Internet censorship pilot to go ahead Yesterday, 12:15 pm
The federal government has formally begun seeking "expressions of interest" from Australian ISPs wishing to be the first to pilot the government's Internet censorship plan.
"The Government intends to take an evidence-based approach to content filtering at the ISP level and is committed to working closely with industry to address any concerns, including costs and impacts on internet speeds", said ACMA.
It is the first time that detail is being provided about the plan, with confirmation of a "two-tiered" approach. The first tier will use a compulsory URL blacklist (currently containing around 1300 URLs), of sites said to contain "child sex abuse material". Importantly, this does not involve rules based algorithms, and the pilot is expected to test both URL blocking and IP based blocking of sites on this list.
The list currently operates on a complaints based mechanism, meaning that it only contains sites that have been submitted as prohibited content under the Broadcasting Services Act. However, ACMA intends to augment the list with sites collected by UK and US based organisations.
The second tier (and optional for ISPs to pilot) is described to include "dynamic filtering of other unwanted internet content and non web based applications (such as peer-to-peer networks)." ACMA also indicates that ISPs are free to charge for this extra level of filtering.
The pilot intends to investigate a range of blocking implementations, and results will be collected through surveys of volunteer end users and formal tests by Enex TestLab, who won a tender to carry out the work.
Information sought will include impact on performance, accuracy of blocking, ease of circumvention, ease of use (including impact on privacy/security), scalability and the cost of implementation.
But the pilot is only about technical implementation, and will not address concerns over what might be added to blacklists in the future. With some fringes of politics seeking to use the censorship infrastructure to block a broader range of material such as overseas gambling or euthanasia sites, even a successful pilot would do nothing to reduce fears that this is "the thin edge of the wedge" towards Chinese-style government control of Internet content.
Senator Conroy did not shy away from the opportunity for future expansion of the blacklist when speaking to the ABC. "So in terms of what some of the senators want to claim should be included on the blacklist, I'm sure that when we get to the debates down the track, if it proves to be technically feasible, there'll be a whole range of people with a whole range of demands about what should be on the blacklist", he said.
The level of participation by ISPs in the pilot will be interesting to watch, especially given the potential cost to their reputation by being associated with an unpopular policy.
The pilot is expected to start before the end of the year and will last for at least 6 weeks.
