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Crypto News - Legality of PGP export
EFA has recently obtained clearance from Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) to place a PGP mirror on its website. This was a test case to determine official policy regarding the status of intangible exports under current Australian export law, as well as an indication of the official view on liability for such exports.
Both these questions have now been answered. Under the terms of the clearance, which took 6 months of deliberation by DSD, EFA is required to place a warning notice on its mirror site. This notice must advise that downloading the software from outside Australia without approval from the Department of Defence could be a breach of Australian export control regulations.
It has long been the view of DSD that intangible exports were subject to the "spirit of the law". This latest ruling indicates that the view is still current, despite the fact that PGP is widely and legally available throughout the world from various mirror sites. The claim that Australian law is there to prevent terrorists, paedophiles and criminals from gaining access to strong crypto rings rather hollow in these circumstances.
An interesting outcome from this long-running saga is that DSD does not regard a website owner as an exporter under the relevant export regulations. Instead, responsibility is placed on the party downloading the software to comply with Australian law, notwithstanding the practical and jurisdictional issues involved. This is a significant concession, and means that DSD takes a rather different view from the US government. Few countries apart from the USA have yet grappled with the issue of intangible exports, although the UK government is currently proposing restrictions. The issue is likely to be a hot topic in meetings leading up to the next Wassenaar review due at the end of next year.
In other crypto news, the Defence Department has now updated the Defence
Strategic Goods List (DSGL) following the change to the Wassenaar lists
last year. The new lists are available at:
SA Liberals and WA Nationals reject Net censorship
Not everyone in the Coalition is in step with Senator Alston's plans to censor the Internet.
Both the National Party in West Australia and the SA Branch of the Liberal Party have called for the repeal of the Broadcasting Services (Online Services) Act.
Meanwhile responding to a query from EFA the Department of Justice in Victoria has advised that they will not be drafting Victorian legislation to complement the BSA(OS) Act, as requested by the Federal government. A departmental spokesperson indicated that they are satisfied with the Victorian Internet censorship legislation enacted in 1996.
EFA is pursuing the issue of complementary legislation with all State and Territory governments. In particular we will be looking at that part of the Act which foreshadows:
(3) The second component of the proposed scheme will be:
These proposals have the potential to criminalise law abiding adults and minors who receive unsolicited email, or who unintentionally find themselves having accessed illegal content after clicking on a web page link or newsgroup message. On the one hand the government claims blocking is necessary to protect users from inadvertent exposure to offensive material, yet on the other hand appears intent on criminalising users who have the misfortune to discover the law does not provide effective protection.
EFA Chair to attend Bertelsmann Internet Content Summit
EFA Chair Kim Heitman will be attending the Bertelsmann Foundation's Internet Content Summit in Germany in September. EFA considers there is a need for a voice representative of many Australian Internet users at the summit. The Australian Broadcasting Authority has been involved with this project and EFA is concerned, among other things, that pertinent questions put to U.S. and German respondents to the Bertelsmann survey were not put to Australians.
According to the Bertelsmann Foundation, a German think tank:
"The Internet Content Summit is the first milestone in the implementation of an international self-regulatory system to deal with the protection of minors online. The conference is organised and funded by the Bertelsmann Foundation in cooperation with INCORE (Internet Content Rating for Europe), supported by the Bavarian State Chancellery, and the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior.
The summit will bring together over 300 decision-makers and key experts from
politics, internet industry, media and the user community. After one year of
intensive work within an expert network the Bertelsmann Foundation will
present the 'Memorandum on Self-Regulation of Internet Content'. The
Memorandum contains practical recommendations for governments, industry, and
users to work together in developing a new culture of responsibility on the
Internet."
http://www.stiftung.bertelsmann.de/english/index.htm
IIA Releases new Code of Practice
The Internet Industry Association has released draft version 5 of its
industry Code of Practice, incorporating changes to conform with the
Broadcasting Services Act. The new code is available at:
http://www.iia.net.au/code.html
EFA will be submitting comments on the draft in due course and feedback from members is welcome.
National Australia Bank criticises Online Services Act
A report released last week by the National Australia Bank, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler sounds an alarm at the migration of Australian Internet expertise and resources overseas. The report says that there has been a 350 per cent increase in applications made to the Consul General in San Francisco from Australian companies that want to move to the United States.
One of the recommendations is that Australia should not seek to censor
Internet content as set out in the Broadcasting Services Amendment Act, but
should pursue other approaches at the international level and encourage the
application of child-safe measures in the home. Another 20 recommendations
relate to tax issues and the ability of companies to co-list on the
Australian Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9908/27/business/business2.html
Net Censorship rejected by Australians
An international survey has shown that the Australian public does not support government censorship of the Internet.
The survey was conducted in Australia, Germany and the USA by the Bertelsmann Foundation, in conjunction with the Australian Broadcasting Authority. The results show similar trends in all three countries, with the majority of parents being quite confident about their ability to control their children's access. This survey has confirmed previous Australian polls which have shown that most Australians do not want the government to tell them what they can see and read.
However, one vital question, which was put to German and U.S. respondents,
was eliminated from the Australian section of the survey. This question
asked whether parents or the government were best to decide what children
should see on the Internet. Fifty seven percent of Germans and eighty three
percent of Americans surveyed said that it should he parents who decide. The
omission of this question is deeply suspicious.
http://www.aba.gov.au/whats_new/index.htm
ACLU President attacks Net censorship
Echoing EFA's statement that the Online Services Act threatens to turn Australia into the global village idiot, Professor Nadine Strossen said the Act provided an open-ended licence for whoever enforced the law to inject it with their own values. Professor Strossen, who is President of the American Civil Liberties Union, was speaking at a seminar organised by the University of Melbourne's Centre for Media, Communication and Information Technology Law.
Author of 'Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights' Professor Strossen said: "If you are critiquing the government in power and the legal system for being sexist, then it seems to me the last thing you want to do is hand over to that power structure an inherently subjective tool which decides what expression is degrading and what is empowering and liberating."
"I think there is no substitute for the mature individual making her own decisions about what she wants to see and doesn't want to see. As far as adults are concerned, I think it's up to them."
Responding to a question about hate speech and racist material, Professor Strossen said:
"I think that people are entitled to hear ideas, even ideas that are outrageous and offensive. My father was a Holocaust survivor and - based on deep personal outrage and the harm that anti-Semitic policy can do - I would never say that we should not hear from those who have anti-Semitic ideas.
"Suppressing those ideas is really dangerous. I want to know who the people who have those ideas are, and I want a chance to answer them back."
New OFLC Guidelines restrict social and political issues
New classification guidelines for publications, to take effect from 1 September, reflect the increasing censorship of all media in Australia.
Instead of remaining focussed primarily on publications overwhelmingly devoted to pictures of sexual activity and nudity, the new guidelines place increased restrictions on, not only pictures, but written information involving "adult themes". Adult themes include social and political issues such as violence, crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, fetish, death, serious illness and racism, as well as sex and nudity.
According to the guidelines, unless pictures and written descriptions involving adult themes contain little or no detail, are generally not prominent and the strength of the effect on the reader is low, they are required to be classified Category 1 Restricted.
These changes appear likely to further restrict adults' freedom to read in Queensland where restricted publications are illegal to sell to anyone. They also provide increased opportunity to prevent teenagers, many of whom are above the age of consent, from accessing detailed information on safe sex and contraception.
It remains to be seen whether the guidelines will be implemented as written. They appear to require newspaper publishers to tone down reports of war, crime and violence and publish less impactful photos, else be sold in sealed wrappers and be banned in Queensland. Some editions of mainstream women's magazines dealing with sexual matters may be restricted. Theoretically, the guidelines provide the opportunity for reports such as those of the Queensland Fitzgerald Commission and the Victorian Kaye inquiry into police corruption and abortion to be restricted to persons of 18 years or more, along with the writings of Adolf Hitler, widely regarded as racist and highly offensive, but also widely studied in schools and universities.
Unlike for films and videos, the OFLC will not be providing consumer advice for publications to assist purchasers in knowing whether a sealed publication might contain material offensive to them. This is no longer a matter of sex or nudity, now it might be racism, or violence or reports on serious illness.
The new publications guidelines are at:
http://www.oflc.gov.au
EFA's critique of the draft revised guidelines issued in April 1998 is at:
http://www.efa.org.au/Publish/publrev9805.html
Alston-endorsed filter fails to block porn
A popular Internet blocking product endorsed by Senator Richard Alston fails
to prevent children accessing pornography, according to a recent report on a
software filter that is being installed in thousands of Australian schools.
http://censorware.net/reports/bess/
"When you install a censorware product in your school district and turn on all the recommended categories, you expect that, at the very least, it will block hardcore sex," said the report's authors. So why, they ask, does the software allow schoolchildren to see hardcore sex?
The Censorware Project's report, 'Passing Porn, Banning the Bible: N2H2's Bess in Public Schools', reveals the results of a study of Bess Internet blocking software from American company, N2H2 Inc.
While passing porn, Bess was found to block a substantial number of innocuous sites. These included a selection of Biblical passages compiled by Thomas Jefferson, a Family and Child Mediation Service approved by the Australian Federal Attorney-General, the Institute of Australasian Psychiatrists, the entire web sites of several Australian Internet Service Providers including hosted business and personal web pages, information about Catholics helping kids on the street and even sites for children.
Bess, rebranded 'iFilter' for Australia, was launched by Senator Alston in March. During a radio interview in the same month, Senator Alston informed listeners nationwide that eight and a half million web sites had been classified and said that the distributors of Bess/iFilter can 'guarantee you clean sites'. There is, however, no suggestion that Senator Alston is being paid for his product endorsements.
Australian distributors, Infopro Technologies Pty Ltd have signed a deal with Schoolsnet Australia for installation of iFilter in as many as 5000 State and Catholic schools around Australia.
Net Activists take on Chinese Government
John Walker, publisher of CSS Internet News, writes that Net activists have managed to get the Chinese government to back down. He wrote 'if the words of one person can reach so many in such a short period of time and force a repressive regime to back off, what would happen if we all banded together'.
The Chinese cult Falfunda has been under attack within China, and Walker says that two Canadian ISPs which had mirrored the Falfunda site came under denial of service attacks which were traced back to the 'Internet Monitoring Bureau of the Public Security Ministry' in China. However within three days of the story being spread on the Net, and following independent reports being filed by AP and Wired, the attacks ceased.
Michigan Act to 'Protect Children' unconstitutional
The American Civil Liberties Union, and a number of US Internet firms, have succeeded in halting the enforcement of a Michigan law which criminalises online communications deemed harmful to children.
In granting an injunction Judge Arthur Tarnow found that the Act violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution and the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
He said that it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments because it effectively bans speech that is constitutionally protected for adults. It violates the Commerce Clause because it 'constitutes an unreasonable and undue burden on interstate and foreign commerce'.
Judge Tarnow said : ".. it is still the right, and duty, of every parent to teach and mould children's concepts of good and bad, right and wrong. This right is no greater than in the confines of ones own home. A family with values will supervise their children. This includes setting limits, and either being there to enforce those limits, or utilising the available technology to do so. With such less restrictive means to monitor the online activities of children, the government need not restrict the right of free speech guaranteed to adults.'
Elsewhere in the judgement he commented "Finally, the Court takes judicial
notice of the fact that every computer is equipped with an on/off switch."
http://www.aclu.org/court/michigan_order.pdf
FCC paper calls for 'unregulation' of the Net
The Office of Plans and Policy in the US Federal Communications Commission
has released the latest in a series of working papers tilted 'The FCC and
the Unregulation of the Internet.' The working paper series are not official
statements by the FCC, and represent only the individual views of their
authors. The paper argues that 'unregulation' has been a critical factor in
the growth of the Internet.
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/OPP/working_papers/oppwp31.pdf
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Membership fees are payable each September and part fees apply to those joining during the year:
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.
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 objectives are:
| (a) | To protect and promote the civil liberties of users of computer based communications systems and of those affected by their use. |
| (b) | To advocate the amendment of laws and regulations in Australia and elsewhere which restrict free speech and unfettered access to information. |
| (c) | To educate the community at large about the social, political, and civil liberties issues involved in the use of computer based communications systems. |
| (d) | To support, encourage and advise on the development and use of computer based communication systems, and related innovations. |
| (e) | 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.
Submissions to this newsletter are welcome. Ideas and brief articles for future issues should be sent to editor@efa.org.au.
© Copyright 1999 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.
URL of this newsletter:
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