I refuse to email this to people, but I do think it's a good cause. I've signed.

[mstakenidentity]

Hi,

Did you know the Government is proposing an internet censorship scheme that goes further than any other democracy in the world?

I've just signed a petition to prevent the scheme that will make the internet up to 87% slower, more expensive, accidentally block up to one in 12 legitimate sites, will miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and is very easily sidestepped. The government of the day may add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist under the scheme.

Our Government should be doing all in its power to take Australia into the 21st century economy, and to protect our children. This proposed internet censorship does neither. Can you join me and take action on the net today to save the net?

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442

Thanks!

Comments

[vox-diabolica.livejournal.com]

A cost is not a technical problem, moron. It's little slips like this that make you seem like a crazy crank. Boohoo, everything that's not perfect should be bemoaned and protested.

What sort of misuse could possibly happen with this system in our environment? We have a highly educated and well educated population. The chances of abuse from a government is next to nothing. And so what if there is limited access to fundamentalists or extremists? You haven't got a case against the (alleged) proposal. You have a whinge. Good for you and welcome to my NFA list.

The threat of getting caught and punished is one thing that stops there being a hell of a lot more of it.

Similarly with the internet blocker. The (alleged) proposal also includes high level scanning of traffic. So people after the material will need to be constantly upgrading their efforts to hide their activity, or risk being caught. I see this as a good thing. Let the perverts and extremists worry about getting caught. I think that's worth my YouTube being a bit slower.

evil levels of censorship

Yeah... You're totally not a fruitcake.

[cumbernotathome.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I ever said a cost was a technical problem. I also didn't say that everything that's not perfect is not worth doing. I said you should look at the costs to society of any proposal and weigh them up against the benefits the proposal will bring. I believe the (allegedly) proposed filter (and any possible filter, for that matter) would have significant costs without offering us any significant benefit in return.

I'm happy to concede that there is no possible chance for misuse of any filter of this kind, since that wasn't part of my case against the proposal and it complicates the discussion.

So people after the material will need to be constantly upgrading their efforts to hide their activity, or risk being caught. I see this as a good thing. Let the perverts and extremists worry about getting caught.

Is this filter preventing access only to sites that are illegal to access? Or is it protecting people (think of the children) from accidentally being exposed to the blacklisted material, including material that is not actually illegal? Any attempts to access legal-but-blacklisted material would not be deterred by the threat of prosecution, because there isn't any. I'm not aware that there is any proposal to make attempting to access illegal material and being stopped by the blacklist illegal, and if not there's no deterrent there either.

I have a vague belief that privacy laws would prevent ISPs from giving out information that can be used to pin a particular blocked attempt to an individual without a specific investigation. I may be wrong on that. I also don't think it would be illegal under the (alleged) proposal to bypass the filter (and there many reasons to use the encryption technology that would bypass the filter as a side-effect, so it would be even worse if it was), and it certainly isn't going to be illegal to know how to, or to tell others (say, on your website) how to. Hence my belief that this will not have a significant effect on people accessing the blacklisted material, legal or illegal.