KLEPAS.ORG

Part of the hot-​air during the Aus­tralian 2007 Federal Elec­tions was the issue of Inter­net content fil­ter­ing, which I waved off as just what I thought it was—hot-air—designed to impress and hope­fully secure votes. The idea was shot down then and quickly was left alone … until now. Ashley Kyd drew this to my atten­tion in his article Australia’s “Clean Feed”:

“The Aus­tralian Federal Gov­ern­ment is pow­er­ing full steam ahead on a $125.8 million dollar plan to enact a manda­tory content-​filter every single Aus­tralian Inter­net con­nec­tion. Subtly dif­fer­ent from the Great Fire­wall of China, the Aus­tralian version is to be imple­mented at ISP level, and will target not only illegal content, but also “inappropriate” content unsuit­able for chil­dren.

The ACMA has sub­mit­ted a report on the current state of the tech to Senator Stephen Conroy — so called ‘Min­is­ter for Broad­band, Comm­unications and the Digital Economy’ — who’s hailing it as a modern miracle, despite what can only be seen as a star­tling lack of com­pre­hen­sion of the real world implications.”

Punc­tu­a­tion changes made to retain sequen­tial quoting.

So, I got off my butt and wrote an email to Stephen Conroy. Because I doubt it will ever get past his sec­re­tary and meet Mr. Conroy’s own eyes due to his likely busy sched­ule I am pub­lish­ing this here in the hopes that any Australians—or even Aus­tralian per­ma­nent res­i­dents (I am one)—who see this might con­sider voicing their con­cerns to the Gov­ern­ment. The letter:

Dear Min­is­ter Stephen Conroy,

As an employed Aus­tralian per­ma­nent resident—and web & Inter­net professional—I have serious reser­va­tions about your new manda­tory “clean feed” filter ini­tia­tive.

Pur­su­ing an expen­sive $125.8 billion million dollar venture that entirely fails to address the secu­rity, speed, quality of any such a fil­ter­ing system, as well as the rights of both website owners in and outside of Aus­tralia and finally the civil rights of the cit­i­zens of Aus­tralia is a waste of tax payers’ money and of serious concern to every Inter­net user in Aus­tralia.

Con­cern­ing secu­rity, I am shocked that the report claims six of the seven solu­tions tested filter the HTTPS pro­to­col (Hyper­Text Trans­fer Pro­to­col over Secure Socket Layer)—the pro­to­col over which Aus­tralians make secure Inter­net banking and e-commerce trans­ac­tions. This com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­col was inher­ently designed specif­i­cally to promise a set level of secu­rity and privacy for its users. Fur­ther­more, as this is a secure pro­to­col, any filter—by logical conclusion—must use a simple keyword, or “blacklist” method which has been proven both inef­fec­tive, slow, incred­i­bly arduous to keep updated and also prone to black­list (block) legit­i­mate content.

In regards to speed, the July 2008 study clearly indi­cates that a high-​speed, accu­rate fil­ter­ing solu­tion is not pos­si­ble. There­fore imple­ment­ing any such fil­ter­ing at the ISP (Inter­net Service Provider) level will only hamper and slow down the current infrastructure—which greatly needs speed improve­ments, not declines.

As noted above a black­list filter is of serious concern to secu­rity and speed, both of which are impor­tant ele­ments of any such a system’s quality level. The higher the block­ing accu­racy of such a system, the more it well hamper the speed of the network infra­struc­ture.

If such a system is imple­mented I believe the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment will anger and frus­trate many website owners both over­seas and locally. Pro­cess­ing black­list removal requests will be a major under­tak­ing that will incur con­tin­u­ous mon­e­tary, time and imple­men­ta­tion costs. I believe many web content owners will con­sider their legal options in regards any such a move by the Gov­ern­ment. At the very least a one-​size-​fits-​all fil­ter­ing approach as the one pro­posed will cast the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment in a very neg­a­tive light, abroad and at home.

Finally—any most importantly—I believe the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment has absolutely no role in mon­i­tor­ing and decid­ing what is appro­pri­ate for myself, our children—a fact that many Aus­tralians will undoubt­edly agree with.

I believe the Inter­net is a tech­nol­ogy that will test society and its legal systems—common issues that have arisen include content cen­sor­ship (as on the table cur­rently), copy­right, licens­ing and patent­ing, uni­ver­sal access avail­abil­ity, and more. Many of our legal systems are out­dated in respect to the advances of the digital age, and this current issue is just another hurdle to be over­come as we realise we must shift our atti­tudes; no body will be suc­cess­fully able to control and filter the expanse of infor­ma­tion present and growing on the Inter­net. Any such a venture is futile, expen­sive and will only cause dis­tress.

The expan­sive resources—125.8 billion million dollars for example—available to the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment instead be focused on pro­vid­ing up-​to-​date edu­ca­tion on Inter­net tech­nolo­gies both to stu­dents and parents to ensure we can make well-​educated judge­ments about how we spend our time on-​line.

Our digital infra­struc­ture has been the hot-​topic before, during and now as it seems even after the election—I sin­cerely hope the Gov­ern­ment will recon­sider this ini­tia­tive and make an informed deci­sion that takes the needs of Aus­tralians at heart.

Your sin­cerely,

Simon Pascal Klein
Can­berra, Aus­tralia