INTERNET 2 - The Imminent Privatization of the World Wide Web / Censorship

[mr anderson]

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24768254-15306,00.html

Fran Foo | December 08, 2008

TELSTRA has snubbed the federal Government by refusing to take part in its live content filtering trial.

Optus, however, has lodged an application to participate in the pilot.

A spokesperson for the nation's largest internet service provider said: "Telstra is not in a position to participate in the Government's internet filtering trial, primarily due to customer management issues."

"However, Telstra is separately evaluating technology that allows the blocking of defined blacklists and we will continue to work constructively with all stakeholders, including the Government, to help provide a safe internet environment for children," the spokesperson said.

An earlier closed trial of 26 web filtering products was held at Telstra's broadband lab in Tasmania without input from the telco.

The deadline for expressions of interest (EOI) to participate in the Government's live trials is at midnight.

The trial will test against ACMA's blacklist that currently contains 1300 URLs and may expand to approximately 10,000 links.

The list mainly contains web pages of child sexual abuse web sites.

Telstra said it already had a raft of measures to protect children from internet nasties.

"Telstra takes down individual websites which ACMA (the Australian Communications and Media Authority) judges to be inappropriate.

"We have no fundamental difficulties with a legislated regime for blocking a defined ACMA blacklist of illegal sites," the Telstra spokesperson said.

Telstra's decision comes as no surprise. Last week its chief operating officer Greg Winn likened filtering the internet to trying to boil the ocean.

"My view on that is that's like trying to boil the ocean ... to think that you're going to be able to centrally filter everything, I think that's a pipe dream," Mr Winn said.

A spokesperson for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy declined to comment on Telstra's decision, but said: "A number of ISPs have indicated to Government their intent to participate in the trial. The deadline for responses to the EOI is midnight tonight and we won’t be commenting further until all responses have been received."

Meanwhile, Optus's application comes with a few strings attached.

"Our participation will be strictly limited to filtering only the ACMA blacklist which contains URLs of illegal content," an Optus spokesperson said, referring to the 1300 web pages on the ACMA list.

"The trial is anticipated to operate in a specific geographic area, with customers given the option to ‘opt-out’ of the trial. Details will be finalised closer to the trial launch date.

"Optus is participating in order to accurately gauge the impact that this type of filtering would have on its network, including download speeds and customer experience," the spokesperson said.

[mr anderson]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081205-australias-internet-filtering-too-ambitious-doomed-to-fail.html

By Iljitsch van Beijnum  | Published: December 05, 2008 - 05:10AM CT

It's tough being a government these days; who has the energy to clean up the Internet after a hard day's work bailing out the financial sector? Not the Australian government, it seems. Rather than actually doing something about illegal content, they just make a list of it and tell ISPs to filter everything that's on the list. Sidestepping the murky political details and—for the moment—the civil liberties problems inherent in this approach, let's take a closer look at the technical aspects of such a plan.

In the Internet Service Provider Content Filtering Pilot Technical Testing Framework document, the Australian Government Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy provides some details about what it wants ISPs to do in a pilot project. The main part is that ISPs who are interested in participating in the pilot will test solutions for filtering a list of at most 10,000 URLs on a blacklist maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, a regulator not unlike the FCC. "Prohibited online content" includes what you would imagine, but also your garden variety porn (yes, the stuff they broadcast over the air on public TV in the Netherlands), and under special circumstances even R-rated movies. Filtering URLs on the ACMA blacklist is a mandatory part of the pilot, though additional filters that aren't clearly specified are optional.

So how would an ISP go about blocking certain URLs from being accessed by its customers?

Filtering: harder than it sounds

First, a little refresher on how the Internet works. It all starts when a user types or clicks a URL. A browser or other application then looks up the domain name in the URL through the Domain Name Service. This usually happens through a DNS server operated by the ISP, but that's not necessarily the case. URLs can also contain IP addresses, avoiding the need for a DNS lookup altogether. Then, the browser starts sending packets to the IP address returned by the DNS. It is of course the ISP's job to make the packets flow in the right direction using the global routing system.

The first place where blocking can happen is on the user's computer. However, unless the Australian government is prepared outlaw open source software and administer all of its resident's computers, this isn't going to work.

The next option is the DNS. Filtering in the DNS is doable, and has been done in the past. This should work well for most users, but it doesn't take too much tech savvy to configure an unfiltered DNS server, bypassing the ISP's filters. Another problem with DNS filters is that a single domain name may host both blocked and unblocked URLs. For truly illegal content this usually isn't much of a problem, but a popular technique for dodgy content is to publish content that is prohibited in the target jurisdiction on a big server elsewhere, where the content in question is legal. Then the blockers are faced with the dilemma of whether to block a popular domain or let the offending content through.

It's also possible to filter packets. In this case, the workaround is installing a proxy. This is not as easy as configuring different DNS addresses, but it's certainly doable. (The obvious counter action by the government would then be to block the proxies.)

However, filtering packets, or making them disappear by manipulating the routing system, has the same problem as DNS-based filters: a single address may host both legal and illegal content. And it's worse in the sense that many different DNS names may resolve to a single IP address. A common technique for hosting questionable content is to use a large number of servers with very different IP addresses and let the DNS cycle through these addresses in quick succession, making it hard to determine which addresses host the content in question. (And maybe throw in Google's addresses once in a while so those get blocked as well?)

Another issue is that the government set an upper limit of 10,000 URLs. This gives bad actors an obvious way to defeat the system: simply host prohibited content on more than 10,000 URLs. A DNS-based filter can probably be made to work with arbitrarily big blacklists, but any system that requires firewall rules or routing table entries to block addresses will be limited to something in the order of 10k blocked addresses or address ranges—simply upping the limit won't work because the hardware would get too expensive.

A different approach to filtering is to intercept all packets and use deep packet inspection to determine if they're going to or from a blacklisted URL. This has two downsides: it obviously doesn't work for encrypted sessions, and it doesn't scale.

Even medium-sized ISPs have many 1Gbps links, and the larger ones have 10Gbps links. At 10Gbps, a router, switch, or firewall has about 400 nanoseconds to decide what to do with a packet—not enough time to run through a list of 10,000 URLs. And that's assuming that the target URL is conveniently present in a single packet, rather than having one half of the URL in one packet and one in another packet—and what happens when the second half is actually transmitted first?

So the DPI equipment must do full TCP/IP processing and reconstruct TCP sessions from the packets flowing by. This can (maybe) work at 1Gbps speeds, but even then it requires hefty boxes, of which a big ISP would have to deploy a good number. And did I mention that simply using HTTPS defeats this type of filtering completely?

Opting-out

An additional complication here is that the Aussie government is interested in letting users opt out of (part of) the filtering. Users can turn off the porn blacklist, but all Australians will still be subject to a filter on "illegal content."

This makes certain types of filtering a lot harder. As long as you have the routing table slots, it's easy to instruct routers to send packets for a certain IP address to the "null" interface so they are filtered. However, this is a binary thing: packets from all users are filtered, or packets from all users are allowed through. Setting up two different filter levels makes everything more difficult.

My conclusion: this isn't going to work. There's no way to build a filter box that can filter all the URLs where porn is hosted throughout the Internet. A DNS-based filter that helps naive users avoid being confronted with explicit content would probably work to a certain degree. An IP-based filter for a small amount of very illegal content—that would be the stuff that even the spam hosters in China don't want on their servers—may also work. But anything more ambitious than that is certain to fail; either it won't work very well, or it will bankrupt the ISPs.

As for the ISPs, they tend to agree.

Here's an idea: if the Australian government actually finds child porn, nuclear bomb making manuals, and the like on the Internet, why not do their best to find the perpetrators and put them behind bars? That way we get to keep our free speech and have less crime and terrorism, rather than less of the former without actually reducing the latter. Then again, imposing restrictions on what local taxpayers can do is a lot easier than tracking down and rounding up international criminals and terrorists, and the filtering plan is moving forward despite the massive and fairly obvious drawbacks.

[Brocke]

Anti-piracy company tells Congress it can eliminate College P2P

SafeMedia Corp challenged colleges and universities to work to eliminate illegal P2P file-sharing of copyrighted material on campus networks in testimony before the House Committee on Science and Technology.

The House Committee on Science and Technology held a hearing today called "The Role of Technology in Reducing Illegal File-sharing: A University Perspective" which focused on the experiences of universities that have implemented technological measures to reduce P2P sharing on campus networks.

In his testimony, SafeMedia Corporation CEO and Founder, Safwat Fahmy, challenged colleges and universities to work to eliminate illegal P2P file-sharing of copyrighted material on campus networks and then briefed the committee on SafeMedia products designed to address the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials on campus P2P networks.

"Some colleges and universities have been reluctant to adopt effective policies to deal with illegal file-sharing. Some cite student privacy as a concern for refusing to stop clearly illegal file-sharing, but how does it protect student privacy to allow P2P file-sharing services to freely roam students' computer hard drives for folders and documents without their explicit permission?" asked Fahmy in his testimony to the committee. "I would ask if there isn't a double standard here. Colleges and universities are fiercely protective of their own intellectual property. Why are they so cavalier when it comes to the intellectual property of others?"

Fahmy then briefed the Committee on SafeMedia's global "P2P Disaggregator"(P2PD), technology which is designed to destroy contaminated P2P networks by draining the illegal content of those networks, and then conveniently offered up Clouseau as a tool for "immediate implementation" to combat campus piracy. "Universities can purchase Clouseau for immediate implementation...(it) will detect and prohibit illegal P2P traffic while allowing the passage of legal P2P such as BitTorrent. Clouseau is inexpensive. Users simply plug it in the subnet as a bridge and it goes to work without altering their network topology."


Since 1998, the year that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed to govern online copyright infringement, the music industry is reported to have sent nearly 60,000 copyright violation notices to more than 1,000 campuses to date, claiming that some 1.3 billion tracks are illegally downloaded each year. The movie industry also claims that they lose some $250 million USD to campus piracy annually.

Campuses generally have two means for dealing with illegal P2P file-sharing on their networks. A significant majority of campuses approach the issue by using traffic-shaping systems to control and modify the rate of file transmissions on their networks. A smaller number of campuses have deployed network-filtering systems, which seek to block transmission of copyrighted material by identifying the content of copyright-infringing files.

Both traffic-shaping and the current network-filtering systems were unable to capture any of the encrypted illegal P2P-traffic (encryption is used in 90 percent of all illegal P2P downloads), and as such, the results were not accurate and were less than marginal. "SafeMedia's technology P2PD is capable of capturing and stopping all encrypted or non encrypted illegal P2P transmissions, while allowing all legal encrypted or non-encrypted P2P transmission," said Fahmy.

"I take very seriously the concern about preserving personal computing privacy," said Fahmy in a separate interview. "That is why our P2PD implemented in Clouseau never opens any transmission packets. Rather, we monitor the ever-changing and adapting myriad of illegal P2P protocols/networks and continually update our systems to block only these illegal transmissions."

According to Fahmy, traffic-shaping is not effective in reclaiming bandwidth, nor does it eliminate, "the outright theft of copyrighted material via P2P file-sharing on campus networks." Fahmy stresses the need for campuses to take more drastic measures by implementing technologies to effectively "stop illegal P2P file-sharing in its tracks, thereby reclaiming up to two-thirds of campus bandwidth currently used for illicit purposes."

Now Fahmy claims that Clouseau won't block "legitimate" or "legal P2P" programs like BitTorrent but, how does it determine this distinction from a content point of view? How will it know if I downloaded a file from BitTorrent Inc. or Legal Torrents and not the Pirate Bay or TorrentSpy? Certainly it must if it is to effectively block the illegal transfer of copyrighted material. Yet, if it isn't, once again we'll see BitTorrent Inc. and other companies who use P2P technology to transfer data and content being slowly shut out of the marketplace as fear of getting sued for copyright infringement spreads.

Other witnesses who testified today included: Dr. Charles Wight, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Studies, University of Utah; Dr. Adrian Sannier, Vice President and University Technology Officer, Arizona State University, on leave from Iowa State University; Mr. Vance Ikezoye, President and CEO of Audible Magic Corporation; Ms. Cheryl Asper Elzy, Dean of University Libraries, Illinois State University; Management Team, ISU’s Digital Citizen Project; Dr. Greg Jackson, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, University of Chicago.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8825/Anti-piracy+company+testifies+before+Congress+that+it+can+eliminate+P2P+at+Universities


Congress threatens to enact new laws, withhold funds if colleges don't stop P2P

Says they must do more to prevent their students from illegally sharing music, movies, and other copyrighted material on campus networks.

Members of the House Science and Technology Committee heard from university officials and technology "experts" on different methods available to reduce illegal file-sharing on campus networks.

“Illegal file-sharing isn’t just about royalty fees. It clogs campus networks and interferes with the educational and research mission of universities,” said Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN). “It wastes resources that could have gone to laboratories, classrooms and equipment. And it is teaching a generation of college students that it’s alright to steal music.”

Witnesses testified on the extent to which these technologies reduced illegal fil-sharing, and also technological issues surrounding them, such as privacy and impacts on speed and reliability of campus networks.

They urged university authorities to conduct more aggressive educational campaigns and to use more effective network filters to reduce the problem, otherwise they may have to take matters into their own hands.

Legislators warned that if illegal file-sharing continues, they may have to enact new laws or worse, even hold back funding for some of the colleges and universities who fail to comply. Rep. Tom Feeney suggested that Congress withhold funding for universities if piracy continues to run rampant, noting that universities annually receive billions of dollars in funding for research and other academic development activities. In 2007, new grants and loans to students totaled some $82 billion USD.

“One of our nation’s greatest strengths is our educational system, and American universities are the envy of the world. Their mission is to educate students, and they should not condone or look the other way when their computer networks are used as clearinghouse for digital piracy and illegal file-sharing,” said Gordon.

The associate vice president for academic affairs and undergraduate studies of the University of Utah, Charles Wight, said claimed that his school was able to save $1.2 million in bandwidth costs and $70,000 in personnel costs after using a combination of monitoring and filtering tools to hinder illegal file-sharing. Arizona State University reported that it had also implemented a similarly successful program to reduce illicit file-sharing.

The legislators, however, were not satisfied. They claimed administrators were not doing enough to stop rampant file swapping and wanted more stringent controls put in place.

Meanwhile, the University of California at Los Angeles is disputing the data used by the congressmen to compile their list of top offending schools. Officials said the data was taken out of context and that it was "misleading" because some types of file-sharing were allowed for academic purposes.

Either way, it's pretty disheartening to see Congress so wholeheartedly pursue the agenda of organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, even going so far as to threaten to cutoff of federal school funding. Since when do the losses of the RIAA, whose obviously inflated losses have never been fully substantiated mind you, constitute a need by Congress to begin legislating each of their networks and reduce academic funding and research if they fail to comply?

Also, the real problem is that no P2P management program will ever be 100% effective without eliminating the use of all P2P and file-sharing programs. Content is content and how are network admins to determine which is or isn't a legit download.? All they can do is monitor the size of the data being downloaded, which may or may not indicate illegal content because there are a number of legitimate academic and nonacademic uses that are possible.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8829/Congress+threatens+to+enact+new+laws%2C+withhold+funds+if+colleges+don%27t+stop+P2P

[Brocke]

From Times Online
December 9, 2008

Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.

A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, "aids terrorists in plotting attacks". Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided.

There are indications that the gunmen who stormed Mumbai on November 26, and the people trained them, were technically literate. The group appears to have used complex GPS systems to navigate their way to Mumbai by sea. They communicated by satellite phone, used mobile phones with several different SIM cards, and may have monitored events as the siege unfolded via handheld Blackberry web browsers.

Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarised themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive. The commandos who stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai said the militants had made a beeline for the building's CCTV control room.

The legal petition also follows unconfirmed reports that Faheem Ahmed Ansari, a suspected militant who was arrested in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in February, said he was shown maps of Indian locations on Google Earth by members of Lashkar-e-Taiber, the Pakistan-based terrorist faction that Indian officials are convinced was behind the Mumbai attacks.

Ansari was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and other sites attacked last month, a senior police officer told The Times.

Security agencies have called for the wealth of data available on Google Earth to be limited for several years amid fears the freely available application may prove invaluable for militants planning terrorist attacks.

In 2005, the operators of Australia's nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights called on the internet giant to censor images of the plant, warning that the images could be used by terrorists.

Earlier, the satellite photographs of the installation would have been available only to a handful of government agencies and NASA, they said.

In the same year, it was reported that Google omitted to blur the roof of the White House in Washington when it updated the images available on Google Earth – something it had done previously.

South Korea and Thailand also complained after the layout of air bases was revealed.

The Mumbai terrorists concentrated their attacks in south Mumbai, a popular tourist location. However, the plea filed with the Bombay High Court claims that Google Earth includes "absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access" to details of nearby sensitive locations, such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

The complaint comes just weeks after India said it would launch its own version of Google Earth.

The project, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), is being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which is based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent.

It comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old space programme, long criticised as a drain on a country where 700 million people live on USD2 a day or less.

Bhuvan will use a network of satellites to create a high-resolution, birds-eye view of India – and later, possibly, the rest of the world – that will be accessible at no cost online and will compete with Google.

Isro officials say Bhuvan will provide images of far greater resolution than are currently available online – particularly of the subcontinent, a region where large areas remain virtually unmapped.

The agency intends to refresh its images every year – a feature that would give it an edge over its biggest rival and help keep track of the frenetic pace at which India's cities are growing.

About 2.5 million people used Google Earth in the UK last month, according to Neilsen, the web analysts, making it the web's seventh most popular application behind tools such as Apple's iTunes (fourth with 5.7 million users) and Windows Live Messenger (first with 14.8 million).

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article5311241.ece

[Brocke]

From Times Online
December 9, 2008

Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai


Aerial photographs of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre on Google Earth


An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.

A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, "aids terrorists in plotting attacks". Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided.

There are indications that the gunmen who stormed Mumbai on November 26, and the people trained them, were technically literate. The group appears to have used complex GPS systems to navigate their way to Mumbai by sea. They communicated by satellite phone, used mobile phones with several different SIM cards, and may have monitored events as the siege unfolded via handheld Blackberry web browsers.

Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarised themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive. The commandos who stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai said the militants had made a beeline for the building's CCTV control room.

The legal petition also follows unconfirmed reports that Faheem Ahmed Ansari, a suspected militant who was arrested in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in February, said he was shown maps of Indian locations on Google Earth by members of Lashkar-e-Taiber, the Pakistan-based terrorist faction that Indian officials are convinced was behind the Mumbai attacks.

Ansari was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and other sites attacked last month, a senior police officer told The Times.

Security agencies have called for the wealth of data available on Google Earth to be limited for several years amid fears the freely available application may prove invaluable for militants planning terrorist attacks.

In 2005, the operators of Australia's nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights called on the internet giant to censor images of the plant, warning that the images could be used by terrorists.

Earlier, the satellite photographs of the installation would have been available only to a handful of government agencies and NASA, they said.

In the same year, it was reported that Google omitted to blur the roof of the White House in Washington when it updated the images available on Google Earth – something it had done previously.

South Korea and Thailand also complained after the layout of air bases was revealed.

The Mumbai terrorists concentrated their attacks in south Mumbai, a popular tourist location. However, the plea filed with the Bombay High Court claims that Google Earth includes "absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access" to details of nearby sensitive locations, such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

The complaint comes just weeks after India said it would launch its own version of Google Earth.

The project, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), is being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which is based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent.

It comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old space programme, long criticised as a drain on a country where 700 million people live on USD2 a day or less.

Bhuvan will use a network of satellites to create a high-resolution, birds-eye view of India – and later, possibly, the rest of the world – that will be accessible at no cost online and will compete with Google.

Isro officials say Bhuvan will provide images of far greater resolution than are currently available online – particularly of the subcontinent, a region where large areas remain virtually unmapped.

The agency intends to refresh its images every year – a feature that would give it an edge over its biggest rival and help keep track of the frenetic pace at which India's cities are growing.

About 2.5 million people used Google Earth in the UK last month, according to Neilsen, the web analysts, making it the web's seventh most popular application behind tools such as Apple's iTunes (fourth with 5.7 million users) and Windows Live Messenger (first with 14.8 million).

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article5311241.ece

[EchelonMonitor]

Better enjoy it while it lasts.  I've been thinking--is there any way to save the data so you can still use it when it's taken down?

Did you notice the google vans have been driving all over the US and some parts of the world taking 360 photos?  4 shots of my house alone--do you think they've located me? 

[mr anderson]

Better enjoy it while it lasts.  I've been thinking--is there any way to save the data so you can still use it when it's taken down?

Did you notice the google vans have been driving all over the US and some parts of the world taking 360 photos?  4 shots of my house alone--do you think they've located me? 

We are so outdated here my house doesn't exist lol

How's that for irony, I don't exist 

You hate me = I don't exist.

[Brocke]

This story broke 2 days before the protest is to take place. It was on the news and current affairs programs yesterday.

Coincidence? 


Retired QC Neil James Williams charged with child porn offences

By Simon Jenkins, Virginia Matthews and Edwina Scott
AAP

December 11, 2008 07:33pm

A RETIRED QC from Victoria, a police officer from NSW and a childcare worker are among 19 people arrested in Australia as part of a global child abuse investigation.
More than 15,000 videos and 500,000 images of child abuse - described by police as among the worst they have seen - have been seized as a result of the 12-month investigation.

The images and videos, shared between members of an online network, capture the sexual abuse of children as young as one.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Resistance, has so far resulted in the arrests of 19 men across NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

Three others have been identified as persons of interest, and more arrests are likely in coming days.

Two children in NSW have been removed from contact with alleged offenders.

Retired QC Neil James Williams, 74, of Newham in central Victoria, faces two child pornography charges as part of the investigation.

Mr Williams was arrested by Australian Federal Police on October 22 and appeared shortly afterwards in the Bendigo Magistrates Court, where he was granted bail.
Related Coverage

He is charged with one count of using a carriage service to access child pornography and one count of knowingly possessing child pornography. He is due back in the same court on March 4.

Those arrested were among 200 people, from 70 countries, named as persons of interest following an investigation by Brazilian authorities, the Australian Federal Police said.

"The videos seized as part of this operation have to be among the worst we have seen," AFP acting deputy commissioner of operations Andrew Colvin said.

"Some depicted sexual abuse of children lasting more than two hours."

Mr Colvin said those arrested had a range of job histories.

Their names would not be released at this stage, a police spokeswoman told AAP.

The matter involving the police officer is before the courts.

Mr Colvin said efforts were continuing to determine the identities of the young abuse victims, and where the abuse was carried out.

"At this stage those inquiries are still ongoing," he said.

"In this case we haven't located any children that were depicted in these videos or these images in Australia."

A Sydney man charged over the abuse network is facing charges after allegedly having sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl on several occasions.

Richard Ngong Fung Lee, 24, was arrested at his Blakehurst home today after allegedly accessing child pornography on his computer.

Police say he is one of the Australian men linked to Operation Resistance.

Mr Lee appeared in Sydney's Central Local Court on Thursday, where he faced two child pornography charges and six child sex charges.

It is alleged Mr Lee had sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl over a 17-month period from April 1, 2007 until September this year.

He is due to face the same court again on December 17.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24786538-29277,00.html

[mr anderson]

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24784419-5013040,00.html

Fran Foo | December 11, 2008

THE federal Government is keeping mum on the number of applications received for content filtering trials.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has refused to budge despite numerous attempts to gauge the response rate for the censorship plan that aims to introduce mandatory internet filtering. The Government plans to make it compulsory for ISPs to block a specific list of illegal web pages and to have a secondary "clean feed" service that people can opt-out of.

The Government called for expressions of interest (EOI) last month, asking internet service providers and mobile phone operators to participate in live trials of content filtering.

The trials, divided into two streams, aims to test the real-life impact on internet networks when content is filtered.

The first is to filter against 1300 illegal web pages, a blacklist managed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) that mainly contains child pornography links. ISPs can also choose to filter the ACMA list and provide additional content filtering such as dynamic filtering of non-web based applications like peer-to-peer networks.

The ACMA list is compiled based on complaints lodged by the public.

The pilot will also test network performance against a list of approximately 10,000 sites, that will not involve ISPs' customers, unlike testing on the ACMA blacklist. Telstra BigPond, the country's largest ISP, has said it would not take part but Optus and iiNet have tipped their hats into the ring.

Internode has also declined to participate.

It has been days since the December 8 deadline but Senator Conroy still refuses to reveal the tally of applications.

"A number of applications have been received from ISPs expressing interest to participate in the field pilot of ISP content filtering,’’ a spokesman for Senator Conroy said. “The Department is now assessing applications and we will provide further details about the pilot trial in due course."

The Government hopes to kick-off the live pilot by December 24.

The pilot is expected to conclude in the first half of 2009 after six weeks of testing.

Meanwhile, the decision by BigPond and others is proof that ISPs are not keen on the Government's censorship plan, the Greens say.

"These internet service providers are sending a clear message to the Government - they don’t think mandatory internet filtering will work and they don’t want to participate in it," Greens communications spokesperson, Scott Ludlam, said.

"This trial is simply all show. It won’t give any meaningful indication of how mandatory internet filtering would work in practice," he said. "One of the few ISPs participating is only doing so to prove to the Government that it won’t work. We won’t even get a sense of the impact of the filter on internet performance because the trial is not even going to be using real customers."

The move to censor the internet was one of Labor's pre-election promises, but it has been slammed by several quarters, including the ISP and technical community, political activists GetUp and civil libertarians. Child protection group Child Wise and Family First Senator Steve Fielding are among those who support the filtering program.

Last week during question time, Senator Conroy was asked how many participants would ISPs have to enlist for the live trials to be credible. South Australian Liberal MP Cory Bernardi also asked if the results of the trials would be independently verified. Senator Conroy could not provide answers to both questions within the stipulated two-minute timeframe.

Related link: QC, cop face child porn charges

[mr anderson]

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=z3BxG4KxqPY - Sydney

[Brocke]

Digital Liberty Coalition protests against web filter held across Australia

By Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter

NEWS.com.au

December 13, 2008 07:00pm



Digital divide ... hundreds attended rallies across Australia today to oppose the Government's web filtering plan.

    * Protests against web filtering scheme
    * Held in capital cities across Australia
    * Monthly rallies until March

HUNDREDS of people attended rallies in Australian capital cities yesterday to voice their opposition to the Rudd Government's planned internet filtering scheme.

The rallies, held in seven cities including Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, were the first in a series of demonstrations organised by anti-censorship group Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC).

In Sydney a crowd of up to 300 mostly young and tech-savvy protestors gathered at Town Hall to hear guest speakers including bloggers and musicians criticise the web filtering scheme.

IT worker Jon Seymour, who runs the blogs Broadbanned Revolution and Filtering Fallacies, said he was concerned the filter had the potential to be misused.

"Even if there's no realistic scenario where it's going to be abused now, it's certainly possible that future governments might choose to use (it) to start frustrating political opinion," he said.

"We have to resist this now, because once it's in place it will be very hard to dismantle."

UNSW computer science Dane Edwards said he attended the rally to voice concern over the effect the filter would have on people who were less technologically savvy.

"For people who are technically skilled, people who know how to use computers properly, this censorship is going to be pathetically easy to defeat," he said.

"(The fear is that) a lot of material that shouldn't be blocked will be."

Under the Government's current plan, all Australians will be served a "clean" internet feed with websites on a secret blacklist maintained by the communications watchdog blocked.

A secondary filter to block material inappropriate for children will also be introduced, however users will be able to opt-out of this system by lodging a request with their internet service provider.

Opponents to the plan are concerned the filter will slow internet connection speeds and accidentally prevent access to a large number of legitimate websites.

Studies cited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority this year found web filtering software blocked the wrong content in up to 25 per cent of test cases.

Anti-censorship advocates are also concerned that the secret blacklist of websites to be blocked for all users could be misused or expanded for political reasons.

DLC Sydney rally coordinator Jerry Hutchinson said the low take-up of existing free web filtering software, introduced by the previous government, showed that parents were not interested in the concept.

"The Howard government spent a lot of money on that and people aren't downloading it," Mr Hutchinson said.

"Why? Because people can monitor their own children – they don't need censorship in their home."

A live trial of filtering software is scheduled to begin this month, with internet service providers Optus and iiNet taking part in the test.

Australia's biggest ISP Telstra has refused to take part, with chief operating officer Greg Winn calling the Government's plan a "pipe dream".

DLC plans to hold anti-filter demonstrations in capital cities once a month until March, when it will promote a national protest in Canberra called March in March.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,24795948-5014239,00.html

Links

Digital Liberty Coalition – http://www.dlc.asn.au/
Broadbanned Revolution – http://broadbannedrevolution.blogspot.com/
Filtering Fallacies – http://filteringfallacies.wordpress.com/

[mr anderson]

Bloody hell. In that news picture above

Rael.org, it's that cult group 'The Raeliens'.

[mr anderson]

ABC News - http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gUt2RvpUKkk

[mr anderson]

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BE8q9ve-_9Q - Digital Liberty Coalition

[mr anderson]

Rally rejects Rudd's internet filter

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/rally-rejects-rudds-internet-filter/2008/12/13/1228585168416.html

Hundreds of free-speech advocates and internet aficionados turned out at Reddacliff Place in Brisbane's CBD today to protest the Rudd government's proposed mandatory internet filter.

With 937 people registering on the event's Facebook group, the tech-savvy crowd turned out in the summer heat to raise awareness of the problems that would arise from the proposed filter, which will block all websites found on a government "black-list."

Holding a sign labelled "hands off my LOLcat", education and IT worker James Croft, from Brisbane's south-side, was concerned about the curtailing of free speech such a filter would result in.

"The only other countries that have a mandatory filter are Iran, Burma, China, Saudi Arabia and North Kore.: Australia will be the first democracy to have one," he said.

"It's a slippery slope. Once you have the censorship in place, who will have control over what other sites are blocked?"

One of the speakers on the day, IT consultant Mike Fitzsimon, told the crowd how a website that had helped him through a grievous medical condition would probably be blocked by a mandatory filter.

"Ostomates.com is a site run by a woman in Perth, where people can discuss their medical problems and give each other support," Mr Fitzsimon said. "But on these forums, people also use language that could be misconstrued by the censors.

"Because we are describing anatomy, but using our own terms, this site could be placed on the black-list."

Mr Fitzsimon's said the government's figure of 0.08 per cent of all websites being blocked would actually mean three to eight per cent of legitimate websites would also be accidentally blocked.

"The government's (current) Netalert in-home system is the best solution to the problem (of child porn) because it is applied where its needed - in the family home," he said.

Digital Liberty Coalition Brisbane rally co-ordinator Jasmine Marosvary said the group hoped to raise awareness of the problems which would arise from the proposal.

"We feel a mandatory filter will infringe on our civil rights and there are other means available to protect children," she said.

"Helping parents supervise and educate their children about the dangers of the internet is another way.

"Digital Liberty Coalition has brought together many different concerned groups and we are holding rallies around the country.

"We're expecting all kinds of ages, from parents with kids and teenagers."

In the midst of all the commotion, a lone Byron Bay system administrator dressed as a robot was adamant that the filter represented censorship.

"All us robots have to stand up for free speech," he said.

[Brocke]

Bloody hell. In that news picture above

Rael.org, it's that cult group 'The Raeliens'.

Provocateurs?! A bunch of nut jobs infiltrated by the Aus Gov?!

[241727]

Shibboleth



http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

No, I am not going to spoon feed you.
Lets see how smart you are.

[Brocke]

Shibboleth



http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

No, I am not going to spoon feed you.
Lets see how smart you are.

That's ok, I have a spoon right here.

Shibboleth (Internet2)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shibboleth is an Internet2 Middleware Initiative project that has created an architecture and open-source implementation for federated identity-based authentication and authorization infrastructure based on SAML. Federated identity allows for information about users in one security domain to be provided to other organizations in a federation. This allows for cross-domain single sign-on and removes the need for content providers to maintain user names and passwords. Identity providers (IdPs) supply user information, while service providers (SPs) consume this information and gate access to secure content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth_(Internet2)

Call me a pessimist but I doubt it is secure and without a backdoor.

[241727]

Ever hear alex say you are going to need some authorisation such as thumb scanning just to get online ?

Well, now you know the name of it...
The authorisation will be at ISP or Organization level.

Its just like he says....
I'll admit, he is no IT expert, but hes got the right idea.

[mr anderson]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/701122/government-asked-to-explain-optus-claims

The federal opposition is demanding the government explain whether a company involved with the new frontrunner's bid for Australia's national broadband network has links with the Chinese military.

Security agencies will closely examine the bid placed by Singtel Optus, which is believed to have asked Chinese firm Huawei Technologies to help build its network, The Australian newspaper reported.

Huawei was the subject of a US congressional investigation on national security, after concerns were raised about the company's links to the Chinese military and intelligence apparatus, the report said.

"These are potentially very concerning revelations," opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin told AAP.

The federal government had kicked out Telstra - the only Australian publicly-listed company bidding for the national broadband network (NBN) - leaving just three national bidders.

The respected global think tank Rand Corporation, which specialises in national security research, says Huawei maintains deep ties with the Chinese military, Senator Minchin said.

Cyber espionage was a problem that Australia had to constantly guard against and the new broadband network needed to be "secure or seen to be secure".

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy must state whether Optus had close links to Huawei, Senator Minchin said.

"If Telstra were kicked out of the bidding process simply because they didn't submit a small business participation plan, where does that leave this particular bid?," he said.

Australians needed to be assured the new network was free of any potential for cyber espionage, he said.

A spokesman for Senator Conroy declined to comment specifically on the report, saying five proposals were being considered by a government-appointed panel.

The panel would provide expert recommendations to government, he said.

[Brocke]

Lawyers turn to Facebook to serve legal papers
Wed Dec 17, 2008 3:06pm EST

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Lawyers in Australia expect the internet social network site Facebook to become a new way of tracking down defendants after a landmark court ruling.

The Supreme Court in Australia's capital Canberra has ruled that Facebook is a sufficient way of serving legal documents to defendants who cannot be found.

The case surrounded a couple who defaulted on a loan, but who couldn't be found.

"We couldn't find the defendants personally after many attempts so we thought we would try and find them on Facebook," lawyer Mark McCormack said.

"We did a public search based on the email address we had and the defendants Facebook page appeared."

He said that was enough to convince the court, which found Facebook was a sufficient way of communicating legal papers when it is the plaintiff's responsibility to personally deliver documents.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE4BG6TU20081217?feedType=nl&feedName=usoddlyenough

[mr anderson]

Provocateurs?! A bunch of nut jobs infiltrated by the Aus Gov?!

Ha I dunno about The Raeliens being an affective provocateur group but their 'motives' seem to be one shared with most freedom loving people: Freedom of speech, religion.

Even though they are cult whacko's believing aliens instructed ONE guy to do ......things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism (That's all I'll post).

[Kilika]

Shibboleth



http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

No, I am not going to spoon feed you.
Lets see how smart you are.

5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was [so], that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, [Art] thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce [it] right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

Judges 12:5,6 (KJV)

[241727]

Yup

Interesting that they get murdered I thought, and other ref refer to infiltraitors....

Forget TOR etc... you wont get online without passing the security tests, and everything you do will be tracked logged and reported to the authorities..

[Femacamper]

5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was [so], that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, [Art] thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce [it] right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

Judges 12:5,6 (KJV)

So basically, this Shibboleth system will be used to identify the resistors of the New World Order, and murder them.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Shibboleth



http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

No, I am not going to spoon feed you.
Lets see how smart you are.

5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was [so], that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, [Art] thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce [it] right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

Judges 12:5,6 (KJV)

Wtf?  So they psychopaths actually read the bible and throw the Satanic stuff in our faces because they want all that to prevail over God.  Unbelievable to actually see this in front of our faces.

We will live in the 21st century Spanish Inquisition.  I bet the NWO loves the history of the inquisition, where unbelievably horrific torture techniques were developed.  Raping a mans wife in front of him and his kids, then restraining the man and shoving a sword from behind through his ass out the front of his groin.  Pouring molten metal on people.  Tying them up to pulley's and dropping them from 30 feet ripping their shoulders out of their sockets --letting them heal for a month, and do it again.  Putting satanic devil hats on protestant Christians torturing them demanding that they renounce their faith in Christ and claim the POPE as their savior, burning them alive with green wood if they refused.  And other countless atrocities.  They probably masturbate to such things.

[Femacamper]

Wtf?  So they psychopaths actually read the bible and throw the Satanic stuff in our faces because they want all that to prevail over God.  Unbelievable to actually see this in front of our faces.

We will live in the 21st century Spanish Inquisition.  I bet the NWO loves the history of the inquisition, where unbelievably horrific torture techniques were developed.  Raping a mans wife in front of him and his kids, then restraining the man and shoving a sword from behind through his ass out the front of his groin.  Pouring molten metal on people.  Tying them up to pulley's and dropping them from 30 feet ripping their shoulders out of their sockets --letting them heal for a month, and do it again.  Putting satanic devil hats on protestant Christians torturing them demanding that they renounce their faith in Christ and claim the POPE as their savior, burning them alive with green wood if they refused.  And other countless atrocities.  They probably masturbate to such things.

Sick. 

[Kilika]

"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." 2 Corinthians 11:14 (KJV)

"Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble." James 2:19 (KJV)

"Therefore rejoice, [ye] heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." Revelation 12:12 (KJV)

"For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, [which] go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Revelation 16:19 (KJV)

[241727]

So basically, this Shibboleth system will be used to identify the resistors of the New World Order, and murder them.

YUP

As a side note, I have about 30 years programming expirence, and I mean real programming like Assembler, C, etc...
Anyone who thinks its gonna be crackable by software posted on some forum or board is delusional and insane.

[Brocke]

Foreclosure notice via Facebook

WBBH-TV
updated 5:12 p.m. ET Dec. 17, 2008

AUSTRALIA: In these hard times, many homeowners are seeing the writing on the wall when it comes to mortgage repayments.

But it's never looked quite like this.

A court in Australia has ruled a mortgage lender can use social networking site "Facebook" to tell one couple they've lost their home.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

For two members of the popular social networking site, their accounts are bringing them some unhappy news.

They've stopped making repayments on their mortgage and they're being sent a default judgment via Facebook.

And they have just seven days to respond or they could lose their house.

Carmel Corbo and Gordon Poyser owe their non-bank lender, MKM, more than $100,000.

After writing several letters, and making about a dozen attempts to visit the duo at their home, a Canberra law firm sought the less-conventional approach.

"We're not aware of it having occurred in the past, it's really just an extension of methods that have been allowed by the court, including email and text message in circumstances where the conventional courses are unavailable to us," said lawyer Mark McCormack.

The court ruling means the law firm has satisfied the legal requirement of informing the two that their loan is in default.

The Law Institute says electronic communication is increasingly replacing more traditional means of serving a summons.

"Well it's a very interesting development, it shows in Australia, our courts are flexible and adaptable and willing to embrace new technologies. But I guess there are messages for those who choose to have a presence on Facebook, you are liable to be found," said the institute's Tony Burke.

The institute says the development is also a reminder that people need to be responsible for the material they place on online profiles.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28278936/

[Brocke]

Note: Doctor Philip Nitschke is Australias version of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.


Doctor Philip Nitschke to launch 'undetectable' death machine

By Kim Wheatley
The Advertiser
December 18, 2008 02:23am



Philip Nitschke
Autopsy-proof ... controversial euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke will today launch a new "undetectable" death machine

    * Euthanasia advocate to launch death device
    * Machine is undetectable during autopsy
    * Can be made from household products

CONTROVERSIAL euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke will today launch a new death device which is undetectable during autopsy.

As well as promoting the method as "flawless", the Darwin medic, 61, says it has the unique characteristic of being undetectable which will make it harder to prove suicide.

The new process makes use of ordinary household products including a barbecue gas bottle - purchased at a hardware store yesterday morning - which is then filled with another gas which is readily available.

Dr Nitschke has developed a process in which "patients" lose consciousness immediately and die a few minutes later, The Advertiser reports.

"So it's extremely quick and there are no drugs," Dr Nitschke said yesterday.

"Importantly this doesn't fail - it's reliable, peaceful, available and with the additional benefit of undetectability."
Related Coverage

In the past, the process was more difficult and included hard to obtain helium gas.

Dr Nitschke maintains the procedure is legal, because none of the pieces of equipment are restricted from sale.

"It's hard to see how the Government could possibly restrict access to common cylinders, and certainly there's no way they could restrict access to (the gas)," he said.

"But really it's the knowledge of how to do it that's so important, it's a technique-dependent method and people have to know what they're doing."

Always divisive, Dr Nitschke was last week accused of "relentless self-interest and cruel insensitivity" by the family of a Perth woman who committed suicide using the death drug promoted by him.

But he maintains he is providing a public service - by empowering the sick and elderly with knowledge.

Dr Nitschke has attracted his largest following so far this year - with 4000 people attending his workshops in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

"And I think that just expresses the fact that this is an issue which is of great interest to people, they've watched the failure of legislation ... but there's a feeling that the political process doesn't deal well with this issue," Dr Nitschke said.

"It's consistent with good medical practice to allow people to know exactly what their options are."

But Dr Nitschke's biggest concern at the moment is the Federal Government's push toward's content filtering on the net, designed to block forms of pornography and "illegal material".

With one of his books banned, Dr Nitschke believes the laws, which were first proposed by the Howard Government, will result in his website being blacklisted.

Ironically, it comes as a number of pensioners have decided to spend some of their $1400 Federal Government bonus to join his voluntary euthanasia group, Exit International.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24817295-2,00.html

[Brocke]

Original Post by Capt. Obvious
Under-sea internet cables cut....again
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=75904.msg419054;topicseen#msg419054

Is the internet going down? Undersea sub-cables have just broken...

Breaking news: something's happening to the internet, right now. We're just not quite sure what.

Interoute, the internet networks company, report that three of the four internet sub-cables that carry run from Asia to North America have been damaged. These carry more than 75 per cent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America. It's hard to gather what this actually means - for example, does that mean that the internet is down or (more likely) significantly slower than usual between the Middle East and America? (If you're reading this, then lets face it, the internet has not shut down altogether)

But the company say what's is happening is that there is a domino effect taking place, Interoute tell me they are:

    "hearing that offices have lost their entire private network connectivity. As a result, users are unable to do their daily job over the internet and are turning to their mobile phones to communicate across the globe. This is having a knock on effect on the domestic voice networks, which are getting a surge of calls needing to be routed internationally. These calls need to be routed onto international gateways that pass voice traffic in longer directions around the world to avoid the cable breaks – causing more quality issues and risk more call failures, in turn causing more calls to be placed and increasing the pressure on local voice networks."

What (I think) this means is that companies private internet services have gone down. So, if they can get access, they've had to go on the public internet and mobile phones like the rest of us average joes to get their work done. That results in more strain on mobile phone networks, which means more calls go down, and the internet becomes slower.

article continues -> http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2008/12/is-the-internet.html

[Brocke]

Japanese seek to scrap Google's street view

Agence France-Presse
December 19, 2008 09:47pm

A GROUP of journalists, professors and lawyers have demanded that Google scrap its "street view" service, saying it violates people's privacy.
Google launched Street View in the US last year, providing pictures of panoramic all-around street-level views at locations on its online maps.

The service was expanded to 12 major cities in Japan in August and six cities in France and most of Australia in October.

The group said it sent a petition to Google's Japanese subsidiary, demanding an end to the street view service in Japan.

They wrote that street view "constitutes violent infringement on citizens' privacy by photographing residential areas, including community roads, and publishing their images without the consent of communities and citizens."

They complained that via the internet, street view was distributing private information "more easily, widely, massively and permanently than ordinary cameras and surveillance cameras do."

Local municipalities in Tokyo and Osaka have already appealed to the national government to take action against the site.

The Google Japanese unit earlier said it was blurring the faces of people seen in street view scenes by special technology and that it would delete the pictures of people and buildings upon request.

Japan has stricter protections on privacy in public than in the US, with Japanese able to stop their pictures from being used against their will.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24825920-29277,00.html

[mr anderson]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,,24833960-29277,00.html

THE Federal Government's controversial internet censorship plan may extend to filter more web activity than first thought, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy revealed today.

In a post on his department's blog, Senator Conroy today said technology that could filter data sent directly between computers would be tested as part of the upcoming live filtering trial.

"Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial," Senator Conroy said.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology is the most common way for web users to share video, picture and music files between computers over the internet.

More to come ...

[241727]

They assume that all torrents are violations of copyright....

That is a big asumption....

A lot of people get there copies of Linux ( 1Gb or more sometimes ) via Torrents, which is better than overloading a mirror.

[mr anderson]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/22/australia_bittorrent/

By Chris Williams
Posted in Telecoms, 22nd December 2008 13:47 GMT

The national web censorship apparatus being built by the Australian government will also include technology to restrict peer-to-peer traffic, according to the minister responsible for the plan.

Until today it had been thought that what opponents have called the "great Aussie firewall" - in a nod to Chinese internet censorship - would target only data transmitted over HTTP or HTTPS.

In response to suggestions by commenters on his blog that censoring web content would drive more peer-to-peer traffic, broadband minister Stephen Conroy wrote: "The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a 'silver bullet'. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.

"Technology is improving all the time. Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial."

Conroy didn't offer any further detail on how BitTorrent traffic will be "filtered" during the trials, which are set to run during the first half of 2009 with volunteer ISPs. They will filter websites against a blacklist for a minimum of six weeks.

In the UK ISPs use a blacklist of "child porn" websites maintained by the Internet Watch Foundation, an industry-backed group rather than government organisation. The recent climbdown over its censoring of a Scorpions album cover on Wikipedia demonstrated the pitfalls of even a self-regulatory approach. The Australian plan proposes much more government influence.

Prime minister Kevin Rudd's Australian Labor government has committed AUS$125.8m over four years to what it calls "cyber-safety measures". The great Aussie firewall is the centrepiece of the initiative, and has provoked strong opposition.

Hundreds of protestors gathered in major Australian cities last week, and some in the country's internet industry have derided the plans too. In November, Neil Malone, boss of ISP iiNet, told the Sydney Morning Herald: "They're not listening to the experts, they're not listening to the industry, they're not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help." He pledged to take part in the pilot to help demonstrate that the system would be ineffective.

Conroy's offhand announcement today that peer-to-peer traffic will be filtered is likely to add criticism of the Australian government from the filesharing community to that being voiced by free speech campaigners and the internet industry. ®

[mr anderson]

Australia's ISP Filtering Pilot Could Affect P2Ps

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337430,00.asp

Chloe Albanesius

Australia's broadband ministry on Monday defended the country's upcoming Internet filtering pilot, and acknowledged that the plan could include P2P traffic like BitTorrent.

"It is understood that technology exists to filter peer-to-peer networks," according to an FAQ posted online. "If such technology is proposed as part of the pilot by an ISP it will be considered."

An Internet filtering pilot is set to kick off later this month and run through the first half of 2009, according to Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy. The Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy is currently looking for a "cross section of industry; including small, medium and large ISPs; and metropolitan, regional, rural and mobile providers" to participate in the pilot.

The government has already consulted with the Internet Industry Association (IIA), the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) and a number of individual ISPs and mobile operators.

Participating ISPs "will strengthen their brand image" and will receive limited funding to help implement the filtering technology, according to the department.

ISP filtering is part of a larger, $125.8 billion government cyber-safety plan that is intended to protect children from harmful Internet content, Conroy said. He denied that the plan would hinder the openness of the Web.

"Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there was never any suggestion that the Australian government would seek to block political content," Conroy wrote in a Monday blog post. "In this context, claims that the government's policy is analogous to the approach taken by countries such as Iran, China and Saudi Arabia are not justified."

Australian ISPs are already subject to restrictions based upon the country's rating system for movies, computer games, publications, and other online content, Conroy said. That system, dubbed the National Classification Scheme, allows the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to issue take-down notices to objectionable material.

"All the government is now seeking to do is to examine how technology can assist in filtering internationally-hosted content," Conroy wrote.

But will this assistance affect chat programs or P2P programs like BitTorrent? Yes, according to the department.

Web filters in other countries often incorporate blacklists of prohibited Web sites, but blacklists do not include P2P or chat.

"The department understands that a number of ISP filtering products allow blocking of non-Web based applications, and that vendors are undertaking development in this area," according to the FAQ. "To the extent possible, the pilot will test the effectiveness of more sophisticated ISP level filtering services and products to help parents manage use of non-Web applications."

The ACMA currently maintains a list of 1,300 blacklisted URLs. The filtering pilot will expand that list to 10,000 URLs – none of which will be released publicly. The pilot will include two levels – one that will test against the blacklist and another that will allow ISP customers to "have greater choice in what is filtered."

"The use of approximately 10,000 sites in this test should not be seen as reflecting an expectation on the part of government that the ACMA blacklist will increase to 10,000," according to the FAQ. "The number has no significance beyond the fact that it has been raised in consultations as a possible tipping-point in terms of network performance for some types of filtering, and therefore needs to be looked at in the pilot."

Not everyone is convinced that Conroy's efforts are simply about protecting children.

The Digital Liberty Coalition hosted rallies in Sydney and Melbourne earlier this month, and said that the recent blacklisting of Wikipedia in the U.K. was "a taste of things to come here" if the ISP filtering plan proceeds.

[mr anderson]

Australian Internet Filter Will Target BitTorrent Traffic

http://torrentfreak.com/australian-internet-filter-will-target-bittorrent-081222/

Previously thought to be limited to HTTP and HTTPs web traffic, the touted Australian Internet filter will also target P2P traffic. In response to a comment posted by a user on his department’s blog, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has admitted that BitTorrent filtering will be attempted during upcoming trials.

The proposed Australian Internet filter is causing quite a lot of controversy at the moment. Part of a package of measures designed to inspire citizens with confidence as they operate online, the “Cyber-Safety Plan” includes proposals for filtering HTTP and HTTPs Internet traffic, ostensibly for the protection of minors.

However, up to now it was thought that the scheme would not be extended to other protocols and methods of online communication, such as those carried out via P2P. Today, however, that illusion is gone, as news surfaces BitTorrent will be targeted.

In a blog post entitled “Promoting a civil and confident society online”, Australian Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy responded to criticism from a user who posed this question: “Internet filtering won’t stop peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic—so why bother?”

    The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a ’silver bullet’. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.

    Technology is improving all the time. Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.

    Stephen Conroy

The filtering scheme has many dissenters, including the chief of one of Australia’s largest ISPs, iiNet, who called it “ridiculous“, and branded Stephen Conroy “the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [Internet] industry has existed.”

Of course, no decent person wants minors exploited or to see evidence of such online, but as a user of BitTorrent for many years, I have never, ever, come across anything that remotely resembles such material. Although it would be naive to say that it does not exist, BitTorrent is probably one of the last ‘places’ online people would visit to gain such material and, as such, i’m hugely disappointed it is to be included in this filter.

However, filtering BitTorrent is not as easy as Mr Conroy might have us believe, as will quickly become apparent when the results of the live pilots come in.

[mr anderson]

Australian 'Net filter testing set, will include P2P

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081222-australian-net-filter-testing-set-will-include-p2p.html

By John Timmer  | Published: December 22, 2008

Australia's Minister of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy (BCDE), Stephen Conroy, appears to have recognized that his country's plan to install mandatory content filters at the ISP level is causing a public backlash. Conroy has set up several FAQs that describe the program in detail, and has even started defending the program on the departmental blog. But neither the backlash nor an apparent lack of preparation will stop him from putting the system in operation, as live tests on Internet traffic are set to begin any day now—even though the ISPs that want to participate aren't sure what's happening.

First, the practicalities. Initial lab tests of web filtering equipment suggested that the current generation of hardware had appreciable rates of false positives (filtering legal content) and false negatives (allowing illegal content through), and several models caused severe degradation of the network's performance. This isn't much of a surprise; as we described in detail, filtering content is a difficult challenge. The Australian government's own FAQ also recognizes that anyone with sufficient technical expertise can also evade the filters.

The government's response to these issues, however, is to plow ahead with live testing of the filtering equipment, using actual customers from any Australian ISPs that choose to participate in the program. The unusual reasoning behind the decision, published on a different FAQ hosted at the BCDE blog, is as follows: the preliminary lab tests didn't include a simpler form of filtering against a small, static blacklist of sites, which would presumably put less strain in the filtering equipment. So, since they hadn't tested it, it apparently makes sense to Conroy et. al. to simply roll it out to the Internet-using Australian population.

That FAQ has revealed some other insights into the working logic behind the decision to roll out Internet filters. Although the previous tests and all public statements on the matter focused on web traffic, the actual live tests are expected to include the use of filters that target P2P applications like BitTorrent. The blacklist, comprised of somewhat over a thousand sites, will be provided by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. But, in a bit of a catch-22, nobody's allowed to know what sites are on the blacklist—after all, publishing the list would let pervs know where to find the child porn.

The FAQ also tackles the issue of personal responsibility. Apparently, the government had previously engaged in a multimillion Australian dollar advertising campaign to get people to start using filters on their PCs. Only about two percent of the households with children present chose to deploy them. Conroy has apparently concluded that this is an indication that most of the Australian populace is technologically incompetent and needs big brother to step in at the ISP level. Of course, Conroy would also disagree with the comparison to big brother, because the list nobody's allowed to see is guaranteed only to contain child porn sites.

Given the fact that the planned tests will be using different techniques than the BCDE's lab tests, it's not a surprise that two of Australia's largest ISPs have decided not to participate in the tests; an executive at Testra referred to filtering generally as the equivalent of trying to "boil the ocean." But news.com.au is reporting that, despite the fact that the government's FAQ says that the live testing should start in 2008 and will wrap up in the first half of 2009, the ISPs that are actually interested in taking part in the tests still haven't been notified if and when they will.

So, in summary, it appears that the government is trying to make up for the failure of an earlier PC-based filtering program by rolling out an alternative, ISP-level filtering program that they know won't fully prevent access to illegal material. They promise not to state what sites are being blocked, even as they promise only illegal content will be. To prepare for the roll out, they're doing live testing of equipment and protocols they haven't used in the lab, and not telling the ISPs when the program will be ready. It sounds like all of the worst clichés about government incarnated in a single program.

[mr anderson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-i8jkEMDJQ - Sky News