PO Box 382 North Adelaide SA 5006
Email: secretary@efa.org.au
Fidonet: EFA at 3:800/846
Phone: 08 8357 8844 Fax: 08 8373 3829
Your volunteer voice on the electronic frontier.
EFA Newsletter - January
1998
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
EFA Newsletter, Vol. 4 No.1, January 1998
ISSN 1329-6906
In This Issue
Editorial: Attorneys-General to impose draconian censorship measures for
Australians
At its meeting in Hobart last month, the States, Territories and
Federal Attorneys-General (SCAG) agreed to get tough. They all agreed
that criminal sanctions should apply to people who place offensive or illegal material on the Internet! They are so sure of this that they issued a news release to that effect.
Not only are authors in their sights, but also Internet Service Providers
who will also bear the brunt of this "get tough" attitude. If a service provider knowingly places offensive or illegal material on the system; or invites (or conspires with, incites, aids or abets) others to place it there, or to access that material, or transmits it; then he or she would be actively participating in an offence. The effect of this is to extend criminal liability beyond the complicity offences, which require some degree of active participation, to a new offence of knowingly, though passively, allowing another person to commit an offence.
Our advice to Internet Service Providers is to become, if you're not
already, like the three wise monkeys. It is indeed in your very best interest to "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil".
As part of its campaign against unnecessary and unworkable Internet
regulatory proposals, EFA is promoting an online Petition to be presented in the Senate. We strongly urge you to, if you have not done so already, to show your opposition to Internet censorship by signing the petition. This petition already has almost 2500 signatures, add yours soon before it's presented to the Federal Parliament in their next sitting.
New Senate Inquiry
SELF-REGULATION IN THE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRIES
INQUIRY is the name of the new brief for the new Senate
Select Committee on Information Technologies which has been appointed,
on a motion by the chair of the old committee, Senator Tierney.
The Terms of Reference of the new Committee are to evaluate the
appropriateness, effectiveness and privacy implications of the existing
self-regulatory framework in relation to the information and communications
industries and, in particular, the adequacy of the complaints regime. On reading the fine print, it is specifically geared towards the Codes
of Practice registered presently with the ABA under s.123 of the Broadcasting Services Act (ie) TV and radio.
As advised in the last EFA Newsletter, the members of the new committee
are:
Submissions have been invited from 'selected' groups and individuals, however the secretary will receive submission from any one. Information for those wishing to make submissions is available on-line at http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/wit_sub/index.htm. The public hearings series will start in the first week of February.
Full details are available from http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/advert/it_inq.htm
EFA urges all Internet users, and industry groups to make a submission
to this Inquiry as soon as possible. EFA's response when available,
will be at http://www.efa.org.au/Publish/senate98.html.
The PICSRules specification released as a Recommendation
The PICSRules document defines "a language for writing profiles, which are filtering rules that allow
or block access to URLs based on PICS labels that describe those URLs.
This language is intended as a transmission format; individual implementations
must be able to read and write their specifications in this language, but
need not use this format internally. " Herein is an innocent statement
of enabling technology. However behind this lies a sinister and
serious threat to the Internet. Why?
PICSRules enables definitions to be created which can be applied to
an individual computer, a school, a university, a single ISP, many ISPs
via the upstream connection, a geographical region, a country, a continent
- the whole world. It does it in such a way as to be 'difficult', to say the least, for an individual user to divine the meaning of the
profile or to alter or amend such in order to more closely meet ones's
own needs for protection. According to an eminent Internaut, Tim
Berners-Lee,
So Metadata, PICS and otherwise, is powerful, as is information in
general. Constant vigilance by concerned members of the public, industry
and government is a very important part of the system of controls which
keeps society healthy. The PICS technology was created specifically
in order [to] reduce the risk of government censorship in civilized countries.
It was the result of members of the industrial community being concerned
about the behaviour of government. The indications are that in this it
will succeed, but that does not remove the need for such vigilance.
[ Philosophy of the
Web - Filtering and Censorship ]
It is unlikely that, in its present form, it will ever win the support
of the majority of Internet users and gain widespread acceptance.
It appears to be a solution to a problem which surveys of Internet users
(see International and Australian surveys items below) suggest
doesn't exist.
GILC submission to W3C on PICSRules
EFA was instrumental in sponsoring a submission
to W3C on PICSRules from Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC)
members in which the potential for abuse of PICSRules was highlighted.
The submission pointed out the potential for the use of PICSRules profiles
for government-imposed censorship. PICSRules facilitates the implementation
of server/proxy-based filtering thus providing a more simplified means
of enabling upstream censorship, beyond the control of the end user.
The Director of W3C, Tim Berners-Lee, has responded to the GILC criticism
with some comments
on the philosophy of PICSRules.
EFA is continuing to work with other GILC members to have our continuing
concerns with PICS and PICSRules more adequately addressed by W3C.
Censorware
A recent report "From Ada to Yoyo"
prepared by The Censorware Project
should be compulsory reading. for all EFA Newsletter readers.
In it the authors discuss Cyber
Patrol software which is used to filter the internet and block content
based on one or more categories: nudity, alcohol, etc. Its conclusion is
that "Cyber Patrol blocks a great many sites which are not deserving, and
that furthermore, looking at past reports of the product's accuracy, fixing
these errors is a low priority. "
EFA commends it to you as an extremely important addition to the arsenal
of anti censorship weapons.
Latest Internet User Survey
The results of the 8th GVU survey are at http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1997-10
Most interesting and relevant findings include:
-
The Web has become an important tool to access information, 84% of
the users report that they consider access to the Web indispensable, nearly
the same percentage as those who feel email is indispensable
-
The Web remains a very viable political medium, with 82.85% of respondents
reporting that they were registered to vote
-
The issues that are most important are privacy (30.49%), followed by censorship
(24.18%) and navigation (16.65%). Among women, privacy was the most
important issue. For men censorship is most important, with privacy a close
second. As with the last survey, younger people are more concerned about
censorship than are older respondents. Older respondents are more concerned
about privacy
-
The frequency with which respondents use the web is on par with the previous
survey with 85% accessing at least once a day and half of those using it
more often than 4 times a day
-
The percentage of female respondents to the survey (38.5%) has unexpectedly
increased 7% from previous surveys in the US
Latest Australian Internet User Survey
Results from the latest www.consult
survey (10500 Australian Internet Users, November 1997) show continuing
opposition to censorship of the Internet. They come just a month
after Australian Attorneys-General promise tough Internet censorship -
and in the same week as China announced sweeping new Internet censorship
regulations. For those stories see http://cnn.com/WORLD/9712/30/china.internet.reut/index.html
and http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/971230/news/stories/internet_1.html.
Fewer than 8% of Australian Internet users believe there should be government censorship of the Internet. 60% think that parents alone should take responsibility whilst 30% think that no-one need censor
the Net.
EFA has consistently maintained that current legislation exists to deal
with illegal acts on the Internet and clearly Australians do not accept
that further censorship is necessary or desirable. The EFA media release on this subject is available at http://www.efa.org.au/Publish/PR980101.html
Support Open Standards - Email Netscape and Microsoft
If you believe in the open standards that have characterised the development
of the Internet over the past forty years, then you must visit http://www.webreview.com/97/12/05/dom/petition.html
where there is an article about a petition to these companies to
urge them to keep to standard HTML tags.
The petition at http://www.webcom1.com/anglais/cgi/petition.cgi/petition.tpl
emails the following message to both companies.
"I hereby protest against the way you develop your respective
browsers.
The increasing incompatibility between your products bothers all internauts
and content providers. For Net's sake, talk to each other! Match
up your tags,
attributes, margins, fonts, spacing... The Net is about cooperation,
not competition.
We have no use of your latest innovation, however wonderful, if it
only works with
your own software. The Internet cake is big enough for everyone. The
more
universal your codes, the nicer our pages and the more internauts.
Thank you."
Government bans Mathematics
The effect of current Australian Government regulations regarding export
of cryptographic software products is to place a ban on the use of
mathematics. For at the core of any such software are mathematical
algorithms that transform plain text into unintelligible text that can
only be decrypted by someone who possesses the relevant secret key.
In order to gain a licence to export such software, the developer must
submit the system to the
Defence Signals Directorate
for approval. The conditions under which a licence will be granted are
not publicly available, but are determined on a "case by case basis".
As a general rule however, DSD imposes the same rules that are applied
by the US Government to US-based software developers. Security systems
that employ strong cryptography are unlikely to gain an export licence
in Australia unless they incorporate key recovery or provide for escrow
of the private keys.
Similar restrictions in the USA have recently led to an outcry in Sweden,
where senior government officials were alarmed to discover that security
keys to the version of Lotus Notes they used were held by the US Government.
The irony in all this is that most cryptographic algorithms
are in the public domain. Furthermore, entire crypto-systems, of which PGP
is the best-known example, are also in the public domain - and the source code
is openly published. This makes a mockery of official policies whose stated
aim is to prevent criminal access to strong cryptography.
The genie is long out of the bottle. It is high time that governments
woke up to this fact and removed restrictions on cryptography that are
crippling the introduction of secure global electronic commerce.
EFA will shortly be announcing a campaign aimed at bringing the crypto
debate in Australia out into the open. If you wish to know more about
these issues, read the
EFA Crypto pages or
join the EFA Crypto mailing list. Contact
the Crypto Committee convenor Greg Taylor for more details.
Internet Crime Conference
The Australian Institute of Criminology
is holding a conference
which will look at how the Internet is being used for illegal activities
and how best to prevent such conduct from taking place - through the law,
technology or market-based crime prevention strategies based on self-help.
This conference will examine the nature and extent of Internet crime and
responses available to deal with it. at the University of Melbourne on
16th and 17th February, 1998
Conference themes
Is the Internet the 1990s equivalent of 'dodge city' where crime is rampant
and policing impossible? Or should the Internet be self-regulated
with users protected from crime primarily through technological means?
Day 1 will examine crimes of Internet vandalism, terrorism, obscene
and objectionable content, copyright infringement, and crimes involving
funds transfer and on-line commerce.
Day 2 will look at the solutions. These include the use of traditional
crime prevention strategies, legal controls, market-based solutions and
the use of technology itself.
EFA members can attract a group discount. If you're interested
in attending email the conference organisers (conference@netinfo.com.au) making sure you mention your EFA membership.
Community Networking Conference
The Third Community
Networking / Networking Communities Conference will be held Friday
27 and Saturday 28 February 1998, at the Victoria University of Technology
St. Albans Campus, Melbourne Australia. The conference is provided under
the sponsorship of the Victorian
Association of Community Information Centres Inc, Victoria
University of Technology and Oracle
Systems Australia.
The conference is designed for anyone interested in in enriching
communities through accessible electronic networking.
The conference aims to bring together a diverse range of people
involved in electronic networking to learn about practical and theoretical
issues in electronic networking and to establish an on-going coordinating
structure within Victoria / Australia for community electronic networking.
A preliminary program for the conference is now available and
promises to be a challenging program with well known speakers such as Dale
Spender, Julia Scholfield and Randy Stoecker. There will be many opportunities
for people from grass roots organisations to share their experiences. To
find out more and register your interest:
http://www.vicnet.net.au/~vacab/comunet3.htm
Membership Renewals
Membership renewals for 1997/98 came due in September 1997. EFA membership is only $20 per annum. If your dues are unpaid, please forward your subscription as soon as possible to support the cause of Net freedom.
You can renew your membership in any of the following ways:
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Cheque for $20 made payable to Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. forwarded
to PO Box 382, North Adelaide, 5006
-
Credit card payments may be faxed to (03) 9564 7729 or (08) 8373
3829
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Credit card details may be phoned to the treasurer on 0411 241 041
or vice-chair at (08) 8357 8844
-
Credit card payments may be sent using a PGP-encrypted message to jnunn@pobox.com
using this public key.
If any of your details have changed, please let membership@efa.org.au
know so as to update your record.
Lost members - if you are a member and did not receive email notification
of this newsletter, you are among the few members for whom we do not have
a valid email address. Please contact membership@efa.org.au
with your preferred email address(es).
If you can take a more active role please contact volunteer@efa.org.au
to offer your services. We can really use you!
Stay in Touch with EFA
How to join
Membership of EFA costs just $20 per year and for that you get to belong
to the premier online civil liberties organisation in Australia; you get
issues of the Newsletter on line or in the mail if you have no electronic
address, you have the opportunity to contribute to the growth of Electronic
Frontiers Australia and volunteer your time and talents in this endeavour.
Please consider joining us.
Membership fees are payable each September and part fees apply to those
joining during the year:
-
If paid between September and December $20.00
-
If paid between January and March $15.00
-
If paid between April and June $10.00
-
If paid between July and September $20.00 (carries through to the following
September)
There is also a membership class of Life Member for which the once
only fee is $100.00.
Group Membership is open to associations and groups on the basis of
an annual fee of $300 or $0.10 per member, whichever is the greater.
The form to complete is available online at http://www.efa.org.au/JoinEFA/Welcome.html.
The membership form is also mailed automatically to anyone who sends email
to efa-info@efa.org.au
or netmail
to efa-info at 3:800/846.
How to follow EFA activities
-
On Usenet, read aus.org.efa (and comp.org.eff.talk
if you want the global picture).
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If you use Fidonet Echos, follow discussion in the "EFA" echo.
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Follow the links on our Web home page at http://www.efa.org.au/.
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Volunteer to help us. There's no better way to stay in touch than getting
involved yourself! Email volunteer@efa.org.au
if you are interested in helping.
About EFA
ELECTRONIC FRONTIERS AUSTRALIA INC. is a non-profit national organisation
formed in 1994 to promote and defend the civil liberties of users and operators
of networked systems. EFA's members are Net and BBS users and other people
with a common interest in the digital community, computer mediated communication
and online information services. EFA is associated with a number of online
civil liberties organisations around the world.
EFA's current objectives are:
-
(a)
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To protect and promote the civil liberties of users of computer based communications
systems and of those affected by their use.
-
(b)
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To advocate the amendment of laws and regulations in Australia and elsewhere
which restrict free speech and unfettered access to information.
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(c)
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To educate the community at large about the social, political, and civil
liberties issues involved in the use of computer based communications systems.
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(d)
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To support, encourage and advise on the development and use of computer
based communication systems, and related innovations.
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(e)
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To research and advise on the application of the law (both current and
proposed) to computer based communication systems and related technologies.
Policymakers and media representatives are encouraged to contact EFA for
input and comment where relevant.
On the Internet, you can find more information about EFA at our World
Wide Web site, http://www.efa.org.au/,
or by sending email to efa-info@efa.org.au.
Ways to get EFA information via Fidonet:
-
File request efa-info.efa, efa-info.lzh, EFA, ERR from node 3:800/846.
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Send netmail to efa-info at 3:800/846 and a copy of the EFA information
file will be bounced back.
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Log in to sawasdi BBS as "EFA" password "EFA" and download the files from
file area "EFA". The phone number for sawasdi is (08) 8261 7802.
Submissions to this newsletter are strongly encouraged. Ideas and brief
articles for future issues should be sent to editor@efa.org.au.
© Copyright 1998 Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc.
Permission is given for redistribution on networks, but distribution
via other media is subject to the written permission of the EFA Board.
Views expressed in this newsletter are those of the authors only,
and not necessarily those of Electronic Frontiers Australia.
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