Filtering lacks clear policy objective: ACS

James Riley
Monday, 12 October 2009 15:08

Your IT - Home IT

It is impossible to understand the feasibility of mandatory ISP-level filtering or its impact on network performance until Government clearly articulates what its policy objectives are, an Australian Computer Society expert panel says.

A report from the ACS' E-Security Taskforce says without a clear definition of the type of content that will be subject to filtering, and without knowing what Government wants to achieve through filtering, it is also impossible either to understand the expected cost of the policy.

In the absence of clear articulated policy objectives, and without knowing which ISP filtering techniques were being tested by Government, the Taskforce had produced a generic report of technical observations.

Taskforce chair Vijay Varadharajan, who is director of Information and Networked Systems Security Research at Macquarie University, said the lack of information from Government was a problem and that the Taskforce was looking forward to seeing data from the filtering trial.

"We simply haven’t had much information on the trial as yet. We would like to know more about how the trials are progressing," Prof Varadharajan told iTWire. "But what is actually being done (in the trials), we are not privy to. And that’s the problem."

The creation of the National Broadband Network would add new layers of complexity to the filtering issues, he said.

He said the Taskforce hoped the release of the data from the Government filtering trial might shed light on the objectives of the policy, which in turn would give it a better understanding of its cost and potential for network degradation.

The ACS is treading carefully in relation to filtering, given the controversial and opaque nature of Government filtering plans. The society gave Communications Minister Stephen Conroy a copy of the report "as a courtesy" three weeks ago.

Varadharajan said the timing of the release of the Taskforce' "observations" had nothing to do with Government's internet filtering trials, or the fact that Stephen Conroy is expected to take receipt of the technical report on those trials in the next to weeks.

Rather it was a generic set of technical observations on security and cyber safety that he hoped would encourage a better articulation of filtering policy objectives, highlighting issues that need to be considered.

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