Only a few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post, "Is the filter really dead?" Since that post was written in what now seems a simpler and gentler bygone political age, an update may be in order.

As of today, the ALP and the Coalition are neck-and-neck in numbers, and who forms the next Government will come down to winning the support of three of the four uncommitted independents. There are a few possible outcomes from here.

Firstly, if the country independents decide to support an Abbott government, then at that point the mandatory ISP censorship scheme we have been fighting for so long is well and truly dead. The Coalition have said publicly they would not introduce such a scheme in government. We shouldn't forget that the Liberal party's record on internet censorship is pretty terrible - they are responsible for the current scheme we have, which on paper makes Australia's internet amongst the most heavily censored in the world, with R-18+ content unavailable on Australian servers and a secret blacklist of prohibited sites. (The saving grace of that scheme is that hosting material overseas is cheap, easy and completely escapes this censorship regime, so the average user is very unlikely to be affected by it.) We have to trust that the Liberal party have learned from the last few years and will think long and hard before returning to their bad old ways. In any case, a new censorship push by them is just a hypothetical possibility for the future, which seems preferable to an actual government policy, which we have now.

The second possibility is that the independents support the return of a Labor government. Yesterday, we saw the Greens enter into a formal arrangement to support Gillard to form government. Up until now, The Greens have a good record speaking out against the filter. Does "getting into bed" with the ALP mean they have softened their position on the issue? It would appear not - the Greens quickly clarified this and I have confirmed with them that the deal with the ALP only covers voting for supply (to ensure the government can function) and does not at all cover Government policies and election promises. It would have been nice to see an open internet mentioned in The Greens agreement with Labor, but the outcome is the same.

The upshot of all this is that without The Greens' support, filter legislation would not be passed in the House of Representatives, let alone make it through a hostile Senate where both the Coalition and Greens would vote it down. It therefore looks very unlikely that, even if the country independents were to make internet censorship a high priority, filter legislation could go anywhere.

As a matter of fact, EFA sent a comprehensive packet of information on the filter to all MPs some time ago, and independent Rob Oakeshott was one of the few MPs who came back to us with thoughtful and encouraging feedback. So there's little danger of the filter becoming one of the horses currently being traded.

The third possibility is a new election. If Labor were to achieve a majority in their own right, then Conroy's legislation would likely remain government policy, despite the hostile senate. In my opinion, though, I don't think Conroy's proposal is likely to surface again in its original form. It has proved too unpopular with the Australian people, has won the ALP few friends, and has little support even in the ALP caucus. I suspect that even with a clear majority they might take this one back to the shop for an overhaul.

The question now is: What next? It's only a matter of time before the next Government, whoever they may be, decides to clamp down on the internet in one way or another. History suggests this will be sooner, rather than later.

This afternoon Delimiter posted an article from Exetel's CEO about Ageing Australia not being interested in seeing broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

During the election campaign, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy revealed the NBN would support speeds of up to 1Gbps, instead of the 100Mbps initially planned — after NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley informed him the upgrade would cost no extra.

But in a blog post published today, Linton — who leads one of the few ISPs to provide broadband in Tasmania over the fledgling NBN network in the state — said it was “the unthinking and just plain stupid” who were excited about the additional speeds.

“Pretty much along the same lines as the stone age cargo cult dwellers in the jungles of New Guinea are excited about the next ‘goods drop’ from the strange coloured bird,” he wrote.

Linton added Australia’s ageing population — who he said didn’t “play online computer games or get a surrogate sex life from pornography” had no interest in terabyte broadband plans (such as have been recently released by some of Exetel’s competitors on ADSL) and speeds that could never made a difference to the internet applications they used.

“They are going to be the ever growing percentage of Australians who are going to drive the percentage of residences that don’t have any sort of wire line connection to their home,” he said.
Linton has been a long-time critic of the NBN and a supporter of the incoming generation of 3G mobile broadband and wireless solutions as an alternative.

Click here to read the full article.

When EFA posted the link, Twitter became very active about Linton's comments:

• @diskincluded: Why on Earth would we want to be able to compete with the rest of the world? There's none of the pressure when you're last.
• @nightkhaos: He's right in that 1Gbps is "too much" now but to presume to know what the market will be like in 10 yrs? Foolish and shortsighted.
• @masterhearts: who gives a toss about the oldies. i want speedy internet dammit.
• @prkaye: Isn't Linton known for his lack of clue? Does anyone think much of most of his 'Industry' comments?
• @cindyleigh: Older generation has little patience for slow technology, they got better things to do with their time than slow net
• @Martin_Eddy: My elderly neighbors are happy paying $5/month for dial up.

So what do you think?  Is Linton right or wrong? We would particularly like to hear from those that feel they identify themselves as one of Linton's Ageing Aussies.

Please leave a comment below

This election, online issues finally got the attention they deserve. And the situation is here to stay.

I'm not talking about which party had the most Facebook followers or made the most gaffes on Twitter (Julia Gillard and Family First, respectively). Serious issues around internet governance and our internet future came into play, and by all accounts will continue to be significant as the situation plays out this week.

The first issue that affected the election was Labor's mandatory internet censorship policy, 3 years old and counting. Throughout that time, I believe the accepted wisdom amongst the scheme's proponents - the most notable being of course Senator Conroy - was that it would be unpopular with a handful of geeks but would appeal to the wider audience of mums and dads in the electorate.

If this was indeed the strategy, I think it backfired. Although it's based on mainly anecdotal evidence, I believe many internet users had their political consciousness awoken by this attempt to slap censorship on the country's net connections. When this issue was important to people, it didn't just put them slightly off-side, but made them hopping mad, if not lifelong skeptics of the ALP. Over time I have spoken to MPs and parliamentary staffers of all stripes, and I'm pleased to report that many people did indeed contact their elected representatives and let the opinions be known. For some MPs, this amounted to a veritable flood, and the issue was absolutely on their radar.

Unfortunately, we'll never be able to quantify what this did to Labor's vote. The fact is that Labor suffered a big swing against them, and it's worth noting that most of this swing went to the Greens, the most vocal opponents of the filter in Parliament. At the ballot box, we can't disentangle the filter from other issues such as climate change and refugees that the Greens campaigned on, but I believe the filter played a big role.

The Coalition, of course, decided to oppose the filter themselves, and this didn't happen until the election campaign was already underway. Once again, from reading the feedback online, there's some evidence that this gave their campaign a boost amongst Australia's netizens. The fact that they decided to make an announcement then, rather than wait for the legislation as they had previously indicated, shows that they thought this was the case as well.

So while I wouldn't want to oversell it, internet users are hardly a minority in Australia, and issues close to their hearts are at getting more attention than ever before.

The other major technological issue of the campaign was of course the National Broadband Network. This was without a doubt the one area where the policies of the two major parties differed the most. At the risk of over-editorialising, it was also one of the few policies with long-term vision and a nation-building agenda. Labor's policy calls for a huge investment in our broadband infrastructure, and - setting the economic arguments aside - is a clear win for internet users. The Coalition's policy is much more modest and boils down to wringing the last drops out of the copper network while leaving the market to take care of the rest.

As it happened, both policies got some real scrutiny, culminating in the Tony Abbott's embarrassing 7.30 Report appearance where he begged off discussing the details of broadband by claiming (correctly) that he's no "tech head". This is a major development; our leaders are now expected to know the difference between peak and actual speeds, symmetric and asymmetric connections, ADSL2+, DOCSIS 3 and Fibre to the Home. Telecommunications capability has assumed a place next to, even ahead of, rail and roads as critical infrastructure. This is as it should be.

The NBN is still making itself felt. The regional independents, now ubiquitously dubbed "kingmakers" by the media, have all flagged this as an issue. Nothing reduces the "tyranny of distance" like a fast net connection would, so it's a crucial issue for regional voters. If the three amigos decide to put Gillard back in the Lodge, our broadband future may have something to do with it.

Incidentally, an example of just how badly the filter has damaged Labor's credibility with regard to online issues is some of the negative comments we received for praising this Broadband policy in contrast to that of the Liberal party. Although this failure to "maintain the rage" against Conroy is temporary and I hope forgivable, the ALP have a long way to go if they ever want to regain the trust of Australian internet users.

I haven't yet touched on the uses of the net itself, including social media, in the campaign. The major parties focussed as normal on scary TV ads to get their message out, and online spending by the major parties (as best we can ascertain) came in at well under 10%. The Greens and minor parties relied much more heavily on drumming up support online, both as a deliberate strategy and due to financial necessity. It doesn't seem to have done them any harm at all. It's interesting to ponder what will the next election will look like; will the 30-second TV spot still reign supreme?

With the way things are going, we might not have to wait three years to find out.

This week is good news for Australian internet users. Both the cyber-safety (covered yesterday) and broadband issues have had their moment on the election stage. We now know the details of all the major parties' broadband policies and can do a side-by-side comparison. Which one will deliver the best outcome for Australia's future?

Refreshingly, the Labor and Liberal broadband policies differ greatly, and represent a very different vision for Australia's competitiveness in the 21st century.

The Government is betting big on the importance of telecommunications in Australia's future, with up to $43 billion committed to the National Broadband Network in what amounts to the largest ever infrastructure project in Australia's history. To recap: The plan involves laying fibre optic cable to 93% of Australian homes, with minimum speeds of 100mbps (upload and download). And just yesterday, NBN Co, the government-owned corporation managing the rollout, upped the ante by promising connections of up to 1 gigabit . Those living in areas where the fibre cannot reach will be provided with either wireless or satellite service at a minimum of 12mbps.

NBN Co will remain government-controlled until around 10 years after the rollout will be complete. This entity will have monopoly control over the national fibre network and will give equal wholesale access under the law to all service providers ensuring a level playing field and more competition for consumers.

Telstra have been a bit of a thorn in the Government's side throughout the whole process. They basically refused to bid on the original proposal, and appeared set to compete with the Government plan rather than partake in it, rendering the whole scheme somewhat questionable. As the NBN became more ambitious, it also became more crucial to get Telstra on board. This was no easy feat given that Telstra's key asset - the legacy copper network - is to be replaced.

A combination of carrot and stick has been employed to solve this problem. The carrot is $9 billion to compensate for the copper network and for access to to Telstra's existing infrastructure of ducts, pits and exchanges in order to lay the fibre. Telstra have also been released from their obligations under the Universal Service Obligation, a saving estimated at a further $2 billion. The stick is the forced separation of Telstra's retail and wholesale arms by legislation and the potential to block the company from bidding on new wireless spectrum. With Telstra now set to become NBN Co's largest customer, the 800 lb gorilla appears to have been tamed for now.

Concerns around the NBN are that no rigorous cost-benefit analysis has been made public, and about the potential costs to consumers. With wholesale prices floated around the $40-$70 a month it has been suggested that end users could end up paying up to $200 per month for a fast connection that takes advantage of the new network.

The Coalition's plan is much less ambitious. Clocking in at $6 billion, the main aims of the policy are to scrap the NBN and spend $1 billion on fixed wireless networks in outer suburban areas, $700 million for new satellite services, and $2.75 billion for a new fibre backbone.

The most glaring difference between the two plans is the last-mile connections to homes and businesses, which under the NBN plan will be fibre optics capable of a gigabit and beyond. Under the Coalition's plan, existing copper and coaxial cabling will remain the predominant connection from the local exchange to the premises. With these technologies already pushed close to their theoretical maximum, it will be left to the market to upgrade this crucial infrastructure. If you live outside the inner suburbs of the capital cities, you're probably out of luck.

The practicality of duplicating the fibre backbone infrastructure is also questionable, and the Coalition do not explicitly address Telstra's role in their broadband world.

There also appears to be little in this alternative plan for Australian businesses who will suffer even more than end users by having to make do with what can be squeezed out of the legacy copper network for the foreseeable future. The only beneficiary is the short-term bottom line of the budget. Industry has described the Liberal plan as a "grab-bag of measures from the past" and it is hard to disagree.

The Greens have promised to support the NBN project, although they too have called for the business case to be released. They most notably differ with the Government in that they want NBN Co to remain in public hands rather than be privatised some time in the 2020s after the network is in full operation. Nobody wants to see the Telstra situation repeated, so it seems sensible that if a sell-off occurs, it does so at least with the explicit approval of Parliament.

The NBN is a big project that shows ambition and long-term vision, and this is to be applauded. The lack of a cost-benefit analysis, however, is indeed concerning. At $2000 for every person in Australia, we need to be sure that the investment will pay off. I believe that ultimately it will.

Firstly, the money is being spent to create an asset that will have lasting value, and under the Labor plan will be sold with an expected return on investment of 6-7%. Borrowing money to build an asset that will bring long-lasting returns for the nation is neither reckless nor wasteful - it's a sound investment.

Secondly, while less tangible, the benefits to the economy of the new services and entrepreneurship that will blossom when gigabit broadband is ubiquitous are real and undeniable. A good proportion of our economic growth comes from productivity gains which will no doubt be accelerated by the advent of the NBN.

While the NBN promises exciting new services such as remote medical consultations, e-learning, and e-government, the as-yet unimagined business models and services are likely to be just as important. That's why we feel that this is one of the most important issues being debated during this election.

Internet issues appear to have finally gotten some oxygen in this election. The National Broadband Network and the Coalition's alternative broadband plan have gotten a lot of coverage in recent days. We'll have a breakdown of the two policies for you in our next update.

Let's turn, instead, to the issue of "cyber-safety", the banner under which the Government has been pushing its mandatory ISP filtering policy. If you follow the news, you might have heard that the Government first delayed the plan for a year in order to conduct a review of the "Refused Classification" rating. Since then, the Coalition have come forward and stated they will not support mandatory censorship and would vote against it even if they remain in opposition after the election. This means that the filter is very unlikely to pass through the Senate without some drastic modifications.

It's still Government policy, however, and they are sticking by it. See "Is the filter truly dead?" for some more information.

The Coalition's cyber-safety policy is now available. They are promising $100.4m over four years for a variety of initiatives aimed at protecting children online.

The Liberal party has a pretty shoddy track record when it comes to online civil liberties. One of EFA's biggest battles to date was against an onerous censorship plan pursued by the Howard Government, that - fortunately - was technically unrealisable. What we ended up with is the current system, whereby R-rated web pages can't be hosted in Australia but for the risk of a hefty daily fine and ACMA prepares a secret blacklist of "prohibited" pages. Fortunately, neither this restriction nor the blacklist have much affect on our daily use of the net to communicate, and so amount to little more than nagging affront to common sense and a considerable waste of money.

By knocking back Labor's filter, and proposing a policy focussed on options within the home, the Coalition appear to have turned over a new leaf. The key planks of their proposal are:

• $60m for home PC filters
• $30m for Cyber-safety outreach
• $10.5m to educate and "empower" principals
• A Ministerial advisory committee on social networking

Although it's hard to get too excited about this use of taxpayers' money, it appears the Coalition have abandoned the heavy-handed censorship approach of the past.

The first two proposals, to fund the availability of PC-based filters and get the message out to children, raise no civil liberties issues. We have long maintained that giving parents a choice of what is appropriate for their own homes is vastly superior to a one-size-fits-all approach that erodes our civil liberties while giving parents nothing but a false sense of security. Although research shows that only a minority of parents will actually want filters, offering them the choice seems a much more commonsensical approach.

The third proposal is aimed squarely at cyber-bullying, one of the real risks children face online. Just like airline safety, cyber-safety is prone to having its risks exaggerated. A literature review conducted about Australian cyber-safety issues concluded that "prevalence rates of less than 10% in Australia have been reported," a figure lower than in similar countries overseas. More importantly, any detailed research into the subject makes it plain that cyber-bullying is just one facet of bullying in general; it's the same kids being bullied by the same peers both offline and online. Unlike politicians who grew up in the 60s, young people today don't see a distinction between their online lives and their lives. Therefore, a dedicated cyber-bullying policy is probably doomed to fail as an attempt to patch one small symptom of a larger problem.

The fourth proposal, an advisory on social networking, is not as worrying as it is silly. It's hard to imagine just what they can do; if an incident like this Facebook defacement flap come to their attention, it's hard to see the Minister being able to take any sensible (or desirable) action.

When all's said and done, compared to the Conroy Curtain the Coalition policy is somewhat of a refreshing return to common sense. Again, the most serious issues with this policy are mainly based around the underlying premise. We all agree we want children to be safe online, but before we spend $100 million on a problem, we would expect to see the problem itself well-researched and quantified. Yes, there are risks to children (and adults) when interacting with others online. The best research on the subject, however, does not paint the picture of a national emergency. A considered review of the literature, and a little common sense, might bring one to the conclusion that using the internet is in fact one of the safest and most rewarding pastimes a child could choose. Is, therefore, a $100 million response truly necessary?

The Greens are yet to formally announce their cyber-safety policy, but we understand it is imminent and will also focus on giving parents a choice at home. But with Labor still pushing for the censorwall and Family First hoping to place a levy on internet users to support net censorship, the Coalition's plan is currently looking pretty good.

The Ausvotes 2010: Party Policy Guide is now available for download.

The guide is available here.

It hasn't been 24 hours since Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey let slip on JJJ's Hack program that the Coalition won't back the Labor Government's plan for mandatory ISP-level internet censorship. Whether they win or lose, they have stated categorically that they will vote against such a scheme.

Does this mean the battle of the last three years has ended in victory? Can we all pack up and move on? Yes and no - but there's cause for plenty of optimism.

It's clear that the mandatory internet censorship policy requires a new law to be introduced. That legislation, of course, has to be voted on in the House of Representatives, where the Government has the numbers, and in the Senate, where they don't. As things stand, to get a law up they need seven extra votes - which can either come from five Greens, Steven Fielding and Nick Xenophon - or the opposition.

With both The Greens and Opposition now saying they won't back the law, there's now no way for the Government to get the numbers to pass this law, and so it is effectively dead on arrival in the Senate (and that's assuming the Government doesn't change at the election). Your internet connection is safe for now.

It's not quite the end of the saga, however. As the saying goes, it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings, and that fat lady is our own Stephen Conroy. As long as the censorwall remains the stated policy of the Government, it could always find a way to come back to life. Some possible scenarios include:

• The Greens don't achieve the balance of power and the ALP have control of the Senate.
• The policy is renamed and changed just enough to wedge the opposition outside of an election campaign.
• Support for the filter is used as a bargaining chip in negotiations over other legislation.

We're going to take this as a victory - thanks to the public education campaign carried out by many organisations and individuals including GetUp, Google/the Safer Internet Group, Mark Newton, the ISPs and Greens' Senator Scott Ludlam inside Parliament, many of you were inspired (or angry enough) to write letters to those same politicians who have finally seen the light.

Thanks for your support. We couldn't have gotten this far without the community supporting us and more importantly, making lots of noise yourselves. However, we at EFA won't let our guard down until this policy is, in the language of the campaign, "dead, buried and cremated".

And is it too much to ask for the Government to simply acknowledge they made a mistake? I suppose I'd better not get carried away.

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today welcomed an announcement by Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey that the coalition will oppose any move to legislate mandatory internet censorship in Australia. On Thursday's Hack program on Triple J radio, Mr Hockey stated that "we believe the internet filter will not work and we believe it's flawed policy."

"We applaud Mr Hockey's announcement that the Liberal Party will vote against Labor's filter," said EFA Chair Colin Jacobs. "The Opposition are very welcome among the ranks of those many organisations and individuals that see the filter as a policy failure."

A mandatory censorship scheme remains Government policy. However, with The Greens long on record as opposing the internet censorship scheme, Mr Hockey's announcement means that Labor's legislation is effectively dead on arrival in the Senate.

"We call on Minister Conroy and the Gillard Government to now admit the mandatory filter policy is dead, and to move on to a debate more grounded in reality," said Jacobs. "The government must now listen to the experts, and get back to working on giving Australians access to better and faster broadband."

- Ends -

Below is:

- Background information
- Contact details for media

Background:

* Coalition vows to block 'flawed' internet filter
- http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/05/2974827.htm?section=justin

* Electronic Frontiers Australia
- http://www.efa.org.au/

* EFA's Open Internet campaign
- http://openinternet.com.au/

About EFA:

Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. (EFA) is a non-profit national organisation representing Internet users concerned with on-line rights and freedoms. EFA was established in 1994, is independent of government and commerce, and is funded by membership subscriptions and donations from individuals and organisations with an altruistic interest in promoting online civil liberties.

Media Contacts:

Mr Colin Jacobs
EFA Chair
Phone: 0402 631 955
Email: cjacobs@efa.org.au

Mr Geordie Guy
EFA Vice Chair
Phone: 0415 797 142
Email: gguy@efa.org.au

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.

Based on previous reporting, we know that the idea that the ISPs would be forced to log even the actual web browsing history of their customers has been canvassed. Basically, if it's logged (or could be logged), the A-G wants it saved.

Apart from the fact that it treats everybody like a possible criminal, there are several concerns with this. Firstly, the privacy implications are enormous. Anybody would have natural concerns about how much data about their personal communications was being stored. Managing all this data would create a lot of work and expense for ISPs, which disadvantage smaller players and would have to be passed on to consumers. And there mere fact that large databases of personal data are being stored at every ISP makes data security a big issue. The consequences of any data breach would be magnified.

Public consultation is therefore paramount. The more sensitive the data being retained, the more the public needs to be informed about the process. The onus is on the Government to explain why they need this data, and why the process has to be a secret one. Otherwise, we must assume the worst - that they want everything, and will be aggressive about accessing it, too.

The proposal is alarming enough, but, again, the secrecy of the process is just as worrying. If you aren't a criminal, you should have nothing to hide, the Government might argue. We might ask the same question. If you're not doing anything we should be concerned about, why so much secrecy?

The document can be viewed here along with the decision here.

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.