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By Sean Wilkins
In the last week, Australia has been in the news for going forward with the introduction of a bill which will subject all Internet content external to Australia to a filter. Of course we have heard this before from other countries but typically these countries have been ones which are known for limiting the rights of their population including Iran, Saudi Arabia and China.
The problem that most people have with these types of filtering systems is not that they disagree with the idea of keeping children safe or trying to keep violent content away from violent people but with the fact that these filtering systems have been proven time after time to be ineffective. The reason that these systems are ineffective is from three main failings; they tend to either underblock or overblock content, they tend to be easy to circumvent and are notoriously hard to police. Let us take these one at a time.
What happens with a filter when it underblocks content is that it fails to block sites which can still provide access to the debated subject. When this happens the people relying on the filter can be surprised by their ability to still access these types of subjects. When the filter overblocks it restricts access to a number of legitimate subject materials. Of course when this happens in a “free” state it is most unwelcomed as people want to be able to access these valid subjects.
These types of filters are also known for being easy to get around as there are a number of different methods which can be used to go around or transparently through a filtering system. This all depends greatly on the technology used with the filter but each method that can be used has its own failings. There have been rumors which have circulated with say that products similar to McAfee’s Smartfilter have been and/or are used on some of the countries listed above networks. These types of products work through the use of a reputation based system along with a category matching system. The reputation system bases its decisions on a large scale repository which is maintained by McAfee; if the site being visited has or is showing suspicious signs of a potentially questionable site then it will block the content. Their category matching system maintains a database of categories which contain “known” questionable sites. These “known” sites are maintained by McAfee as well. These types of systems when used in this manner can be circumvented by using secure tunnels and anonymizing networks which obscure the destination processed by the filtering system. Other methods include using peer-to-peer networking facilities on the Internet which are not typically monitored as well.
The next big question that also comes out of this is who polices the filter and who maintains the list of blocked sites. For a corporation it may be good to have a rather restrictive list of sites to maintain company security and in this situation there is no expectation of unlimited Internet. However, when using your own computer on your own Internet connection this changes dramatically. There is an expectation on a personal connection that all material is open to you and it is at your discretion to visit any of these potentially “dangerous” sites. Now the definition of “dangerous” changes depending on who is being asked. For example, a conservative person may believe that all pornography should be considered dangerous while others may think it is fine for adult use. This is one of the major concerns which have been voiced against these types of global filtering systems, as there are a number of different people with a variety of views which can be quite different; it is nearly impossible to maintain a list which does not block some valid content from some specific group.
The Australian filter is supposed to be a filter (per reports) which is strictly going to be based on a site blacklist (sites receive a “refused classification”). This blacklist is to be maintained by an oversight body which has yet to be named. The future of this filter and whether it will be put into effect will truly depend on the purpose, scope and management of this list. If this list is too restrictive and vastly limits the ability of Australians to access valid external content then it will surely be short lived. However, if a list is put together which allows people to voluntarily use it for blocking networks with children using them then it may in itself be very popular. A middle ground may be found which is acceptable to both those for and against this type of system, the problem is finding it and seeing if the effort put into it is worth the amount of money required to maintain it.
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