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Time to turn the page on net filtering

By Peter Chen - posted Tuesday, 17 March 2009


While reports that Senate Independent Nick Xenophon is unlikely to support the government's proposed internet filtering system probably came as bad news to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, this was received with some relief by other parts of the Labor Party.

This relief is not simply contained to those elements of the party who spearheaded the 1990s campaign against similar proposals under the Howard government or NSW Young Labor (who’ve already criticised the approach). Pragmatists in the Party have had concerns that the proposal presented the worst of both political worlds: a system that gives you no thanks when it works, and where every failure is carefully watched by motivated members of the community who take great pleasure in highlighting the flaws in the system.

This problem also dogged the previous government. Publicly-subsidised desktop filters received scant attention until a year 10 Victorian student went public with a crack allowing him to bypass the filter while giving parents the illusion that it was still functioning.

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While this type of flaw encourages governments to look to ISP-level filtering, the political palatability of these systems is hard to determine in advance of their wide scale implementation. While the technical community have a keen eye for this issue and have watched government developments over many years, the level of public awareness of this issue remains comparatively low, making it difficult to determine the reaction of the public until after the implementation of filtering.

It is true that comparisons can be drawn between the proposed Australian approach to the UK, where a “Cleanfeed” system is already in place, however the potential scope of the proposed Australian version was considerably more ambitious, based as it is on the existing internet classification system (adapted from film classifications) with the government considering means to filter other problematic services - like those pesky peer-to-peer protocols copyright holders hate so much.

This is in sharp contrast to the UK's existing “minimum level” filtering which focuses purely on sites that host child sexual exploitation materials.

While the government indicated that the proposed Australian filter could list 10,000 sites, as a complaints-based model the list would be likely to swell as conservatives identify the new system as far more robust than that introduced by the previous government. Under the current system, a complaint against material hosted in Australia only generates a takedown notice, with content simply likely to move offshore.

For those with an eye to the potential backlash of a public that finds itself surprised by new regulations that cut of access to content, look to the United States where the long-advertised digital television switch led to considerable confusion as screens went blank. While only a limited number of stations actually turned off their analogue signals because of a transition delay, 28,000 consumers swamped the federal communications regulator with calls the first day of the transition. This risk marks a significant difference from the late 1990s: the internet has become a far more integral part of most Australian's daily lives, and issues that affect it have greater personal, and therefore political, salience.

The complexity here is that these political disincentives may provide a motivation for the government to largely abandon their engagement with online risk issues, or engage in a trading game with Senator Xenophon - whose key concern is a further expansion of online regulation to address internet gambling - in the same way the Howard government traded horses with then Senator Harradine. It probably is trite to note that the failure of that exercise in logrolling led us to the current regulatory system the Minister sees as such a failure.

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This, however, would be a bad outcome for other reasons. While mass filtering approaches are a flawed approach to dealing with online risks, the public has genuine and real concerns about the internet that they would like to see governments take action on.

While the public support increased investigation and policing of child sexual exploitation, the over-focus on this one specific area of concern has failed to protect the public interest, both at the practical level - it’s one-eyed - and at the political level - the censorship model creates political barriers to action.

This is a pity as the increasingly insecure nature of online networks has been an area of government responsibility that has been systematically neglected by successive governments: largely because these issues of consumer protection are neither easy to address or neatly within the scope of the Commonwealth's powers.

Threats associated with malicious software (spyware, trojans, viruses) and predatory practices online (frauds) affect the financial and personal safety of many Australians, and the capacity of many computer users to understand risks and appropriate mitigating strategies is often low: providers of security products have an interest in talking up risks, while computer manufacturers are often less than forthcoming about the security of the systems they produce. This was evidenced most recently by Apple Corporation's recent reversal on advice that its customers should install and use anti-viral software.

Addressing these types of problems, and yes, including issues of content management for concerned parents, will require both top-down and bottom-up strategies. To date the Commonwealth - through the 2004 Inquiry into recent trends in practices and methods of cybercrime - has largely focused on top-down initiatives: improvements to national surveillance, law enforcement activities, and programs aimed at financial institutions. Bottom-up strategies - hardening individual user’s computers against online threats - has remained a relatively under developed activity, largely focused on some programs to increase consumer education and awareness.

We have to be realistic about the level of current and up-to-date information about risks most computer users can be expected to maintain. While groups like NetAlert and the Australian High Tech Crime Centre provide updates and educational materials, and some major exploits get coverage in the technical section of the larger newspapers, these scatter gun approaches to awareness and education are unlikely to significantly improve the security of Australian internet users at the population level.

Simple “heuristic” safeguards, such as avoiding email attachments, have become less useful as criminals have become more sophisticated in delivering malicious software through compromised websites and other exploits. This sophistication has led to an expansion in the growth of “botnets” - armies of co-ordinated compromised computers - compounding the insecurity of the internet and encouraging greater activity by criminals.

Online security is like vaccination, you need a critical mass to lower the overall threat level. Australia could take a big step in addressing this issue from a completely fresh perspective.

In developing a reasonable response, therefore, the Commonwealth needs to expand its actions considerably. First, given the rapid spread of modern threats via the internet, the government has to identify that all computers online need to have access to prompt updates for operating systems and key software (such as browsers). This means admitting that the 1.5 million (as at 2008) remaining dial-up connections are obsolete and there’s a security imperative behind the development of our new broadband infrastructure.

In addition, Australian governments’ needs to engage with consumers at the point-of-sale level, considering what type of minimum safety requirements may be needed in computers, just as minimum safety requirements are built into other products. The difficulty of this approach for Senator Conroy is that this is not the type of solution that can be dropped onto the public top-down: it would require action by the State and Territory governments, in agreement, and with a clear identification of the real risks we face online, and the best approaches to address them.

That would be the start of a whole different type of conversation that the one we're currently not having.


Postscript

Following the submission of this article, the Australian Communication and Media Authority released a report - Australia in the Digital Economy: Trust and Confidence (PDF 610KB). The report, based on user survey data, observes that many people with home internet connections are employing minimal security practices.  In addition the report observes that self-reported information technology literacy is not a strong determinant that Australian internet users will engage in practices to reduce online risks. The report’s main policy conclusion is renewed emphasis on end user education.

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About the Author

Dr Peter John Chen is a lecturer in politics and public policy at the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.

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