CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA — A secret, high-level government report reveals the technology underlying Australia’s planned mandatory internet filtering does not work, will slow Web traffic and runs significant risk of blocking legitimate sites. Nevertheless, the government plans to go ahead with trials scheduled to begin within days.The report, completed in February by the Internet Industry Association at the government’s request, called the scheme “fundamentally flawed.”
Forty-four million dollars has been earmarked to implement the filtering system if the trials are deemed successful, but according to the report, success is the last thing the trials will indicate. The speed of connections will be slowed by as much as 87-percent. In addition, the techniques to be used can be bypassed easily — that is, assuming they catch any of the smut the government wants to block in the first place.
Even worse, entire a user-submitted-content sites like YouTube or Wikipedia could be blocked if the filters find a single posting “objectionable.”
According to Bjorn Landfeldt, a University of Sydney associate professor and one of the study’s authors, the filtering system is “definitely not going to be workable to get a very significant reduction in access to this [unwanted] content that is available out there. It’s fundamentally just not viable.”
Landfeldt also said he believes Communications Minister Stephen Conroy hid the report because of its unflattering conclusions. Conroy is a major proponent of the filtering system, which is designed to include two tiers: a mandatory tier that will block all “illegal” and “inappropriate” content blacklisted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and a second, optional tier designed to protect children from potentially damaging material.
Electronic Frontiers Australia, an online lobby group, has said the filter would put Australia on a censorship par with Iran and China.
Landfeldt listed for SMH.com.au some of the flaws his study found in the system:
– It easily can be circumvented by off-the-shelf software.
– The human censors who are responsible for maintaining the blacklist will not be able to keep up with the volume of new material published to the internet every second.
– Automated filters using real-time analysis both over- and under-rate websites and slow network speeds exponentially.
– Australia’s “secret blacklist” could be leaked because although it will be unavailable to average users, more than 700 internet service providers will have access to it.
– The filters are not designed to check content on peer-to-peer networks, chat rooms, email and instant messaging.
– Disallowing content providers the right to contest the blockade of their material is a recipe for massive lawsuits.
So far, the Australian government has refused to reveal which ISPs have volunteered to participate in the trials scheduled to begin as early as this week. All of the trials are expected to be completed by mid-2009.
Australia’s largest ISP, Telstra, has said it will not participate; Internode joined in declining to take part. Optus, the country’s second-largest ISP, plans to run a small-scale trial of just the mandatory tier.
iiNet, Australia’s third-largest provider, said it will participate in the full trial, but only because it believes that is the only way to prove the system will not work.
The Greens Senator Scott Ludlam urged the government to drop its “completely unhinged” plan before more taxpayer dollars are wasted.
