Abstract
Internet has revolutionized our lives. Almost everyone now somehow uses internet daily. It contains limitless amounts of information. To restrict illegal content reaching the end user the governments imposed a national filter to protect the society. In 2006 Labor party proposed a much stricter mandatory filter for the whole population of Australia. Now the filter is in the stage of public testing. Most of experts and majority of public are against implementation of such system in this country. However the government is still pushing the project to go ahead despite many reasons to abandon this project. In this report I explore the topic of internet filtering, the new proposed mandatory ISP level filtering, and the ethical issues associated with it. I conclude that some internet content filtering is required and what already exists is enough.
Introduction
Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet.
This report will concentrate on analyzing the issues involved in Internet Filtering which governments use to restrict access of the public to illegal and ‘inappropriate’ content over the internet. Internet has no boundaries. A person can access any information that is on the internet from any point on earth if he has internet access. Consequently internet is a perfect place for cyber-crime to occur. It is very difficult to catch cyber criminals as they could be located anywhere on the globe. Any material could be placed on the world wide web whether it is acceptable by society or not. Such as child pornography, sexual abuse, execution etc. this is why the governments feel obliged to ‘protect’ its citizens from such ‘inappropriate material’.
The report will concentrate on the newly proposed mandatory ISP level filter in Australia. Statistical data will be analyzed to understand what the public wants from the government in regards to internet censorship. Various ethical issues will be looked into to understand how much filtering should be done and how involved the government should be in restricting access to information over the internet.
Body
Internet filtering as technology began to emerge in mid 1990s. The programs ranged that simply blocked URLs to more complicated packages which limited use of some online services such as email, chat, messaging software, timed browsing etc.
Since then the filtering technologies have grown and evolved into more complex programs and have become known to the public. Now most governments have some sort of filter imposed on its public which is controlled at an ISP level, usually is a blacklist of websites.
(source Wikipedia)
Figure 1: Internet censorship of different countries in the world.
As it can be seen from Figure 1 most of the world is censored. With China and parts of Middle East being the most censored nations.
Australia is listed as a country with ‘Some censorship’ which means that there is a blacklist existing which blocks illegal websites. Total control of the internet information is very difficult, next to impossible due to the underlying distributed technology of the internet.
Since the introduction of internet filtering there have been debates going on within society with different groups being for and against internet filtering such as Peacefire (against), Filtering Facts (for), and Censorware (against).
The blacklist in Australia is currently 1300 websites. It claims to block illegal content such as sexual abuse, child abuse, suicidal and other such illegal websites. This blacklist is compiled and maintained in Australia by Australian Communications and Media Authority(ACMA). They decide what goes on the list and what doesn’t.
On 21st March 2006, Federal Labor Opposition made a media release1 ‘Labor’s Plan for Cyber-Safety’. This announcement was not very publicized and rather kept quiet as media was concentrating on other issues such as climate change. The announcement stated that once elected Labor government will require all Internet Service Providers to introduce mandatory internet content filtering to all households, schools and other public computers. Meaning that all internet information that can reach the end user “will filter out content that is identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority 1 “ and the blacklist will increase from 1300 to about 10 000 websites meaning that Australia will be censored worse than China and Middle Eastern countries. On top of that the government plan for Cyber-Safety internet filtering will cost $40 million to the taxpayers.
Labor Government stated that this blocking system is primarily to protect children from accessing restricted information and “dangers that did not previously exist such as cyber-bullying, e-security issues and computer addiction1”. In effect proposing a mandatory filter for the whole population of Australia. Adults, kids, elderly will all be under the ‘Great Australian Firewall’ as already nicknamed by the public.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy said that the filtering will model on the same classifications that the current media is subjected. Such as classification of movies, books, TV shows etc. "Australian society has always accepted that there is some material which is not acceptable, particularly for children," he said. "That is why we have the National Classification Scheme for classifying films, computer games, publications and online content." 9
These plans came under criticism in the media and in the parliament.
As reported by the technology experts. The filter will be ineffective in protecting children as the filtering programs are unable to properly distinguish between legal and illegal information. With ISP level filters the speed of the internet will become slower as reported anywhere between 87% to 2%6 slowdown. The cost of implementation of such system is high. Protecting children online by ISP level filtering is unintelligent as better solutions are possible such as PC level filtering, good parenting and good education.
A research conducted by ACMA in 2005: ‘Kidsonline@home Internet use in Australian homes’3 shows that two thirds of Australian parents do not use PC level filtering at home. This is a major justification to introduce ISP level filtering. However the latest ACMA report : Media and Communications in Australian Families 2007 2 shows that 61% of Parents are not concerned with their child’s internet activity, with only 8% being very concerned. Report also states that 50% did not install the filters because they trusted their children, 17% used some other safeguard software, 5% were unsure how to install the software, 3% were not aware where to get such software, 4% thought the software was too restrictive.
The ACMA report also stated that almost all parents - 92% were somehow involved with their children’s computer usage.
The research and the statistics clearly show that Australian parents do not believe in aggressive filtering.
The labor’s Cyber-Safety plan was devised to combat the following incidents as stated in their media release:
• online identity theft
• cyber-bullying
• having photos published online without their permission
• computer addiction
• picking up a virus or trojan
• online activities of child predators
ISP level filtering of inappropriate content would almost have no effect on protecting kids from such dangers. Most of the illegal activities take place in chat rooms which will be unaffected by the filter.
The resources could be spent on some other much more effective strategies. Especially when PC level filters are available to parents for free.
Internet filtering will not be able to block Peer-to-Peer traffic where most of the illegal file sharing occurs. P2P sharing programs such as bit torrent and limewire will still function.
Another highly debatable point is who would decide what will be blocked. Recently ACMA blacklist have been leaked 4. What is interesting is that “about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist” 4.
First the statement was that the list will block out only children inappropriate content, but now the list has legitimate websites such as gambling, YouTube videos, Christian and some other religions. What is there to stop political material to be blocked too.
The ISP filtering software is not error proof. It may fail to block some illegal websites and will block ones that are legitimate. Such as a website of a Queensland dentist. “In the tests that have been conducted blocked sites included those rated PG, M, MA the tests explicitly included perfectly legal material”, ”even the best filter has a false-positive rate of 3% under ideal lab conditions. That might not sound much, but Mark Newton a network engineer reckons that for a medium-sized ISP that’s 3000 incorrect blocks every second. Another maths-heavy analysis says that every time that filter blocks something there’s an 80% chance it was wrong”8. Also about 8 percent of material that should have been blocked was not.
Another reason why ISP filtering is not practical option is because it is easy to bypass. Anyone knowledgeable or wiling enough can bypass filtering by using proxies redirection and other techniques.
On the 4th of May 2009
www.computerworld.com.au published an article that ISP level filter could endanger national security, “ the filters open a security hole which has been used to cripple entire ISP networks”. “We've found major security vulnerabilities in filters put in front of ISPs and they basically corrupted the entire network for that ISP” 5. Dan Kamisky a Security Researcher said.
ISP level filtering is not what Australian public wants. Just in the first month of 2009 campaigning Get Up a political organization gathered 95 000 signatures against the filter and $50 000 in donations. The resistance is beginning to look mainstream. Netspace – and Australian internet provider conducted a survey of some 9700 people of which 79% indicated that they either disagree or strongly disagree with government’s proposed plan of ISP level filtering.
It is generally unclear who exactly wants for these filters to be put in place. In 2006 Senator Stephen Conroy presented a key petition with 20 646 signatures most of which were gathered through churches. Church groups are the main groups supporting the filtering scheme7 to this moment.
Ethical Issues
The blacklist
What goes on the list is a major issue. As stated before right now the blacklist put together by ACMA contains some 1300 websites. This blacklist has been present in Australia for a while. It claims to have blocked websites with illegal content. Such as child sex abuse, bestiality, rape, suicide etc. Australia is a developed society which believes in freedom. However we are all bound by the laws of the society we live in. We are not free to kill, sexually abuse children or rape women. So ethically it is perfectly correct to block websites which contains such material. It would be unethical if these ‘inappropriate’ websites were easily accessible by our children, or sex offenders. The websites may exist in countries which do not have laws or resources to stop this activity, hence the only ethical option for Australia is to block such content.
The proposed ISP level filtering however wants to extend the blacklist from 1300 to 10000 websites. The websites included in that list are perfectly legitimate businesses and should not be blocked from Australian public. The society we live in is democratic. The government should listen to what the public wants. Right now the government is being unethical as it is ignoring the majority of population’s resistance of the new filtering plan and is still going ahead with its trials. The government is not listening to the technology experts who are all saying that this technology is going to fail. It is unethical for the government to spend taxpayers money on a project which is bound to fail and is unwanted by the taxpayers when the money could be used much more effective to combat the same problem from a different angle.
Who controls the blacklist
The control of the blacklist is another ethical issue. The blacklist has to be kept secret from the public. It contains all the illegal websites which should not be known to the public. Hence if the list is secret any new websites added will not be known to anyone but the one who controls the list. This grants a lot of power to those who control it. Political information could be restricted and only politically correct materials would be accessible to the public. This actually happens in some countries such as shown in Figure 1 – Middle East and China, where a lot of political material is blocked from the public as to not steer them away from what the government wants them to know or see. This is clearly unethical as freedom of political speech and different political views should be allowed.
Parents should be allowed to monitor their children themselves
Another ethical issue is that with new proposed ISP level filtering the Australian government implies that it no longer trusts Australian parents. Researches indicate that the majority of parents are against this mandatory filtering and for the government to ignore the parents and take away their responsibility is unethical because it is now the government who decides what the children may view and what they may not, parents will no longer have a say.
Free Speech
Free speech has been a topic of ethical debate for a long time. We live in a democratic society meaning that free speech is one of the rights the public has. What does this freedom mean? We are not free to say what we want, to whomever we want at any time. Racism, verbal abuse can be taken action against. So in reality we are not free to say anything we want. We are bound by the rules of the society we live in and what society tolerates us to express. The freedom of speech on the internet has been much less controlled. For long time you could say anything you wanted at any time and get away with it. So the governments though that it is unethical to let people behave in ways that are not accepted in the society. So the filters are being introduced in order to limit the free speech on the internet that may harm or distress some of the users.
Another agenda
If in reality not many people really want these ISP level filtering to be installed, why is government so eager to get them in place? There may be another agenda. Governments are realizing now the power of the internet. TV, newspapers and radio are no longer the only source of information. The government seized the control of those media channels a long time ago. Now they are taking further measures to make sure that they are prepared for the future where internet will be the most powerful tool people can use. This is may be why they are exploring internet filtering as a propaganda tool for future. If installed in place these filters can block out whatever content you would want. Put ‘political freedom’ in the filter blocking preference and all websites which contain ‘political freedom’ will be blocked. This would be a very powerful tool a government could use. The internet will no longer be free but customized however the government wishes it to be.
Ethical issues in regards to engineers.
Engineers and technologists are the people who have the most knowledge about how the new proposed system can perform and whether it is feasible to achieve the tasks. Therefore the engineers are ethically responsible to inform the public of the performance of the system. In this case they actually have made their opinion known. Through many online websites and articles published. Consensus seems to be reached that engineers do not believe such filtering system is going to work well for the ment purpose. And should be abandoned.
Conclusion
In conclusion I believe that the government should be involved in filtering out some illegal content from the end users. However it should only be the illegal content. Such content would include, child pornography, sexual abuse, suicide, or genocide content. The new proposed filtering system in Australia however is said to overachieve that goal by quiet a bit. Increasing the blocklist from current 1300 to 10000 addresses. Protection of children from cyber-crime will not be achieved as it does not block out peer-to-peer networks or chat sites where most cyber-crimes happen. Some of the addresses will include legitimate businesses and websites such as pornography industry or poker and gambling websites. The system is also faulty meaning that it will erroneously block legitimate websites and not block some of the ‘inappropriate’ content. The speed of the internet will decrease due to these filters. Also the Internet Service Providers are going to be vulnerable to hacker attacks which may damage the whole ISP system. Concluding from these reasons I strongly believe that the new proposed mandatory ISP level filtering system project should be abandoned. It overachieves the required filtering standards and may be abused as a political tool in the future for propaganda purposes.
Reference
1. Stephen Conroy, Minister for Communications and Information Technology, 2007, Australian Labor Party, accessed on 20 May 2009 <http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf>
2. Australian Government, Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2007, ACMA, accessed on 20 May 2009 <http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib101058/media_and_society_report_2007.pdf>
3. Australian Government, Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2007, ACMA, accessed on 20 May 2009 <http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/aba/about/recruitment/kidsonline.pdf>
4. Asher Moses ( Sydney Morning Herald),Leaked Australian Blacklist reveals banned sites, March 19 2009, Wikileaks, accessed on 20 May 2009
<
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Leaked_Australian_blacklist_reveals_banned_sites>
5. Darren Pauli, Web Filters Threaten National Security, 04 May 2009, Computerworld, accessed on 20 May 2009
<
http://www.computerworld.com.au/artic...ilters_threaten_national_security>
6. Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson, Rudd Government’s internet filter to block up to 10000 ‘unwated’ sites, 13 November 2008, news.com.au, accessed on 20 May 2009
<http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24645568-5014239,00.html>
7. Stilgherrian, Who supports compulsory internet filtering, exactly?, 28 January 2009, crikey.com.au, accessed on 20 May 2009
< http://
www.crikey.com.au/2009/01/28/who-supp...lsory-internet-filtering-exactly/>
8. Stilgherrian, Kim Wallace’s pro-censorship lies and distortion, 26 January 2009, Stilgherrian, accessed on May 20 2009
<http://stilgherrian.com/politics/jim-wallaces-pro-censorship-lies-and-distortions/>
9. Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter, Internet Censorship Expands, 22 December 2009, news.com.au, accessed on 20 May 2009 <http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,24834708-5008620,00.html>
10. Electronic Frontiers Australia, Labor’s Mandatory ISP internet blocking plan, created 29 March 2006 last updated 4 March 2008, EFA, accessed on 20 May 2009 <http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/>
11. Asher Moses, 26 February 2009, Web censorship plan heads towards dead end, Sydney Morning Herald, accessed on 20 May 2009 <http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/02/26/1235237810486.html>
12. Nick Minchin, 27 January 2009, Big Brother filter plan insults parents, Caberra Times, accessed on 20 May 2009 <http://www.canberratimes.com.au/blogs/national-comment/big-brother-filter-plan-insults-parents/1417327.aspx?storypage=2>
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