Google and Yahoo raise doubts over planned net filters

By BHRP

Google and Yahoo have joined two Australian organizations calling for a “rethink” of the country’s controversial internet filter plans.

Flickr Creative Commons | Digital Reflections

The groups argue that the subjects covered by RC material are too wide-ranging for a blanket ban.

They also warn that the filter will not “effectively protect children”.

Will Australia join China in filtering the Internet?

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Alex E Proimos

While the rest of the world enjoys the epic battle between internet search giant Google and Communist colossus China over internet censorship, Australian free speech activists are this week attempting to shoot down their own government’s compulsory web filter plans.

Any Australians choosing to log on to the internet today instead of spending Australia Day on the beach would have found many of their favourite websites faded to black. Displayed against the dark background is a message opposing the Federal Government’s censorship plans, under which a secret blacklist of objectionable websites would be ‘refused classification’ and Internet Service Providers would be forced to block them.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labour government says the aim of the filter is to protect children. China frequently defends its own web censorship, dubbed the ‘Great Firewall of China’, as filtering out violent and pornographic material.

The organisers of the Great Australian Internet Blackout say the filter plan will not work and is a waste of money. They also question what future Australian governments might choose to deem ‘RC’. “Although the Government claims the scope is limited, there are no guarantees on what this or future governments will do with the blacklist once it’s in place,” says the campaign’s spokesman Colin Jacobs.

It will not even protect children, they say: “The filter isn’t a ‘cyber safety’ measure to stop kids seeing inappropriate content such as R and X rated websites. It is not even designed to prevent the spread of illegal material where it is most often found (chat rooms, peer-to-peer file sharing).” Child welfare groups agree and say it would give parents a false sense of security.

Inevitably the list of over 2,000 websites was leaked last year to wikileaks.org and was found to contain such objectionable content as online poker sites, a travel operator, a dentist and Wikipedia pages as well as fetish, satanic and Christian sites.

Iarla Flynn, head of policy at Google Australia wrote last month (before Google’s announcement that it would no longer censor its Chinese language search engine) that the company agreed that child abuse material ought to be screened. “But moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.”

Although there are ISP filtering regimes in place in Italy and Germany, they are limited strictly to child abuse and illegal gambling websites. Australia’s law would be “the first of its kind amongst western democracies,” says Flynn.

With Australia’s Green Party opposed, the Labour government will have to rely on the support of the opposition Liberal Party, which is yet to take sides in the RC debate. Could the Liberals be swayed by the blackout protest? Whether or not Australia takes its place aside the likes of China, Iran and Saudi Arabia in ‘protecting’ its citizens from the internet hinges on that question.

2009 Unprecedented Year For Online Repression

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Zensursala

by Clothilde le Coz, Reporters Without Borders

2009 was an unprecedented year for online repression.

For the first time since the Internet emerged as a tool for public use, there are currently 100 bloggers and cyber-dissidents imprisoned worldwide as a result of posting their opinions online in 2009, according to Reporters Without Borders. This figure is indicative of the severity of the crackdowns being carried out in roughly 10 countries around the world. (In one example, Burma handed out long prison sentences to online dissidents.)

The number of countries pursuing online censorship doubled in the past year — a disturbing trend that suggests governments seek to increase their control over new media. In total, 151 bloggers and cyber-dissidents were arrested in 2009, and 61 were physically assaulted.

The crackdown on bloggers and ordinary citizens who express themselves online comes at the same time that social networking and interactive websites have become extremely popular, not to mention powerful vehicles for free expression.

China Still Leads in Online Censorship

China was once again the leading Internet censor in 2009. Countries such as Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan also blocked websites and blogs, and engaged in surveillance of online expression. In Turkmenistan, for example, the Internet remains under total state control. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer is still in jail, while the famous Burmese comedian Zarganar still has 34 years left on his prison sentence. These are but a few examples.

The list of approximately 120 victims of Internet censorship in 2009 also includes leading figures in the defense of online free speech, such as China’s Hu Jia and Liu Xiaobo, and Vietnam’s Nguyen Trung and Dieu Cay.

People are usually targeted because they speak out on political matters, but the global financial crisis is also on the list of subjects likely to provoke online censorship. In South Korea, a blogger was wrongfully detained for commenting on the country’s disastrous economic situation. Roughly six people in Thailand were arrested or harassed just for making a connection between the king’s health and a fall in the Bangkok stock exchange. Censorship was slapped on media in Dubai when it came time for them to report on the country’s debt repayment problems.

Overall, wars and elections constituted the chief threats to journalists and bloggers in 2009. It is becoming more risky to cover wars because journalists themselves are being targeted for murder and kidnappings. It’s also just as dangerous for reporters in some countries to do their job at election time. Journalists have ended up in prison or in a hospital thanks to their election reporting. Violence before and after elections was particularly prevalent in 2009 inside countries with poor democratic credentials.

Iran Election Crackdown

Iran saw the most violence, censorship and arrests due to an election. Its elections this past summer saw more than 100 arrests, and many prison sentences handed down. The country, which is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “Enemies of the Internet,” has also deployed a sophisticated system of Internet filtering and monitoring, especially in recent months. The country’s main ISPs depend on the Telecommunication Company of Iran, which recently came under control of the Revolutionary Guard, and does not hesitate to flout international treaties or to restrict the free flow of information.

Within hours of the announcement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad’s election “victory,” journalists were being arrested by the intelligence ministry, Revolutionary Guard, and other security services. Most were taken to Tehran’s Evin prison. At least 100 journalists and bloggers have been arrested since June, and 27 are still being held. Today, Iran is one of the world’s five biggest imprisoners of journalists.

Since the election, national and international media in Iran have been subject to massive and systematic censorship that is without precedent. For the first time since the 1979 revolution, the security services are vetting the content of newspapers before they’re published.

The Iranian regime’s offensive against online free expression took a new direction in December after Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi announced he was going to prosecute two conservative websites for “insulting” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, several Internet service providers cut access to prevent political opponents from disseminating information during opposition demonstrations on December 27. After the demonstrations, the intelligence ministry and Revolutionary Guard began rounding up government opponents and journalists, arresting an estimated 20 people in the latest wave. Those targeted included a dozen or so journalists and cyber-dissidents. Alireza Behshtipour Shirazi, the editor of Kaleme.org (opposition leader Mirhossein Moussavi’s official website), was arrested at his Tehran home and taken to an unknown place of detention.

Trouble in Democratic Countries

Democratic countries have also enacted online censorship. Several European nations are working on new steps to control the Internet in what they say is a campaign against child porn and illegal downloads. Australia is also planning to set up a compulsory filtering system that poses a threat to freedom of expression.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy announced in December that, after a year of testing in partnership with Australian Internet service providers, the government will introduce legislation imposing mandatory filtering of websites with pornographic, pedophilic or particularly violent content.

Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn, raised concerns, saying, “Moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy-handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.” In a Fairfax Media poll of 20,000 Australians, 96 percent strongly opposed a mandatory Internet filtering system.

Yet that proposal — as well as many others around the world — continues to move ahead. Hopefully, 2010 will be a better year for free speech online.

Filter report reignites censorship debate in Australia

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Linh rOm

Kumar Parakala | October 20, 2009

The release last week of the ACS report on ISP filtering has reignited the debate about internet censorship, with the ACS e-security task force suggesting that, if mandatory internet filtering is to occur, then a multi-faceted strategy would be needed to ensure that children are protected from dangerous or inappropriate material online.

The ACS neither supports nor condemns internet censorship, but given the current government policy to introduce mandatory ISP filtering, we established the e-security task force late last year to examine the technical issues associated with this approach in an objective and balanced way.

The task force, which includes some of the nation’s leading e-security experts, suggests that if the government remains committed to this policy, then ISP-based filtering, while an important first step, will not be sufficient to achieve the desired result.

Filtering alone is unlikely to adequately address cyber security issues or significantly impact those who deliberately produce, distribute or search for illegal material, since there are too many technical loopholes that can be exploited to evade detection.

With the government seeking to deliver on its election commitment to require ISPs to offer a clean feed internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, it’s clear that a mix of technical and education-based initiatives will be needed.

According to the ACS report, the diversity and sheer volume of content and web sites on the internet, the determination of those generating malicious or illegal content and the need to balance e-security concerns with freedom of speech and censorship issues means that there is no one solution that will solve all filtering needs.

While acknowledging the value of filtering, the task force has also called for better education of both parents and children on using the internet, and greater transparency around blacklists and their criteria.

The issue of internet filtering has been a contentious one with many stakeholders protesting that any moves to require ISPs to introduce filtering will degrade network performance and increase costs to consumers.

Certainly these are valid concerns and the task force report provides substantial detail around the technical issues associated with the different types and levels of filtering.

Some of the challenges identified include:

• A lack of clear definition about the types of content that will be subject to filtering;
• The technical limitations of automated ways to analyse video, pictorial and audio content;
• The need for clear and consistent criteria behind content labelling and rating systems;
• The impact on network performance of content filters, depending on where they are placed within the network architecture;
• The need for consistency in the blocking of content and how to avoid overblocking or underblocking;
• The difficulty in maintaining up-to-date black lists, white lists, keywords and phrases because of the rapid rate at which new internet content is being generated;
• How to effectively manage user-generated material, which is created on the fly since it is practically impossible to accurately label or rate these sites and content; and
• The need for ways to deal with encrypted traffic and secure channels, as encryption impedes filtering.

The report called for the government to clearly define the objectives of any ISP filtering program and provide more information around desired performance standards, the type of material to be filtered, reporting processes and the type of traffic and filtering mechanisms to be used.

Task force spokesman and Director of Information and Networked Systems Security Research at Macquarie University, Professor Vijay Varadharajan, said we need to clearly understand what we are filtering and why, as well as having specific strategies for how this might best be achieved.

Different levels of filtering will act with varying levels of efficiency and have different impacts on performance. There are obvious technical issues relating to the filtering of certain types of content, such as SSL content, peer-to-peer traffic, internet chat rooms and instant messaging from social networking sites.

Many of these are popular ways for seasoned purveyors of illegal material to communicate and exchange files, he explained.

The six experts on the task force believe there is no single mechanism that can accurately filter out or block illegal material on the internet 100 per cent of the time. A successful approach would need to incorporate filtering technologies at the ISP, user and enterprise level, as well as increased professionalism and tighter controls around domain name registration, education at all levels of society and greater oversight by parents.

The growing importance of the internet at all levels of society makes it essential that we seek ways to protect users and promote greater confidence in the internet as a safe and effective platform for business, education and social interaction.

We look forward to working with the government to identify effective strategies and tools that will deliver the right level of protection without compromising performance or negatively impacting ISPs and other ICT businesses.

Kumar Parakala is chairman of the ACS. www.acs.org.au