OT: Uproar as Great Aussie Firewall threatens Internet freedom

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Uproar as Great Aussie Firewall threatens Internet freedom

8:17AM Monday Dec 29, 2008

Tanalee

The sun is setting on Australia's Internet freedom, according to unhappy

ISPs and opponents of a planned Internet mega-filter.

SYDNEY - A proposed Internet filter dubbed the " Great Aussie Firewall " is

promising to make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among

democratic countries.

Consumers, civil-rights activists, engineers, Internet providers and

politicians from opposition parties are among the critics of a mandatory

Internet filter that would block at least 1,300 websites prohibited by the

government - mostly child pornography, excessive violence, instructions in

crime or drug use and advocacy of terrorism.

Hundreds protested in state capitals earlier this month.

" This is obviously censorship, " said Pearson , 29, organizer of

protests in Melbourne and an officer of one of a dozen Facebook groups

against the filter.

The list of prohibited sites, which the government isn't making public, is

arbitrary and not subject to legal scrutiny, said, leaving it to the

government or lawmakers to pursue their own online agendas.

" I think the money would be better spent in investing in law enforcement and

targeting producers of child porn, " he said.

Internet providers say a filter could slow browsing speeds, and many

question whether it would achieve its intended goals. Illegal material such

as child pornography is often traded on peer-to-peer networks or chats,

which would not be covered by the filter.

" People don't openly post child porn, the same way you can't walk into a

store in Sydney and buy a machine gun, " said Geordie Guy, spokesman for

Electronic Frontiers Australia, an Internet advocacy organisation. " A filter

of this nature only blocks material on public websites. But illicit material

.... Is traded on the black market, through secret channels. "

Communications Minister Conroy proposed the filter earlier this year

following up on a promise of the year-old Labor Party government to make

the Internet cleaner and safer.

" This is not an argument about free speech, " he said in an email. " We have

laws about the sort of material that is acceptable across all mediums and

the Internet is no different. Currently, some material is banned and we are

simply seeking to use technology to ensure those bans are working. "

Jim Wallace, managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, welcomed

the proposed filter as " an important safeguard for families worried about

their children inadvertently coming across this material on the net. "

Conroy's office said a peer-to-peer filter could be considered. Most of

today's filters are unable to do that, though companies are developing the

technology.

The plan, which would have to be approved by Parliament, has two tiers. A

mandatory filter would block sites on an existing blacklist determined by

the Australian Communications Media Authority. An optional filter would

block adult content.

The latter could use keywords to determine which sites to block, a

technology that critics say is problematic.

" Filtering technology is not capable of realizing that when we say breasts

we're talking about breast cancer, or when we type in sex we may be looking

for sexual education, " Guy said. " The filter will accidentally block things

it's not meant to block. "

A laboratory test of six filters for the Australian Communications Media

Authority found they missed 3 per cent to 12 per cent of material they

should have barred and wrongly blocked access to 1 per cent to 8 per cent of

websites. The most accurate filters slowed browsing speeds up to 86 per cent

The government has invited Internet providers to participate in a live test

expected to be completed by the end of June.

The country's largest Internet provider, Telstra BigPond, has declined, but

others will take part. Provider iiNet signed on to prove the filter won't

work. Managing director Malone said he would collect data to show

the government " how stupid it is. "

The government has allocated 45 million Australian dollars (NZ$54.5 million)

for the filter, the largest part of a four-year, AU$128.5 million

cybersafety plan, which also includes funding for investigating online child

abuse, education and research.

One of the world's largest child-advocacy groups questions such an

allocation of money.

" The filter may not be able to in fact protect children from the core

elements of the Internet that they are actually experiencing danger in, "

said Holly Doel-Mackaway, an adviser with Save the Children. " The filter

should be one small part of an overall comprehensive program to educate

children and families about using the Internet. "

Australia's proposal is less severe than controls in Egypt and Iran, where

bloggers have been imprisoned; in North Korea, where there is virtually no

Internet access; or in China, which has a pervasive filtering system.

Internet providers in the West have blocked content at times. In early

December, several British providers blocked a Wikipedia entry about heavy

metal band Scorpion. The entry included its 1976 Virgin Killer album cover,

which has an image of a naked underage girl. The Internet Watch Foundation

warned providers the image might be illegal.

Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom have filters, but they are voluntary.

In the United States, Pennsylvania briefly imposed requirements for service

providers to block child-pornography sites, but a federal court struck down

the law because the filters also blocked legitimate sites.

In Australia, a political party named the Australian Sex Party was launched

last month in large part to fight the filter, which it believes could block

legal pornography, sex education, abortion information and off-colour

language.

But ethics professor Clive Hamilton, in a column on the popular Australian

website Crikey.com, scoffed at what he called " Net libertarians, " who

believe freedom of speech is more important than limiting what children can

access online.

" The internet has dramatically changed what children can see, " said the

professor at Sturt University in Canberra, noting that " a few extra

clicks of a mouse " could open sites with photos or videos of extreme or violent

sex. " Opponents of ISP filters simply refuse to acknowledge or trivialise the

extent of the social problem. "