Stilgherrian » stephen conroy

Links for 21 November 2008 through 22 November 2008

del.icio.us — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:37:29 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 21 November 2008 through 22 November 2008, after being tickled with a feather duster:

Danger Room Debrief: How to do Defense, When the Money’s Gone | Danger Room from Wired.com: “The current global economic and financial meltdown may yet become something worse: a protracted global depression. As with the last century’s Depression, which spawned fascism and WWII, it could recast the world at a fundamental level. As such, it may soon represent our biggest security challenge in over 50 years.”
The Power of Nightmares | YouTube: The 2.5-minute introduction to The Power of Nightmares, to give you a flavour of the full 3-hour documentary series.
The Power Of Nightmares (DVD) | Internet Archive: This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today: “Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret organized evil that threatens the world, a fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.” The full DVD image is free to download.
Irrelevant Al Qaeda | Jon Taplin’s Blog: Is it time to declare Al Qaeda irrelevant and downgrade the War on Terror a police action that’s just mopping up the stragglers?
Mother Earth Mother Board | Wired 4.12: A massive 1993 feature article in which Neal Stephenson toured six countries following the roll-out of fibre optic cables. It introduced me to his writing and it remains an excellent read today.
The End | Flickr: A collection of classic “The End” title cards from a wide variety of films.
Fiscal Conservative vs. Tax & Spend Liberal | Be the signal: Another variation of an infographic pointing out that the Republicans don’t have the best track record for the US economy.
Opinion graph | Junk Charts: On average, the US stock market does much better under Democrat Presidents than Republicans, as this graph shows.
How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign | Advertising Age: A groundswell of opinion on Twitter caused Johnson & Johnson to pull an adverting campaign.
Thesis Theme for WordPress | DIY Themes: A high-quality but not-free theme framework for WordPress. While I currently use the free Tarski theme for my website maybe this is worth a look at some point.
NSW Parliamentary Research: Mandatory ISP filtering is not what it seems | Internet Industry Association: Research by the NSW Parliamentary Library shows that Senator Conroy’s claims about other nations’ compulsory Internet censorship regimes are wrong.
Kerr's curse | ABC Unleashed: If nothing else, I love this essay for the phrase “cardboard cutout think tanks”. But there are many other reasons to like it.
Internet Censorship and the Irukandji Jellyfish | First Dog on the Moon: Only First Dog on the Moon could successfully combine Senator Conroy’s Internet censorship plan and jellyfish in one cartoon.
PG Nation | ABC Unleashed: An interesting essay about the neo-wowserism of the Rudd government.
Europa Film Treasures: An archive of European cinematographic treasures. It looks like there’s a lot of material here.
The Trojan Horse | Business Spectator: “The current government policy of forcing ISPs to offer their customers a so-called ‘clean feed’ has the overt intention of helping parents to protect their kids while surfing the Internet. It is, we are told, all about child protection. However, the use of content filtering to make the Internet ’safer’ for kids is already available, to the extent that any statistically significant real demand exists to solve it.”
Failing hard drive sounds | Datacent: A collection of the sounds made by dying hard disc drives. Yes, they can be used in music provided you contact these guys first.
19-year-old Commits Suicide on Justin.tv | NewTeeVee: Abraham K Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site Justin.tv. Apparently the 19yo Floridian was egged on by commenters on Justin.tv and forum users on bodybuilding.com. The article canvasses some of the legal and ethical issues.

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So many Cnuts to choose from!

Stilgherrian — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:34:36 +0000

Nominations are now open for “Cnut of the Week”. Who do you think is futilely resisting the tide of change? I’ll select the shortlist at 8.30pm Sydney time, and you can vote during tonight’s Stilgherrian Live at 9.30pm.

Senator Stephen Conroy has been the clear winner for the last three episodes thanks to his persistence with the government’s Internet censorship plans. Some have suggested we just make him “Cnut for Life” and open the field to other contenders. What do you think?

We already have a pre-nomination of the bloke who tried to convince his wife that his iPhone accidentally emailed naked photos to another woman. Yeah, sure mate.

Who do you nominate, and why?

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Links for 19 November 2008 through 20 November 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:34:09 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 19 November 2008 through 20 November 2008, gathered despite the rain:

Brisbane (Mt Stapylton): A sequence of radar images of last night’s severe storms over Brisbane.
Web moves to front and centre in coverage of Obama presidency | ABC Digital Futures: For the first time ever, a website (not a newspaper or news agency) will have the most reporters covering the White House.
Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide | Google: What it says: an excellent guide to what works best for getting better Google search results.
Fireside chats in the 21st century | ABC News: “Obama not only raised far more money via the internet, he also spent far more than McCain on it. This approach clearly paid off,” says Barry Saunders in this superb opinion piece.
New task force to examine ISP level content filtering | iTnews Australia: The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has formed a task force to look into the Federal government’s controversial ISP filtering scheme. The task force meets on 26 November and expects to take “a leadership role, provide expert technical advice, and review e-security and ISP filtering proposals” to assist the ACS to develop its own policy positions.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media | Capture the Conversation: “In the world of social media, are you going to be a force for good? Or are you going to turn to the dark side - ruining your chances and infuriating those who cross your path?” Some interesting tips on building an online presence.
Industry and government work together to tackle internet terror | Home Office: The UK government announces an Internet “filtering” plan similar to the Howard government’s NetAlert scheme. The key difference is that the “bad stuff” it’s protecting us against is “websites that may encourage the endorsement or participation in acts of terrorism” rather than Conroy’s ubiquitous “child pornography”.

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Me on radio 2SER about censorship

Stilgherrian — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:12:40 +0000

Last night Sydney radio station 2SER’s science program Diffusion broadcast an interview with me about the Australian government’s plans for Internet censorship. It’s available as a podcast and MP3 download.

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Conroy’s Cnutful Hat Trick

Stilgherrian — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:08:29 +0000

Yes, Stephen Stephen Conroy was voted “Cnut of the Week” for the third time running by the audience of last night’s Stilgherrian Live — which you can watch online now. My people do not like his Internet censorship plans, it seems!

We had so many nominations, ranging from “NSW wheat farmers” (who, despite record crops in some areas, are still whingeing because the world economic recession means they can’t get the price they want for their grain) to “the people of Arkansas” (for their medieval attitude to gay couples adopting children).

Still, despite a strong final field including Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (for calling US President-Elect “tanned”), Vitamin D (you’ll have to watch) and NSW Premier Nathan Rees (for recent state budget cuts), Senator Conroy was the clear winner with 66% of the vote.

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Appearing on 2SER’s “Diffusion”

Stilgherrian — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:46:22 +0000

I was interviewed yesterday about Australia’s Internet censorship plans by radio 2SER’s Ian Woolf for their science program Diffusion, which goes to air in Sydney on Monday night at 6.30pm on 107.3 FM, and then around Australia on the community radio network after the news at 4pm Wednesday. It’ll also be podcast once the program has aired.

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Will Conroy be “Cnut of the Week” yet again?

Stilgherrian — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:28:28 +0000

In just 4 hours, we’ll discover whether Senator Stephen Conroy is chosen as “Cnut of the Week” for the third time running — because it’s just 4 hours until tonight’s edition of Stilgherrian Live (9.30pm Thursdays Sydney time).

Senator Conroy is pre-nominated because… well… he’s continuing his denial-mode tactics in relation to Internet censorship. I know mah peeps, and I know ya want to nominate him. Who else? It’s the same rules as usual. We’re after people (or abstract forces of nature, or organisations or whatever) who’ve been futilely trying to hold back the tide of change.

Who do you nominate, and why?

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OMFG! Kevin Rudd tweeted again!

Stilgherrian — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:31:40 +0000

Wow! Yesterday @KevinRuddPM said “Looking forward to communicating with you on Twitter” and now he’s said “Thanks to everyone for adding me on Twitter”! The Rudd Government really is about fresh thinking! Look!

OK, I’m not going to write a blog post every time the PM tweets something. But this gives you an idea of the scrutiny he’s under. He (or an as-yet-unnamed minion) types eight words and suddenly hundreds of people are a’flutter. Or a’twitter.

Mr Rudd’s first challenge will be to explain why he had over 400 followers last night, and had followed most of them back, but now half of them are gone. It’s probably just a Twtter glitch, but we all Need To Know. Now please. I’m sure the friendly folks at Twitter will respond quickly when they know it’s Australia’s Prime Minister (or an as-yet-unnamed minion) asking. That’s like even more important than Sarah Palin!

Have you ever seen Sarah Palin and Kevin Rudd in the same room? Spooky!

Since my welcome to the PM yesterday, I’ve been thinking about some suitably Prime Ministerial tweets.

Most of us don’t get that classified message each morning telling us where the Prime Minister will be, so it’d be harmless enough to feed us a little information as the day goes by. He could add a personal, reflective note without being a security risk.

“‘Only’ 200 pages to read over breakfast. Now I know why the coffee is free.”
“On way to CBR airport, flying to SYD. Constant travel is the tiring part of the job.”
“Glad to see NSW farmland looking better after the rains. Have farmers started to recover”

As I said yesterday, Twitter is about just being yourself. Twitter could humanise the role of PM. Make visible the questions in the PM’s mind, like the ones about the farmers, and people will respond. They’ll also understand that Rudd is busy man and won’t respond personally to every reply, but he does need to show that he’s seen what they said.

He could also use Twitter to send (not-so-)subtly coded political messages.

“Meeting Gordon Brown, looking forward to resolving the pensions problem”
“Hoping Conroy’s finished writing his resignation letter”

The folks who write books about political tactics said that one of John Howard’s more successful tricks was using talkback radio to speak over the heads of “the media” and communicate directly with listeners. His mistake was thinking all those bitter, hate-filled time-wasters on the phones were actually representative of Australia now, rather than being an old-fashioned whingefest — the last remnants of a medium almost dead. A bit like Mr Howard himself.

Twitter and other social media tools could allow Rudd to take that tactic to the next level, talking directly over the heads of the talkback hosts, his media minders (read: limiters) and forum moderators to interact directly with The People. A bit like that story of the King going amongst the peasants in disguise, but without the disguise.

He could also use Twitter to listen over the moderators’ heads. If Rudd (or any politician) learned for themselves to use the searching and filtering and analysis tools, they could investigate what they wanted to see, rather than on the minions who, let’s face it, are only serving the PM because they want to climb that greasy pole themselves. Would you trust them to give you accurate information if it showed them, personally, in a bad light? I thought not.

There’s a whole essay in there about how politics and government is the last remnant of an age when information was hoarded rather than shared. Us hyperconnected folks know that sharing information is where the power truly lies. That’s the big difference between the industrial age and the post-industrial.

We’re in transition, though. Some organisations get it, some don’t. The open source software community is all about sharing and making the process public — warts and all — and as a result they can deliver a secure operating system like Linux for free when it takes Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars to come close. The NSW state government couldn’t even roll out Wi-Fi hotspots in Sydney because they wanted to plan it from the top down with similarly top-down centrally-controlled businesses. Wrong tool for the job, people!

But, as I say, another essay for another time.

Both of Kevin Rudd’s tweets so far have been exactly eight words, and eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture. Will the next tweet also be eight words, making it the super-lucky “888″ message from Chairman Rudd?

Or, it’s a Full Moon in Spring tonight, the first in Rudd’s time as PM. Maybe this is when he reveals that he’s a super-powered were-robot, and the Twitter account will spew forth the hypnotic trigger-words to activate his army of Iced Vo-Vo-eating slaves. Man, that’d be so cool! Scary though.

Full Moon is at 5.18pm Sydney time.

Bonus Link: The mild-mannered Stephen Collins has unleashed his own super-powers to write Welcome Prime Minister. Now please engage.

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Welcome to Twitter, Prime Minister

Stilgherrian — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:28:37 +0000

[Update 13 October: Since writing this post last night I've written a follow-up: OMFG! Kevin Rudd tweeted again!]

Dear Mr Rudd, it’s wonderful that you’ve joined Twitter. Of course Mr Turnbull was here a month before you, but Twitter has been around more than two years. Even sceptical old me has been here a year. You’re both complete n00bs. May I offer some tips?

The first thing you must understand is that Twitter is about human communication. We already have more formula-driven spin-doctor-approved crap than we’ll ever need. What we want to see is you, Kevin, that smart hard-working control-freak slightly-daggy-but-endearing father of three. The guy who after a long day’s campaigning could still crack a joke with The Chaser crew when they turned up at your home.

This afternoon you walked into the world’s weirdest non-stop front bar cum water cooler conversation and said “Looking forward to communicating with you on Twitter”. Outstanding. And now 430+ people have turned around to pay attention, and quite a few have even said hello. More will join them. What happens next is a conversation. You’ll be judged on that conversation, not what you do elsewhere — though we’ll certainly want to talk about your work. And your pets.

And your tea towels.

I’m guessing that right now your Hollowmen are analysing every reaction to your tweet (singular), agonising over how you should respond. Tell them to piss off. You’re a grown man — you’re the Prime Minister for God’s sake! — so if you can’t talk with a fellow human when they say hello without someone advising you what to say, you might as well give up now.

Just. Be. Yourself.

The second thing, though, is that you will find it strange and challenging. And that’s OK. We all did.

Twitter is both ephemeral and on the record all at the same time. It represents a new mode of communication. Society (and politics!) will need to adapt to people’s actual humanity. Twitter’s ambient intimacy provides you with a window into the lives of the people you follow, and us with a window into yours. What will we see?

We understand that you won’t want to reveal everything. Old-fashioned tabloid journalists, hypocrites that they are, make a big deal about what is actually normal human activity. Those of us who’ve made the transition to the hyperconnected world don’t care so much, because we see more of humanity’s actual variety. We know that people express frustration after a tough day, or doubts in uncertain times, and we don’t think any less of them. In fact, we think more of them for sharing.

We know that you’ll draw the curtains from time to time. We won’t see tweets like “Ordering the RAAF to bomb Wellington” or “I so want to stab Malcolm Turnbull with a pen, the smarmy prick!” or “ZOMG Julia Gillard is teh hotness!!1!!!1!” — though we’d all relate to that last one! But it’d be good to loosen that media mask just a little. Us hyperconnected folks respect honesty.

The other thing to notice is that Twitter is fast. Very fast.

The inimitable Mark Pesce has already written all about this in his lecture Hyperpolitics, American Style. You might want to put your feet up, make a nice strong cup of tea, crack open the Iced Vo-Vos and watch. He “gets it” more than those Sussex Street machine men will ever understand. If you’ve got time, you might also try Only Connect or even the more challenging This, That, and the Other. If you can absorb the lessons and work them into your personal politics, you will be full of WIN!

If you truly engage with Twitter — or rather, engage with the people who sit right in front of you thanks to Twitter — you’ll be able to bounce around ideas and reach a consensus before one of the old political dinosaurs has even finished his first canvassing phone call.

The real lesson is that you can’t just translate what you do in industrial-age media into this new world. You need to learn new skills, and the best way is to immerse yourself. Take the plunge. We won’t laugh.

Well, not at first.

Of course if @KevinRuddPM is not actually you but a minion, things are different…

There’s nothing wrong with a minion-operated Twitter account. @DowningStreet has even managed to inject real personality into the role even though it’s shared by three humans! Just be honest about that up front, and let the minion be a human.

It’s even kinda OK if the Twitter account is only to tell us about new posts to kevinpm.com.au — though that’s also kinda lame because the website already has an RSS feed and your first tweet did use the word “communicating”. We have expectations.

Over to you, Prime Minister!

P.S. Can you tell Conroy to pull his head in about the Internet censorship thing? It’s not a good look to have been elected on talk of “evidence-based policy” and then ignore the evidence.

P.P.S. Do you agree with John Birmingham when he says that Conroy does a “puckered cat’s bum thing with [his] mouth” when equating freedom of speech with kiddie-porn-watching? Just wondering. You can message me privately about that one, promise I won’t tell.

[This post was also re-published by ZDNet News Australia.]

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Lame parrots try to defend Internet censorship

Stilgherrian — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:22:19 +0000

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?

Anthony Albanese’s letter

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 wi” 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

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Conroy thoroughly tangled in his own Rabbit-Proof Firewall

Stilgherrian — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:57:32 +0000

[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.

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The argument is simple, Senator Conroy

Stilgherrian — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:19:41 +0000

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?

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

And this week’s Cnut is…?

Stilgherrian — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:58:54 +0000

Oops! Only 3.5 hours until tonight’s edition of Stilgherrian Live (9.30pm Thursdays Sydney time) and I’m only just opening nominations for “Cnut of the Week”. Still I’ve got four requests for Senator Stephen Conroy already!

Senator Conroy was the clear winner last week for his efforts relating to Internet censorship, and if you’ve ready my piece in Crikey today (behind the paywall for now), or Bernard Keane’s, I reckon you might understand why he’s worthy of yet another go.

Still, maybe someone else is worthy too? It’s the same rules as usual. We’re after people (or abstract forces of nature, or organisations or whatever) who’ve been futilely trying to hold back the tide of change.

Who do you nominate, and why?

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Dear Mr Albanese, Internet censorship trials must stop

Stilgherrian — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:33:46 +0000

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.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Dear Ms Kate Ellis, MP…

Stilgherrian — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:41:20 +0000

Mark Newton, the network engineer who Senator Conroy’s office tried to bully, has written to his local member Kate Ellis MP detailing his criticism of both the Internet censorship plans and Conroy’s behaviour — and calling for a detailed response.

The PDF of the full letter has all the references, but I’ve reproduced the main text below — verbatim, except for minor changes to suit my own typographical and linking preferences.

One important figure which was “hidden” in a footnote….

When translated into the network traffic handled by a medium-sized ISP, the 3% false-positive rate of the most accurate filter tested corresponds to more than 3000 “bad blocks” per second.

Imagine the bureaucracy you’d need to undo all that damage to legitimate Internet traffic!

Imagine if your business or your family’s holiday photos were being blocked and you had to “prove” to the government that you’re not a child pornographer — because that’s how Senator Conroy is characterising you!

Here then, The Letter… it had been released into the public domain, so spread it wide! (So to speak. Sorry, Senators.)

Mark Newton’s letter

20 October 2008
The Hon Kate Ellis MP
Minister for Youth and Sport
161a Main North Road
Nailsworth SA 5083

Dear Ms Ellis,

I am writing to you to express my concerns about moves by Senator Stephen Conroy to implement the “clean feed” proposal described on page 5 of Labor’s Plan for Cyber Safety by Senator Conroy prior to the 2007 election.

My objections to this policy are detailed below. In your reply to this letter, I would appreciate a direct, detailed response to each of these issues. I am making the assumption that collating such responses will be a simple matter, because a proposal as important as this one obviously wouldn’t have proceeded as far as it has if these basic concerns had not been considered and alleviated. If that assumption is unfounded, then that fact should justify revisiting (or, alternatively, abandoning) the “clean feed” proposal.

While I approve of the general thrust of the Cyber Safety proposal, I have serious objections to the “clean feed” section, which will erect an online Government censorship regime in Australia for the first time.

I also have significant objections about the professional conduct of Senator Conroy as he has pursued this issue. The Senator has attacked critics by comparing them to child abusers; refused to provide details of his policy then maligned opponents for their “speculative” remarks; lied to the Australian voting public about the availability of an “opt-out” in December 2007; and failed to consult with the 21 million Australian stakeholders who will be most affected by this plan, in contravention of the Prime Minster’s oft-repeated aim to implement a “Government for all Australians” [1, 2, 3]. Rather than addressing the serious policy objections which I outline below, Senator Conroy has preferred to respond with aggressive, offensive, extremist bluster.

The Government has not demonstrated a need for an online censorship regime.

While I accept that the presence of illegal material on the Internet is a cause for some concern, I’m appraised of two important points which the Government appears to have missed.

Firstly: Australians have been using uncensored Internet access for at least 30 years, and there’s no evidence of a burgeoning problem concerning access to illegal material. I have been using the Internet almost every day since 1989 and have never seen any content that I’d expect to require Government intervention. Without demonstrating a need for this system, how can the Government credibly claim that it should be mandated?

Secondly: There is little evidence that Australian parents require Government assistance. Indeed, those who claim that parents require such assistance have a remarkable track record of being wrong.

In 1989 / 1990, the Senate Select Committee into Online Services carried out an enquiry into the nature of content available online, and made a rash of recommendations in favour of some kind of censorship scheme based on the expectation that unfettered access would harm the fabric of Australian society.

The passing of time has shown that 1990 Senate’s concerns were completely wrong: Almost 20 years have passed since that enquiry, and Australians have enjoyed uncensored Internet access for the entire period. Society has not fallen apart, there is no emergency, children are not being raised in moral vacuums and turning into rapists and axe-murderers, parents are diligently and capably excelling in their efforts to raise their children into fine, upstanding citizens. Today’s parents are comfortable with ubiquitous access to unfiltered Internet, having grown up using Google to assist with homework assignments, publishing blogs and websites, using email to stay in touch with friends and family, and treating the Internet in its current unfiltered form as a valuable resource for the education and social engagement of their children.

This fact is reinforced by the public’s unresponsiveness to the previous Government’s offer of free filtering software for family PCs. When only 140,000 users downloaded the free software over 12 months, and less than 29,000 of them were still using it three weeks later, Senator Conroy concluded that the $84M filtering software distribution plan failed because it wasn’t mandatory, rather than the more rational conclusion that the failure of the initiative could be traced to lack of public desire.

The image of technologically-disconnected parents floundering helplessly in a sea of pornography as they fail to adequately raise their children is a reflection of the appalling lack of Internet-savviness of our politicians, not society at large. 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.

It is thoroughly insulting to Australian parents to undermine their efforts by asserting that the way to prevent societal decay is for the Government to step in and make decisions about the appropriateness of online content. That is a parent’s role, not Senator Stephen Conroy’s role.

The government has not demonstrated that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasibly.

Senator Richard Alston, in his tenure as Minister for Communications and the Arts, passed amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act in 1999. As accompaniment to that legislation, the Minister directed the ACMA (then ABA) to establish NetAlert, and for NetAlert to carry out periodic assessments of the “state of the art” of filtering technology.

Since that time, NetAlert and the Department have commissioned separate studies by the CSIRO, Ovum, and most recently RMIT and Enex Testlab. All of the studies have uniformly demonstrated that online censorship technology:

slows down Internet access;
inaccurately blocks content which should not be blocked;
inaccurately fails to block content which should be blocked;
is ineffective at inspecting or blocking “Peer to Peer” traffic that comprises over 60% of Australia’s Internet traffic; and
fails to accurately distinguish between legal and illegal content even when specifically configured with lists of illegal content under laboratory conditions.

The most recent trials, conducted in Tasmania by Enex Testlab earlier this year, found that the most accurate product tested incorrectly blocked 3% of innocent material, and incurred a “slowdown” performance penalty in excess of 70%, and failed to reliably block the ACMA’s prohibited content list. It stuns disbelief that the Minister for Broadband would be interested in pursuing these systems whilst at the very same time advocating for a $20B National Broadband Network (NBN) intended to increase Internet speeds.

There is no evidence on the public record to demonstrate that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasible. Every time experts have been asked, they have uniformly concluded that it is not possible. Furthermore, advances in technology cause Internet speeds to increase faster then censorship systems’ speeds, meaning that as time passes the performance penalty caused by these systems becomes worse.

It is very poor public policy to proceed with mandatory implementation of provably failed technology.

The government has not demonstrated that online censorship is effective.

Any Australian can obtain encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) access from the United States for less than $5 per month [1, 2]. This is the same technology that human rights activists use in China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to hide their activities from the Government, and provides an effective, guaranteed bypass of any effort by any National Government to filter Internet content.

There is no requirement for complicated software to use these services, VPN clients are installed by default on all common Operating System platforms. Australians who wish to hide themselves from Government Internet censorship efforts are only a few clicks away from total anonymity.

The government has failed to consider unintended consequences arising from the policy.

In order to implement a censorship scheme, the ACMA will need to make its blacklists available to ISPs.

There are approximately 400 ISPs in Australia. Even if each ISP only has a handful of staff in a position to access routers and scrutinise network configurations, that still leaves several thousand ISP technical staff with full knowledge of the contents of the blacklist.

A moment of consideration of that state of affairs yields the unavoidable conclusion that the blacklist will be “leaked”. Many sites on the Internet specialise in providing repositories of “sensitive” Government data for the purpose of providing public access to documents against Governments’ wishes, and a Government blacklist is exactly the kind of content those sites exist to publish.

When the Government makes a mistake, it will be public [1, 2, 3]. It is simply not believable that putting the same people who called for the destruction of the Bill Henson photographic exhibit in charge of a blacklist of pornographic imagery can end well. It also strains credibility to assert that there is value in putting the people who decided that Mohammad Haneef should be pursued on terrorism charges, or that David Hicks should rot in Guantanamo, in charge of a list of illegal terrorist material. Governments of both sides have a long and distinguished track record of embarrassing failure in these areas, and the public is wise to be sceptical of moves to place further faith in the demonstrably flawed judgement of our public officials and political representatives.

Leaks have other hazards: It will only be a matter of time before someone, somewhere in the world, testifies in open court that they knew where to find child pornography due to the assistance and enablement of a leaked copy of Senator Conroy’s Internet blacklist. The Government will no doubt launch a flurry of PR spin to demonise the leaker and portray itself as an innocent victim of circumstance when it happens, but one fact which will not be in dispute when it happens is that the Government was warned and carried on regardless. How much child exploitation is the Government willing to accept as “collateral damage” associated with this policy? More than zero? How much more?

Encouraging people who wish to bypass censorship to use encrypted VPNs carries a further unintended consequence, namely that the Australian Federal Police are unable to effectively execute Interception Warrants on encrypted traffic. Implementing censorship will drive criminals towards encryption by blocking non-encrypted methods of accessing the content they desire. I invite you to ponder the likely political effect of the revelation that Australian law enforcement was unable to gather evidence to convict a child abuser or a terrorist because the ALP’s censorship system had inspired the offender to encrypt their Internet traffic.

Senator Conroy has invalidated the government’s claim for a mandate by lying to the Australian public about the scope of the policy.

In December 2007, Senator Conroy was widely reported in the press as stating that “…anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.”

In October 2008, Darren Pauli from IDG/Computerworld obtained confirmation from the Minister’s media spokesman that no opt-out will be available, “… the filters will be mandatory for all Australians.”

As far as politicians’ lies go, this one is breathtaking in its audacity. The Minister took the false impression that Australians will be able to (in his own words) “opt out of the service” to the last election, and allowed it to persist for almost an entire year even as the policy progressed to “live trials” with no opt-out provision. Then when the truth was exposed he launched personal attacks to denigrate critics as “extremist” “speculators”.

Summary and Conclusion

Nearly a year has passed since Senator Conroy announced his plan, and none of the concerns described above have been addressed. The 21 million people comprising this policy’s largest stakeholder group have not been consulted. We have not even been provided with the details we’d need to assess whether Senator Conroy’s efforts to implement the policy are consistent with the Australian values, societal fabric, and child-rearing aims that the policy is purportedly designed to protect.

It disturbs me that Senator Conroy’s response to these criticisms has been to label those who disagree with him as “speculators” and “extremists” and to compare them to child abusers. My criticisms are not “extreme”, and I am not a child abuser. I am a voter, and I expect Senator Conroy to show some respect by answering my concerns without resorting to hysterical personal attacks. Senator Conroy’s job is to convince the Australian public that his idea is worthy, but his habit of resorting to bluster, offensiveness and secrecy has severely undermined that role. Without Senator Conroy’s detailed responses to these issues, the responsibility for any undesired “uninformed speculation” lies directly upon his shoulders.

I call upon you to:

respond to the policy concerns that I have outlined above; and
represent my interests in the Party Room to persuade Senator Conroy and the Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd to change track by abandoning the “clean feed” proposal.

The general aims of the ALP’s cyber-safety initiative are worth defending. In particular, budget allocations for education programs and investigative law enforcement are commendable. But the “clean feed” proposal is impossible to defend on technical, moral, financial and public policy grounds, and should be reviewed for suitability for inclusion in the Government’s policy agenda before being allowed to proceed any further.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Newton