Last week I had a looooong debate with Jeremy over at sydneyanglicans.net over Labor’s proposed mandatory internet filtering.
I oppose it - I think it’s a waste of time and money that could be much better spent, but I’m not looking to re-open the debate here (I made my case several times over).
However, I thought it would be interesting to monitor how it plays out over the coming weeks/months.
So, to that end, I thought it would be interesting to highlight a story from the dept of delicious (yet disturbing) irony.
On Friday, AustralianIT reported this story “ACMA takes aim at Whirlpool, supplier” saying “IN an unprecedented move, Australia’s communications regulator has threatened to fine a company up to $11,000 a day for indirectly leaking part of its top-secret list of banned internet web pages.”
What happened was a user of the Australian tech/broadband forum Whirlpool posted a link to a page that was on the ACMA’s blacklist.
That page was an American anti-abortion page, and the ACMA was satisfied “the content is prohibited or potential prohibited content”, the Oz reported. A user submitted a complaint about the page to test the complaints mechanism.
Under the Government’s proposed scheme, this page would be blocked for all Australians.
The ACMA’s action is particularly disturbing because they’ve issues a take-down notice (with threatened fines) to the *host* of a forum where a user *links* to ‘potentially prohibited content’ while discussing the politics of the situation. Electronic Frontiers Australia covers it here (and links to the blacklisted page).
So, the delicious irony?
One of the biggest supporters of the mandatory filter is the Australian Christian Lobby’s Jim Wallace.
And what’s one of Jim Wallace’s and the ACL’s pet topics? You guessed it, their anti-abortion message, and now the scheme they are strongly in support of has blacklisted an anti-abortion site.
Luke, all that just proves the current situation with the complaints generated ACMA blacklist and ‘take downs’ etc is a joke doesn’t it?
You agree with me that the current Howard instituted arrangement is highly problematic and needs to be fixed, yeah?
Alan, I was/am talking about illegal material. I do accept the validity of the mail analogy, although I guess law enforcement/customs has developed ‘filtering’ strategies to cope with law breaking using older technologies. (Phone is a confusing analogy given current convergence with the internet)
PC-based optional filtering for soft porn is another matter entirely from mandatory ISP-based filtering of illegal content - and as (I understand from Luke and others) there appears big issues with that as well given it doesn’t work on new devices. BTW - parents are not able to monitor their kids when they are using computers at school for example, let alone their mobile usage etc - so that is really an outdated rhetorical point.
But I’ll shut up now (as like Luke) I don’t want to reopen the debate on filtering per se.
The irony of some of the false positives does surprise me a little. I would have thought that filtering would be inadequate (by ‘bad site’ creators getting around the filters) rather than blocking anti-abortion sites or whatnot…
Either way I’m opposed, but you already know that.
My understanding is that the false positive in the abortion example is the result of activists exposing the flaws in ACMA’s complaints generated process.
But again that is the current state of play. It has nothing to do with mandatory filtering per se.
Jeremy, I’m a bit confused about ACMA v blacklist - are you under the impression the ACMA complaints process will change? If so, can you point me to info about changes? I could have totally misunderstood & you just think the complaints mechanism & a blacklist itself are different issues, so just wanted to clarify.
As far as I can see, Labor has no plans to change the ACMA complaints process. Eg Conroy in response (scroll down) to concerned letters:
The ACMA blacklist is developed by complaints by the public about online content to the ACMA hotline. ACMA does not arbitrarily assess and classify content. Online content is assessed in accordance with the National Classification Scheme. The Scheme was established by the Classification (Publications, Films, and Computer Games) Act 1995. Content which is the subject of a complaint is assessed by ACMA and in some instances referred to the National Classification Board for classification.
The ACMA complaints process has been established by the Australian Parliarment through the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. If content is found to be prohibited and is hosted in Australia (i.e. located on a computer or server in Australia), ACMA will direct the content provider to remove or provent access to the content. If content is found to be prohibited and is hosted overseas, ACMA must add the material to its blacklist.
ACMA officers and Classification Board members applying the Scheme are highly trained and apply criteria set out in the Scheme’s legislative framework. Further, decisions made by the Classification Board can be reviewed by the Classification Review Board.
The scope of the definition of prohibited content in legislation cannot be expanded without changes to legislation being passed by Parliament.
To me, they are two sides of the same coin. The blacklisting of the anti-abortion page wasn’t a false-positive, it was just an example of the normal working of the process. If the complaints process is a joke, certainly the blacklist will be a joke.
It is extremely disturbing - given it’s apparently illegal to reveal what has been blacklisted, how could you even known, let alone appeal what was on the list?
Add anti-vilification laws into the mix and there are plenty of reasons to be very concerned.
But like I said - if there is any info that Labor plans changes to this process then I’d certainly be interested in seeing it, as I haven’t been able to find anything about it.
Ok - maybe this is another area we were debating across purposes.
My reading of Conroy is that nothing about the Howard process is locked in concrete. I’ll try to find something in black and white saying this.
But as we both agree we are getting bizarre mixed messages out of Conroy and his dept, I’m not surprised we are reading this differently. I’m in the process of getting some direct answers for my SC article. Its important to nail this down.
You’ll notice referrals to the classification board is now arbitrary. “Content which is the subject of a complaint is assessed by ACMA and in some instances referred to the National Classification Board for classification.” This is what I object to about the current process. I agree this ‘arbitrary’ part of the process is a threat to freedom of speech and why I don’t think the current ACMA blacklist can or should be used for mandatory filtering (optional is another issue).
Now if the abortion site you have mentioned was reviewed by the classification board and found to be illegal (ie prohibited content), that’s a different matter and then we are not talking about a false positive.
If we have mandatory filtering then we need mandatory review by the classification board as we have for other media. I’m not against a complaints generated system per se (its probably the only workable option) as long as the review is by the appropriately independent umpire.
From my understanding of hearing what you, and others like Malone and Pillion has said - everyone in the industry agrees that a very tightly defined anti-kiddie porn blacklist is technically workable (ie less than 900 urls). It just can’t be based on the current ACMA blacklist process (Pillion admitted this to me by the way - I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear before).
This is the state of play:
* Malone says 200 url blacklist workable
* Pillion says 900 url blacklist workable
* ACMA (unreviewed) blacklist = 1300 urls
* As part of a much wider trial, Conroy is seeking a 10,000 url test to determine the upper end of the technology.
If the pro-filter part of the industry says the current ACMA blacklist is unusable then its dead in the water obviously. That doesn’t get Conroy out his political pickle that he needs to be seen to come up with something to ‘fix’ the problem. The public don’t want to hear from Govt that they can do ‘nothing’ to enforce the law.
this why I think mandatory filtering per se and the current ACMA blacklist are separate issues.
I’d be Ok with the ACMA blacklist if they fix the review mechanisms.
Just quickly, some back-of-a-napkin maths on the numbers involved if the Govt wants to ‘clean up the filth’.
There is a 2006 AP story that said research conducted by the US Govt and Microsoft estimated that 1% of all pages indexed by Google are sexually explicit.
I found an estimate of active domain names in 2006 that put the number at 50,000,000, and it was growing exponentially. (Google currently indexes 8 billion+ pages).
So, by 2006 numbers, if you wanted to blacklist (as opposed to dynamically filter) sexually explicit sites, that would be 500,000 sites, and that is using 2006 numbers (remember, this was growing exponentially). By contrast, the ACMA blacklist is, as pointed out, currently ~1300 sites, and the trial (such as it is) will be of up to 10,000 sites.
So as it stands, with very conservative figures which are several years old, the ACMA blacklist would block 0.26% of sexually explicit sites (and apparently the odd anti-abortion site!), at a cost of many millions of dollars. Put another way, it wouldn’t block 99.74% of sexually explicit sites.
Also, the number of web sites isn’t static either, with millions appearing every month, so lets say 1,000,000 appear every month, and 1% are sexually explicit, then 10,000 sites would have to be added every month, or an average of 333.33 every day. Let say there are 20, 8-hour working days per month, which gives 160 business hours per month. In that case, 62.5 sites would need to be blacklisted every business hour, which works out (quite nicely!) at an average of blacklisting 1 site per minute.
A broad European alliance of industry and police began sharing private financial information yesterday in a bid to crack down on criminals who profit from distributing child pornography on the internet.
Credit card companies, Internet firms, police forces, NGOs and the European Commission officially launched the initiative in London to stop the trade in the images.
[...] He said the Commission would fund the scheme to the tune of 427,000 euros ($540,100).
[...]Chief Executive of the CEOP Center Jim Gamble said the organized crime element had been reduced over the years since the days of Operation Ore, a huge police investigation into British users of American child pornography websites, as the risk increased and profits fell.
“Now by applying the individual lessons learnt and by coming together with our combined skills…we plan to eradicate the remnants of that industry once and for all,” he said.
I think that’s the kind of action everyone would like to see (and to be fair, the Govt is increasing resources for the AFP as part of their policy).
You know I’m not going to defend the ACL position on filtering all sexually explicit material. yes, its impossible.
In my defence ‘sexually explicit’ does not equal illegal ‘prohibited content’.
As far as we know the number of urls in that category is less than 1,300.
I’d be happy if after trialling mandatory blacklist filtering the Govt said even a small targetted filter is pointless and we are putting our efforts into resourcing the AFP.
I’m not stuck on the idea of blacklist filtering, just saying that we should explore it properly.
Despite premature celebrations or wishful thinking that the Government are looking for an exit strategy, the Government is powering ahead with its plans to censor Australia’s Internet.
On Sunday’s edition of Background Briefing on radio national - an excellent and in-depth look at the scheme, available here for download - the Minister could be heard proclaiming the necessity of the scheme, dismissing the critics, and confusing the issue, saying that the filter would protect Australia’s children from “’such vile websites as child pornography and the ultra-violent sites” and that Labor made no apology for trying to “block these sites from families’ loungerooms and children’s bedrooms.” These are frightening words for anyone who understands the issues at stake, for they demonstrate some very confused thinking lies at the heart of this policy. If the Minister truly believes that children are seeking out, or being bombarded with child pornography, then there’s a dearth of both common sense and proper research in the Ministerial suites.
In the meantime, events have belied the benign nature of the new regime. After Friday’s notice to online discussion site Whirlpool, demanding a link to blacklisted content be taken down, it has come to light today that ACMA has blacklisted a page on the whistle-blower site Wikileaks. The page was submitted by a Whirlpool user, and ironically contains the leaked blacklist from a Danish filtering scheme (where the list is also kept secret, as in Australia). Wikileaks is designed as a safe repository for the anonymous posting of documents, especially those Governments would seek to suppress. Few would fail to see the value in such a site, and so it is not a little disturbing to see how casually it was added to ACMA’s list of prohibited web sites. Even under the current regime, a site like Wikileaks could certainly not be hosted in Australia.
The ABC Radio National story mentioned above (which I haven’t heard) is available as audio here on the ABC RN site.
Conroy’s clean feed
In the name of protecting children, the government will decree we’ll be forbidden to see ‘unwanted’ and ‘inappropriate’ things on the web. But exactly what that means is a secret, and the thin end of the censorship wedge. Reporter, Wendy Carlisle.
The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.
The Australian communications regulator’s top-secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked on to the web and paints a harrowing picture of Australia’s forthcoming internet censorship regime.
Wikileaks, an anonymous document repository for whistleblowers, obtained the list, which has been seen by this website, and plans to publish it for public consumption on its website imminently.
Wikileaks has previously published the blacklists for Thailand, Denmark and Norway.
University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt said the leaked list “constitutes a condensed encyclopedia of depravity and potentially very dangerous material”.
He said the leaked list would become “the concerned parent’s worst nightmare” as curious children would inevitably seek it out.
But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has said that the list of prohibited internet addresses leaked by an unknown party is not the ACMA blacklist.
There was some speculation that it may have been the ACMA blacklist plus additional sites from a filtering company, but who knows. Things certainly do echo around the internets rather quickly :)
Still, it highlights the problem. The list will be a honeypot for anyone looking for the worst of the worst, and anyone looking to embarrass the Government. Having the list distributed to 100s of ISP’s, with no doubt more than a few disgruntled geeks, and you can imagine this playing out regularly.
I didn’t, I must say it didn’t really interest me because the issue has already come full circle to my mind with the leaking of the ACMA list. What starts out as good Government intentions has resulted in the publication and publicising of a list of the so-called ‘worst of the worst’ - pretty much the exact opposite of the Govt’s stated goals.
Anyway, just had a read through the transcript. Andrew Bolt was his subtle, nuanced self, and I think if Andrew Bolt is on your side then rather deafening alarm bells should be ringing. Conroy’s attempts to explain anything technical were embarrassing, eg “[people ask] how could you possibly block a dentist: because the Russian mob hacked his site. Well, not his site directly, but they actually entered into using his web address” - what?, and his explanations about other issues ranged from the dubious (ACMA blacklisting Henson site “literally a technical error” - it’s a human process!) to the bizarre (“cracking peer to peer” - again, what?) with a bit of policy on the run (parents choosing filtering control, really?). The objections have been around for months now, you would think Conroy would have coherent responses prepared. It’s a shame he didn’t get to elaborate on how the anti-abortion site ended up there.
It’s also a shame that the discussion overall was pretty superficial - it didn’t look at dynamic vs blacklist filtering, but given the trouble the simple blacklist alone has caused the Govt, it’s hard to imagine dynamic filtering, which would be 100x more controversial I imagine, ever seeing the light of day.
It’s also a shame the objections were pretty superficial as well - the discussion has moved on from where some of the objections were coming from. In any case, you just have to run the numbers as I did earlier to illustrate how absurd the blacklist scheme is vs stated intentions.
I think if Andrew Bolt is on your side then rather deafening alarm bells should be ringing
LOL, Luke.. I’m never on Bolt’s side.. just my own!
That said, you may well be surprised by what I conclude in my updated SC article… at the presses as I type. I was convinced on a few points… which is why flying kites on a 2,000 read blog ahead of an 40,000 read SC article is helpful. :)
On the whole ‘effectiveness’ angle - I decided my ‘education’ argument is far too nuanced. I realised people didn’t get my analogy to surf safety.
I’ve been playing round with the ‘shark net’ analogy more recently.. which you will rightly guess isn’t entirely a positive one.
Internet filtering/censorship is the topic for Insight tonight on SBS, 7.30pm. Not sure there will be anything new, but it should be interesting to see how Jennie Brockie handles it.
Seemed like a more thorough discussion on Insight than occurred on Q&A (though I only read the transcript), with a good mix of people including Mark Newton of Internode who was excellent, and Tom the teenager who famously bypassed the Howard govt filter in 30 minutes.
The ACL guy, Lyle Shelton, was embarrassing. If you’re going to express an opinion, it helps if you don’t grossly misrepresent the entire discussion as your opening line. Christians should aim for accuracy, not blatant distortion. Thankfully Jennie Brockie picked him up on it and he had to backtrack. Not a good look.
Otheriwse, nothing much new, but Conroy’s take on the politics around ACMA was interesting. He made the point that given the current ACMA scheme was the previous Govt’s policy and that they have Steve Fielding’s support that they are unlikely to support any legislation through the Senate, and therefore no changes to the legislation were likely given the formation of the Senate (which is well known). He seemed to express ambivalence about ACMA’s process, but obviously has to defend the law he wants to use to implement the Labor policy, which creates a lot of confusion as the law is quite broad, whereas his stated goals regarding the blacklist are much more narrow. Of course this creates the absurd situation where he’s trying to enforce a blacklist with extremely broad terms that he doesn’t appear to be particularly fond of simply because he can’t change the law, Labor wont risk a vote, and Labor has decided to pursue it’s policy regardless. Truly bizarre.
Also bizarre was his defense of the anti-abortion site appearing on the blacklist - it wasn’t the site, he argued (which is true, I think it was just a page), but an image on the site that has been blacklisted. How about that - bureaucrats banning specific images on web sites!
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