Freedom of speech and the speed and reliability of Australia’s internet are under threat from a plan to force ISPs to censor websites the government considers inappropriate. If the scheme is implemented, every time you click a link on the internet, filtering software will check if the requested page is on a list of banned websites and analyse the content of the page to determine if it contains forbidden material. Both of these tasks are resource intensive and will significantly reduce network performance.
What sort of things can we expect to be banned? Sites with “illegal content” is all Senator Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy, has admitted so far. Child pornography will definitely be blocked, as could all R rated material not protected by a government-approved restricted access system. Any website hosting or facilitating the sharing of pirated copyrighted material is also certain to be banned. The blacklist could contain websites discussing illegal or controversial topics such as drug use, euthanasia, anorexia and abortion. And watch out for the government buying the support of balance-of-power senators like Family First’s Steve Fielding and anti-gambling Nick Xenophon with promises to ban the types of websites they particularly disapprove of.
The scheme was originally to protect children from inappropriate content but even for this task a government imposed server-based filter is not the right tool for the job. Consider the results from a government trial of six filter systems (read here how Senator Conroy distorts the results):
| Filter | Performance reduction (%) |
Pages correctly blocked (%) |
Legitimate pages incorrectly blocked (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpha | 84 | 90 | 2.6 |
| Beta | 33 | 98 | 7.5 |
| Gamma | 86 | 87 | 1.3 |
| Delta | 2 | 91 | 2.4 |
| Theta | 24 | 94 | 7.8 |
| Omega | 21 | 94 | 2.9 |
All but one of the filters reduces the network performance by over 20% and this was under simulated conditions which are nothing like the load the filter systems will face during peak usage times. Most filters let through about over 1 in 20 pages (and they don’t block certain peer-to-peer exchanges at all). Is this sufficient to protect your children? The results also reveal that large numbers (tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands) of websites with no harmful material will be incorrectly blocked and this number could be even higher if the types of sites that are banned is expanded. Users and website owners will have little recourse as these false positives would need to be addressed on a site by site basis and ISPs and the filter providers are not likely to have the resources to address this. Can you imagine how annoying it will be browsing the internet and finding 1-8 out of every 100 sites you visit stamped with a “Blocked for your protection” message from the Australian government?
For parents that want to monitor or control what their children view on the internet, there are thousands of free and commercial software systems available which are far more effective than the server-based filter the government is trying to impose and don’t impose costs on other users of the internet.
The good news is that there is considerable opposition to the Senator Conroy’s mandatory internet filter and if people are vocal enough, I believe this attack on our liberties can be defeated. So spread the word and write or call Conroy’s office as well as your local representative and tell them you don’t want the government censoring your internet.
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