It recently came to light (thanks to some good reporting) that the Government has been fishing around with ISPs for their support on a new and radical data retention policy. This would legally oblige telcos to retain large amounts of data about their customers' communications activities in case law enforcement needed them at some point in the future.

We know this because some in the industry have spoken out, quietly, about the meetings. The Government, it would seem, would prefer to conduct them in complete and total secrecy.

Ben Grubb at the Sydney Morning Herald today shared some documents he obtained under Freedom of Information about the briefings between the Attorney-General's department and the industry. The screenshot below is indicative of the rest of the document - besides the page numbers, nothing substantive is left uncensored. Even the glossary of terms is heavily elided. One can only imagine the officer responsible for the editing must have made a few trips to the stationery cupboard for a fresh texta.

(more...)

We're hiring! As the country heads into an election and scrutiny of policies and issues intensifies, EFA needs help with our outreach efforts and so we're looking for somebody to come on board and help get the message out to the community.

Love social networking? Passionate about the issues? We'd like to know you.

Have a look at the description of the position and get in touch.

It's an old chestnut, being bewildered at the "opposition to the governments plan to protect kids", and this time it was put forward by Dr Joe Tucci from The Australian Childhood Foundation .  When supporters of government proposals to censor the Internet run this line, they tacitly imply that those who disagree with them are supporting the abuse of children - or at the very least holding other matters in higher regard to the detriment of children.

To me this is very distressing, in my work with EFA I've had this one levelled at me by Brg. Jim Wallace (ret.), and now Dr Tucci on Sunrise this morning and in reality nothing could be further from the truth.  I understand how passionate Jim and Joe are about their causes, but they are wrong in how they approach them, and it's difficult to find any class in their painting of people who disagree with them as supporters of child abuse.

EFA's position on this matter is clear.

Mandatory Internet censorship, and for that matter voluntary censorship, will not protect children in any impactful sense. While voluntary censorship fixes some of the problems of the mandatory model, the overwhelming preponderance of content which it is illegal to possess is still not published on the open web but rather inside of secret networks of criminal associates.  While there is no benefit to censorship for children, a national censorship system represents a power over free speech that no western democracy has ever had - sure some have come close, with Germany even getting so far as to pass a law allowing it before deciding against it anyway, and the UK has attempted for seven years to make voluntary censorship work and has only really succeeded in breaking Wikipedia.  The "refused classification" category, unique to Australia,  is a mixed bag of illegal-to-possess material that police should be appropriately resourced to deal with (as in all crime), and perfectly legal material that an open government has no business stopping adults from accessing.

So what should we do?

We have options.  Rather than spend more than $40m on an Internet censorship system that won't work, we could take up the US Ambassador to Australia's offer for assistance in combating child abuse as I mentioned on Sunrise; offered by a country that can't censor the Internet because of constitutional rights.  This is an important thing to consider for two reasons, the first being that our long-history of alliance with the United States could benefit enormously from their expertise, and secondly it gives us a reason to stop and consider what  doing something that is impossible in a country with a legal right to free speech means.

We could take the approach of German anti-censorship campaigner Alvar Freude and contact hosting providers to advise them what their resources are being used for (Freude knocked 60 child abuse websites off the Internet in one day in this way), or we could apply a host of other crime prevention methods that police already use to track and deal with people who delight in the abuse of children.

What we shouldn't do, is implement a system that is illegal or abandoned in other countries, which won't protect children, will waste tens of millions of dollars and represent an unheard of intrusion into the lives of law abiding families.

While we do that, I'd appreciate no further inferences that I don't understand or care about the abuse of children.  Those inferences make me stare at the photos my sister sends me of my 6 month old niece, and question why we can't advocate online rights without becoming the subject of baseless attacks.

Friday's announcement by Minister Stephen Conroy that the filter would be put on the back burner pending a review seems like good news. In the sense that Australians' net connections will remain uncensored by the Government in 2011, this is indeed something to be pleased about. The filter remains very much alive, though, and the promised review is unlikely to make much difference.

The review will be run by an as-yet-unnamed party and will investigate whether the RC category of content remains in line with community expectations. Given that the logistics of coordinating such a review with the states, and the length of time a proper review that incorporated community feedback would take, it would seem further progress on getting the filter legislation through Parliament is at least a year away.

To our great surprise, the Minister appears to have endorsed several of the best ideas received in their review of filter transparency, by agreeing to several measures (including some suggested by us [PDF])  that attempt to lessen the corrosive effects of a secret blacklist. Conroy announced that:

• Australian site owners will be notified when their content is added to the blacklist;
• A standard block notification will be shown, making it clear the page was deliberately blocked by the government;
• The Classification Board, rather than ACMA, will decide on the RC status of submitted URLs;
• An annual review of the list will be conducted.

It's good that the issues have finally got some attention, but it is important to note that nothing has really changed here as far as the value of this policy is concerned. Firstly, the filter still has no clear policy goal; it will still neither help parents nor prevent the spread of illegal material. Secondly, a secret blacklist, the scope of which could easily increase over time, is always going to be a big worry.

Perhaps one positive outcome from the announcement will be a more critical look at how classification can be applied to the internet. The Minister has gone out of his way during this debate to draw attention away from the classification of web pages and towards the nastiness of material at the extreme end of the spectrum. This talk of the Classification Board and a review of the RC category highlights what the Government is proposing: to apply a system designed for books, movies and magazines to the global internet. Since it will never be possible to review a significant number of web pages (and they would in any case be out of date by the time the decision was published), classification can never achieve anything but the waste of a few million of taxpayer funds. The Government has missed an excellent opportunity to go back to the drawing board - instead, they are fiddling around with the details of a plan that is fundamentally ill-conceived.

(more...)

Electronic Frontiers Australia today welcomed the delay in the Gillard Government's internet censorship policy but expressed disappointment that it is still on track to be implemented in the Government's next term.

In an announcement today, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy indicated that the filter will be delayed until a 12-month review of the "Refused Classification" category is completed in conjunction with the states.

"While we welcome a review of the RC category, this is just tinkering around the edges of the filter's problems," said EFA Chair Colin Jacobs. "Applying a classification scheme designed for books and movies to the internet was never going to work. Altering the definition of one category won't change the fact that the government will never, ever, be able to review enough web pages to make any difference to anyone."

The Minister also announced that Australia's 3 largest ISPs will be implementing a voluntary filter targeted only at child abuse material. "The industry has been trying to engage with the Minister for a long time, and we're glad he finally decided to listen. It's still not clear who will be helped by taking the next step to a compulsory government filter," said Jacobs. The Minister also announced several measures designed to improve transparency, but indicated the blacklist would remain secret.

"The Minister had an excellent chance today to let the filter die a natural death. Instead they've left the ailing policy on life support for another year. We still urge the Government to listen to the experts, drop the filter, and focus on improving broadband access for all Australians," said Jacobs.

- Ends -

(more...)