We’ve all had it: the problem that takes up hours of time and just shouldn’t be happening. Network connectivity is difficult enough as it is, but once you start throwing in proxies, packet filtering, DNS poisoning and firewalls it becomes exponentially more difficult to manage. A closed content filtering program is going to make troubleshooting web and network related issues a frustrating one indeed.
In the light of the Australian government’s trials of a national and mandatory Internet filter, questions have started to arise as to how it will be implemented. The government has recently released a call for participants in the live filtering trial, along with some documentation that hints at what we can expect.
From what we know the filtering system is most likely to be blacklist and keyword based, and will have two secret block lists. For web developers and other IT types, this is going to equate to a massive headache, and a significant shift as to how we do business.
Should the live trial be declared a success and the filter become mandatory — which is likely considering the way one Senator Steven Conroy is steam-rolling over the legitimate concerns — there are several policies that should be mandatory for such a program to be implemented in any kind of democracy.
As such I present to you wish list, if you will. These points deal with transparency and accountability of the system.
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The program must be completely accountable.
We know for a fact that this initiative is going to block completely legitimate content, going to poison completely legitimate DNS entries, and through its very nature be completely random in it’s discretion. There needs to be absolute disclosure in the event of a block, intended or accidental, with in-line tools to report, protest, and discuss any discrepancies. Anything less is completely unacceptable, and will only help further legitimize the claims of similarities between this and the filtering programs of other more repressive regimes.
These tools must enable anyone inconvenienced by a (false or positive) block to discuss and protest such a block in a public forum. We’ve already seen that the current administration has been hostile toward criticism of the project, and will likely continue to be so in its handling of net filtering “bug reports.” Only a truly public discourse will help keep the government accountable, and serving the good of the public.
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The program must provide a publicly available & centralised forum of discussion.
The Government knows it’s a trivial matter to get around the filter anyway, so there’s likely no way we’re going to have actual disclosure of the blacklist. The best compromise we can hope for is a centralised forum to allow public discourse on protested blocks. It’s going to be a major (expensive) headache for the government having to deal with a national publicly available forum, but providing a “black-hole” comments box is simply not acceptable.
This discourse will need to utilise common technologies such as email, RSS and a publicly accessible API to allow concerned citizens to follow the discussion. Additionally the system should prioritise reports and requests from holders of valid ABNs, to help businesses and web professionals resolve false blocks quickly and with minimal loss of revenue.
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The program must provide technical data
Reports of requests, packets, and pages modified by the system must be made available on request, in (as close to) real time (as possible.) It’s simply unacceptable to expect web professionals to work with a system that interferes with the very medium they make a living from, without any form of “error checking” at their disposal.
Reports must be available via web (signed by digital signature should the filtering software have the ability to alter or otherwise interfere with the data being transmitted,) and available via hard-copy on request.
The same API that makes the public discourse available must be able to report inappropriate content, as well as check if and why a particular page has been blocked. If ACMA wants to classify and rate the entire Internet, it must be in a transparent and accessible way. Providing the ability for software to keep tabs on these ratings is the only responsible way to do so.
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Privacy is Paramount
While this technical shenaniganry is going on, the major dismissed aspect of the system is privacy. The live filtering pilot will be trialling circumvention detection, which is a really ambiguous and concerning concept. The only insight into this is that the government plans to monitor such common tasks as using a proxy server, and provide warnings when this activity is detected. The notion that “you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’re not hiding anything” is unacceptable, and Senator Conroy’s equating privacy advocacy to paedophilia is blatantly offensive.
Putting aside the numerous legitimate uses of proxies, and the plethora of different products available to do just that, the privacy implications are just astounding. The notion that one false positive exposes an individual’s private activities to government scrutiny is astounding.
Any solution implemented must completely anonymise data until it’s proven beyond a doubt that the activity is criminal in nature. Should this occur, it can naturally be forwarded to the police, but any other access to personally identifiable data should be completely obscured (preferably encrypted) until that need arises.
Cynical Politics
It is more than likely we’ll end up with absolutely none of the above, which is a a crying shame.
Granted, some of these points may seem unreasonable or a little over the top at first glance, but when you consider we’re dealing with a government that is aiming to purge the entire Internet of “illegal” and “inappropriate” content based on a criteria out of touch with the majority of Australians, civilian oversight seems only too reasonable.
Though the plan may be shocking for a vast majority of Australians, and completely irresponsible toward the digital economy, it’s going ahead despite the protests. As such we are still free to demand a quality system in which public oversight is an integral part.