You are to be censored

[davereid]

You are to be censored.

A secret list of banned websites will soon be applied to your internet surfing. While claiming the list targets child porn, its a secret, so you will never know whats on it.

Internet service providers will soon begin blocking access to hundreds of websites that are on a secret blacklist compiled by the Department of Internal Affairs, but critics say the system lacks transparency.

The department yesterday announced its new Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, which it said would help fight child sex abuse.

The $150,000 software will be provided free of charge to ISPs in a couple of months and will reroute all site requests to government-owned servers.

The software, called Whitebox, compares users' site requests with a list of banned links. If a match is found, the request is denied.

It will not cover e-mail, file sharing or borderline material.

Internal Affairs secretary Keith Manch said the scheme was voluntary for internet service providers, but Yahoo!Xtra, TelstraClear and Vodafone -- representing over 93 percent of the market -- had all expressed interest in adopting it.

Internal Affairs first trialled the scheme in 2007 and 2008 with some ISPs, but IT Minister Steven Joyce told the National Business Review in March that the Government had no plans to introduce internet filtering technology in New Zealand.

The minister's office yesterday declined to comment.

Critics say the system has been introduced by stealth and lacks accountability.

The department will not disclose the 7000 objectionable websites for fear "inevitably some people would visit them in the interim", effectively facilitating further offending and making the department party to the further exploitation of children.

The blacklist is not compiled by the Censor's office and internet censorship is not covered under the Films, Videos And Publications Classification Act.

Internal Affairs censorship compliance head Steve O'Brien said the blacklist would be personally reviewed by staff each month and would be restricted to paedophilic content only.

But systems administrator and IT blogger Thomas Beagle said the system had been deliberately kept "under the radar" to avoid public debate.

Filtering systems in Australia, Denmark and the UK have been accused of serious flaws, with unexplained blacklistings of straight and gay pornography, Wikipedia articles and small businesses.

Mr Beagle said he favoured providing optional clean feeds for users, but believed governments would be tempted to expand the blacklist in reaction to events.

"No one minds when it's blocking child pornography, but what about when there's a media furore about anorexia and we add the pro-ana (pro-anorexia) sites?

"Okay, that might be harming people - but what about the euthanasia information sites? Or the holocaust deniers?

If the blacklist was managed in an open manner people would be able to challenge what was being done to "protect" them, he said.

Internet NZ also questioned the system, saying it could be abused and anything that attempted to redirect internet traffic had the potential to "break" the internet.

"Who makes the decision on what is on the filtered list and who checks anything shouldn't be there?" said Internet NZ chief executive Richard Currey.

Internal Affairs had only spoken to I nternet NZ once, and the group had not had the chance to see what its 300 members thought.

"While this filter might stop casual browsing it won't stop hard core offenders, and there are alternatives ways than web browsers to access content."

Mr Manch said the system was not a silver bullet but another important tool in fighting the sexual abuse of children.

Anyone trying to access child sex abuse websites would receive a screen message saying the site has been blocked because it was illegal.

However, the department would not log who was trying to look at the images and it would not be used for law enforcement, he said.

The department was trying to stop people accessing the images, rather than trying to catch them.

The department was developing a publicly available code of practice to provide assurance that only targeted website pages containing images of child sexual abuse would be filtered and the privacy of ISP customers was maintained.

An independent reference group would also be established to oversee the operation and further information would be provided to Internet NZ, he said.



http://nz.rd.yahoo.com/news/rss/top_...tories/5731205

[98tls]

Well thats Finn fucked then,wonder if there watching the "River rock watchers" website.Best i get out there and measure,may well have taken a few young-uns.

[Brownstoo]

system was not a silver bullet but another important tool in fighting the sexual abuse of children

Fuck off! It's an excuse for more controll.

[sil3nt]

only kiddy fiddlers would have an issue with this. won't affect anyone else.

[=cJ=]

only kiddy fiddlers would have an issue with this. won't affect anyone else.

Who will just bypass it like they usually do.

It will be so easy once this kind of system is in place to quietly expand it too.

And we laughed at the great firewall of china too... >_<

[James Deuce]

only kiddy fiddlers would have an issue with this. won't affect anyone else.

My word, you're quaint. Once that control is in place it will be a simple, non-transparent process to get a website "filtered" out of existence. It is really simple to make emails and stuff copied off the Internet look like it came from, I don't know, say, www.kiwibiker.co.nz.

The Internet is about the free, uninterrupted exchange of ideas and information. That is utter anathema to most Governments, and corporate and government agencies have done their very best to limit every aspect of that ethic since they started charging us for access. Yes, once upon a time Mary-Jane, access to the Internet was free, thanks to the Wellington City Council, Victoria University, and Waikato University.

I am willing to bet that Kiwibiker is banned in China. It won't stop the enterprising people who like bikes getting to it, but breaking a filter rule in China carries harsh financial and penal penalties.

Censoring the message doesn't work. Fighting Kiddie Porn by censoring one medium isn't addressing the problem at all. How about some of you people out there stop dressing your kids like 6 year old whores, and chemical castration and permanent incarceration for a first offence become the norm.

[CookMySock]

Theres no way to block anything on the internet. Once there is a machine inside a compromised network, the game is back on. What they are doing will block the casual dabblers, and inconvenience the hardcore for about, oh, an hour.

And seriously, when was http used for file sharing anyway.

It's either a ruse to give traders a false sense of security, or some Internet tecnology company has managed to persuade the govt to part with millions.

Steve

[Ixion]

So all web access is now to be controlled by the gubbermint. Who will allow only such access as a non-elected, non-accountable secret committee decides is acceptable.

You can be very sure indeed that sites like al-Jezerra will be on the banned list. Not to mention any blogs that are unfriendly to the gubbemint.

The inanity of the claim that "it is only to stop kiddie-fiddlers" is an insult to our intelligence.

Kiddie-fiddlers, I am assured by the media, are a cunning careful and devious bunch. Circumventing these sort of blacklists is easy enough IF YOU HAVE REASON TO.

So the people who do have reason to circumvent controls (said kiddiefiddlers) won't be affected. Who will be affected? Mr and Mrs Smith - who will simply say "Oh how strange - that site we were told about doesn't seem to exist". And remain in blissful ignorance of all that the gubbermint doesn't want them to know.

That's capitalism for you. Aren't you glad that your forefathers went off and died so that you could live in a free country.

[MadDuck]

Theres no way to block anything on the internet.

Dammit so you are saying even if I have blocked Katman I never will be truely rid of him?

Oh and dont red me for trolling. Its an honest question.

[James Deuce]

Troll! Troll in the Dungeon!

[Phurrball]

Other folks have been exercised on this matter too...

Emma Hart on Publicaddress puts it much better than I ever could.

[sil3nt]

My word, you're quaint. Once that control is in place it will be a simple, non-transparent process to get a website "filtered" out of existence. It is really simple to make emails and stuff copied off the Internet look like it came from, I don't know, say, www.kiwibiker.co.nz.

The Internet is about the free, uninterrupted exchange of ideas and information. That is utter anathema to most Governments, and corporate and government agencies have done their very best to limit every aspect of that ethic since they started charging us for access. Yes, once upon a time Mary-Jane, access to the Internet was free, thanks to the Wellington City Council, Victoria University, and Waikato University.

I am willing to bet that Kiwibiker is banned in China. It won't stop the enterprising people who like bikes getting to it, but breaking a filter rule in China carries harsh financial and penal penalties.

Censoring the message doesn't work. Fighting Kiddie Porn by censoring one medium isn't addressing the problem at all. How about some of you people out there stop dressing your kids like 6 year old whores, and chemical castration and permanent incarceration for a first offence become the norm.

Thank you captain obvious!

Censoring the material won't hurt anyone. Of course there are ways around it but if it stops one or two of these perverted losers then thats a good thing right?

Oh but wait the government is going to start censoring everything now right? Better go invest in some tin foil shares or start a tinfoil hat company.

[Bonez]

Proxies.

[gatch]

Its fuckin bullshit, they SAY its about kid porn. The american government said the p.a.t.r.i.o.t act was for protecting its people too..

[James Deuce]

Thank you captain obvious!

Censoring the material won't hurt anyone. Of course there are ways around it but if it stops one or two of these perverted losers then thats a good thing right?

Oh but wait the government is going to start censoring everything now right? Better go invest in some tin foil shares or start a tinfoil hat company.

The Government won't, the ISPs will, with the blessing of the Government and infrastructure the taxpayer paid for.

Telecon have spent two years trying to stop NZers from playing overseas Internet based games, while trying to make people use their games service (it sucks) by treating all international data as non-time critical and traffic shaping until Internet traffic flows suit their own grand scheme. They quickly realised it was a great way to nail Skype as well. We're lucky that we still have the odd agency, and competitors who have to use Telecon's network who have balls to demand (both punitively and unpolitely) that Telecom stop messing with data that belongs to other organisations.

There's no conspiracy, merely equipment that can be used unscrupulously to gain a competitive advantage all in the name of stopping "kiddie porn".