The media release was emailed at 6.26am AEST, a clear sign that it was a calm, reasoned decision made as part of a long-term government strategy. Sorry? No? Read the release?

“The News of the World scandal and other recent mass breaches of privacy, both at home and abroad, have put the spotlight on whether there should be such a right.”

The Australian Law Reform Commission’s recommendation for such a law has been sitting on the table for three years now. But hey, something in the news cycle triggers a potential “announceable” and… disco!

Right then.

I’ve already written straight news stories today for CSO Online, Australia to consider right-to-privacy law and Watchdogs welcome Australia’s right-to-privacy move. I’ll be writing about the timing thing tomorrow for ABC’s The Drum.

Right now, though, I have one question. It’s a question I’ve asked before, but I was reminded by something Mark Newton said earlier this evening.

How come we don’t see such sudden action, ever, when is comes to giving Australians a statutory right to freedom of speech?

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week was busy enough, but this week was even busier. Something’s gotta give.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 94, “ISP filtering goes ‘voluntary’”. Even though Australia’s controversial mandatory internet filtering program is at least two years away from being implemented, internet service providers will soon start filtering child exploitation material on a voluntary basis. My guests are Peter Black, who teaches internet and media law at the Queensland University of Technology; Network engineer Mark Newton; Lyle Shelton, chief of staff of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Articles

• The only NBN monopoly seems to be on ignorance, for ABC Drum Opinion. My response to opponents of the National Broadband Network claiming that it’ll destroy competition in the telecommunications industry.
• Internet filtering isn’t compulsory, but everyone will volunteer, for Crikey, covering the recent news the “voluntary” of filtering of the internet will soon begin in Australia, covering child exploitation material only.
• Voluntary filtering removes the controversy, for CSO. In this op-ed I explain how the voluntary filtering makes sense technically and politically, if not necessarily for effective child protection.
• Drug spam rules, thanks to WikiPharmacy: Symantec, for CSO. It’s a shame I didn’t notice that my headline is a crash blossom.
• If Facebook killed Myspace will Google+ kill THE social network? Crikey. At rather short notice, when I’d already been up very early to wrote two other articles, I was asked to write a piece covering the news of both Google launching Google+ and Myspace being sold for UD 35 million and how that’d affect Facebook. This is what resulted.
• Interpol blacklist goes live in Canberra, for ZDNet Australia. “Voluntary” internet filtering started on Friday.

Media Appearances

Two radio spots this week, and a guest appearance on someone else’s podcast.

• On Wednesday I spoke with ABC Gold Coast about Google+ and how it’ll affect Facebook. There’s audio at the link.
• On Thursday I was talking about information security for business on Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast.
• On Friday I was talking about Myspace, Google+ and Facebook on ABC 774 Melbourne. Again, there’s audio at the link.

Corporate Largesse

None. I am reliably informed that the drought will be broken next week.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A misty dawn at Bunjaree Cottages, 1 July 2011. This is the view from Roselle Cottage, not normally rented to the punters. The much-battered camera in my phone does not do this scene justice.]

Australia’s mandatory internet filter is at least two years away, but Telstra and Optus are only weeks from implementing their “voluntary” equivalents. Where are we up to with this controversial issue?

That’s what I covered in yesterday’s Patch Monday podcast for ZDNet Australia. And as I explained on the weekend, I’m returning to my habit of doing a blog post here for each episode.

For this internet filtering update, I spoke with Peter Black, who teaches internet and media law at the Queensland University of Technology; network engineer Mark Newton; and Lyle Shelton, chief of staff for the Australian Christian Lobby.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Since this podcast was recorded, we’ve discovered that Primus isn’t so sure about voluntary filtering any more. They were the third ISP to commit to the plan last year. However the Internet Industry Association (IIA) has said most Australian ISPs will filter via the Interpol list this year.

Previous podcast on this issue covered the meaning of the Refused Classification content category, Senator Conroy’s announcement of the strategy in July 2010, and the apparent fact that parents don’t act on their cybersafety fears.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — very late this week because I just couldn’t be arsed doing blog posts while I was in San Francisco. But here’s the summary of last week. On Wednesday. So I’ll refund your goddam subscription fees.

Articles

• WikiLeaks in the clouds: why attempts to shut down Assange will fail, for Crikey.
• Wikileaks could gag sources: Clinton, for ZDNet.com.au. That’s Bill Clinton, who apparently used to be “president” of some place called “America”.
• Letter from: San Francisco, and Bill Clinton on instability, sustainability … and WikiLeaks, for Crikey. Well, this is what happens when you end up in a room with 15,000 people.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 68, “Wikileaks: the survival lessons”. A panel discussion with network engineer Mark Newton — he described WikiLeaks as “a bespoke cloud-based CDN [content distribution network] that is enabled by the Streisand Effect” — information security specialist Crispin Harris, and platform architect Benno Rice.

Media Appearances

None. What wrong with you people?

Corporate Largesse

Where do you start? This week was all about me travelling to San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.com. So they paid my airfares, accommodation, food and drink throughout the event, and “networking functions” at the W Hotel and the Palace Hotel. Plus they gave me a Flip HD video camera, a scarf, a t-shirt, a universal power plug thingy and a can of whipped cream. Don’t ask.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A comparison of real American men with the idealised version portrayed in advertising in a storefront on Market St, San Francisco.]

Just when you thought you’d covered every possible angle… Wow, what a packed week for Senator Stephen Conroy, eh?

I’m in Crikey today with a piece they’ve entitled Conroy’s really bad week #347: Classification Board website hacked. Which it was. And what a lovely new welcome message they had.

This site contains information about the boards that have the right to CONTROL YOUR FREEDOMZ. The Classification Board has the right to not just classify content (the name is an ELABORATE TRICK), but also the right to DECIDE WHAT IS AND ISNT APPROPRIATE and BAN CONTENT FROM THE PUBLIC. We are part of an ELABORATE DECEPTION from CHINA to CONTROL AND SHEEPIFY the NATION, to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. All opposers must HATE CHILDREN, and therefore must be KILLED WITH A LARGE MELONS during the PROSECUTION PARTIES IN SEPTEMBER. Come join our ALIEN SPACE PARTY.

I also offer some comments on Senator Conroy’s performance on ABC TV’s Q&A last night. You can watch the video for yourself, but I reckon he performed poorly.

There wasn’t room in my Crikey piece for another angle: that the Stephen Conroy I’d seen in 2007, alert and in control, was missing in action. However Mark Newton summed it up in a Whirlpool post:

The best bit about Q&A, though, was Conroy’s demeanour. I’m accustomed to seeing him in Question Time, Estimates, or in doorstop interviews, where he looks like he’s in command, on the attack, confident and assured.

Tonight he looked hunched-over. He rambled. He started sentences then stumbled as he tried to work out how to finish them. He stuttered. He was defensive. It was almost embarrassing to watch, and he looked defeated.

When the show moved on to the Afghanistan war, it was like the old Stephen Conroy had climbed out of his shell again. Completely different person.

He said the censorship issue was a distraction, but his performance tonight suggested to me that it’s eating him away inside. Weak, vulnerable, and factually wrong. My god what a perfect combination.

This raises a point that’s been in the back of my mind for ages: Does Senator Conroy personally support this policy?

I suspect not. Or if he did, he certainly doesn’t now. I’m hearing that he’s been ordered to continue by the Prime Minister. If Conroy is looking defeated, it could well be because he’s realised that he’s now personally identified with this lousy policy, and his own political career is now anchored to it. And we all know what happens to anchors when the chain gets cut.

[This article was originally published in Crikey on Tuesday 17 February, but behind the paywall. I think enough time has passed for it to sneak out — particularly as one commenter called it "the most unworthy article Crikey has ever published". Thanks.]

Cool newcomer. Rising talent. That’s Greens Senator Scott Ludlam as described by Crikey’s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane last year. He’s right, too.

Yesterday [Monday] I explained how Senator Stephen Conroy popped out of his lair, announced (some of) the ISPs in the internet “filtering” trials, and scurried away — leaving everyone’s questions unanswered. Perhaps he hoped the story would be buried by discussions of bushfires and the stimulus package. But no.

In an op-ed piece for ABC News yesterday, Senator Ludlam nailed why. “The interwebs never sleep,” he reminds us.

Within minutes of Conroy’s 5.25pm media release, Twitter was, well, a’twitter with speculation and then analysis. Within hours, without any central control, a consensus emerged about what the choice of ISPs meant. With its focus on small business-oriented ISPs, the trials won’t reflect the realities of home internet usage, and the government can string out the process just a little bit longer.

“Senator Conroy is trapped by something akin to a virtual hydra,” writes Ludlam.

“Every time he ‘responds’ to one piece of criticism, numerous other more refined, more powerful and more targeted arguments arise from all sides.”

To paraphrase The Guardian’s social media strategist Meg Pickard, who spoke in Sydney last week, the audience is now smarter than you are because they have more time and there’s more of them.

Government ministers no longer own the conversation. Nor does anyone else, for that matter. While Senator Conroy may assert that “the Government does not view this debate as an argument about freedom of speech”, no-one actually cares what the government’s view is. The conversation has its own life. And Conroy has bailed out. He’s ceded the field.

“He’s acquiesced his leadership role in this debate, relegating himself to the status of a mere observer, allowing his critics to run the show,” says network engineer Mark Newton, one of Conroy’s most credible and persistent critics.

“I couldn’t care less what Conroy does next, because he’s an irrelevant loser in the wider context of this debate … Every time he’s [made public statements] he’s inevitably been embarrassed by the responses of an army of online correspondents who have fact-checked him into oblivion.”

Conroy, who’s presumably used to getting his own way as a Labor Right head-kicker, has sulked off to his room, slammed shut the door, turned up the music REALLY LOUD AND I HOPE YOU WILL ALL JUST GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY I HATE YOU!

Conroy’s left his poor media advisor (who I’m reliably informed is a nice guy who deserves better) to post the passive-aggressive notes on the fridge — sorry, to answer all questions by copying and pasting boilerplate from the media release.

Not a good look.

Not what you’d call “leadership”.

Not what you’d call “being in control of the issue”.

I’m guessing Senator Conroy is secretly very happy that the Great Imploding Opposition is providing a useful distraction from his own performance. For now.

Meanwhile that Greens senator bloke is making sense, eh?

“We’re all in vociferous agreement about what won’t work. But what will? Can this enormously empowered campaign speak with one cogent voice about what we’re for?” he asks.

“How do we empower parents … and law enforcement agencies…? Is there a way to adequately prepare children to understand other threats such as cyber-bullying, without asphyxiating the greatest information sharing tool in history?”

Any suggestions, Senator Conroy?

You’ll have to come out of there eventually, Senator.

I’m in Crikey today, looking at Senator Conroy’s announcement from last week of the first six ISPs to be taking part in the Internet “filtering” trials: Primus Telecommunications (iPrimus), Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Highway 1 and Netforce.

One of the questions I ask is: Why is there further mission creep?

Labor’s pre-election policy said: “A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.” Apart from pointing out again that “offer” isn’t the same as “require everyone to use”, the policy doesn’t mention business premises. Yet three of the ISPs (Highway 1, OMNIconnect and Netforce) are business-only ISPs.

As network engineer Mark Newton says, “If the Government is scope-creeping its plan to include business, I think it has some explaining to do.”

The article isn’t behind the paywall so it’s free to read.

• Where Attention Flows, Money Follows | Kevin Kelly : The Technium: “The new rules for the new economy can be summarized as: Where ever attention flows, money will follow. Almost anything else except attention can be manufactured as a commodity. Luxury goods are only luxuries temporarily. They quickly are counterfeited and commodified. Premium brands are only premium because they garner a surplus of attention. Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow.”
• “Firewalls Under Fire”: Mark Newton talks internet censorship on Today show" | Hoyden About Town: Karl Stefanovic interviewed internet service provision expert and outspoken censorship critic Mark Newton on Friday’s Today Show. Here’s a transcript.
• Ericsson W25 Fixed Wireless Terminal, 3G Fixed Wireless Terminal, EDGE, UTMS, 3G, Gateway, HSDPA: One one side it’s a standard Internet gateway device with Wi-Fi and 4-port Ethernet switch. On the other side it’s HSUPA mobile broadband. In between, it can run off an internal battery for 3 hours should the power fail. Add it all up and maybe this is what Stilgherrian Live can use for mobile programs. At least Our Man At Telstra thinks so. Stand by.
• How to defeat internet censorship | DanuPoyner.com: “If you think we will defeat internet filtering just by being right or just because the facts are on our side — think again. This is politics. If we don'’to hear it – we WILL lose.” A good analysis.
• Dr Google | Memex 1.1: Google search trends can predict flu outbreaks 7 to 10 days ahead of the US Centres for Disease Control.
• The Barack SlideShow | Tools of Change for Publishing: “What’s notable is that the images are fairly informal — and they are on Flickr. This kind of photostream — not unique in itself — would previously, a generation ago, have been highly curated, entitled ‘The new presidential family waits for news’ and published the week following in Life or Look magazine. However, the Obama pictures appear less curated (or at least have that air), were published nearly instantly, and do not involve the mediation of traditional media. In fact, whether these are eventually printed or not as official administration photos is secondary, because they are available freely and publicly online.”
• Election Night 11-04-08 | Flickr: An 82-image slideshow of how Barack Obama and his family spent election night, posted by BarackObama.com.
• What I learned about Blogging from the US Presidential Election | ProBlogger: Guest writer Trisha from Ideas for Women points out the importance of having a personal narrative in your blog. I’m not sure whether I agree for all blogs, but it’s food for thought.
• Japanese Sewer System | + megabunny: Apparently this is actually a flood control system rather than a sewer system, but it's still a fine set of photographs of this massive infrastructure project, only slightly spoilt by the unimaginative comparison to The Matrix.

• Against Australian Internet Censorship? We Must Change Our Arrogant, Flawed Strategy | Let’s Take Over: Someone who manages to talk about Internet censorship with even more anger than me, though the anger is directed at those who poorly manage the political arguments against censorship.
• If you look long enough, you can find anything on the Internet | The Weblog With No Name: A nice little piece about the need to preserve our knowledge, “just in case”.
• ISP Content Filtering Live Pilot | DBCDE: The official call for expressions of interest from ISPs who want to take part in the Australia government’s Internet censorship trials.
• Filter advocates need to check their facts | ABC News: Network engineer Mark Newton’s latest piece about plans for Internet censorship.
• Get the Picture – Video | Screen Australia: A detailed analysis of the video industry in Australia, with lots of useful statistics and graphs. The site also has analysis of cinema, free-to-air and subscription TV, interactive media, the audiovisual trade and international comparisons.
• A Brief Lesson on the Practicalities of Internet Filtering/Censoring for the Current Australian Government | UserFriendly: The metaphor has been used before, or at least variations of it have, but this cartoon version might spread the meme more widely.
• Destruction Day for Pirated DVDs | Minister for Home Affairs: Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus’ original media release claiming the figure of $1.7 billion for the cost of illegally-copies DVDs.
• Film piracy “funding” Islamic militants | ABC News: According to Optical Media Board chairman Edu Manzano, the Abu Sayyaf — blamed for the worst terrorist attacks in the South-East Asian country — are likely behind the illegal copying of movies onto DVDs, which are then peddled at Manila shops by migrant Muslim traders.
• US Attorney General: Piracy funds terror | ars technica: Another source for the trope that illegally copying DVDs funds terrorism.
• What piracy crisis? MPAA touts record box office for 2007 | ars technica: The US box office continues to grow, despite all the rhetoric about piracy.

Anthony Albanese, my federal MP, replied to my letter about Internet censorship. It’s nothing but platitudes and a regurgitation of Labor’s policy-speak.

Network engineer Mark Newton met with his local MP Kate Ellis in Adelaide yesterday. She too had nothing but canned responses.

This is not good enough.

The same goes for “pro-family” lobbyists like the Australian Family Association’s Anh Nguyen in Online filtering recognises families’ concerns today, or the people quoted in the Courier Mail‘s Web filter ‘needed’ to protect kids from porn on Friday.

Detailed, coherent critiques have been put forward addressing the technical, economic and policy flaws in clear, straightforward language. If you can’t counter those arguments with evidence and logic, not more “think of the children” hand-wringing, then we must stop wasting time and taxpayers’ money on this “filtering” folly. Now.

I can almost excuse family lobbyists for failing to understand. If you’re deeply concerned about children emotionally, then logical analysis probably isn’t your strongest suit. If you’re so ignorant of the Internet that you imagine “hardcore pornography” (whatever that is) suddenly pops up to freak out your six-year-old every time you turn your back to stir the soup, then you might also imagine some magical technology which can automatically figure out what you do and don’t want your child to see.

But “all our members have families, and they think X” is not the same as “all people with families think X“. Every family is different. Every child is different. And there are plenty of families who don’t want this so-called “filtering”. And don’t bring religion into it either, because there are Christian mothers who think censorship is wrong too.

An elected representative has no excuse for ignorance, however. We pay good money to advisors to keep them informed. Mark Newton is quite rightly concerned about Kate Ellis’ ignorance.

She was unknowingly parroting the same factual errors that Conroy uses every time he opens his mouth on this issue. It’s obvious that there’s a set of talking points that has been distributed around the Parliamentary Labor Party, and no matter which member you talk to they’ll say the same things.

Those same things are easy targets, low-hanging fruit. Because they’ve so completely failed to educate themselves on the facts of this issue, they’re absolutely simple to demolish.

There was nothing Ms Ellis said at the meeting that couldn’t be drilled into the floor by the factual data I’d footnoted in my letter (and I’ll be following up the meeting with another letter drawing attention to that fact, and suggesting that she forward my footnotes to ALP policy hacks so that they can replace their current talking points with true ones).

The overwhelming impression I walked away with is that the ALP members who support this policy don’t know what they’re talking about. They haven’t researched it, they don’t understand the existing law, they don’t understand the scope of what they’re proposing; It seems that they actually believe the talking points because they don’t know any better.

Anh Nguyen reckons the Phase 2 filtering trials should go ahead, asking “Why not give some families a chance to pilot to see if it suits their requirements?”

My response to that is simple: You already have plenty of options without interfering with everyone else’s Internet.

Why aren’t you trying the existing “filtered” Internet available from ISPs in the Internet Industry Association’s Family Friendly ISP program?

Why aren’t you using the free taxpayer-funded filters downloadable from NetAlert?

If you’ve tried them already and they don’t work for you, why not try one of the many other filters on the market?

Why not band together with like-minded parents and start your own “safe” ISP?

Why, exactly, do you expect the government to do your child-minding for you, and every other taxpayer to pay for it?

Here’s the full text of the letter I received today. You can also download it as a text file for handy editing.

Dear Mr Stilgherrian

Thank you for your fax regarding ISP filtering. I am aware that the proposal has attracted some criticism from those, like yourself, who are concerned that it will lead to censorship of the internet. However, the Australian Government has no plans to stop adults from viewing material that is currently legal, if they wish to view such material.

The Government regards freedom of speech as very important and the Government’s cyber-safety policy is in no way designed to curtail this.

The internet is an essential tool for all Australian children through which they can exchange information, be entertained, socialise and do school work and research. The ability to use online tools effectively provides both a skill for life and the means to acquire new skills.

However, while the internet has created substantial benefits for children it has also exposed them to a number of dangers, including exposure to offensive content. As such, parents rightly expect the Government to play its part in the protection of children online.

The Government has committed $125.8 million over the next four years to a comprehensive range of cyber-safety measures, including law enforcement, filtering and education. Measures include:

• Australian Federal Police (AFP) Child Protection Operations Team – funding to detect and investigate online child sex exploitation;
• Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions – funding to help deal with the increased activity resulting from the work of the AFP to ensure that prosecutions are handled quickly;
• ISP level filtering – funding to develop and implement ISP filtering, including undertaking a real world ‘live’ pilot;
• Education activities – funding to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to implement a comprehensive range of education activities;
• Websites / Online helpline – funding to ACMA to improve current Government cyber-safety website resources and to make them easier for parents to use, and to provide up-to-date information. ACMA will also develop a children’s cybersafety website to provide information specifically for children, and improve the online helpline to provide a quick and easy way for children to report online incidents that cause them concern;
• Consultative Working Group – funding for an expanded Consultative Working Group. The Group will consider the broad range of cyber-safety issues and advise the Government, to ensure properly developed and targeted policy initiatives;
• Youth Advisory Group – funding for a Youth Advisory Group which will provide advice to the Consultative Working Group on cyber-safety issues from a young person’s perspective; and
• Research – funding for ongoing research into the changing digital environment to identify issues and target future policy and funding.

These initiatives will tackle the issue of cyber-safety from a number of directions to help clean up the online environment and protect Australian children from the dangers of the internet now and into the future. This approach acknowledges the key role parents and carers have in the online safety of children, and provides them with the necessary information to assist with this task. This initiative also recognises that there is no single solution to ensure children can access the internet safely.

A key part of the Government’s plan to make the internet a safer place for children is the introduction of ISP level filtering. The policy reflects our community’s growing belief that ISPs should take some responsibility for enabling the blocking of illegal material on the internet. Filtering would cover illegal and prohibited content using an expanded ACMA blacklist of prohibited sites, which includes images of the sexual abuse of children.

Consideration is being given to more sophisticated filtering techniques for those individual families who wish to exclude additional online content in their own homes.

The Government wants to ensure that Australian parents can access a ‘clean feed’ internet service. This will be informed by the technology adopted in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Canada where ISP filtering, predominantly of child pornography, has been successfully introduced without affecting internet performance to a noticeable level.

The Government’s ISP filtering policy is being developed through an informed and considered approach, including industry consultation and close examination of overseas models to assess their suitability for Australia.

ACMA recently completed an extensive laboratory trial of available ISP filtering technology. The trial looked specifically at the effect of a range of filter products on network performance, effectiveness in identifying and blocking i”egal and

inappropriate content, scope to filter non-web traffic, and the ability to customise the filter to the requirements of different end-users.

The laboratory trial indicated that ISP filtering products have developed in their effectiveness since they were last assessed in 2005. The Government wll now proceed with a ‘live’ pilot in the second half of 2008 which will provide valuable information on the effectiveness and efficiency of filters installed in a ‘real world’ ISP network. An Expression of Interest will be released in due course seeking the participation of ISPs in the pilot.

The Government is committed to working closely with internet industries to address any concerns, including costs and internet speeds. These concerns will be carefully considered during the pilot and will further inform the Government’s cyber-safety policy.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to my attention. I trust this information will be of assistance.

Yours Sincerely,

Anthony Albanese MP
Federal Member for Grayndler
Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development & Local Government
Leader of the House

28 October 2008

Further Reading

21 December 2008: In the weeks since this post was written, I’ve written more on this issue, as have others.

If you have time to read only one article, make it Irene Graham’s incredibly well-researched Australian Gov’t Mandatory ISP Filtering/Censorship Plan. What Irene doesn’t know about this issue wouldn’t even cover half the head of a pin.

If you like my style of writing, then you might like these pieces:

• The lies of the internet censors: Your. Filter. Won’t. Work.
• My radio interview on 2SER FM’s Diffusion
• Clive Hamilton doesn’t quite win “Cnut of the Week”

There’s some earlier material, listed here newest-first:

• Conroy thoroughly tangled in his own Rabbit-Proof Firewall
• Cheap tricks not the right response on internet filtering
• Internet filters a success, if success = failure
• Labor’s dream of kid-friendly internet is flawed
• Angry geeks: “Don’t waste money on internet filters”
• Why government internet filtering won’t work

Gosh, this really has been my Issue of the Year, eh?

[This article was first published in Crikey on Thursday, along with the superb Conroy a fearless combatant in the war against free speech by their Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane. I've added a few extra links and changed it from Crikey's typographical rules to my own.]

As any farmer can tell you, fencing is bloody dangerous. The stretch-wire-between-posts thing, I mean, not the pointy-steel-pokey thing. One mistake and it’s THWACKKKK! Ten metres of barbed wire whipping into your face.

Senator Stephen Conroy is discovering the hard way that trying to build a Rabbit-Proof Firewall around the Internet is just as dangerous. As Bernard Keane points out in Crikey [Thursday], the standard politicians’ tactic — lying — doesn’t cut it in today’s hyperconnected world.

But even this morning, on ABC Radio National’s The Media Report, Conroy was still claiming it’s only about illegal content.

“There is illegal material on the Net, things like child pornography, things like ultra-violent sites,” intoned Senator Conroy. “What we’re seeking to do is take technology and actually enforce the existing law… We’re seeking to use new and emerging advances to block access to sites like that.”

“Let me be clear,” he continued. “We are committed to work with the industry to see if it is technical feasible — that’s why we have conduced a laboratory test and we’re moving to conduct a live test with ISPs, and that’s Labor’s policies.”

Thing is, we can all download the results of that lab test Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filters and read for ourselves, on page 2, that the tests covered “technology to filter illegal or inappropriate content”, and on page 21 how the test sites included those rated PG, M, MA… Despite Conroy’s repeated assertion, the tests explicitly included perfectly legal material.

Why conduct tests of something you don’t intend to implement? A waste of taxpayers’ money, surely?

Why continue with a “live” test when the lab test demonstrated such poor performance?

As Crikey has reported (Tuesday, 9 July 2008, Internet filters a success, if success = failure) [local copy], even the best filter has a false-positive rate of 3% under ideal lab conditions. That might not sound much, but Mark Newton (the network engineer who Conroy’s office tried to bully last week) reckons that for a medium-sized ISP that’s 3000 incorrect blocks every second. Another maths-heavy analysis says that every time that filter blocks something there’s an 80% chance it was wrong.

Senator Conroy was back-pedalling this morning:

A whole range of people have said, ‘Hey, let’s expand this!’ That’s a debate that we will come to. We are no further than establishing at the moment whether it is technically feasible. In terms of what some of the Senators claim should be included on the blacklist, I’m sure that when we get to the debate down the track, if it proves to be technically feasible, there’ll be a whole range of people with a whole range of demands about what should be on the blacklist. But what we’ve committed to do is practically implement what’’s on the blacklist at the moment.

Conroy justifies continuing the trials by saying Labor “made this commitment back when Kim Beazley was leader of the Labor Party.” True, they did. They also committed to a Coast Guard and a Department of Homeland Security — both well and truly dropped.

Whatever Conroy says, this is arse-about policy-making. Surely the sensible way to proceed would be to decide what Australians should and shouldn’t see on the internet, express that in a coherent policy, and then ask the technologists and educators how to achieve that aim.

[Added 1 November: Assuming, that is, that you actually have a legally-valid mandate to construct a comprehensive, centralised, secretive, unaccountable Internet censorship machine.]

Mark Newton was spot on when he said:

Politicians assume that parents are ignorant about the Internet because politicians are ignorant. Yet parents came to grips with it years ago; the last remaining social group in our country who expresses difficulty with the Internet appears to be baby-boomer Federal politicians, whose child-rearing days are mostly well behind them.

Well, the Government is now getting a crash course in hyperpolitics. Those online are better connected, smarter, and faster. We can spot the lies.

• Annual Report 2007–08 | ACMA: The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s annual report for the financial year ended… four months ago. Trying to understand the emerging world by looking at documents like this is like trying to steer a fast car by reading traffic statistics from last week’s newspaper.
• ISP-level Filtering Discussion part 2 | Whirlpool Broadband Forums: A women — a Christian and a mother — explains why she is against Internet censorship.
• The perplexing Internet debate | On Line Opinion: Mark Newton, the network engineer who Senator Conroy’s office tried to bully into silence, has only become more vocal. Here he lists in clear bullet-point form the arguments the government has to counter.
• ISP-level content filtering won’t work | ZDNet Australia: Three of Australia’s largest ISPs take a stand against the government’s plans to censor the Internet.
• Clean feeds | ABC Unleashed: Mark Pesce’s piece about the Internet censorship debacle steps back and looks at how the last fortnight has been affected by what he calls “hyperpolitics”.
• Keep Your Filter Off Our Internet | AWIA: “As the professional body representing people working across a broad spectrum of the web industry, the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) objects to the Government’s plans to trial ISP filtering, with a view to introducing it nationally.”
• Have Your Bunny Repeatedly: Crikey cartoonist First Dog on the Moon’s contribution to the campaign against Internet censorship in Australia.
• Twitter Goes Mainstream | WSJ.com: When a major mainstream newspaper says something is mainstream then it must be mainstream.
• Copyright Infringement as Stealing: Pfft! | Brendan Scott’s Weblog: One important part of any propaganda campaign is framing the discussion to benefit your side’s arguments. Major copyright-holders are keen to frame their bad guys as :”thieves” and “pirates”. This post is a well-reasoned piece explaining why “theft” is an inappropriate and disrespectful use of language.
• Eee PC 1000H HackBook | Flickr: Photo of Stephen Collins’ HackBook, an Asus Eee PC 1000H running OS X. Includes shopping list.
• Why follow @Stilgherrian on Twitter? | Matt’s Musings: One smart person’s musings on why he chooses to follow people on Twitter. I’ll write a response some time this week. It’s amusing to be called “the Rove [McManus] of the Streaming Web”.
• Sarah Palin Wardrobe Challenge: Kathryn Builds ENTIRE Wardrobe for the Candidate for Less Than $2500 | The Budget Fashionista: Just what it says. How to look just like the world’s most glamorous moose-killer without her $150k budget.
• Multicolr Search Lab | Idée Inc.: Punch in a selection of up to 10 colours, and this’ll search through more than 10 million Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr and show you those which match. Very cool and, I suspect, very useful.
• 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate | BBC News: A nice collection of 50 examples of annoying business-speak. It’s from June, but it’s still valid.

For the second week in a row, the Stilgherrian Live audience voted Senator Stephen Conroy our “Cnut of the Week” for his persistence with and behaviour over the Australian government’s Internet censorship “plans”. The program is now online for your viewing pleasure.

OK, that’s a biased sample, sure. But as I wrote in Crikey yesterday, Conroy is thoroughly tangled in his own Rabbit-Proof Firewall. I’ll try to sneak that article out from behind the paywall later. However in summary Conroy is blustering, maligning his critics with the McCarthyist tactic of bullying and calling them child pornographers and generally ignoring the rational questions being put to him.

He’s also back-pedalling fast. On ABC Radio National’s The Media Report yesterday, he was even denying the policy was about censoring legal material at all, despite clear evidence for exactly the opposite.

Not good enough, Senator Conroy.

If the government wants to persist with comprehensive, centralised, secretive, unaccountable Internet censorship — let’s not use the spin-words “filtering” and “clean feed” because that just reinforces their moral-panic frame of the Internet being “dirty” — then they need to deploy this evidence-based policy-making they used to talk about and actually address the evidence.

Mark Newton, the network engineer Conroy’s office tried to bully into silence, has only become more vocal in his criticism. And at Online Opinion yesterday he puts his case more clearly than ever.

I can’t argue with Newton’s logic. Can you, Senator Conroy?

The online community’s argument is a simple one:

• there’s no problem to solve because actual illegal material on the Internet is so rare that nobody ever finds it;
• even if there was a problem to solve, there’s no serious public demand to solve it;
• even if there was a public demand to solve it, none of the solutions proposed by the ALP will be effective, and the Government has handily provided original research to decimate their own case;
• even if they were effective, they’ll slow down Internet access and reduce Internet reliability, as shown by the same original research released by the Minister on July 22;
• even if the proposed solutions had perfect performance and reliability, none of them are affordable;
• even if they were affordable, they’ll be implemented terribly by the same underclass of bureaucrat that deemed Mohammad Haneef a terrorist, or Bill Henson a pornographer. The salivating of hangers-on like Family First and Nick Xenophon, lobbying to have the blacklist expanded before it’s even in force, demonstrate perfectly how open the system will be to political manipulation and lobbying;
• even if they were implemented perfectly by perfect administrators, the blacklists will inevitably leak, be published on the Internet, whereupon they’ll fall into the hands of nefarious individuals and consequently enable child abuse all over the world, with the direct assistance of the Commonwealth of Australia; and
• there’s no possibility that the blacklists won’t leak. Finland’s list has already leaked, CyberPatrol’s encrypted blacklist is cracked every six months or so. It’s delusional to believe that Australia will be any better at securing its officially sanctioned list of Child Porn and Terrorism sites than anyone else. It might take a month, a year, five years, ten years, or two hours. But it will leak, secrets always do. Pressing it into service will be like setting a ticking time bomb, and when it explodes there’ll be a thronging multitude of critics pointing at Senator Conroy and saying, “I told you so, you were warned, but you did it anyway”.

This isn’t a complicated argument. To justify the ALP’s policy, cogent, successful arguments against each and every one of those independent points will need to be mounted.

So, Senator Conroy, would you care to respond? Would anyone in government? Because if all you can do is slag off those wanting to debate the issue, your plans clearly don’t stand on their merits, do they?

Here’s my letter to my federal MP Anthony Albanese (pictured), which this very moment is rolling off his fax machine.

I’m hoping that Mr Albanese will be able to have some impact on this because he is both Minister for Infrastructure — the Internet is key infrastructure, right? — and Leader of the House of Representatives.

I know that he understands human rights issues because … well, us Marrickville folks just do understand these things, right Anthony? And you certainly knew how to stick it into John Howard when he demonstrated cluelessness.

Like Mark Newton, I also release this letter into the public domain.

The Hon Anthony Albanese MP
Federal Member for Grayndler
334A Marrickville Road
Marrickville NSW 2204

Internet censorship is poor policy: filtering trials must stop at once

Good morning Mr Albanese,

I write to you, my elected representative, to express my deepest concerns about the government’s current plans for censoring the Internet.

Respected network engineer Mark Newton, who I consider to be one of the pioneers of the commercial Internet in this country, has powerfully detailed his own concerns in a letter to his local MP, Kate Ellis. I too would like to see the government provide specific responses to the issues he raises — rather than the attempted bullying which has come from Senator Stephen Conroy’s office.

Where is the demonstrated need for an online censorship regime? Where is the evidence that it is technologically feasible? Where is the demonstration that is it effective? Where is the demonstration that the stated potential side effects can be mitigated?

I have already speculated in Crikey that the Rudd government is only continuing with the filtering trials, which were set up by the Howard government, to placate Senators Steve Fielding and Nick Xenophon. I do understand that to secure their vote on other matters the government needs to toss them a bone occasionally. But…

The fundamental human right of free and open communication is far, far too important to use as a bargaining chip for Senate votes.

Last week’s Senate Estimates showed that The Greens understand this. Senator Conroy’s responses show that he cannot defend the trials on their merits — and more worryingly that he, and by extension the Australian Labor Party, does not understand.

During the 2007 election campaign the Prime Minister said many times that his government would be one of “evidence-based policy”. The evidence clearly shows that Labor’s policy on Internet censorship is wrong.

The only rational outcome is for these trials to cease immediately, before any more taxpayers’ money is wasted.

I welcome you response.

Regards,

Stilgherrian

Should you wish to print and send this to your local MP too, here’s a PDF copy, as well as the PDF of Mark Newton’s letter.

The quickest way to find your local MP is to hit openaustralia.org, and enter your postcode. You can then click through to his or her website for the contact details.