Government Net filter

[Farsouthscanner]

Hi all
Some of you guys on here might have heard that the Federal Government is going to bring in a Internet filter to block porn and illegal sites etc.
This sounds good in theory but it has a lot of flaws.
Below is a copy and paste job from a post on the Whirlpool forums that explains why it isn't a good idea.
Can I ask everyone to spread the word as I am sure most people probably don't know there privacy, internet speed is at risk.
Thanks
Mark

This is serious stuff, please take the time to read this, and to pass it on to every aussie you know, it affects us all.

If you are hearing about this for the first time, I wouldn't be surprised, the government has been working very hard to keep this from the general public, because they know it is not what most of us want.

in 2003, the Libs investigated the efficacy of ISP filtering of illegal websites, and a childrens safety filter. It was found to degrade internet speed and not be very effective as well as being expensive to maintain. they dropped the idea. The Labor govt is now bringing it back via Senator Conroy. a trial earlier this year in tasmania tested 6 filters. the best filter incorrectly blocked 3% of websites. in SA, for medium sized ISP internode, this has been said to equate to 3000 incorrectly blocked sites PER SECOND. that's from ONE ISP that at best has a 15% share of the market, leading to more than 20,000 pages PER SECOND being incorrectly blocked for SA alone. this was the most efficient filter they tested. if this wasn't bad enough, it turns out the filters showed a speed degradation of 22-86%, with the best efficiency filter causing the worst speed degradation. so on a 30MBps cable plan (the highest offered speed anywhere in oz), your speed will drop to 5.5 – 24MBps, depending on which filter would be used. on dialup your 54kbps connection will drop to 7.5 – 42kbps. would that even load a page at all? worse yet, the conditions they tested them under were connection speeds of half of dialup speed, and the number of sites tested had an almost equal ratio of legal to non-legal websites, which surely doesn't reflect the real ratio, and probably has underestimated both possible speed degradation and incorrect blocking rates.

Despite these appalling numbers, Conroy has pushed on to further live trials. Whilst the ISPs who are participating have not revealed themselves yet internode and a few others will NOT be. One wonders if they will inform their customers if they do.

ISP filtering works by forced unencryption of data sent so the data packets can be checked and it can be decided if you should be allowed access to where you are telling your browser to go. This is a massive breach of privacy, and as yet, it has not been stated that this will not cause secure online banking and online purchases to become less secure, as they would most likely not be able to be made exempt from the filtering.

At first, it was said Aussies could opt-out of the filter, but it appears we have been lied to, and there are 2 filters to be put in place, not one. the first is a mandatory "illegal" site blacklist. Now whilst this idea may be well meant, with the intent to blocking kiddy porn, a blacklist will inevitably be very subjective, and one has to wonder who will in charge of determining what is illegal, and who will regulate and sueprvise these decision to make sure that they are unbiased, and we don't turn into China, where websites with political views their govt doesnt agree with are blacklisted. It'd be a might point of temptation for the govt i am sure of it. the second is a childrens filter, where it will function much like a net nany, but at the ISP level (which btw, most ISPs offer already) only the second filter will be opt out, leaving australias internet speeds crippled, when we are already behind the rest of the 1st world when it comes to the internet.

The government contradicts itself. first it says it wants to give us the national broadband network, and improve speeds and coverage massively, and then it wants to slow us down again with this filter?

What can YOU do to help stop this? (see http://www.nocleanfeed.com for further ideas)

Email this to all of your aussie email contacts. The more people that are made aware of this, the better.

Send a letter to senator conroy (minister@dbcde.gov.au.), your local MP, Nick Xenophon (http://www.xen.net.au), your ISP, and your bank telling them you aren't happy.

Tell you friends, let's inform the nation of what the govt is doing behind our backs whilst we have a chance to stop them before it is simply implemeted much like workplace choices, and then they tell us it cant be undone.

Join the Facebook group here. http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/g ... 7968823265 invite your friends to join.

Sign the petition http://petitions.takingitglobal.org/oznetcensorship and invite your friends to do so as well as it will be sent to key politicians

Read the original report from the ACMA regarding the tasmania trials http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/ma ... report.pdf

Follow discussions about how easily the filter can be circumvented, and what it means for aussies /forum-replies.cfm?t=967413

For a great article covering all areas of the ISP filter concerns http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandat ... -blocking/

Thanks for your time,