Finally, a politician who has a clue

I have to say, up until recently, I didn't have very much time for Senator Nick Minchin, representing as he does the decapitated rump of the Howard Liberal party.

But, boy, the man knows how to critique doomed ISP filtering policies.

Steve Cannane interviewed him on Radio National this morning.

The only disappointing aspect was that he didn't commit the opposition 100% to opposing any legislation. Mind you, he doesn't need to, given that their support for legislation seems to be conditional on the trial being proven, by an independent auditor, of being a success. And we all know how likely that is to be.

Why mandatory ISP filtering is a bad idea

Stuart, a commenter on "Somebody Think Of The Children" has made this very simple point:

"The only reason that secrecy is required is the fact that filters don't work, and even those backing them know it. If your filter does work, then there is little harm in publicly listing a URL and a reason for blocking it."

There is a certain seductive truth to this, but there is one flaw. The filters that the Australian Government impose are not universal. Even if the Australian filters were perfect, the list would have to be secret to prevent the list being exploited in jurisdictions not subject to Australian law and hence filters.

Stuarts point would probably be better phrased this way: since filters will never be 100% effective and universal, the list must be secret.

The issue then is whether a democracy can tolerate a permanent lack of transparency and accountability, implicit in existence of a secret list. Relying on secrecy is never a good thing, because secrecy is very hard to sustain or, if it is sustained, it invariably leads to a lack of accountability and an abuse of power.

Why are supporters so confident that the lack of accountability and transparency implicit in the existence of the ACMA blacklist won't eventually lead to corruption and abuses of power in this case?

Merry Xmas, Senator

It was December 31, 2007 as I was preparing to head up the coast to see my favourite band, Mammal, kicking arse in Newcastle at a NYE gig when I caught a NewsRadio interview mid way through.

The interview appeared to be with some conservative nutcase who thought that censoring the Internet would be a good idea. It then became apparent that the nutcase being interviewed was the Minister For Broadband, Communications and The Digital Economy, Senator Conroy talking about his plan for mandatory ISP filtering.

My jaw dropped. What a sneaky time to announce this - the day before the day of the long hangover, when no-one will be thinking too hard about stuff. Still, I banged off my letter to editor and hopped on my train upto Newcastle.

So it is somewhat fitting, I think, that nearly a year later, the SMH chooses to put this on the wrapper page of its December 23-25 edition. Something for the punters to talk about over the Xmas turkey. "Web Censorship Fiasco", the banner screams.

And it only gets better on the actual front page

Merry Xmas, Senator. Stay away from the cranberry sauce, lest someone mistakes you for dinner.

And a very Merry Xmas to Asher Moses and the editorial staff at the SMH - gentlepeople and scholars all.

Why don't we know which commercial entities are involved with ACMA?

I'd like to ask a very simple question:

Why don't we know which commercial entities are currently being consulted by ACMA in relation to the Government's ISP filtering plans?

The lack of this information presents a serious difficulty to our side of the debate. The pro-filtering vendor camp, who have a strong financial interest in the Government deciding to impose an ISP-filtering regime, have detailed knowledge of their own strength and weaknessess.

The anti-filtering camp doesn't even know who the vendors are and how far advanced their plans are. Without this knowledge, we can't effectively marshall our resources to do our own analyses of solutions being proposed.

I'd also like to know on what basis the CEO of iPrimus Ravi Bhatia can claim it is "It's easy for us to do it," when other ISPs don't even know if their EOIs have been accepted. Has iPrimus been working with ACMA in advance of the trial being announced? Does it already have filtering infrastructure built and in place? Or will it, too, be scrambling to build the infrastructure between now and when the trial is due to start on Wednesday?

"Mike The Participant", whoever he is, uses his position as an insider within part of the industry to accuse others, like Mark Newton, of being "ignorant". This is quite a call from someone who hurls insults from behind a pseudonym and is a beneficiary of a system that seems designed to keep us ignorant of what is being proposed.

Blatherings about commercial-in-confidence arrangements, particularly in a debate that goes to the core of what it means to be a free society in the 21st century, simply don't wash. Surely citizens contemplating the imposition of such draconian social controls as mandatory ISP-level filtering, deserve fully transparent disclosure and vigorous debate about the respective merits of the solutions being proposed?

Write to your Senators. Write to your local MPs. Write to the paper. Demand to know which commercial entities are working with ACMA and what the extent of their dealings have been to this point.

It is your right. This is, after all, still a democracy.

With Netsweeper installed, the thought police will be unnecessary

Since October 2008 is has been clear that the Government intends to implement a 2-tier filtering regime. The first, mandatory tier, would involve URL blacklist filtering according to a blacklist specified by ACMA. The second, optional (as in opt-out) tier, would be used to filter additional material not on the ACMA blacklist that the Government thinks that Australians should be protected from.

By definition, the second tier of filtering will not use a blacklist, or at least, not an ACMA blacklist. The Government has not talked about a second ACMA blacklist. Instead, the sort of filtering performed by the 2nd tier would be more like the filtering already done in schools, corporations, and by dedicated ISPs that already offer clean feed services. It is not clear what parameters bound the operation of this second tier and how much control individuals will be given over the filtering decisions made by the second tier.

Let's suppose that an ISP grants the user some control over what is blocked on their feed. webshield already does this, for their customers. Products like Netsweeper also have a category list and any ISP that used Netsweeper could potentially offer a configurable filter to their customers.

How would configuration work? Presumably, the adults in the household could select which categories get blocked by the filter. Here's a document that lists the categories that Netsweeper uses. And here is a definition of category 23 pornography.

This category contains URLs that reference, discuss, or show pornography, pictures, videos, or sexually oriented material. This category includes nudity, soft and hard-core pornography, sadomasochism, bestiality, child porn, fetishes, stories, adult magazines, toys, or any sexual related purchase. This category excludes sex education sites.

Which is fine. What is unclear is why Netsweeper classified (on December 21) "The Porn Report Book" as class 23, pornography?

This is a site which is about a book which is about pornography. It is not a site that contains pornography itself.

Worse, here is a page which offers a review of "The Porn Report". On December 21, Netsweeper classified this page as:

Journals and Blogs [1]
Arts & Culture [2]
General News [12]
Pornography [23]

In other words, Netsweeper has decided that a site advertising "The Porn Report" and a site offering (an unflattering) review of "The Porn Report" are themselves pornographic.

What are the implications of this?

Anyone subject to a Netsweeper filter who was interested in educating themselves about the role of pornography in Australian society would be denied access to the site that promotes the book if they have the "pornography" classification switched on - which they surely would, otherwise, why are we having this debate?.

Not only that, anyone in this unfortunate condition who wanted to read reviews of the book, would have their access to some reviews of the book blocked by the same filter.

Promotional websites and book reviews are critical elements that help to sell books. It is an obvious consequence of this inadvertent censorship, that publishers of the Porn Report will lose revenue due to lost sales from a large portion of the Australian population. Furthermore, the voting public won't be as educated about the issue of pornography as they otherwise could be.

What are the publishers of "The Porn Report" meant to do?

Do they prostrate themselves on bended knee before Netsweeper and the other vendors and ask them to remove the "Pornography" classification from the site? Possibly, but why should it be their responsibility to do that? And even if the filter vendors deign to reclassify the site, that doesn't solve the problem. The publishers simply won't know where all the reviews of the book are and whether they have been blocked. Whose responsiblity is it to locate every last blocked review and get the classifcation fixed? Is it the publisher? Why?

This is why filtering for pornography is so unlike any existing censorship mechanism. It doesn't scale to the volume of material and doesn't deal with the contingent and transient nature of publishing on the Internet

So here we have a very real example of how the opt-out filtering policy will place a very real restraint on the trade of people who have conducted serious studies about the role of pornography in Australian society. Furthermore, such a filter will directly interfere with the quality of social and political discourse within this country.

This is quite simply unacceptable for a democracy. The Government should not be setting up a censorship mechanism that censors by default and is fixed by exception.

What a joke.

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Readers are invited to discover for themselves what other sites Netsweeper regards as pornography using this test site.

Classifications reported by Netsweeper were accurate as at 21 December, 2008. Subsequent results may vary, presumably in response to the level of community outrage.

Mike The Participant wades in

People who read this blog may think that I am rather blind about the problem of child pornography and one-eyed about the need to protect freedom of speech. To help address this imbalance, I decided to help an acquaintance, "Mike The Participant", set up his own blog. For some reason, Mike wishes to remain behind a pseudonym. Anyway, his collected words say it all - enjoy.

Shame, McMenamin, Shame!

From today's Australian:

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

"Let the 300 people march on Canberra because it looks pathetic," he [sic] said. "It looks pathetic and shameful because most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child pornography."

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[An image of a cowering Bernadette McMenamin. She really has nothing to fear. The person on the otherside of the door is a photographer whose job it is to help sell her vision of moral panic.]

A woman who has to violate the Conroy Rule in her every utterance on this subject is in no position to describe others as pathetic.

Bernadette McMenamin is a living, breathing disgrace to the Order of Australia of which she is a member. If she can't put her case without accusing others of being supporters of child pornography, her case must be exceedingly weak indeed.

We already know exactly how loose McMenamin is with facts and statistics. We know how clueless her grip is on the technical details. But even with this poor grip, she admits that the proposed filter will do almost nothing to stop hard core consumers of child pornography. She fails to consider the unintended consequences and is willing to pay any price in support of a solution that can never attain the objectives set for it.

Bernadette McMenamin's business is moral panic. She has a vested interest in it. From her point of view, an ineffective filter is actually a very good thing, because it means the oxygen that sustains the flames of moral panic, and her organization ChildWise, will never disappear.

Perhaps this is uncharitable. Perhaps McMenamin and ChildWise have done worthy work in the past. Perhaps they do some now. But why should anyone continue to be charitable about a person who unapologeticly accuses her opponents of being witting or unwitting supporters of child pornography. That is a completely despicable accusation as McMenamin herself should well know - if her tears about the plight of abused children mean anything at all.

Bernadette McMenanim, AO, is a scoundrel. Australians who are outraged that she continues to slander her political opponents as supporters of child pornography should use every opportunity they have to remind her how despicable that is.

Oh, and don't forget the March on Canberra in March 2009.

Update:Link to her e-mail address removed. I do encourage people to write to her and express their contempt. But please, try to do it without excessive vitriol since that will not, in the end, help our case. Point out we have tried to reason with her in the past but that we are dismayed that she continues to use the same slander. Remind her that her slander denigrates "Save The Children" as much as it does anonymous targets of her contempt.

Updated 28/2: I recently drew Bernadette's attention to this post. In response she pointed out that she does not herself make a habit of personal attacks against opponents of the filter and that I only gave one example of where she has made use of the slander that upset me so much. To the extent that I implied that she makes a habit of doing so, I retract that implication and apologise for generalizing from but one example. The fact remains, however, that the Australian reported her as making the remark on this occasion and she has yet to publicly deny that this was an accurate record of her remarks.