Sysadmins slam ACMA web filtering study

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 31 July 2008 15:31

Business IT - Networking

Furthermore, most of the filters tested only work on HTTP streams, which represents less than one third of Australian ISPs' backbone traffic. Peer to peer traffic - which carries the bulk of Internet content - and instant messaging would not be filtered.

Another worry involves the treatment of HTTPS traffic, which is encrypted to prevent eavesdropping and impersonation. It is commonly used for banking and other financial transactions. Filtering HTTPS streams would require ISPs to engage in 'man in the middle' attacks, SAGE-AU officials asserted.

The Guild also expressed concern about the tested filters' ability to distinguish between permitted and illegal content.

Perhaps most significantly, the report is silent on the issue of cost - because that was specifically excluded from the terms of reference set by the Federal Government.

"Why should we, at significant expense, significantly reduce the performance of every part of the Internet in Australia for the dubious goal of possibly blocking part of the overall traffic in questionable material, when there is no absolute standard of what should be blocked?" said Don Gingrich, SAGE-AU member and lecturer in System Administration at RMIT University.
 
"From past experience in looking at how this has played out in other regions, there seems to be a near certainty that legitimate and useful educational sites will be inadvertently blocked as a part of any effort of this sort. 'A little bit censored' seems a lot to me like a 'little bit pregnant.'"

iTWire's Stuart Corner previously expressed some similar concerns about the ACMA trial.