren’t? And that’s ignoring finer points like the filter not blocking non-web content, and only maybe blocking P2P, but with filtering technology in its infancy.

The stupidity of this plan goes from bad to worse. If this does occur, god help everyone in Australia, because we might be returning to internet speeds closer to dialup than our already sorry excuse for broadband.

And a little perspective: the number of sites blocked in Iran is said to be up to 20 million, and the figure isn’t known for China (and censorship isn’t centralized there to complicate things) it is believed to be at a similar level. Soon we’ll be adding Australia to the list.

(image via Queen of the Desert on Flickr).

Australian Censorship Regime could block over 20 million websites: Testing therefore Useless is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Labor Government elected in late 2007 promoted a policy that would make it mandatory for internet service providers to offer a “clean feed” to homes, that blocked content deemed illegal, pornographic and inappropriate. Until recently, Minister Conroy had publicly stated that internet users would be able opt-out of the filter, but in a backflip has since disclosed that the filter will be compulsory, with two levels: one for children, and one for adults. Australia’s strict and sometimes bizarre censorship regime would see online adult games blocked (such as Second Life) because Australia doesn’t offer an R (adult) classification for games, and would also see soft pornography banned online despite being freely available a petrol (gas) stations.

The latest drama was reported by the Fairfax newspapers, who obtained copies of an email, and details of a phone call from the Ministers office directed towards a critic of the Government’s plan.

Mark Newton, an engineer at Australia ISP Internode, has heavily criticized the Government and its filtering policy on popular Australian broadband forum Whirlpool, and went as far as saying that the censorship regime would enable child abuse by ignoring non-web applications which are will not be censored under the plan (the tech behind the censorship plan doesn’t block P2P and chat for example).

The Ministers office wrote to the Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton based on Newton working for Internode, despite his criticism being offered in a personal capacity.

“In your capacity as a board member of the IIA I would like to express my serious concern that a IIA member would be sending out this sort of message. I have also advised [IIA chief executive] Peter Coroneos of my disappointment in this sort of irresponsible behaviour ,”

The email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed on to senior Internode management.

As Asher Moses points out in The Age, the irony in the Ministers response is that the Minister himself has constantly branded critics of the censorship plan as being in favor in child pornography.

Although this shouldn’t come as a great surprise, it is none the less unacceptable in a democratic country that a Minister would seek to censor critics who are doing nothing more than exercising their rights to publicly disagree.

Enough is enough. I call on the Minister to resign, or should he not do so, I call on the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to sack the Minister at the first available opportunity. This abuse of power has no place in a modern, free and democratic society in the 21st century.

Australian censorship minister tries to censor critic: time to go Conroy is a post from: The Inquisitr