www.nickhodge.com

Dear Aus­tralian Fed­eral Politicians

re: Aus­tralian ISP Inter­net Filters

As a par­ent, a tech­no­logy industry vet­eran and cit­izen who works via the Inter­net, I feel it is my duty to provide a prag­matic per­spect­ive on the Fed­eral Government’s pro­posed plans to adopt Man­dat­ory Fil­ter­ing of Aus­tralian Inter­net Ser­vice Pro­viders (ISPs) for the bene­fit of Child Safety.

Cur­rent state­ments from Sen­ator Con­roy high­light the need to pro­tect Aus­tralian Chil­dren from undesir­able corners and con­tent found the Inter­net. This is a worthy ideal, but Sen­ator Conroy’s pro­posed solu­tions go nowhere near far enough to truly keep our chil­dren safe. Any half-hearted attempt at fil­ter­ing exposes the Gov­ern­ment to legal liab­il­ity and voter dis­con­tent when their kids see any undesir­able mater­ial that will fall through the cracks of a pure technology-based solution.

The block­ing of inter­na­tion­ally recog­nised child p-rn sites; and addi­tion­ally adding warn­ing bells to people access­ing these sites is a must. Whilst the need for secur­ity, and the seques­ter­ing of these sites for crim­inal invest­ig­a­tions is under­stand­able — to counter claims of “cen­sor­ship by stealth”, these sites should be reviewed by an Ombuds­man on a reg­u­lar basis.

The cur­rent rhet­oric from the pro-filter lobby pur­posely asso­ci­ates chil­dren online with rep­re­hens­ible child p-rn. I ser­i­ously doubt that chil­dren are going to pur­posely or not stumble on child p-rn. Rather, undesir­able people will find chil­dren in the “clean” inter­net. This online safety aspect requires more than 1,000 or 1,000,000 sites on a fil­ter list: it requires strong poli­cing, par­ent­ing and school edu­ca­tion: just as road safety is taught. Con­nect­ing two dis­par­ate and highly emotive issues obfus­cates and politi­cizes the real need of parents.

How­ever, the call for “undesir­able” sites to be cen­sored does cause alarm. “Undesir­able” is an emotive, and very sub­ject­ive defin­i­tion for each par­ent and fam­ily: based on their own moral, reli­gious, cul­tural, eth­nic and many other highly per­sonal considerations. 

Today, Edu­ca­tion Depart­ments provide Children-safe Inter­net access. This is treated much the same way as Kids-safe play­grounds and excur­sions: The legal prin­ciple of In-loco Par­entis applies. To imple­ment a Kid-safe fil­ter of any less qual­ity for kids at home seems counter pro­duct­ive. Experts in the field of internet-based edu­ca­tion also note that these fil­ters are very dis­rupt­ing and sig­ni­fic­antly slow down access to the Inter­net: but it is a cost that is born out of necessity.

By hav­ing a laud­ible goal of imple­ment­ing an Opt-out, com­pletely filtered truly Kids-safe Inter­net, the uniten­ded impact to Aus­tralian busi­ness and the eco­nomy will great. There­fore, fil­ters should be Opt-in for ISPs and Consumers.

Both a “Kid-safe Inter­net” needs to be cre­ated as an Opt-in for Home access; backed by a strong edu­ca­tion cam­paign from the Gov­ern­ment to Par­ents, and a stand­ard speed Filter-free Inter­net for the Aus­tralian Economy. 

Also, a “Kid-safe Inter­net” is much more than just what can be seen or read: there must be a code of con­duct for advert­ising, safe social com­munit­ies and busi­ness when inter­act­ing with our Chil­dren. For instance, the new phe­nom­ena of Cyber-bullying.

Any imple­ment­a­tion of Opt-in Fil­ters, Author­it­ies and broad-based edu­ca­tion cam­paigns should also real­ise that there is no abso­lute in safety. Just like pools, bicycles and cars: acci­dents can and will hap­pen. The Inter­net itself is in con­stant change: there­fore, any man­age­ment sys­tem must be cre­ated with con­tinual improve­ment as a stra­tegic imperative.

My think­ing and research on this mat­ter has led me to the fol­low­ing struc­tured recommendations:

Toward A Kid-Safe Internet:

1. Chil­dren must have access to the Inter­net. It is a fun­da­mental part of our world eco­nomy; cent­ral to our future as humans in the 21^st Cen­tury. Ignor­ing the Inter­net will ser­i­ously dis­ad­vant­age future Aus­trali­ans from the world eco­nomy: sim­ilar to neg­lect teach­ing math­em­at­ics or lit­er­acy skills. Simply ban­ning the Inter­net would be a dra­conian move that only a lud­dite minor­ity would advoc­ate. (Recent study on Child­hood cas­ual access to the Inter­net)
2. The world is a large and poten­tially dan­ger­ous place for young humans. That is why today Gov­ern­ments across the world reg­u­late what/when chil­dren can see in movie theatres, read, smoke, drink, engage in sexual activ­ity and drive. There­fore a strong pre­ced­ent has been set for the Gov­ern­ment to equally pro­tect chil­dren when using the Internet.
3. The Inter­net is unlike other pre­vi­ously inven­ted medi­ums, modes and tech­no­logy of com­mu­nic­a­tion: highly dis­trib­uted, uncon­trol­lable, two-way, multi-faceted (for instances: video, text and sound in a myriad of formats). There­fore, a unique admin­is­trat­ive mech­an­ism for pro­tect­ing those who need pro­tec­tion is required. Simply “listing” web sites with movie rat­ings will not work as will miss other con­tent. A cent­ral fil­ter for all inter­net traffic into and out of Aus­tralia is tech­nic­ally not eco­nom­ic­ally nor tech­nic­ally feas­ible with cur­rent com­puter technology.
4. Equally, the Gov­ern­ment should not be in the busi­ness of cre­at­ing fil­ter­ing soft­ware for all inter­net con­nec­ted devices a child has access to. These devices num­ber in their hun­dreds of mil­lions, across thou­sands of ver­sions shapes and sizes: PCs, Macs, non-Windows OS PCs, the wide range of internet-able mobile phones, Game sta­tions and Music play­ers. The Net­Alert pro­gram of the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment has shown to have a low install­a­tion rate, and also misses the Inter­net con­nec­ted mobile phones many chil­dren cur­rently posses.
5. Hav­ing Kid-Safe fil­ters at the ISP level seem to be a sound and logical solution.
6. If the Gov­ern­ment ini­ti­ates the pro­cess of pro­tect­ing our chil­dren whilst they are on the Inter­net, and makes a pub­lic prom­ise that “the inter­net is now safe for our Chil­dren”: simply rely­ing on exist­ing the exist­ing static list-based sys­tems provided by ACMA as pro­posed by Sen­ator Con­roy the Gov­ern­ment will ulti­mately fail.
7. Sen­ator Con­roy talks of a list of ~1,500 sites, and is test­ing fil­ters with a list­ing of 10,000 sites. If you assume 1% of the 1 bil­lion web pages are not suit­able for chil­dren; Sen­ator Conroy’s plans is a few orders of mag­nitude out to safely restrict inde­cent sites.
8. Basing fil­ters purely on HTTP/HTML pro­tocol (that is, just Web browser traffic) will res­ult in a fil­ter­ing fail as the Inter­net com­prises many pro­to­cols. Adding other pro­to­cols such as instant mes­saging (chat rooms), file down­loads, sound and video doubles the load on fil­ters for each new pro­tocol added.
9. Keep Chil­dren “safe” on the Inter­net must be more than just block­ing static pages, sites, pro­to­cols and streams. True Online Child safety must include Cyber-bullying, Social Com­munity codes of con­duct, Inap­pro­pri­ate Advert­ising (sim­ilar to Child TV advert­ising guidelines) and many other asso­ci­ated issues with a broad, two-way com­mu­nic­a­tions system.
10. Of greater con­cern is what our kids: either acci­dently, or on pur­pose; pub­lish to the inter­net. With rampant iden­tity theft, and the abil­ity for people to pub­lish video and images to the world: we need to ensure this is addressed by any kid-safe inter­net.
    

    My sug­ges­ted approach:

11. A new Author­ity is cre­ated; resourced to keep Aus­tralian Chil­dren Safe Online.
12. This Author­ity is com­mis­sioned to address all the above issues, using the know­ledge that already exists in the community
13. This Author­ity has the power to Cer­tify Kid-Safe Inter­net Fil­ters at both end Device and at ISP level. For the sake of this doc­u­ment, these are named Fil­ter Devices.
14. This Author­ity also has the import­ant respons­ib­il­ity to edu­cate and com­mu­nic­ate Inter­net Pub­lic Ser­vice Advice for Parents.
15. The Author­ity own a cent­ral policies and pro­ced­ures to con­trol the Fil­ter Device Cer­ti­fic­a­tion; and pro­cesses of con­tinual man­age­ment of the Fil­ters. The Author­ity has the power to Cer­tify and de-Certify Fil­ter Devices installed at any point in Aus­tralia. Sim­ilar stand­ards exist for toys that show child safety breaches. Par­ents rely on thse stand­ards, recalls and Author­ity vigil­ance to offer a greater level of pro­tec­tion to children.
16. The Author­ity would have exec­ut­ive over­sight over a dis­trib­uted Fil­ter Man­age­ment Body. This body would be crowd-sourced, and be the clearing-house of fil­ters, codes of con­duct, industry best prac­tices and con­nec­tions with local Edu­ca­tion depart­ments and law enforcement. 
17. A cent­ral registry of what a Fil­ter Device must clean, and other child-protection guidelines is man­aged by this man­age­ment body. This registry may con­tain pro­scribed (child p-rn) sites, but to a lar­ger extent all the child-inapproprate mater­ial on the inter­net. This list will be lar­ger than the pro­posed 10,000.
18. Addi­tion­ally, there must be Industry-based codes of con­duct for online for­ums; age veri­fic­a­tion; phish­ing and other internet-related com­munit­ies. This body would could use inter­net tech­no­logy for rapid response, vot­ing and shar­ing best-practise amongst all ISPs.
19. As much a leg­ally pos­sible, this body of fil­ter­ing know­ledge must be trans­par­ent to bona-fide inter­ested parties, and would reflect com­munity “norms” as the inform­a­tion comes from the community.
20. Every ISP who has a com­mer­cial wish to mar­ket and sell “Kid-Safe Inter­net” must com­ply with the Author­it­ies policies and pro­ced­ures (ie: Each ISP chooses to Opt-in).
21. And ISP may only sell a Kid-safe Inter­net con­nec­tion if cer­ti­fied by the Author­ity. This could also apply to Edu­ca­tion depart­ments and private school groups where their con­nec­tion to the inter­net should also be through a Cer­ti­fied Fil­ter Device.
22. The know­ledge of what is to be filtered/codes of con­duct must be col­lect­ively shared so smal­ler, regional based ISPs can provide an equity of pro­tec­tion for rural chil­dren. These smal­ler ISPs will not have equal resources avail­able to their own fil­ter managers.
23. Par­ents and oth­ers interest parties have an internet-speed mech­an­ism to report and escal­ate breaches to the Author­ity; all parties must have trans­par­ent access to these reports; and like Wiki­pe­dia: a his­tory of decisions made.
24. The Author­ity also has the import­ant respons­ib­il­ity to edu­cate Par­ents and Guard­i­ans about the Inter­net. Par­ents have per­sonal exper­i­ence of mor­als, road rules, social norms, cul­tural expect­a­tions passed to them from their par­ents. The inter­net, being extremely new, is alien to today’s par­ents , and is incor­rectly feared. Like in pre­vi­ous times where the Gov­ern­ment has provided inform­a­tion on AIDs, cur­rency changes (to decimal) : it also has a respons­ib­il­ity to edu­cate today’s Aus­tralian par­ents on the Inter­net. The Author­ity must embark on a cam­paign to edu­cate Par­ents as they are the last lines of defence. Par­ents must also be encour­aged to pur­chase a Kid-safe Inter­net con­nec­tion from their choice of ISP.
25. Par­ents who are internet-savvy could opt-out of the Kid-safe Inter­net sys­tem; thereby tak­ing the respons­ib­il­ity for the pro­tec­tion of their chil­dren, or a range of fil­ters based on a range of clas­si­fic­a­tions could be cre­ated. A teen­ager will not want to view the inter­net as if they are 6 years old.
    

    The Cost of Filters

26. Any reas­on­able Adult Aus­tralian does not want a child-like view of the Inter­net as described above,
27. If left Opt-out, the res­ult­ing ISP Fil­ter­ing speed-tax will reduce invest­ment in Aus­tralian busi­nesses, and due to the inter­na­tional nature of the inter­net drive employ­ment and invest­ment offshore.
28. As the deeper level of fil­ters and codes of con­duct as described above are enabled to rightly pro­tect Chil­dren; there will be a slow­ing down of inter­net response for these filtered users. And just as alco­hol, smoking, vot­ing and other rules are relaxed for adults:  the same must apply to inter­net access.
29. Gen­eral ISP con­nec­tions should there­fore be unfiltered, and Opt-in. Turn­ing the inter­net into a pure-children’s play­ground will only hamper Aus­tralian busi­nesses and gov­ern­ments as they con­duct oper­a­tions in the emer­ging global Digital age. Busi­nesses do not con­duct busi­ness in a playground.
30. The impact of Australia-wide man­dat­ory fil­ters would hurt Australia’s eco­nomic future across all sec­tors of industry. Email traffic, online bank­ing, busi­ness to busi­ness com­merce: will all slow due to man­dat­ory filters.
31. Other com­pet­ing eco­nom­ies do not have the same ISP Filtering-speed-tax, and can there­fore out-compete Aus­tralian businesses.
32. There­fore, the fil­ters must be Opt-in and kept sep­ar­ate from the grown-up, busi­ness inter­net; but to a deeper level as the Gov­ern­ment takes on par­tial respons­ib­il­ity of In loco par­entis
    

    Vigil­ance

33. Apart from child p-rn, there are many other insi­di­ous dark corners of the inter­net that impact all Aus­trali­ans. Nigerian scams, phish­ing attacks on bank accounts, gen­eral spam, cyber bul­ly­ing: all drain our eco­nomy. The Aus­tralian Fed­eral Police must be given more exper­i­enced and trained officers with strong Inter­net skills to pro­tect all our cit­izens by poli­cing those who embark on illegal activ­it­ies. The Gov­ern­ment must address these increas­ing risks, too. (ref­er­ence: Online fraud­sters ‘steal £3.3bn’)

The cur­rent con­fus­ing state­ments of policy by Sen­ator Con­roy strikes me as policy-on-the-run with a dearth of grass-roots (elect­or­ate) demand and little to no pub­licly artic­u­lated strategy. There­fore, fear-mongering and ad-hominem attacks from all sides of this argu­ment have arisen. At this stage, it is in Sen­ator Conroy’s hands to clearly artic­u­late the strategy out­side of pure tech­nical “tri­als” and emo­tional and glib “child p-rn” arguments.

The lack of clar­ity and trans­par­ency is of deep con­cern as it thrusts at the heart of people’s desire for the free­dom access to inform­a­tion as adults: uncensored and unfiltered.

Now that the Pandora’s box of a Kid-safe Inter­net is opened, it is in the Government’s hands to do the right thing for our kids without hurt­ing the eco­nomy and freedoms we all enjoy. For the sake of Australia’s col­lect­ive future.

Nick Hodge

Inter­est­ing Links

• Noclean­feed star­ted out with Mark New­ton.
• What chil­dren need is cen­sor­ship Art­icle from The Guard­ian by Aric Sig­man. P-rn is only one of the many things on the inter­net that we must pro­tect chil­dren from; and ulti­mately par­ents must take control.
• Inter­net Cen­sor­ship, Blogs, And The Gov­ern­ment View More inde­pth res­ults of the fil­ter­ing trials
• Why inter­net fil­ter­ing is bad for busi­ness post on Smart Com­pany by Paul Wall­bank. Apart from the poten­tial acci­dental inclu­sion on a fil­ter, the Internet-speed-tax on all Aus­tralian indi­vidu­als, busi­nesses and gov­ern­ment agen­cies would make Aus­tralia an Inter­net back water
• Fireside chats in the 21^st cen­tury by Barry Saun­ders on the ABC web site.  
  
• Elias Biz­annes on The Rudd Fil­ter: one of the ori­ginal, and well thought and more import­antly, well ref­er­enced out posts on the matter.
• With a pub­lic intel­lec­tual like this, who needs bar­bar­i­ans? by Jon Sey­mour, detail­ing the lack of logic from the man­dat­ory fil­ter­ing side of the argu­ment; espe­cially the “inter­net has p-rn, there­fore opt-out all encom­passing fil­ter­ing is required.
• Glenn Milne of news.com.au writes a cohent and con­cise art­icle on Inter­net Fil­ter­ing and Censorship
• Sen­ator Nick Minchin (Liberal-SA) on NBN and fil­ter­ing. I like the quo­ta­tion: “The oppos­i­tion sen­ator addi­tion­ally claimed that Conroy’s policy was caus­ing Aus­tralia embar­rass­ment inter­na­tion­ally, giv­ing it a repu­ta­tion as a repress­ive regime.” Ouch. The full state­ment from Sen­ator Minchin has also been published.
• Tom Edwards and Gareth Grif­fith wrote in a spe­cial research note pub­lished by the NSW Par­lia­ment­ary Lib­rary Ser­vice, repor­ted in ZDNet: “NSW calls Con­roy on Euro fil­ter fudge”
• Mark Newston’s second, follow-up let­ter to his local Labor mem­ber.
• Libertus on Stat­ist­ics Laun­der­ing: false and fant­astic fig­ures in regards to child p-rn online. Well researched, with many links. High­lights the cur­rent emo­tional, McCarthy-ist level of witch hunt­ing with knee-jerk reac­tions does not help. Par­ental vigil­ance is a must.
• Back­ground on The Aus­tralia Insti­tute, and his­tory of fil­ter­ing prior to the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment The ALP under Rudd is in fact far more mor­al­istic and author­it­arian than the Lib­er­als ever were.
• iiNet’s state­ment iiNet and Inter­net filtering
• Kath­ryn Small of IT News reports on Net fil­ters debated by experts at cyber­law forum held on 27^th November.
• Neu­ter­ing the net is about repres­sion, not pro­tec­tion In the Age, by Chris Berg of the Insti­tute of Pub­lic Affairs. “wowser­ism dressed up in con­cerned rhet­oric about the sanc­tity of child­hood is still wowserism.”
• Children’s Wel­fare Groups slam Conroy’s Fil­ter­ing Plans by Asher Moses, The Age
• Clive Hamilton, “Net porn: Whose rights mat­ter most?”. Some notes: argu­ment has moved from chil­dren to teen­agers, two very dif­fer­ent beasts as far as par­ent­ing is concern.
• Labor Plan to cen­sor inter­net in shreds by Asher Moses, Sen­ator Con­roy has said that, under his fil­ter­ing plan, Aus­tralia would sign up to the same IWF blacklist
• and in rela­tion to the Inter­net Watch Asso­ci­ation, the recent block­ing of Wiki­pe­dia edit­ing in the UK does not lend itself creditability.
• LeWeb’08 Attendees note that Aus­tralia is plan­ning to Fil­ter the Internet
• Aus­tralian Inform­a­tion Secur­ity Asso­ci­ation on Man­dat­ory Inter­net Fil­tering
• 37% rise in 2008 “money trans­fer scams” in Aus­tralia res­ult­ing in AU$33million in lost funds. (Choice magazine). Choice has more detail on how to avoid online scams. The fail­ure of the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment to make the broad popu­lace aware of this is more prob­lem­atic for kids than “p-rn”.
• Dept’s Response to post­ings to its “blog” about Inter­net Cen­sor­ship. I just love the double-speak/managerial speak of the title, and the requests to stop call­ing it cen­sor­ship, please!“ Min­is­ter Con­roy on: Pro­mot­ing a civil and con­fid­ent soci­ety online.
• The Sydney Morn­ing Her­ald repor­ted on a secret report: Fatal flaws in web­site cen­sor­ship plan, says report. Again, excel­lent report­ing from Asher Moses
• Duncan Riley, Australia’s premiere blog­ger with logical ana­lysis: Great Fire­wall of Aus­tralia. I agree with Duncan: we need to keep the Gov­ern­ment out of our bed­rooms. To quote Duncan’s last para­graph, to which I agree and fur­ther echo:
  

  Today I am ashamed to be Aus­tralian, ashamed that my Gov­ern­ment should seek to imple­ment dra­conian 19^th cen­tury style cen­sor­ship laws over the mar­vel of the mod­ern age: The Inter­net. Free Speech may not be totally dead in Aus­tralia yet, but it’s about to be placed on life sup­port. Con­roy can say all he wants that this isn’t about free speech, but speech cen­sored by Gov­ern­ment isn’t free, no mat­ter which way you want to spin it. 

• Response from the Sydney Morn­ing Her­ald front page: Con­roy and Prof Land­feldt respond to secret report art­icle, trial delayed. I find it con­tempt­able that Sen­ator Con­roy has access to this report in Feb­ru­ary 2008, yet con­tin­ued to waste our money on “a trial”. A trial that is delayed until mid Janu­ary 2009. The more that is revealed, the more this whole situ­ation looks like a pure polit­ical play to ensure Sen­ator Fielding’s votes in the Sen­ate. So, who is genu­inely look­ing after the kids?

Notes:

• need to find ref­er­ences to fact to back up some of the statements
• there are some leaps of logic that need to be addressed.
• I will modify as com­ments come in
• I have linked to vari­ous post­ings from all sides as the debate has raged. One day someone will find this useful