Group items tagged

Spam filters are not always smart, in some cases results into the blocking of harmless websites or e-mails

Online censorship is growing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world," said John Palfrey, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. South Korea's filtering efforts are very narrow in scope, but heavily censor one topic, North Korea;

This is 5 years of global survey on political, social and national security filtering conducted May 18, 2007

The University of Sydney's IT Alumni Association will next week bring together IT experts in networking, industry, law, child welfare and ethics to discuss the Federal Government's plans to introduce compulsory internet filtering by Internet Service Providers. Forum details When 6.30pm for a 7pm start, Wednesday 28 April 2010 Where Boardroom (Room 124), School of IT Building, 1 Cleveland Street, The University of Sydney How Entry is free and open to the public but online registration by 23 April is essential. For more information http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/alumni/discussion_forum.shtml

This report is about the errors the filtering software might make. Briefly, there are two kinds of misktakes, over-blocking and underblocking. The effects of each kind of errors are evaluated.

Four Corners and Q&A are covering the mandatory ISP filter debate tonight, should be a great double bill. Now its off the agenda till after the election, so the Government clearly misjudged the public reaction. Thanks to widespread media coverage on the inherent flaws of the MISP, coupled with the activism of protest movements such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Pirate Party, its fair to say that the general public have moved beyond the Government's black and white positioning of the proposal.

Thanks for the reminder!

The federal government's own experts have slammed the internet filter as"difficult" to implement, and saying it would "impose siginficant burdens on the industry". Expert and government report author Louise Collins also suggested the blacklist would have "currency" and could actually serve as a directory for paedophiles.

A speech by Stephen Collins, member of the EFA Board, that he gave at Parliament House recently to highlight the problems with the mandatory filter.

Guest blog on Jenkins' MIT site about internet filtering in Australia by Mark McLelland from University of Wollongong.

My first blog post about my topic - "protest movements". I am specifically looking at the Australian protest movement against the Government's proposed ISP filtering legislation.

The Internet is changing every seconds and obviously getting to be worriyng in some aspects. However, free access to information, free expression and participation, and thus free access to the world is now becoming narrowed due to govermental regulations and censorship. And who is going to decide which websites should be banned or not? It seems to be worried that increasingly soficiticated leak could be created by computer geeks to retrieve the freedom of the internet.

Minister Stephen Conroy challenges Google's credibility in response to the search engine giant's criticism of Australia's looming mandatory filtering. Interestingly he also says he is unaware of complaints from Hilary Clinton - which his department responded to in the previous article I posted. Interesting...

Even Piers Ackerman thinks the Government's proposed ISP filtering is a bad idea! Possibly the first time I've ever been on the same side of a debate as Ackerman, makes me feel a little nauseous. Granted, this is really just another avenue of Rudd/Labor bashing for him, but it shows that there are people on both sides of the political divide who oppose internet censorship.

Is Conroy backing down or just trying a new approach. the Minister has described the MISP as a 'modest measure today', in an effort to make it sound like a perfectly normal - or uncontroversial - thing to do...

The article looks at the growing global trend for net regulation. Our interest is where Australia, as a result of our drafted internet filtering system, fits in this global picture of regulation. Reporters Without Borders has drawn up lists which groups nations in terms of their level of regulation. Appropriately as a democracy Australia is not listed under "Enemies of the Internet" which names China, North Korea, Egypt and Cuba. Yet disconcertingly we are given the label of "Under Surveillance" which lists us alongside Turkey, Russia, South Korea and the UAE.

How on earth can he guarantee that this will be 100 percent accurate - with no overblocking, and no underblocking!?!?! And in this interview, he advises that this is not a limit on freedom of speech and that the internet should not be considered a special platform.

This article discusses how the Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has dismissed the Internet as a special medium, claiming that it is nothing more than, "just a communication distrbution platform." Which, is quite short sighted, as the notion of open source, crowd sourcing, collective/collecting intelligence, collaborative intelligence is achievable because of the Internet. Conroy also claims that his filter is 100 percent accurate..." which begs to question, according to who? Filtering, content only prevents access, it does not prevent those individuals from crimnimal acts offline, nor does it address how to protect victims from their predators.

As mentioned in the tutorial: Sharleen spent 16 years under 24/7 house arrest in NSW. No one is actually sure what legislation she was detained under. Many other people were, and still are, doing exactly what she did. However, she broadcast the fact on national television and became a scapegoat. The intersection of media and politics, the forcing of action and then lack of transparency around the forced actions are very reminiscent of the Internet Filter and Black List debate.

Evidence that it really isn't hard to bypass an ISP filter. This provides a walk though so if you didn't know how - now you do

surprise surprise, the MISP is off the agenda till after the election...

"we are not amused".....i don't think this can be resurrected...unless there's a huge public outcry about something and they wheel it back in.

how much time and money has been wasted on these initiatives that get shelved?

This offers an overview of how the debate over the proposed mandatory internet filtering law has played out to date. In particular it outlines key voices in the debate and their stance.

EFA look at the answers provided Senator Conroy's office to the Questions on Notice asked by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam. EFA's summary is accompanied with their comment to each of the Ministry's responses but at the end you are able download the entire exchange.