The case for mandatory internet filtering

Forums › ICT Policies and Regulation › The case for mandatory internet filtering

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | ... | 11

809 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1769196 23-Apr-2017 13:26

Talkiet:
PaulBags:
Talkiet:

Rikkitic:

There is a lot to go through here and I will take the time to do it, but my first reaction is that you (or anyone else) have no business deciding what is appropriate content for me to access. I deeply resent the suggestion that you think you do. In this society there are adults, children and the mentally disabled. The latter two are special categories deemed in need of protection. Adults are assumed to be capable of making adult choices. I do not like you implying that I am a child or mentally disabled.

What about someone implying that _ILLEGAL_ material should be able to be blocked? Is that ok?

Cheers - N

What illegal material? If material is illegal it's because of the harms creating it causes, in which case it'll still happen if it's filtered and no harm is prevented.

I agree with law enforcement on the internet, but that's not what filtering is.

And what harm is caused by a filter? Lose of transparency and public trust. The blacklist becomes a shopping list for criminals. Illegal activity is driven further underground where it's harder to police.

TBH I'm still not seeing any coherent case for mandatory filtering, just lot's of "don't like bad stuff". Well, for the most part the anti-filtering side agrees there. So show us how mandatory filtering prevents real harms, rather than simply sating moral panic. Until that case is made I see no point in looking at the harms filtering causes and looking to weigh the balence.

No, because there are decent arguments both sides. I happen to think it's _reasonable_ to block some material and you don't. A bit like some parts of society agree with certain laws and some don't

Cheer s- N

A belief is reasonable if there's reasons for it, so far those reasons are unclear and the belief seems to be based instead on preconceptions. But if you don't want to dive into it for professional reasons that's cool. OP OTOH hasn't really made a case either though, and according to them it's their job to do so - so, yeah.

Rikkitic

Awrrr
18662 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1769271 23-Apr-2017 16:39

Talkiet:

Rikkitic:

Agree completely with the above. @Talkiet: How does filtering help anything? Those 'illegal materials' have already been created. And again, for the umpteenth time, filtering doesn't work. It has no effect whatsoever on the sites where most illegal material exists.

Sorry, I'm not going to continue this discussion - you're presenting factually inaccurate statements there. "no effect whatsoever"? Wrong. For YOU perhaps true, across a large userbase, WRONG.

I'm out sorry, while this currently has nothing to do with my day job, it might get there and for that reason alone I'm being careful about what I say. Nothing I have said on this topic represents any company policy that I know of. (If it does, it's co-incidence).

Cheers - N

I also respect your wish not to involve your employer in this. For the sake of clarification, what I was referring to was the inability to filter sources that are not part of the regular web. I will continue this discussion with OP if he so wishes but will leave you out of it.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Lias

5589 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1769531 24-Apr-2017 10:01

No organisation, governmental or otherwise has any place regulating or controlling content on the internet, and ISP's should be investing in ensuring their customers have total anonymity, and provide an unblocked unfiltered internet. Our ISPs here are gutless compared to some overseas, take IINet and Bredbandsbolaget for instance who happily went to court vs our ISP's that rolled over at the mere threat of a lawsuit from Sky.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

MikeB4

18435 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#1769537 24-Apr-2017 10:18

Lias:

No organisation, governmental or otherwise has any place regulating or controlling content on the internet, and ISP's should be investing in ensuring their customers have total anonymity, and provide an unblocked unfiltered internet. Our ISPs here are gutless compared to some overseas, take IINet and Bredbandsbolaget for instance who happily went to court vs our ISP's that rolled over at the mere threat of a lawsuit from Sky.

Why?

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79289 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#1769561 24-Apr-2017 10:26

MikeB4:

Lias:

No organisation, governmental or otherwise has any place regulating or controlling content on the internet, and ISP's should be investing in ensuring their customers have total anonymity, and provide an unblocked unfiltered internet. Our ISPs here are gutless compared to some overseas, take IINet and Bredbandsbolaget for instance who happily went to court vs our ISP's that rolled over at the mere threat of a lawsuit from Sky.

Why?

Because information must be free (as in freedom).

Take the case of Facebook. They regulate information heavily by using third world countries' workforce to look at images all day. What do they do? Due to difference in the way our cultures think they block photos of famous sculptures because of a breast here or a penis there. Or taking out/blocking groups that support breastfeeding for posting photos of mothers feeding their babies. Or taking out groups or breast cancer survivors for their discussions of breasts.

Also happens that some filters block access to discussions about curbing child pornography because automated systems can't discern between the content itself and the discussion on how to limit the content.

shanehobson

68 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

#1769995 24-Apr-2017 20:05

freitasm:

Because information must be free (as in freedom).

Are you saying all information must be free or all information carried across the internet ? If you mean all information must be free, are you suggesting that printed material that is currently age restricted or banned completely should be permitted on our book shelves ?

If you're saying that restriction of some printed material is acceptable but not online material then why should the internet be treated differently from any other publicly accessible infrastructure ?

A note to those questioning my motives : I'm not here to sell to you. Nor am I trying to change your opinion any more than I would try to change your religion. I'm interested in hearing the opinions of those who are opposed to mandatory internet filtering. Please do not assume from my statements and questions that I support mandatory filtering.

MikeB4

18435 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#1769998 24-Apr-2017 20:10

freitasm:

MikeB4:

Lias:

No organisation, governmental or otherwise has any place regulating or controlling content on the internet, and ISP's should be investing in ensuring their customers have total anonymity, and provide an unblocked unfiltered internet. Our ISPs here are gutless compared to some overseas, take IINet and Bredbandsbolaget for instance who happily went to court vs our ISP's that rolled over at the mere threat of a lawsuit from Sky.

Why?

Because information must be free (as in freedom).

Take the case of Facebook. They regulate information heavily by using third world countries' workforce to look at images all day. What do they do? Due to difference in the way our cultures think they block photos of famous sculptures because of a breast here or a penis there. Or taking out/blocking groups that support breastfeeding for posting photos of mothers feeding their babies. Or taking out groups or breast cancer survivors for their discussions of breasts.

Also happens that some filters block access to discussions about curbing child pornography because automated systems can't discern between the content itself and the discussion on how to limit the content.

Thank you for your answer. While I do not completely agree with you I do get where you are coming from. Your reply is food for thought.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79289 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#1770006 24-Apr-2017 20:32

shanehobson:

freitasm:

Because information must be free (as in freedom).

Are you saying all information must be free or all information carried across the internet ? If you mean all information must be free, are you suggesting that printed material that is currently age restricted or banned completely should be permitted on our book shelves ?

Age restriction is way different than filtering. Applying this to the Internet is also more difficult as no one knows for sure who is using a connection at any given time, without extreme privacy invasion.

As for banned material, in real life people can buy a book and smuggle it in the suitcase. If caught then there are penalties but search and apprehension requires probable cause, and constant monitoring of everything you're doing without a warrant is not acceptable. A tap where everything you are looking at is constantly being monitored is way over the line of invasion of privacy and unwarranted surveillance.

shanehobson

68 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

#1770011 24-Apr-2017 20:43

freitasm:

Age restriction is way different than filtering. Applying this to the Internet is also more difficult as no one knows for sure who is using a connection at any given time, without extreme privacy invasion.

As for banned material, in real life people can buy a book and smuggle it in the suitcase. If caught then there are penalties but search and apprehension requires probable cause, and constant monitoring of everything you're doing without a warrant is not acceptable. A tap where everything you are looking at is constantly being monitored is way over the line of invasion of privacy and unwarranted surveillance.

With current technology, age restriction is difficult to implement for online material, so let's stick with banned material to simplify the discussion.

Yes, people can buy contraband overseas and smuggle it in their suitcase. I don't know the answer to this, but are NZ Customs permitted to pull people at random from the queue and search bags (let's assume they have sufficient resources to do this) ?

What about material posted into NZ ? It's likely that a large portion of our incoming postal items are examined by x-ray, sniffer dog or sniffer machine. Where contraband is found, it's either destroyed, or sent through to the recipient with monitoring of some sort. We have no choice in the matter of whether our parcels from are inspected or not because a border inspection that allowed people to opt-out would be ineffective.

Particularly for posted articles, this seems very close to a mandatory internet filtering analogy. All packets are inspected for contraband and either dropped (blocked) or forwarded to the recipient and authorities alerted.

We seem to accept this 'filtering' in the real world to help keep meth ingredients out of our society, so why shouldn't we accept it for damaging online material ?

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#1770053 25-Apr-2017 01:41

If the aim is to catch people viewing or trying to view kid porn. Then a far better way would be to not block anything, But still have a blacklist of sites. When someone views a blacklisted website. The Police, DIA ect get notified, and all of the accesses of blacklisted sites get logged. This means that viewers don't know that they are being watched, the owner of the banned website doesn't know that their visitors are being tracked. The blacklist itself will be far easier to be kept secret. The Police will easily be able to tell from the logs who are active consumers of child porn. Vs those who only ended up on such a website due to typing a web address wrong, being a victim themselves due to a DNS cache poisoning attack that redirected them to that website instead of to say google.com or youtube.com

With filtering in place, someone hitting the filter will then figure out a way around it if they want to access kid porn. Which will probably then be harder for the police to monitor. Yet someone typing www.blockedwebsite.co.nz into their browser, and then getting the "you have been blocked" webpage, doesn't actually prove anything. Would that person have viewed kid porn if that site hadn't been blocked? Or did they just type the address wrong ect. So having filtering in place may actually be causing more harm than good.

A different analogy - Imagine I discover a security flaw in the internet banking system of a major bank that allowed me to steal money from any bank account with that bank. Obviously the best thing would be if the bank immediately fixed that security problem. Yet if we view filtering as the answer, then the bank would stop people from accessing any information about the security problem. And just hoping that the bad guys never find out about it. As just having knowledge of the existence of such a security problem is not proof that you have actually used it to steal money.

Going back to kid porn, The first and best option should always be stopping those who produce or create it. Second should be those who view it (identifying viewers and bringing them before the courts). And a distant 3rd is filtering. As filtering is the equivalent of shooting the messenger. It doesn't remove either the supply or the demand for kid porn or anything else that is "bad".

Rikkitic

Awrrr
18662 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1770066 25-Apr-2017 08:30

It is also worth pointing out that filtering is after the fact. Much better to stop it at the source. By the time it gets filtered, the child has already been abused (or whatever the crime is has been committed). Nothing here has changed my mind that filtering is essentially a lie that makes very little real difference. It looks like doing something, is relatively easy (as opposed to detection at the source) and makes people feel better, but it does almost nothing to prevent victimisation. It does not remove market demand. If you look at recent arrests over the past year or so, none of these pornography rings were using filterable web sites as a means of distribution. Child abuse images have gone deep underground, participation is by invitation only, and material is exchanged in closed groups. Filtering cannot touch any of this. Better to put the resources into detection. Good police work takes a lot of time and effort. There are no shortcuts.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Rikkitic

Awrrr
18662 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1770078 25-Apr-2017 09:22

shanehobson:

What about material posted into NZ ? It's likely that a large portion of our incoming postal items are examined by x-ray, sniffer dog or sniffer machine. Where contraband is found, it's either destroyed, or sent through to the recipient with monitoring of some sort. We have no choice in the matter of whether our parcels from are inspected or not because a border inspection that allowed people to opt-out would be ineffective.

Particularly for posted articles, this seems very close to a mandatory internet filtering analogy. All packets are inspected for contraband and either dropped (blocked) or forwarded to the recipient and authorities alerted.

We seem to accept this 'filtering' in the real world to help keep meth ingredients out of our society, so why shouldn't we accept it for damaging online material ?

This is a fake argument. Inspection of imported goods is generally based on probable cause (an authorised official has reason to suspect the item) and is subject to specific procedures. Internet communications are information, not goods. In terms of the postal analogy they are a letter, rather than a parcel. By the same analogy, Internet filtering is the equivalent of opening and reading every private letter that goes through the postal system. Only the security services are allowed to do that, and only under strict controls. This kind of blanket surveillance would mean a gross invasion of personal privacy and no-one in this country would accept that.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

cadman

1014 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1770320 25-Apr-2017 19:36

Talkiet:

cadman:

There is no case for internet filtering because I don't trust special interest groups to not hijack it to further their own agendas.

By logical extension then you don't trust the government to make laws so you don't think there should be any laws either?

And objectively, you should be stating that YOU can't see a case, not that "there is no case". It's your opinion, not fact.

N.

That's not a logical extension at all and I never said it was anything other than my opinion.

Geektastic

17943 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1770339 25-Apr-2017 20:14

This is a tricky one.

On the one hand, I dislike the concept of official censorship outside times of war etc.

NZ is a more regulated place than it seems to think it is, though. For example, you cannot even name your child here without official approval. NZers think they have freedom, and yet most of the countryside is a privately owned fiefdom to which they have no access. Etc.

If it's illegal to possess X materials in print, then it is illegal to 'possess' it on your PC presumably, since it must be the content that is illegal not the delivery method. I'd tend toward catching and prosecuting offenders not trying to police the un-policeable internet, personally.

Lias

5589 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1770353 25-Apr-2017 20:53

You might not agree with it, I certainly didn't at first and I still don't agree 100%, but this article and its followup is worthy of a read.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | ... | 11