(8th April 2009)
SAGE-AU praises Federal $43B fibre network plan
SAGE-AU has praised the Federal Government's proposed $43 billion Fibre-to-the-Home network for offering better services for consumers, greater competition and underpinning Australia's economic future.
SAGE-AU is the not-for-profit professional organisation representing this country's system administrators, the technology experts who keep computers and networks running.
SAGE-AU President Donna Ashelford said the proposal represented a positive step forward for the Australian telecommunication industry and for consumers. "The proposed network will bring Australian telecommunications into the 21st Century," she said.
"We commend the Government's objectives of creating a world-leading broadband infrastructure, an innovative telecommunications sector and bringing healthy competition to a sector sorely lacking in it."
Yesterday, the Federal Government announced its intention to lead a $43 billion, eight-year project to build a wholesale, fibre-optic broadband network that will reach 90 per cent of Australia's population.
Ms. Ashelford said a central benefit of the Government's proposal was a clear separation between the network's wholesale infrastructure and retail service providers. "This national fibre network will bring an end to Telstra's monopoly control of telecommunications infrastructure," she said.
"As well as creating thousands of jobs to build the network, this initiative will provide quality infrastructure for service providers and encourage greater competition and innovation in the telecommunications sector, which will deliver better services to businesses and individuals.
"In the long term, a Fibre-to-the-Home network covering the nation will underpin Australia's economic future, advancing innovation in content services and providing key environmental benefits through the move to digital delivery and enhanced telecommuting."
Media assistance
Donna Ashelford on 0401 714 350 or email
About SAGE-AU www.sage-au.org.au
[SAGE-AU] is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. It promotes the development of the system administration profession via online communication forums, regional monthly meetings, regional symposiums and an annual national technical conference. SAGE-AU members work in all varieties of profit and not-for-profit industry, education, research and government. Roles range from junior administrators to chief information officers.
(24th March 2009)
SAGE-AU says abandon compulsory Internet filtering - it's a botch!
Publication of the Federal Government's "black list" of pornographic and violent websites has fatally damaged its proposed compulsory Internet filtering regime, warns SAGE-AU, Australia's peak body for System Administrators.
SAGE-AU president Donna Ashelford said the black list's appearance on Wikileaks demonstrated the futility of the Government's proposed censorship regime and the need for fresh thinking. "Publication of that list has, in effect, given every 15-year-old in Australia a guide to porn online," she said.
"The Government's trial has both fatally damaged the cause of Internet filtering and, globally, damaged Australia's reputation because the Government appears to be - very ineffectively - trying to block legal sites from the Australian public. It appears that the release of the blacklist was not a leak, but rather a reverse-engineering of the software the government provided to home Internet users, which raises serious questions about the security of the list.
"Also, the secrecy of the blacklist itself creates a public hazard: If you release it to the public, it becomes a guide to the content you are trying to keep out; If it is neither released nor effectively vetted, it can be used inappropriately to block legitimate content."
SAGE-AU (the System Administrators Guild of Australia) is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. System administrators are the technology experts who keep computers and networks running, including much of the Internet in this country.
Ms. Ashelford said the Federal Government needed to apply fresh thinking to its approach to addressing objectionable content online. "They need to step back, define what the problem is and then come up with a workable solution to that problem," she said.
"SAGE-AU continues to support the three-phase plan it released last November to provide for safety of children using the Internet." The SAGE-AU proposal comprises:
1. Encouraging "family-friendly" ISP services
SAGE-AU proposes that the Government should support and promote the Family Friendly ISP program, under which ISPs have offered 'clean feed' services to customers who desire them for several years. These family-friendly ISPs build their brands around their filtering services.
2. Improved parent education
The Government should invest in ongoing education to assist parents to ensure their children are not exposed to objectionable material.
3. More rigorous enforcement
SAGE-AU supports increased budgets for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the Australian Federal Police to identify and remove illegal content from Australian hosts.
Media assistance
Donna Ashelford on 0401 714 350 or email
Iain Robertson on 0407 757 622 or email
About SAGE-AU www.sage-au.org.au
[SAGE-AU] is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. It promotes the development of the system administration profession via online communication forums, regional monthly meetings, regional symposiums and an annual national technical conference. SAGE-AU members work in all varieties of profit and not-for-profit industry, education, research and government. Roles range from junior administrators to chief information officers.
(24th March 2009)
SAGE-AU's critique of the Federal Government's proposed Internet filtering program
Donna Ashelford noted that in October 2008, SAGE-AU member Mark Newton had published a number of predictions about the future of the Government's proposed Internet filtering regime."SAGE-AU agreed with these predictions and noted that each of the points, standing alone, was enough to render government policy unworkable even if all the other points were invalid," she said."These predictions have now all been fulfilled."
| Prediction |
Fulfilment |
| There is no serious problem to solve. |
Both Harvard and ACMA (the Australian Communication and Media Authority) have released research showing that the biggest problem with children online concerns bullying and identity theft. The Harvard group contended that online child abuse is a false threat promulgated in an atmosphere of moral panic. The ACMA research shows that parents rate TV as a bigger threat to their children than the Internet.
Harvard: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/isttf/
ACMA: http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib101058/media_and_society_report_2007.pdf |
| Even if there was, there's no public support to solve it. |
GetUp has gathered nearly 100,000 signatures and raised nearly $50,000 in donations; evidence of significant public opposition to the plan. Polls by major media organisations have shown the policy to be unpopular with the public. So many people responded to Senator Conroy's "Superblogger" column in AustralianIT on February 17 that they crashed the www.news.com.au comments system. |
| Even if there was support, this solution won't work. |
Not even the scheme's supporters believe it will work. Experts in the field know it will not work. Minister Conroy has said in answers to Senator Ludlum's questions that the Government has no plans to restrict circumvention. |
| Even if it could work, it's too expensive. |
Last month, news.com.au reported the "live trials" had been delayed for three months partly because DBCDE was having difficulty securing funding for the testing. Given the size of test ISPs, there was no need to purchase high-end equipment. |
| Even if it was affordable, it'll be implemented very poorly. |
There are already signs of poor implementation including blacklisting legal but controversial sites, serving link deletion notices on Whirlpool, numerous false positives in the black list including a dentist, breeding kennels and other innocuous sites. |
| Even if it were implemented perfectly, the blacklist would leak. |
The list, in several dated versions, is now available on the Internet. The latest list has been considerably shortened. It appears that the lists were not "leaked" but reversed engineered from packages designed to run locally on home computers. |
| There's no possibility that it won't leak |
There is no doubt that leaks will be repeated if the system becomes mandatory. |
Media assistance
Donna Ashelford on 0401 714 350 or email
Iain Robertson on 0407 757 622 or email
About SAGE-AU www.sage-au.org.au
[SAGE-AU] is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. It promotes the development of the system administration profession via online communication forums, regional monthly meetings, regional symposiums and an annual national technical conference. SAGE-AU members work in all varieties of profit and not-for-profit industry, education, research and government. Roles range from junior administrators to chief information officers.
(18 December 2008)
Open letter from SAGE-AU to Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital
December 18, 2008
The Hon. Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Parliament House, Canberra
Dear Minister:
Re. SAGE-AU opposition to the proposed Internet filtering initiative
As the representative organisation for Australian system administrators, SAGE-AU is writing to state that it is unable to support the Federal Government's proposed Internet filtering initiative and to outline the significant concerns that inform SAGE-AU's position on this issue.
The System Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) represents professional system administrators across Australia. System administrators are the technical people behind commercial networks and computing systems, large and small. Accordingly, we believe SAGE-AU is in an excellent position to contribute to the discussion of the technical issues with your Department's proposed network filter. Our Code of Ethics (1) requires that we communicate with users regarding computing issues likely to affect them; and thus we feel it essential that we explain these issues to you. We trust that you will find this letter helpful.
The proposed Internet filter cannot achieve its stated goal
In summary, the current proposals - to be trialled by commercial ISPs including Optus (2) for potential mandatory implementation - cannot and will not achieve the stated goal of providing safer Internet access for all Australians. Moreover, the trial, and any subsequent implementation, cannot and will not have any impact on any illegal activities being undertaken on the Internet.
There are several inherent flaws with the filters as proposed. The evidence of this is in the Australian Communications and Media Authority's own report on the matter (3). The ACMA noted that filters were incapable of dealing with traffic utilising communication protocols other than HTTP (traditional "web" traffic). However, several major Internet Service Providers report that HTTP traffic now consists of less than 50 per cent of a typical day's Internet use). There are also concerns with the performance of the filters, both in terms of reliability, and in terms of speed.
Fast-functioning filters block one in 12 legitimate websites
The worst performing in terms of filtering capability were the fastest in terms of network traffic throughput; the fastest resulted in a two per cent slowdown under test conditions, but blocked eight per cent - or one in twelve - of the legitimate websites tested. This level of unreliability would result in every Australian Internet user being denied access to legitimate websites on a daily basis. This filter also failed to detect twelve per cent of the illegal content against which it was tested; an unacceptably large failure rate if the intention is to stop access to illegal or unwanted content.
Slow filters decrease Internet speeds by as much as 87 per cent
The converse is also true. The most effective filter decreases performance against the baseline by 87 per cent. This is an unacceptable performance reduction for modern Internet users. However, even this filter was still unable to detect three per cent of the illegal content presented to it, and blocked one per cent of the legitimate websites presented to it.
An application of Bayes' Theorem, shows that even for the most generous interpretation of the filters' accuracy, the chance of a randomly selected page actually containing unwanted material when it is blocked is only 55%; the remaining blocked pages will be collateral damage and contain no such illegal material. (4)
DBCDE testing mechanisms do not reflect actual patterns of internet use
The testing mechanisms proposed (5) by the Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy are also of concern. These methods do not reflect the use patterns of the regular Internet-using population, so the results are unlikely to be unrepresentative.
The testing framework also explicitly ignores connection speeds above 12Mbps. This is troubling, as your Government's own Next-Generation Broadband Network plans call for 12Mbps or faster connection speeds to 98 per cent of Australians; failing to test the filter under these conditions is short-sighted at best.
The testing framework further fails to adequately address the following questions:
- Exactly how much performance degradation, both in terms of added latency and reduced bandwidth would be considered "acceptable" for the purposes of the trial?
- Exactly which protocols are to be inspected and potentially blocked by the filter, and under what circumstances?
- During the trial, will there be any method of community oversight of the blocking lists to ensure that unreasonable overblocking is not occurring? If a plan for oversight exists, exactly who will be involved in this oversight?
- What recourse will exist for businesses and other website holders who host legitimate and "wanted" content when it is found that their sites are being blocked?
- For both the purposes of this trial and for any future filtering, will website owners be notified of their inclusion in the "unwanted" or "not safe for children" lists?
- If a business or other website owner suspects that their website is mistakenly being blocked, is there (or will there be) a way to confirm it? Will there be a method to resolve matters such that such pages (if legitimate) are no longer blocked?
- For any user trials, will there be a way to distinguish between a site being unavailable due to other issues and a site being unavailable due to it being blocked? Will there be a way for any user to request that a page that is being blocked be reconsidered for such cases where the page may be misclassified?
- Can you define "unwanted content" and promise that any filter will not be subject to scope-creep where "unwanted content" expands to cover more and more things without public input?
- What criteria will be utilised to determine the success or otherwise of this trial?
Problems with filter list maintenance
SAGE-AU also has concerns about how the filtering list will be maintained. On one hand, illegal website owners are suspected of changing their internet information regularly to avoid being found by law enforcement, so the list will need to be updated daily - in some cases, hourly - in order to be effective. On the other hand, due to the list's exemption from Freedom of Information requests and other public review, no mechanism exists to ensure that legal and child-safe sites are not accidentally blocked. In fact, website owners will be unable to confirm whether website issues are due to the filter or other technical reasons.
The test framework refers to the blacklist as containing a "majority of [...] material that would likely be classified RC by the Classification Board", but does not state whether the Classification Board will have input into the filtered content's actual classification level.
SAGE-AU suggests alternative use of funds allocated for proposed Internet filtering system
None of these issues have, to date, been addressed by the Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy, by the Australian Communications and Media Authority or by Enex TestLab as appropriate. As such, SAGE-AU cannot support the proposed trial or any future implementation of this style of mandatory filtering scheme.
We instead suggest that a better use of public monies earmarked to fund any trial or future implementation, would instead available to the Australian Federal Police, specifically the Online Child Sex Exploitation Team and/or the Australian High-Tech Crime Centre.
Rather than unsuccessfully attempting to filter undesirable material in transit, it would be a more effective use of public funds to support law enforcement in preventing the creation and consumption of this material at its end points, just as is the case for all traditional carriage services.
We, and our members, look forward to your reply.
Yours faithfully
Donna Ashelford - on behalf of SAGE-AU and the SAGE-AU Committee of Management
SAGE-AU Code of Ethics. Accessed Sunday, 7 December, 2008 from SAGE-AU web site: http://www.sage-au.org.au/display/SAGEAU/Code+of+Ethics
Optus, iiNet put filters to the test. Accessed Saturday, 6 December, 2008 from Computerworld web site: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/267223/optus_iinet_put_filters_test
Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering. Accessed Friday, 24 October, 2008 from ACMA web site: http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf
Bayes' Theorem 1, Mandatory Filtering 0. Accessed Monday, 8 December 2008: http://girtby.net/archives/2008/07/31/bayes-theorem-1-mandatory-filtering-0/
Testing Framework. Accessed Monday, 8 December, 2008 from DBCDE web site: http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/text_file/0011/89165/technical-testing-framework.rtf
Media assistance
Donna Ashelford on 0401 714 350 or email
About SAGE-AU www.sage-au.org.au
SAGE-AU is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. It promotes the development of the system administration profession via online communication forums, regional monthly meetings, regional symposiums and an annual national technical conference. SAGE-AU members work in all varieties of profit and not-for-profit industry, education, research and government. Roles range from junior administrators to chief information officers.
(7 November 2008)
SAGE-AU proposes three-step safe Net plan for families
7 November 2008
IT professionals' advocacy group SAGE-AU has proposed a three-pronged plan that can protect families from objectionable Internet content without slowing Internet performance to a snail's pace.
SAGE-AU (the System Administrators Guild of Australia) is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. System administrators are the technology wizards who keep computers and networks working, including much of the Internet in this country.
SAGE-AU President Donna Ashelford said the Federal Government had been widely criticised for the current incarnation of "Labor's Plan for Cyber Safety". "The proposed plan, which aims to filter and block objectionable material in a compulsory manner, is not technically sound," she said.
"SAGE-AU fully supports any practical initiatives to protect children from viewing objectionable content on the Internet, but we oppose the current plan based on the technical issues involved and the appearance that alternative solutions have not been fully considered.
"If implemented in its current form, the Government's proposal will punish the vast majority of home and business Internet users who never come into contact with objectionable material by slowing down all Internet access. Additionally, it will prevent access to many resources that are not objectionable.
"Finally, those who create and traffic in objectionable material already use methods of encryption that will not be stopped by the proposal."
Ms. Ashelford said SAGE-AU recognised that some parents were concerned by Internet content they regarded as objectionable. "Those parents should be empowered to implement filter rules that they believe are best for the welfare of their families," she said.
"As an organisation representing the systems administrators who run the country's networks, including much of its Internet architecture, SAGE-AU puts forward the following three suggestions to address the short-comings of the government plan."
1. Encourage "family-friendly" ISP services
Ms. Ashelford said a Family Friendly ISP program, run by the Internet Industry Association (IIA), was already available. "It appears that many families are not aware of this program's existence," she said.
"Participant ISPs currently offer 'clean feed' services to customers who desire them and have been doing so for several years. Many of these ISPs have invested considerable resources into refining their services, which occupy a competitive niche in the Australian ISP marketplace.
"These family-friendly ISPs build their brands around their filtering services. The most likely side effect of the Government's proposal will be to cause many of the companies who have done the most to promote 'clean feed' services to close their doors."
SAGE-AU proposes that the Government leverage its existing relationship with the IIA to support and promote the Family Friendly ISP program. The $44m budgeted for 'clean feed' services could be provided as grants and subsidies to participating ISPs, enabling them to offer their 'clean feed' services at price points that are competitive with the services offered by more traditional ISPs.
A model similar to the Australian Broadband Guarantee, wherein a participating ISP is subsidised for each subscriber, will stimulate this sector of the industry and consequently improve the quality and accessibility of the services they offer to the Australian public.
The Government could also use its resources to assist with the promotion of both the IIA Family Friendly ISP programme and qualifying ISPs. This is consistent with the Government's election promise to provide clean feed services with an opt-out for adults.
2. Improved parent education
Ms. Ashelford said the Government should invest in ongoing education to assist parents to ensure their children were not exposed to objectionable material. "SAGE-AU welcomes the budget allocations accompanying 'Labor's Plan for Cyber Safety' in this area and fully supports the initiative," she said.
3. More rigorous enforcement
Ms. Ashelford said SAGE-AU supported the allocation of increased budgets to assist the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to discover and remove illegal content from Australian hosts. "The Government should provide more resources to the ACMA and the AFP to improve this enforcement process," she said.
"We recognise that the majority of illegal content is hosted overseas. We suggest that the Government opens discussions with authorities in other countries to ensure objectionable content - particularly when it is illegal in both countries - can be dealt with cooperatively and removed from the Internet."
SAGE-AU believes that imposing Internet filtering requirements on all ISPs may drive criminals towards encrypted Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which will complicate the role of the AFP in securing evidence to support convictions. The modifications proposed by SAGE-AU provide a sound, workable solution that satisfies the Government's stated goals without forcing criminals into modes of operation that make their Internet activity impossible to monitor.
Media assistance
Donna Ashelford on 0401 714 350 or email
Iain Robertson on 0407 757 622 or email
About SAGE-AU [www.sage-au.org.au]
SAGE-AU [www.sage-au.org.au] is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. It promotes the development of the system administration profession via online communication forums, regional monthly meetings, regional symposiums and an annual national technical conference. SAGE-AU members work in all varieties of profit and not-for-profit industry, education, research and government. Roles range from junior administrators to chief information officers.
(27 October 2008)
SAGE-AU calls for open talk on Net censorship
27 October 2008
IT professionals' advocacy group SAGE-AU has called on the Federal Government to embrace open discussion of its proposed Internet filtering regime in order to ensure the best possible policy outcome.
SAGE-AU (the System Administrators Guild of Australia) expressed its concern after reports that the office of Federal Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, had attempted to silence criticism by a SAGE-AU member of the Government's controversial plan to filter Internet content.
In a personal capacity, Mark Newton, a member of SAGE-AU, has strongly criticised the Government and its Internet filtering policy on the Whirlpool broadband forum. Subsequently, a policy advisor for Senator Conroy is reported to have expressed "serious concern" about Mr. Newton's comments to a board member of the Internet Industry Association (IIA) and requested that this concern be passed to his employer, an IIA member.
SAGE-AU is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. System administrators are the technology wizards who keep computers and networks working.
SAGE-AU President Donna Ashelford said the Code of Ethics for SAGE-AU members required them to communicate with users about computing matters that may affect them. "It's reasonable to state that the issue of Internet filtering is one of substantial impact on all Internet users," she said.
"The Government's own figures indicate that all of the filtering systems trialled would impact Internet performance, as well as availability of legitimate services to varying degrees. To this end, Mr Newton has undertaken his duties under the SAGE-AU Code of Ethics to the fullest, and receives the full support for his position from the organisation.
"Accordingly, SAGE-AU calls upon the office of the Communications Minister to respect Mr Newton's professionalism and independence, as an upstanding individual member of the leading body of System Administrators within Australia. We believe that it is only through full and open discussion of the various options that the Government can achieve the best policy outcome for all Australians."
Ms. Ashelford said that SAGE-AU's position on the issue of Internet filtering was based purely on the technical feasibility of an Internet filtering solution. "Specifically, SAGE-AU remains concerned that the filters tested are unable to provide an effective, reliable filtering solution with the performance required for modern broadband connections," she said.
"The filters tested have demonstrated an excessively high exclusion rate of legitimate Internet content. To this end, SAGE-AU remains opposed to the implementation of Internet filtering in its current form and is concerned about any attempts to silence legitimate discussion of Internet filtering plans."
Media assistance
Iain Robertson on 0407 757 622 or email
Donna Ashelford on 0401 714 350 or email
About SAGE-AU [www.sage-au.org.au]
SAGE-AU [www.sage-au.org.au] is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. It promotes the development of the system administration profession via online communication forums, regional monthly meetings, regional symposiums and an annual national technical conference. SAGE-AU members work in all varieties of profit and not-for-profit industry, education, research and government. Roles range from junior administrators to chief information officers.
(31st July 2008)
SAGE-AU CONCERNED WITH CONCLUSIONS DRAWN IN ACMA INTERNET FILTERING STUDY
31 July 2008
The System Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) has raised strong concerns regarding a report issued on 28 July 2008 by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) entitled, "Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering".
The artificial conditions of the testing methodology, together with unacceptable limitations in the test's terms of reference, combine to reduce the usefulness of the report for real-world conditions.
Mark Newton, SAGE-AU member and network expert, pointed out, "The baseline performance test featured 30 users on a gigabit switch saturating the test web server at 425 megabits per second (page 30), and stated that that would be equivalent to around 20,000 end users each on 1.5 Mbps connections (page 31). However, 425 Mbps divided among 20,000 end users actually gives each user 21,250 bits per second, around half of what can be achieved with a dial-up modem."
"While it's probably true to say that filtering software doesn't present noticeable performance degradation when you've already artificially constrained the offered traffic rate to below dial-up speeds, it's difficult to see the relevance of that conclusion in a world where the Minister wants everyone in Australia to connect over 500 times faster," Mr. Newton concluded.
The interpretation of the results is also cause for significant concern. The most accurate filter tested by ACMA incorrectly blocked Internet access 3% of the time. The report noted that the overblocking result was a significant improvement on previous surveys (pages 49 to 51), but failed to consider that medium-to-large Australian ISPs routinely carry in excess of 100,000 HTTP requests per second during peak times. According to ACMA's results, under ideal conditions with the best-of-breed filter in place, those ISPs would be incorrectly blocking over 3000 HTTP requests every second. It is difficult to believe that the helpdesk requests required to manually unblock that volume of errors will not come at a significant cost, or that that cost won't increase Australian Internet access prices, increasing the "digital divide" for sections of the Australian public already disadvantaged in terms of Internet accessibility and affordability.
The fact that few of the tested products are capable of performing their filtering functions on non-HTTP data streams is also a significant issue. In 2008, less than one third of the traffic carried by a typical Australian ISP's backbone is HTTP. The most prevalent means of distributing online content, including the content unsuitable for minors which Senator Conroy claims to want to address, is BitTorrent (a peer-to-peer networking protocol). Short of blocking peer-to-peer and instant messaging systems outright, none of the systems tested were able to filter these protocols.
David Jericho, an expert in high performance networking and member of SAGE-AU, calls into question the benefits of the touted Fibre to the Node (FTTN) network under a filtering regime, saying that "any benefits from a faster FTTN network will be undone by the delays and processing required by any content filters."
Don Gingrich, SAGE-AU member and lecturer in System Administration at RMIT University, says "Why should we, at significant expense, significantly reduce the performance of every part of the Internet in Australia for the dubious goal of possibly blocking part of the overall traffic in questionable material, when there is no absolute standard of what should be blocked?"
"From past experience in looking at how this has played out in other regions, there seems to be a near certainty that legitimate and useful educational sites will be inadvertently blocked as a part of any effort of this sort. 'A little bit censored' seems a lot to me like a 'little bit pregnant,'" Mr. Gingrich concluded.
There also remain privacy concerns with the filtering of secure web (HTTPS) traffic (page 45). Effective filtering of a HTTPS data stream can only be performed by compromising end user privacy, further affecting secure web applications including legitimate Internet financial transactions which are otherwise not the subject of any filtering or scrutiny. That is, HTTPS data streams can only be filtered by requiring individual ISPs effectively engage in a "Man in the Middle attack," making encrypted sensitive or confidential data available to eavesdropping within ISP networks.
The "Adaptability" section of the report contains the somewhat puzzling assertion on page 46 that an ISP-level filter can be set to an "Adult" profile which "... blocks only illegal content," then says, in relation to illegal content, "... only three of the filter products blocked greater than 95 per cent and none blocked 100 per cent" (page 50). How it is possible to set a mandatory filter to an Adult mode to "... create an open browsing experience..." when none of the tested products are capable of reliably distinguishing between permitted adult content and banned illegal content even under ideal experimental conditions - involving a mere 4000 web addresses - is a question which warrants strong consideration.
While the report exhibits considerable failings in its analysis of "Performance," "Effectiveness," "Scope," and "Adaptability," it is also notable for what it doesn't analyse: The terms of reference presented to the testing agency by ACMA specifically excluded examination of deployment cost (page 53). Public debate on the topic of the Federal Government's currently planned mandated Internet content filtering has existed for almost a year, and the Internet industry has consistently stated that the massive deployment costs required to build filtering into Australia's Internet infrastructure would require significant price increases to be imposed on families seeking Internet access from ISPs. In that environment, it is incredibly surprising that the Federal Government has not even started to address the question of cost. On this subject, Mr. Newton asked, "How is it possible that we have come this far, and covered this much ground, over this much time, without any attempt by the Government to address industry concerns about the on-the-ground practicalities of implementing its plan?"
Donna Ashelford, President of SAGE-AU, called on the Government to reconsider: "It is not too late to consider policy alternatives which meet the Government's stated aims without the deficiencies that accompany mandatory ISP-level filtering. Aside from the commercial and technical impact such legislation will have on a variety of sectors within the IT Industry in Australia, technical band-aids are invariably ineffective in addressing the root causes of social problems."
Media assistance
Donna Ashelford on 0401 714 350 or email
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About SAGE-AU [www.sage-au.org.au]
SAGE-AU (www.sage-au.org.au) is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia. It promotes the development of the system administration profession via online communication forums, regional monthly meetings, regional symposiums and an annual national technical conference. SAGE-AU members work in all varieties of profit and not-for-profit industry, education, research and government. Roles range from junior administrators to chief information officers.
