http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dont-believe-the-myths-on-the-isp-filter/

Unfortunately her article repeated some of the misinformation and I’d like to outline the facts.

The Government has always maintained there is no silver bullet when it comes to cyber safety and we have never said ISP-level filtering alone would help fight child pornography or keep children safe online.

The Government’s $125.8 million Cyber Safety Policy includes a range of measures:

$49m for law enforcement by providing 91 additional AFP officers to the Child Protection Unit
A grants program to encourage ISPs to offer additional filtering services to households on an optional basis. This filtering could enable customers to block access to particular websites and chat rooms, if the customer chooses to do so
Funding for a range of education programs for children, parents and teachers through the ACMA Outreach program
Funding for the cybersmart website and online counselling service
Establishing the Government’s 300 strong Youth Advisory Group and Consultative Working Group on cyber-safety
ISP Level filtering which would block RC material on URL based websites through a public complaints mechanism.
The Rudd Government does not support Refused Classification content being available on the internet. This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.

I’m sorry Mr Conroy, but the Internet isn’t a public Library. The best part about the internet is that people have access to what ever material they want and can self moderate. If you seriously want to stop terrorism then we shouldn’t be checking shoes at Air Ports. The Terrorists have already won. Out of the thousand child abuse site that you block, there will be thousands you haven’t blocked, and the ones you have blocked will be able to be accessed via a simple proxy, which from the use of the Education Queensland filter, students have gotten fairly creative at by passing it. Good bye safe drug use too. Regardless if you list the filter list, it will be found out, as such systems have been abused in the UK as seen in this article.

Under Australia’s existing classification regulations this material is not available in newsagencies, it is not on library shelves, you cannot watch it on a DVD or at the cinema and it is not shown on television. Refused Classification material is not available on Australian hosted websites.

Please Mr Conroy, The internet is not a library, or a store, your point is mute. Just stop it.

The Government’s proposal will bring the treatment of overseas hosted content into line by requiring ISPs to block overseas content that has been identified as Refused Classification.

This is only true if you block all the proxies and tunneling, which won’t because it’ll pretty much break the internet.

Ms Cussen is wrong to claim that filtering works by scrutinising personal communication such as family photos. Let’s be clear, the only content that will be examined with a view to blocking, is content which is referred by an individual complaint or by an international agency. Specific web pages will only be blocked if they are deemed to contain content which is Refused Classification under the National Classification Scheme. Unless the URL’s requested are on the RC Content list, the web traffic will not pass through a ‘filter’.

Let’s use facebook.com as a loose example. Technically, please tell me how you filter facebook.com/sucidepage and not facebook.com/mwheeler without my data passing through your servers? URL’s != domains

The Refused Classification Content list cannot be made public because if it was, it would simply be a catalogue to direct people to specific URLs that are Refused Classification. Also, publishing links to child abuse content is a criminal offence. The Government has held a public consultation on improved transparency measures to ensure the public have confidence in the list and the submissions will feed into the legislative framework.

Ms Cussen claims the Government’s policy won’t protect children from viewing harmful ‘stuff’ online. As I have said, the Government has never claimed filtering is a silver bullet solution. It is just one part of our Cyber Safety policy which includes education and law enforcement.

Yes Mr Conroy, it isn’t a silver bullet, it’s far from it. It doesn’t protect children at all. I would like to see studies on the effects of blocking 1000 pages on the internet vs not, on the children, compared to using the money to build a school

In addition the Government is encouraging ISPs to offer wider levels of filtering on an optional basis. Parents will always have an important role to play in supervising their children online and that’s why the education programs also cater for them.

I don’t have children, why should I have to pay for others to have a filter. Even if I had kids, I wouldn’t filter on the internet, but supervise and teach them web safety

For Ms Cussen to compare Australia’s policy with countries like China and Iran is ludicrous.

No it’s not. It would be technically possible for your government to block or modify what ever they like. Sure you could do it now, but this would make it a tone easier.

The National Classification Scheme makes no reference to political or religious comment. Under our policy we will only block material that is Refused Classification.

Ms Cussen claims the policy will slow internet speeds. The Government’s independent pilot trial found that ISP-level filtering of a defined list of URLs can be done with 100% accuracy and negligible impact on internet speeds. Telstra’s own trial, separate to the Government, found the impact on performance was equivalent to one 70th of the blink of an eye.

We don’t know the true story here, yes if you are blocking a full text site. Video’s or anything else, we’re pretty much screwed.

High traffic sites like YouTube and Facebook are not included in the policy, however, it should be noted that these sites have their own policies which prohibit a wider range of content than Refused Classification, such as X18+ and R18+ content. The Government is continuing to work with the operators of these sites.

So a site like xtube can host beastitality ? Great!

In her article, Ms Cussen claims the independent trial did not prove the technology would be scalable to work on the National Broadband Network. Consultations with ISPs, and expert technical advice, confirms this claim is wrong. There are technologies that can filter a defined list of URLs, with negligible impact on network speeds, including on the National Broadband Network.

We just don’t know do we. We don’t know what your blocking, so we can’t work out if it’ll slow down the speed of sites, or in the future you might block wikipedia and we end up with the same issue as the UK filter had

Ms Cussen’s claims that the policy will make the internet more expensive are also wrong. In Western democracies such as the UK and Sweden, filtering has been implemented with no cost to users.

Mr Conroy, money doesn’t come out of the air, unless we are in Zimbabwe. Sure there won’t be a price increase, but at the same time, the price of internet isn’t going to drop for awhile after implemented.

The Government understands there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to cyber safety and that’s why we have a comprehensive policy covering education, law enforcement, research and technical-based solutions.

I welcome debate on our policy, but let’s make sure the facts are at the centre of the argument.

Yeah I like the facts too. Considering that everyone I know in a technical background says it’s a waste of time and money, I think you should be listening. Just remember that students already know how to bypass your filter.