the net
25 Feb 2009
The Trial Begins
With the Government's clean feed trial about to start, a number of policy questions remain known unknowns, writes Colin Jacobs
For months now Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has been answering letters about his internet censorship drive with generalities about "cyber-safety". He has deferred any further debate on the policy until after the upcoming "live" filtering trial. Just this week, he deflected comments about the scope of the proposed blacklist in a Senate Estimates hearing, saying "it will be determined, as we have always said, following the live pilot trial."
Testing is expected to begin in earnest in the coming weeks and the trial’s progress is being watched keenly by those who have an interest in how the filtering policy will take shape.
The pilot, according to the "expression of interest" document released by the Government, is designed to "test a range of content filtering solutions in a real world environment". The outcomes, it says, will "inform the Government’s decision making".
Data will be gathered on the accuracy, costs, scalability and effect on network speed brought about by the filtering software, as well as commercial concerns.
Even before the trial has begun, questions are being asked about its integrity. The process by which participating ISPs were selected is a little opaque. ISPs were invited to volunteer to take part in the pilot, and several did so. The ultimate decision, however, to exclude the nation’s most popular ISPs has raised a few eyebrows.
Although the nation’s largest ISP, Telstra, did not choose to take part in the trial, the second- and third-largest, Optus and iiNet, did apply. Neither were selected. Instead, six smaller ISPs were named earlier this month to take part in the first round of testing: Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.
These ISPs represent a very small percentage of Australian internet users. In fact, one of them, Highway 1, is a business-focussed ISP and has hardly any home users at all.
Tests conducted on the networks of some of the country’s smallest ISPs cannot possibly reflect the realities and challenges of filtering on a national level, where millions of users are viewing thousands of web pages every second.
Presumably, this decision was partly based on cost: outfitting the larger networks of iiNet or Optus, even for a limited trial, would be very expensive. Smaller ISPs are probably also more able to respond in the trial’s very short time-frame. Nevertheless, the credibility of the test is undermined considerably by its limited scale.
Cynics have also suggested that iiNet was excluded because of their vocal opposition to the scheme as a whole. The company’s chief executive has been quoted as saying the company applied to take part in the trial merely to show "how stupid it is".
Not all the ISPs are so pessimistic. Some maintain it is technically feasible and see it as a revenue opportunity. Nicholas Power, General Manager of Highway 1, told tech journalist Ben Grubb of Tech Wired AU that participating in the pilot made "good business sense" — by being closely involved with the development of the policy, they could use Government money to prepare themselves, should the legislation come into effect.
Those chosen to take part must undertake to filter a blacklist of websites based on the ACMA list of prohibited material. This simulates the mandatory tier of the filtering policy targeted at illegal and "undesirable" material.
The choice of technology used to filter content is up to the ISPs, and they can apply for government funding to offset the cost of the new equipment. The ISPs must then provide a filtered internet connection to Enex Testlabs, who will be conducting the test and eventually delivering a report to the Government. The connection will be tested for 60 days meaning that, barring leaks, the public is unlikely to hear much about the trial until May.
We know now what the pilot is testing, but it is what the pilot will not test that is problematic. Most noticeably missing from the pilot is the policy that was actually taken to the last federal election: a child-friendly internet feed. The "technical testing framework" document mentions "dynamic analysis filtering" in passing, but the focus is clearly on the mandatory tier of the scheme. The ACMA blacklist, although reasonably broad in scope, is small and has been presented by the Minister as a tool for fighting the spread of child abuse material by pedophiles, not for protecting underage web surfers. Filtering just the ACMA blacklist is certainly more technically realisable than dynamic filtering of all requested content, but it means the trial will not reflect the Government’s proposed policy in full.
Exactly how the various ISPs will approach the trial will be interesting to see. Filtering the blacklist can be accomplished relatively simply at a network level if blunt instruments are used — that is, if whole domain names are blocked rather than particular pages. It is not yet clear, however, how the overblocking which can arise through DNS poisoning and IP blocking will be avoided.
A blocking solution that can filter out individual web pages in a site is much more complicated technically. We saw last year how necessary such a system is when the Internet Watch Foundation, which compiles an index of child-abuse URLs for blocking purposes, added a Wikipedia page to their list. Blocking the entire domain would be catastrophic. The same applies for many sites such as YouTube that host millions of pages of content, only one of which needs to be objectionable to complicate access to the entire domain.
There has been some confusion as to whether or not the pilot will even include actual users. Initially, the Government indicated that "this will be a closed network test and will not involve actual customers". Participating ISPs, however, have said they will offer filtering to their customers. Whether or not the experiences of end users will inform the final report is not yet known.
The ISPs are currently in the process of configuring the hardware
and software they have chosen to implement the filtering. They will
have to put this to the Government for approval before
implementation, which indicates the Department is keeping a close eye
on the technology on offer. This makes good sense, as if and when the
system is rolled out nationwide, the Government will have to subsidise
the cost, which could run to tens of millions of dollars.
The Government knows filters can be trivially broken and points this out several times in its own documents: "It is acknowledged that filtering can be circumvented by motivated people with sufficient technical knowledge." If the pilot does show, as the Government itself seems to anticipate, that filter circumvention is trivial for most adults, how will this impact the proposed policy?
Regardless of the outcome of this trial, having some concrete data to focus the debate should be welcomed by all sides. Some hard technical data and real cost figures will allow a proper cost-benefit analysis to finally be undertaken.
That said, given its rather limited scope, it is disingenuous for the Minister to hide behind the trial and refuse to engage his critics in the meantime. Fundamental policy questions remain — such as what online content is to be effectively outlawed by the filter. A small ISP, let alone a large one, cannot inform this debate through the purchase of a new router. As Tech 2U’s General Manager Andrew Robson points out, they can test the network, but the question of where parental responsibility ends and Government mandate begins has not yet been satisfactorily discussed or resolved.
For the technical numbers to have a meaningful context, these issues must be clarified.
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Enex Testlabs house-cat types “shaved doggy” into search engine to test filtering.
11,100 results. Who would have thought it.
This trial also deflects attention from whether the government should be censoring our communications at all. It is obvious from the secrecy of the censoring criteria they intend to be able to block politically disagreeable sites if they wish, and to allow special interests to influence what we should be allowed to see. As anyone can filter internet access for themselves and their children if they wish, the real target of this scheme is obviously to destroy the right of adults to decide for themselves what is objectionable.
At this point I guess we can only hope that senator Conroy’s lack of respect for Australians and pandering to the religious right sees him driven out of politics before he can do much more damage.
Hear! Hear! to that last one, Anistar! Dazza.
Xenophon has withdrawn support, it’s dead.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/09/02/26/1344207.shtml
thanks datakid —
However, considering the Greens and Opposition were already against it, not even the Senaton’s support would’ve got this one through the Senate. The real hook in that story that came out yesterday was that Nick Minchin has had legal advice that in order to introduce the clean feed, legislation WOULD need to be passed. As far as we know the trials are still going ahead however..
So Fielding and the ALP are the only ones supporting this ridiculous idea? What on earth is the point in trialling it then? other than appeasing the very tiny minority of religious right numpties who should be ignored at best and sectioned at worst?
Didn’t we vote the Libs out rather spectacularly at the last election - why does the ALP insist on aping them?
@datakid it is way too early to declare the censorwall dead. Building a censorwall is still Government policy, so until the Government clearly repudiates this policy we must continue to fight it.
Senators, particularly independent Senators, are subject to persuasion and deal making. Coalition Senators are entitled under party rules to vote against the party line on matters of conscience.
Drawing premature conclusions that the fight has been won will ultimately only damage our cause by lulling us all into a false sense of security and reducing pressure on the Government.
It ain’t over until Rudd categorically buries it. It certainly ain’t over because an independent Senator said one thing on one day.
—
http://efa.org.au
while I agree with jon.seymour on not taking an independent’s view on any given issue on any given day as concrete (presumably Xenophon could be swayed with a bag of cash for the Murray) but I think the possibility of ANY Coalition Senator crossing the floor and voting with the ALP on this is stretching things a bit.
If the Greens & Coalition say no this is pretty much dead in the water - all it can possibly be is an expensive waste of money to appease morons who take their guidance from middle eastern goat herders who lived 2000 years ago
There’s a principle at stake in this whole business. It’s freedom. You don’t have to be a porn crawler to understand the importance of not letting governments (or any other putative regulators of your mind) get anywhere near censoring access to media. It’s just that the media concerned in this instance are web-based and therefore much harder to proscribe than the filthy postcards of olden times.
Rounding up paedophiles and stamping out criminal sexual abuse of children is sensible policy. It should be pursued with consummate vigour through the mechanisms already in place.
Shutting off free access to material and sites - such as so-called “adult chat rooms” - that some people (even most people) find objectionable, is not sensible policy. It is the thin end of a very nasty wedge that could too easily result in busybodies minding everyone else’s business.
The issue where children are concerned is parental (or in loco parentis) control. The issue where predator adults are concerned lies in detection and enforcement of criminal law.
Conroy and the Government are chumps to talk themselves into the sort of idiocy they propose.
Richard Laidlaw, Bali
I was recently denied access to the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) on the grounds that it contained illegal content.
lols. datakid waves @arel from a hotspot near Kuta beach.
Kafka and ‘1994’ live on, and feed on religious zealotry! The whole world seems to be going back to the ‘Dark Ages’. We need a new Enlightenment! We are NOT going to get it from Rudd, Conroy and Co. Dazza.
A little off the topic but this story from the US raises questions that could be posed in Australia. In a nut shell, Republican God fearing states buy more porn than commie Democrat voting states.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Business/Story?id=6977202&page=1
douglas jones
One needs to examine as well potential conflicts of interest similar to those,yet to be found by to-days investigation which is still to be set up, by the Pecora Committee of1933.