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Electronic Freedom Project

Dedicated to protecting the freedoms of Australians on-line.

Latest News

Not running to Schedule. P2P filtered too: Deep Packet Inspection a must

  • Conroy's "dead" trials start in late January without a single user.
  • Conroy announces P2P to be filtered as well, and solves the problem of an impossible task, by taking on a doubly impossible task. This will require every packet to be inspected for its transmission type and dynamic content analysis or very large hash tables. Why boil one ocean, when you can try to boil two?

Senator Conroy admits Technical Illiteracy

"This changeover will touch everybody's lives," the Comunications Minister, Stephen Conroy, told the Herald in an interview. "To get this wrong will deprive people of what they consider to be a basic service. That would be a significant miscalculation and stuff-up"

"I've tested this myself to find out how easy it is to install a set-top box if you are not very technically literate. I've got to tell you it's not that easy." ("Pensioners and poor may get free changeover to digital TV," SMH, 1, 15 Dec 2008)

Surprisingly Senator Conroy has not answered questions in Parliament about how he intends to deprive many Australians of what they consider to be a basic service.

Dec 8th - dbcde opens a "blog" to find out what we think.

Let them know. Contribute to the new blog here

Actions To Take

see links or below for more information

* Protest on the street. Canberra, 21 March

  • Sign Petitions.
  • Email, mail and call all politicians, media etc. Let them know there is a lot of people very concerned.
  • Let people know that their freedom is threatened, through Wikis, Forums, Blogs etc.
  • Add the GetUp! widget to your website, wiki, blog. Gathers peition signatures directly.
  • Become a member of the DLC/EFA.
  • See Projects for more info, and ideas on Project Ideas.

March In March


DLC are hosting a protest in Canberra on Saturday, the 21st of March.

Time: 1300hrs
Location: Federation Mall
City: Canberra City, ACT
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=50062819138
Website: http://www.marchinmarch.org

Protests 13th December 2008

Nation wide protests will happen on Saturday 13 December.

See the forums at http://nocensorship.info for more information and discussion on the protests

Time City Location Facebook Events
11am Brisbane Brisbane Square Brisbane Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=42526399601
11am Hobart Parliament Lawns Hobart Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39329861995
11am Sydney Town Hall Sydney Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=49916537640
12pm Adelaide Parliament Adelaide Facebook Event : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39343300875
12pm Melbourne State Library Melbourne Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=46838735931
12pm Perth Stirling Gardens Perth Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=45738419714
12pm Canberra City Walk (near the fountain outside of Canberra Centre), Civic Canberra Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=38717743533

Petitions, Online Actions, Phone Campaigns

  • www.wakinggiant.org print out Hardcopy Official House of Reps type petition form, circulate it among friends, at work, at college, then mail it to the organiser.
  • takingitglobal.org online Petition against the plan (running at around 25,000 signatures (6/12/08)
  • Getup! Save-The-Net petition upto 80,000 signatures (6/12/08). Also you can donate to an advertising blitz on the net about this issue. (Around $40,000 collected by 6/12/08)
  • GetUp! Save-The-Net Widget Save The Net campaign/petition widget for your blog or website. Put this widget in and people can sign the petition without leaving your site.

Forums, Blogs, Wikis and Chat

Some Forums, blogsand Wikis are already actively discussing this.
Jump in to as many forums, blogs and Wiki's as possible to prompt them to think about this. You are not going off topic in any of these. They have a real interest in keeping the Internet working fully. If you can, put in the GetUp! widget and/or some other banner.
These are the main ones currently discussing the issue

For more see More Information Links
Add ones you have alerted below.

For more see More Information Links

Facebook Groups

Just the biggest ones

For more, see More Information Links

Information

Short lists of some of the best and latest outside information For more, see More Information Links

In the Popular & Mainstream News and Media

Just a few of the best and latest mentions

For more see In the Popular & Mainstream News and Media

Informed / Involved Comment

Just a short list of teh best and most interesting, relevant

For more see More Information Links

Background Info, Government Announcements etc

Just a short list of some of the most relevant

For more see More Information Links

Other

The Players - For and Against

Find the full list of Sentors and Members of the House or Reps at Project Score Card

FAQs

  • What is happening? : The Federal Government, through The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, is introducing a filter on the internet which will:
    1. Stop all content above M being received by any internet subscriber
    2. Except if users put their name on a list, in which case they can receive all content up to R18+ (where legal) R1 or R2, except for videogames, which are limited to MA15+. Illegal content such as RC material or copyright violations will still be blocked by this filter.
  • However, illegal content includes:
  1. copyright violation (from "torrents" to posting songs or videos without written formal permission),
  2. defamation and racial vilification,
  3. discussions of suicide or euthanasia methods or advocacy methods,
  4. discussion of illegal drug cultivation or use, and,
  5. strangely enough, most "adult entertainment" available on the internet starring consenting adults is illegal.
Senator Conroy (in Hansard)-We are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material-illegal material.
Senator Conroy (in Hansard)-Existing provisions under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 are able to deal with suicide related material that provides detailed instruction or promotion of matters of crime or violence. It is an existing law.
  • Illegal content which would be blocked would includes:
  1. Wikipedia (adult content, defamation, euthanasia, copyright violation),
  2. YouTube (adult content, copyright violation),
  3. MySpace (copyright violation),
  4. Facebook (copyright violation), and
  5. various file-sharing sites (copyright violation, suicide & euthanasia advocacy documents).


  • What actually will be filtered will be
  1. secret (FOI will not apply to the list)
  2. by bureaucractic decision (subject to personal agendas and taste)
  3. not subject to judicial review (so how can we challenge if the material is actually illegal)
  4. Very prone to censorship creep. Various conservative groups (Family First etc)are lobbying for filtering of gambling, abortion information, etc.


  • As filtering content is, and will always remain, technically difficult, network speeds will be slowed by between 20 and 80%. 3% of illegal content will make it through the filter. 1 in every 100 web pages will be incorrectly blocked.
  • The manner in which Senator Conroy and his Department have discussed the filter indicates that they will use Deep packet inspection, content profiling.
  • Some products claim to be able to bypass certain encryption Secure Sockets Layer (ssl) encryption. However, to do this effectively, (see pages which require a login) a man in the middle attack would have to be performed. This would break the trust in the ssl pki, which guarantees the security of internet banking, shopping, ebusiness, computer security and a large proportion of secure communication on the internet. Thus, this the effective interception of ssl protected pages cannot be implemented without major backlash from the general community. Encryption other than ssl, such as AES, pgp, blowfish, etc. should not be affected.
  • When is this happening? : It is already happening. They trialled it in Tasmania and it failed badly. The government asked for expressions of interest from Internet Service Providers for a live trial using real users.
  • Don't they need to pass a law? : The Law has already been passed. The filter is already provided for under the Broadcasting Services Act (1992) as amended specifically Schedule 5 and Schedule 7. The Howard Government passed the substantive portions of the Act that legally allow internet censorship. The Rudd Government confirmed this law on 22 January 2008. However, by [writing to politicians] and the Minister Senator Conroy, we can still pressure them to stop the filter, or make it so politically damaging to support the filter that they halt progress on it.
  • But doesn't Australia have freedom of speech? : Yes, but Australians do have freedom of speech in relation to politics and elections. This was brought into effect by a High Court of Australia decision which found, that you cannot have a democratic election without freedom of speech. It should be noted that freedom of speech in Australia does not extend nearly as far a US freedom of speech. Australia does not have a bill of rights in the constitution.
  • If you want to do something right now, print out posters or flyers at no censorship.info and hand them out or post them up; discuss this with your friends and family; link to us on your online social networks (twitter, facebook etc.) ; and write to Senator Conroy, all six of your State Senators, your Local Member, your ISP, using the examples in the Scorecard.

Other Sources of Info

See also http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=cleanfeed for very good summary writeup of this whole issue.

  • What we know so far
  • Why is it a bad idea?
  • What can I do?
  • Chronology and Media Coverage
  • ISP's positions
  • Links
  • Other Wikis
  • Audio Links
  • Letter Templates
  • Facebook Groups
  • Quotes

See More Information Links also

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