Just my pondering for the night.

Myself, as very much a technical person, practical solutions to the core. With current filtering technologies, any automated filter is pretty much a shotgun with its accuracy. When using a shotgun you get a spread, sometimes if that target you’re aiming at is close to something else you don’t want to hit – there’s a good risk you might hit that unwanted target anyway.

Therein lies the reason how filtering can used as a breach into freedom of expression, as well as a poor method of attacking ‘unwanted’ content.

Intentional or not, certain people and groups play politics – which may eventually be abused to edge the filtering system into the realm of suppression of information. If not, it’ll at least make the thought of mistakenly blocked content more palatable, making us more accepting as the filtering eventually works its way deeper and deeper into the content of the internet.

Technically as the filter list gets larger and more dynamic. The requirements for the filtering system become larger – most likely not just linearly, potentially exponentially. As do the costs, and for the ISPs that have to provide the system, passing those costs back onto us – the customers – quite a substantial increase in internet costs. Inherently as network response times increase, hardware costs will increase to rectify the situation.

The government won’t be able to help as each ISP is unique in its own way, and custom solutions cost more. I’m sure lesser ISPs will begin to fail providing filtering and not provide any internet at all to their paying customers – who by now will have already begun to shoulder quite a hefty burden of the filtering.

In these times of economic uncertainty and desperation – adding extra baseline costs to companies and businesses who pass costs onto consumers can’t be a good thing. Increased baselines costs can’t be a good thing for international trade, why bother with a country’s industry that is so hampered by risks and additional costs lumped on by an Internet filter intended to protect the country’s children.

Children who by this time on their slowed down, unreasonably more expensive Internet because the NBN also did not properly address future communications requirements, have already learned to bypass the filtering system that was deemed necessary to protect them while they send their self-shot nude photos to some lacking in life adult across the world via IM/Social networking from their government funded laptop.

All the while their parents are in the next room enjoying their newly acquired Digital HD TV bought with child support bonuses just in time for analogue tv transmission to be turned off.

While at this moment the Government has only pledged about $15M for the bushfire recovery funds, although government is happy to spend $128M on this internet filtering shenanigans.

Every night I confuse myself with how mandatory ISP level filtering could actually be considered at any level as being beneficial for our country’s future.

A person in the know, a technical person, an engineer perhaps even gets asked a question. They recommend that it’s a bad idea. Oh okay. Then the person asking the question asks for some numbers. 0.4% failure rate. OH THAT’S NOT SO BAD THEN. And so it goes ahead anyway.

Talking scaling, 0.4% on a sample of 50 is pretty much nothing.  However there’s a reason some companies try and maintain a six-sigma process control that considers even 3 defective parts per million opportunities a minimum. Something that NASA goes above and beyond in their stuff.  Once you’re handling something that scales up, that “oh that’s not so bad” starts to become a big number.

Looking at one end for nice numbers can look good, but until you’re looking at the other end of things and side-effects which perhaps may not be so numberly which is where things can happen down the track can get predator-face ugly.  If it was a simple as pulling a test and taking some numbers, we’d be building tanks out of glass, and have chefs being replaced by robots.

That’s why the people in the know when they’re asked a question already know that something’s a pretty bad idea in the first place, before the somewhat small numbers begin seeming insignificant.

What does a number mean when the people making the decisions don’t understand or comprehend the weight on a value?

What’s the chances that this Internet filtering thing in Australia has been brought so far based upon the misunderstanding of a few ’small’ numbers?

Apparently I do.  Or so Bernadette McMenamin, CEO of ChildWise says. She probably cooks these ideas up in between counting the hundreds of thousands of dollars she’s collected from the Government using either false or unverified statistics and facts.

Chief executive of child protection group Child Wise, Bernadette McMenamin, said most of the criticisms levelled at the internet filter scheme were founded on misinformation.

“It’s disturbing that people are getting hysterical about all the misinformation that is being spread about the internet filter,” Ms McMenamin said.

“Instead of hearing hysteria from the minority we need to hear from the Government and exactly what it intends to ban.”

Ms McMenamin was equally critical of the past weekend’s protests and the DLC’s plans for future action.

“Let the 300 people march on Canberra because it looks pathetic,” he said. “It looks pathetic and shameful because most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child p-rnography.”

Sign the petition below if you like your Internet. In fact, sign if you believe the Government is better off spending our money trying to boil the ocean.

Was out and about today. Was at a workplace that used fairly standard firewall software by the looks of things.  I got blocked trying to access The Australian IT.   The story in question? Stephen Conroy wades into child porn net flood.

What are the chances that the intended system will perform better than a commercial off the shelf solution?

(To prevent the ohno-sayers: Take note of the methods listed by the error box)

Well you might assume it wouldn’t be a problem in a filter the Australian Government is dumping a whole heap of money on. Or will it?

Mr Rizvi—At a very broad level, the purpose of the pilot is to look at two streams of potential filtering. The first stream of filtering is in terms of just filtering the ACMA black list and different methodologies for filtering the ACMA black list. What we will seek to test is the impact of that type of filtering in terms of a range of criteria. We will also test more sophisticated types of filtering that go beyond just simply testing the ACMA black list through to filtering larger black lists and also looking at other types of filtering including dynamic filtering, filtering using key words—those sorts of methodologies—to see what the impact of that type of filtering is in terms of both the ISP and the customer.

1. Discredit and devalue public opinion as wild and HYSTERICAL. Example.

Senator Ludlam – So what are your benchmarks or what is acceptable?

Senator Conroy – We are just at the very early stages. You are actually jumping ahead. I can understand that if you have been reading some of the wild and-

Senator Ludlam – Some of it is not so wild, Minister.

Senator Conroy – enthusiastic commentary that I keep seeing both in blogs and in the media.

2. Brag that you are certain you have read more blogs than the person opposing you even though you have no clue on how much research they have done. Then repeat step one. Example.

Senator Conroy-As I said, we are at the early stages. We have not made any decisions along those lines, so we are taking it step by step. This is a complex issue. Notwithstanding some of the commentary that borders on hysterical at times that you have possibly seen, we are just slowly and methodically working our way through and gathering information through this trial.

Senator Ludlam – Some of the comments that I have seen did not approach hysterical at all. I think there have been some quite well thought through concerns.

Senator Conroy-I am sure I have unfortunately probably seen a wider range of commentary than you have, Senator Ludlam.

3. Lie about your facts or at the very least bend the truth to make your words sound morally right. In fact do it while in Parliament. Example.

Senator Conroy – Just to indicate the countries that have implemented along the lines that Abul is talking about include Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. This is not some one-off excursion.

Makes you wonder why people who know what the hell they are doing aren’t in Government.  Mark Newton caught this one out.  Itch.

• UK: Government specifically excluded from online censorship by the Communications Act. British Telecom has implemented a private, voluntary clean feed system which its customers can use if they wish;
• Canada: Eight ISPs, without any Government coersion at all, run a voluntary parental control tool. The project’s FAQ specifically states that “There is no legal obligation to do this; it will be entirely voluntary. ISPs may have technical or other reasons for not adopting the system;
• Sweden: One ISP, Telenor, runs an optional blacklist. It was embroiled in controversy last year when the police tried to add P2P trackers to the list as child pornography sites, demonstrating how pernicious “scope creep” is in these systems: As soon as they exist, there’s always political pressure to make them block more;
• New Zealand: Examined the BT Cleanfeed system from the UK in 2005, and concluded that it was only 10-15 per cent effective in a fitness-for-purpose study launched by the Department of Internal Affairs Censorship Compliance Unit. The Government abandoned the idea as something too stupid to pursue; I contacted the President of InternetNZ today to confirm that there’s no NZ censorship system whatsoever, and they don’t expect that situation to change if there’s a change of Government in their election later this year.

4. Suggest that everyone in Australia is a bunch of pedophiles. Example.

Senator Ludlam – Just let me finish. In terms of the countries that you have just listed for me, it is mandatory or is it an opt-in system that, for example, concerned parents could take advantage of?

Senator Conroy – Illegal material is illegal material. Child pornography is child pornography. I trust you are not suggesting that people should have access to child pornography.

Today’s lesson is derived from somebodythinkofthechildren.com

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I’m not feeling too well today so this will be a budget post. However a very important one. Something that’s been riding under the radar since the election.  Hopefully some of the other bloggers who read this will pass this further down the social daisychain better than the FPM site can.  Do take note.

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

…

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contacted by Computerworld say blanket content filtering will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch.

Online libertarians claim the blacklists could be expanded to censor material such as euthanasia, drugs and protest.

…

“Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked — end of story.”

…

“Once the public has allowed the system to be established, it is much easier to block other material,” Clapperton said.

Please do read the rest of the article at Computerworld.

I’d hate to pull the political bandwagon, but Rudd’s been smoking a bit too much of the Chinese pipe.

For many of us this would probably mean many sites we know well will be blacksited and unavailable to us given the current save-you-from-yourselves type society we live.  How many of the games you know have been banned from Australia?

If you feel you’re against this (and you should) – it’s one switch away from being at China’s censoring levels – contact your local Federal Representative in your area, as well as send a letter (yes an actual physical paper letter) to Stephen Conroy.  Why a paper letter? That’s because Timmy your e-mail basically doesn’t get read – they skim it (if at all) and then send you a pregenerated response.

It’s the proverbial Pandora’s box for Internet censorship. Where does it end?

UPDATE 19/Oct/2008

INTERNET users could be forced to subsidise the federal Government’s quest to censor the internet, with early estimates indicating the scheme could cost $60 million a year.  AustralianIT

When’s the last time you knew a Government project to stay on budget? How often does the Government admit defeat on a project instead of beating it to death to prove that it will work?

Of course you could always call the people opposing the government ignorant extremists.  From “Interview With Media Contact Tim Marshall For Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy.”

and you know there’s a few lobby groups in the sector who are pretty keen to put there extreme view out there without perhaps having too much interest in the facts.  Techwired Interview

Medium-to-large Australian ISPs routinely carry in excess of 100,000 HTTP requests per second during peak times, SAGE-AU said in a statement.

Under ideal conditions with the best-of-breed filter in place, those ISPs would be incorrectly blocking over 3,000 HTTP requests every second.

…

The Guild also claims the filtering regime will undo any benefits from a future Fibre to the Node (FTTN) network, due to the delays and processing required by the content filters that were tested.

Preliminary results from the ACMA study showed that five of the six filters tested degraded Internet throughput speeds by at least 22 percent.

IT News

• Look after your own children.
• Protecting the children is a media emotive beatup and does not have any real logic behind it.
• Look after your own damn children.
• I like my Internet the way it is.
• Look after your own goddamn children.
• Our quality of Internet access can only get worse.
• Look after your own goddamn children or don’t have any.

This is something that we need to keep a lookout for.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the government will soon trial blocking prohibited and “additional” material in a live pilot with ISPs using the filters. Computerworld

In other news we’ve almost got the band back together. We just need Gerbie to pull his arse up and grab his banjo.

Decided to hop on a few IRC channels around the place to idle in and keep up with a few groups of people.

Unfortunately it seems mIRC no longer cuts it with consistently and invenvitable software caused connection abort every two minutes without fail.  Switched to xChat and not only does it not disconnect me all the time – it even wipes my bum and checks my spelling.  There’s also more plugins than Phonic could shake a stick at to porno. It has a lot of plugins.