Government plans to filter New Zealand Internet

Comment by sleemanj, on 11-JUL-2009 13:58

So.... are they also going to be blocking proxies. 

There are an abundance of free (both legit and simply unknowingly open) proxies out there, one would expect that those people who are looking for kiddie porn they are going to be using a proxy.

Simple fact of the matter is, that unless they are going to be doing content filtering on all ports (impractical to the point of impossible), then such an effort is (ignoring the ethical or political implications) an excercise in futility. 

Comment by Russ, on 11-JUL-2009 14:39

censoring the truth - its protecting us from ourselves since the majority cannot be responsible for thier own actions - liberty if you can keep it.

Comment by Kimeros, on 11-JUL-2009 15:31

I agree with your concerns. I don't like the way it is being introduced under the radar.

I also don't like the behind closed doors approach to what is being censored. If we are going to have censorship it should be open in the same way it is for the censorship of films and publications*.

For those interested in following the topic, the twitter account nzcensor provides links to relevant and interesting articles.

http://twitter.com/nzcensor

* The Chief Censor is obliged by law to publish a list of all decisions they make. This is not the case with the current internet filtering plan.

Comment by Jason, on 11-JUL-2009 18:14

In many countries there is some oversight when things like this are done (warrantless wiretaps being one). Letting DIA manage the list, with input from an interested NGO (ECPAT NZ) is a recipe for disaster.

Things that should change:

1) The list should be public.

2) IP Addresses should be added to the list only upon an appearance in front of a judge.

3) The hearings should be public.

4) The legislation should be clear about what can and cannot be filtered.

5) The legislation should have a sunset clause.

6) It should be a requirement that the filter must be shown to be working (instead of merely being an arms race) to remain active.

7) Everyone needs to consider what sort of government would they _not_ want to have this power?

This is a curtailment of free speech rights and should therefore be treated as seriously as shutting down any of the national papers.

I also don't see why these lists are private. It would be extremely easy to do comparative probes of addresses between a remote proxy and a local system and see if the address is filtered. At 100/s, that's about a year to span the entire IPv4 address space. With ~400 people, it can be done once a day. I'm pretty sure you'd find at least 10-20 people in New Zealand interested in running a process to make the list public.

The Internet is already becoming more and more "dark", with VPNs, SSL Proxies, HTTPS and encrypted P2P. All this list will do is drive it further into the darkness.

Comment by paul151, on 12-JUL-2009 08:27

Well written post Mauricio... agree with your final sentiments.

Comment by Aaroona, on 12-JUL-2009 09:24

Personally, I'm not happy with a decision of the Govt. filtering my internet. Like posted above, while the idea of the filter is great (I wont dispute that), it does end up filtering legitimate sites, and is a technology that could potentionally cripple us if used incorrectly.

I think giving the Govt this kind of power is really asking for trouble, and from what gustov posted above, the team doesn't seem to be "with the times".

If they do implement a filter, I really don't believe that it will stop those types of people offending. They will just do more to cover their tracks and utilize other technologies to achieve the same goal.

Transprancy is definitely the key should anything like this happen. Keeping users (Legitmate) in the dark as to whats filtered and whats not is just asking for trouble no matter which way you look at it.

And dear I say it, it reminds me of North Korea's restraints on the internet (specifically).
I saw a news report not so long ago, and they tried to access CNN from a North Korean computer and it was filtered. You couldn't access it at all.

Honestly, I don't know where to go from here, however, I just feel that this would be more of a step backwards. than a step forwards.

-Aaron

Comment by t94xr, on 12-JUL-2009 10:44

I'm all for blocking child porn and all, but what fightens me is the abuse - NZFACT & RIANZ might want to take advantage of the fact of the filtering to prevent access to any websites it perceives as objectional, as in music websites.

Such of what has been observed by the Australian Firewall, where it blocked child porn and access to almost every non-legal mp3 website on the planet, every legit porn site known to man, and even competitors having the competition blocked.

Comment by Kimeros, on 12-JUL-2009 18:09

Another FAQ for those interested in the more technical aspects of the filtering system:

http://thomasbeagle.net/2009/07/12/nz-internet-filtering-technical-faq/

Comment by Jason, on 13-JUL-2009 10:15

@joseph, impressive smear on Gustov. I'm impressed with how quickly it went from a polite discussion to "Everyone who objects is pro-kiddie porn".

How to make the list public:

1) Find a site that is likely to be filtered. WikiLeak's copy of the Aussie list is good to use.
2) Traceroute the site.
3) If the route shows up as being to the DIA, you've got a filtered location.
4) Get a route to an unfiltered location. Google.com is probably good.
5) Find the _earliest_ difference.

Then, foreach IP Address:
1) Send out an ICMP packet with a TTL set to the number of hops to the difference.
2) When the timeout packet returns compare it to the DIA router.
3) Output the IP address when it matches.

Nice, cheap and easy probes to make the list public. How many UDP packets can you send out in a second?

Comment by Richard, on 15-JUL-2009 08:08

All widespread Internet censorship schemes are doomed to inevitably fail. I give it six months.

Comment by Trittbretttreter, on 16-JUL-2009 03:14

Greetings from Germany. I'm surprised this discussion has been limited to NZ and Australia so far. Over here in Germany we have a situation alike: The ministry for family affairs wants to implement internet filtering against child pornography. Despite protests, despite an online petition with more than 130.000 subscribers and despite less than solid "facts" for such filtering, a law called "Zugangserschwernisgesetz" ("Law to complicate access to child pornography") was passed and may become effective within weeks now.

There's one point I think noone mentioned so far. If the government/the police know the address of a site that contains child pornography - why would you want to put a filter on it? Why not remove the site? As far as I know, most countries do have laws against child pornography. All you'd have to do is inform the webhoster that their service is being misused. If there's real kiddie porn hosted there, I suppose 99% of webhosters all around the world would happily shut down the website within a few hours and they would just as happily file a law suit against their own customer due to illegal action.

Besides, the IWF also stated that the majority of all kiddie porn is hosted in western Europe, the US and Australia. All of these countries definitely have laws against that, so you wouldn't even have to hope that the webhoster agrees with your opinion - there are official ways to contact the authorities and inform them about offending websites.

So if you manage to remove, say, 95% of all child porn from the internet, that I would call a real success and it would render filtering all around the world pretty useless and it would be indeed a waste of tax payers money.

Besides, several filter lists from scandinavian countries as well as australian lists have been published months ago. They're free for download at Wikileads and other sites. Of course, while our ministers and politicians argued that we NEED to ACT NOW, they didn't even bother to remove the sites on those lists. For months, they did NOTHING. Didn't contact federal police, didn't contact the webhosters, they just sat there and talked about how important it was to implement filters.

So finally citizen's rights groups wrote a script to contact all hosters who hosted sites that were on those lists (more than 1000 IIRC). Some 60 sites were taken down by the webhosters within hours, while the majority of the hosters said that they couldn't find any objectionable material. Pretty much all of them responded that they had not been contacted about those sites before.

I think with a force of just a few cops who unterstand ICMP and who know how to write an email, you could take down most of the kiddie porn within a matter of days, so I really don't see why anyone would want to implement expensive and faulty censorship with a high risk of abuse by future governments.

Comment by saria, on 24-JUL-2009 17:12

hi to friends
im from iran .
the large of site is filter by government.
and we need to new filter that can to the site we need.
if anybody can help us???