As part of the story on Senator Conroy’s Internet Filter the SMH web site is conducting a poll. Currently (Tue Mar 30 22:15:03 EST 2010) there are over 32,000 respondents with 96% opposing this filter. Please register your vote against this deeply flawed proposal – http://www.smh.com.au/polls/technology/technology-news/internet-censorship/20100330-r9ft.html

Below is a form that I have sent to Bob Debus, my local member:

Thank you for the form letter I received after my earlier complaint about the Internet Filter. The form replies showed a lack of understanding of Internet technologies.

After Senator Conroy’s lies, blatant misinformation and total lack of comprehension of the Internet works on Radio National last night as he promoted his Internet Filter, I implore you to vote against this legislation. There is no way any filter is 100% accurate, ask any IT professional – I am one so I know.

The Internet Filter only targets a one method of transferring data over the Internet – Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. This is the “http” at the start of a web address when using a web browser. This method is not used for the transfer of “child pornography”, that Senator Conroy screams every time someone questions the Internet Filter. They use encrypted connections, encrypted files using P2P networks. These are the same methods kids use to download and share music files. The filter can’t block encrypted web sites, otherwise online banking would be impossible.

Senator Conroy knows this won’t work, that’s why he refuses to have the blocked list published. If the filter worked 100% even having the list of sites would be of no use because the filter would block access.

Spend the millions of dollars on actual police who search the Internet and track down the paedophiles, not on censorship which will turn Australia into a technological black hole.

Pleaser recognise that this Internet Filter will zero effect on child pornographers but will lull parents into a false sense of security and have a massive impact on Internet access speeds.

Focus – a research company committed to making world-class business expertise universally available – has released a report detailing 50 places that you wouldn’t expect to run Linux – http://www.focus.com/fyi/information-technology/50-places-linux-running-you-might-not-expect/. It includes Google, Amazon, New York Stock Exchange, Toyota Motor Sales USA, US Department of Defence, US Navy Nuclear Submarine Fleet, Spanish Government, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Pakistani Schools & Colleges, US Postal Service and numerous European schools. They have even missed out the numerous South American governments that have legislated a preference for Linux.

Unfortunately, there is not one report of Linux being adopted in Australia by government or private enterprise.

Today NASA have also complained about the lack of a high speed Internet connection delaying a multi-million-dollar balloon mission used to transmit information about the stars and the galaxy back to Earth – NASA Balloon Mission.

These two stories show how far behind the rest of the developed world Australia is. The promised $43 billion National Broadband Network will take years to be deployed and estimates of $2500 to connect each house with $100+ monthly charges for only 25GB of data mean that the possibilities of Fibre-To-The-Home won’t be realised by Australians.

The Australian Government released the public submissions to the Internet filter proposed by Senator Conroy. Major tech companies like Optus, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Telstra and many “concerned citizens” made submissions. Many were concerned about the transparency of the list and the continual broadening of blocked categories by Senator Conroy. The Australian Christian Lobby, one of the biggest supporters of the internet filtering plan, was even concerned the adding of innocuous content to the blacklist would “undermine the entire policy”. Google said implementing mandatory filtering across Australia’s millions of internet users could “negatively impact user access speeds”. Google also said it would “not to be technologically possible [to filter high-volume sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter] as it would have such a serious impact on internet access”. In other words it would make the National Broadband Network unviable. Submissions by ISPs like Optus and Telstra, Microsoft and the Internet Society of Australia were concerned about the legal liability if sites were blocked incorrectly or sites that should have been blocked weren’t.

We still need to keep the pressure on “our” elected representatives to stop Senator Conroy implementing this filter.

Senator Conroy is upset that he has been declared an enemy of the Internet – Conroy hits out at internet enemies report.

He again spews the “Material like child pornography, pro-rape websites, pro-bestiality websites and material of that nature” line implying that if you’re anti-censorship you are in favour of this content. Nothing could be further from the truth. All of that material is already illegal and there aren’t open web sites with this content. This sort of material is passed around by email, encrypted peer-to-peer networks and other methods that Senator Conroy’s filter just can’t block. Of great concern is the “material of that nature” part. Just what does he mean? What other categories does he think shouldn’t be on the Internet? Pro-abortion web sites? Anti-abortion web sites? Anti-Afghanistan war web sites? Anti-Christian web sites? Pro-Islamic web sites? My blog because I don’t agree with him and his policies?

However, my biggest concern is that he just doesn’t seem to have the intelligence to understand why the filter won’t work.

Reporters Sans Frontièrs (Reporters Without Borders for Press Freedom) have added Australia to the “Under Surveillance List” because of Senator Conroy’s determination to censor the Internet. Even though members of his own Labor Party (how can you trust a political party who misspell their name), most notably Senator Kate Lundy whose motto shows her understanding of life in the 21st Century – “Taking Australia forward with openness and vision”. Senator Lundy’s sensible approach to protecting children from the scum and bottom feeders that inhabit all walks of life is:

With this in mind the approach I am taking takes the opportunity to educate subscribers about better internet safety that empowers them to make an imformed choice and addresses the fundamental objections through:

1. the introduction of a Mandatory Option for all Internet subscribers that requires an active choice on the level of filtering for that household, with the government RC filter as the default service if they fail to make a choice within a reasonable period of time, whilst making other information about cyber safety best practices and support available, and
2. a requirement of ISPs to provide an Open Internet service as one of the Mandatory Options to Internet subscribers, creating the ability to opt out. I think mandating the provision of an Open Internet service in legislation for all ISPs also protects the civil libertarian principles of freedom of information and speech whilst not diminishing the ability of the authorities to tackle illegal content such as child pornography where is found. Senator Kate Lundy – February 16, 2010

Do I think some regulations and filtering need to be available? Yes, but people should have the option of filtering at a level they choose – from no filtering to a white list of the only sites that can be accessed.

Businesses and places where children use computers need to block objectionable content. The problem is that people are “inquisitive”, particularly teenagers, so they will push the boundaries for things that are forbidden. Filtering at the ISP level is not the best option. Where you need to filter the Internet, places like schools, child care centres, Internet booths, etc, you should filter at two different levels – before anything gets out to the Internet and then by checking in real time before anything is sent back to the computer. Filtering requests before they go to the Internet use a Proxy Server like Squid with a URL redirector like SquidGuard or one of the many commercial offerings. These include “Internet Security Suites” like Trend Micro’s Internet Security Pro which allows you to block number sequences from credit cards, personal information, email addresses, bank details and other sensitive information. Real time checking is best performed at the DNS level, where your request for “www.example.com” is converted to an IP Address (192.0.32.10) so the web site is sent back to your browser.

A quick and easy way for home users and small businesses to filter at the DNS level is to set their ADSL modem router to use the OpenDNS Domain Name System servers. This is free for anybody to use and they also offer premium paid services. You can select the basic “Low” level which blocks “Tasteless”, “Proxy/Anonymizer” (stops people bypassing OpenDNS), “Sexuality” and “Pornography”, one of the higher levels or customise the filtering totally by choosing your own categories.

We can only hope that the rest of Australia’s politicians wake up and defeat Senator Conroy’s aim of censoring the Internet under the sham of “stopping the paedophiles”, which his filtering plan will have 0% effect on.

The web site for Senator Conroy, the Australian Minister for Censorship, has infringed on copyright and failed to remove the code when requested by the author. As reported by ITWire the DBCDE web site uses a Javascript to generate a “tag cloud. The Javascript was written by Aleks Bochniak who requested on 1 March 2010 that the script be removed. He requested the removal of the code because “I do not want in any way to be associated with yourself, your office or your policies”. The copyright information has been deliberately removed from the script so I’m asking DBCDE to prosecute the DBCDE and Senator Conroy, whose photo appears large and proud on the site, for copyright infringements and issue an immediate take down notice for DBCDE web site.

ITWire also reported that Senator Conroy is already censoring his own web site by removing the the term “ISP Filtering” from the tag cloud. The code below is from the ministers website – http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/:

for(var i=0; i<=15/*<-Important! increase this value by 1 everytime a keyword is excluded below*/; i++)
{
var z=0;
for(var j=0; j if (unique[i]==split[j]) {
z=z+1;
}
counts[i] = z;
}
var size = getTagClass(z);
//Customise the tag-cloud to display what shows up
if (unique[i] == "ISP Filtering")
{
continue;
}
document.write(''+unique[i]+' ');
}

This is type of action that Senator Conroy would like to impose on all Internet access in Australia, filtering any content that is embarrassing the Labor Party or government. Make no mistake, the filtering that Senator Conroy wants to impose has nothing to do with paedophiles and child pornography, these are already illegal and offenders can already be prosecuted under Australian and international laws. This offensive material is not distributed by web sites, it is distributed by email, peer-to-peer sharing, personal FTP servers and encrypted file transfers. The ISP filtering Senator Conroy wants to impose will do nothing to stop these methods.

In late November last year Optus rang up saying that my contract was just about up and asked if I was going to renew my contract. The phone caller offered a new Nokia 6710 Navigator as part of the 2-year contract. After telling them that there was still 3 months to they offered to waive that contract and any penalties if I signed up then over the phone. My Nokia 6110 had been a good phone as had all of my previous Nokia phones, so I agreed.

I received the 6710 a few days later and it felt a little flimsy in my hand but thought it would be OK. A week later I received my next bill, Optus had charged me for both the new and the old contract effectively doubling my bill. A rather irate, one hour phone call and this was “fixed” by the call centre. Then I had trouble texting, which I use a lot to customers and my daughters. The phone was “missing” characters as I typed messages into the phone. My eldest daughter sent a couple of text messages from my phone and made the same complaint. The phone was only two weeks old so I rang Optus and after a lot of hassles they arranged a swap over with a courier company delivering a new phone and taking the slightly older phone away. After a few weeks I started having the same problems texting. I’ve worked out it is actually the keypad. When typing one handed the small speaker on the back of the phone that emits the little beep for each character gets covered up by a finger, so you don’t hear the beeps to select the correct letter. The number pad gets really sloppy and has to be pushed directly in the middle of the key or its not detected by the phone. The two sections of the phone “wobble” when the slide is opened. It’s impossible to read the screen when outside, you’ve got to move into the shade or go inside. The new mapping software called “Ovi” is crap, you have to type in a postcode as part of the address search – so I can’t use the navigation feature. How many people know the postcodes of every suburb in Australia? What a stupid “required” option? It’s quicker to get a laptop out, connect to Internode (my ISP) using a 3G dongle and use Google Maps to work out where I’m going. The whole phone just feels like a cheap plastic knock-off, not a high quality Nokia phone.

That’s the last Nokia phone I get, I’ll put up with this as long as I can but I’ll probably end up buying a phone and swapping the SIM card out.

I’m starting to feel like a motoring journalist or “Top Gear” on the cheap. I’m teaching in Lithgow each Tuesday for this semester so I get a TAFE car to travel back and forth on Tuesdays. I’ve made 3 trips in 3 different cars – a Toyota Ascent sedan, Toyota Camry and a Holden Epica. They are all automatics with 4,5 and 6 speeds respectively and this what causes problems (other than the lack of headroom in the Ascent and Epica) – the 6-speed box in the Epica is useless. It doesn’t like 100 km/h – you get to 100 and the box changes into 6th and the car starts slowing down Press the accelerator and you drop back to 5th and get back up to 100 and it changes into 6th and slows down. 50 km of this is very frustrating and the “cruise control” doesn’t do any better!

However, the biggest problem I have is that in all three cars you can’t see anything of the car past the back window and the rear door handles. This means you can’t see where the car finishes when reversing, which is sort of needed when parking.

I can heartily recommend that you shouldn’t buy any of these vehicles … LOL

AGIMO’s policy and planning division general manager Graham Fry told a Senate Estimates Committee hearing that scoping the potential for a platform change could cost more than it saves.

“Agencies are obliged to consider value for money on each occasion they apply a software,” he said.

“That means considering value for money between the alternatives of open source and proprietary software.

“If the cost of assessing it was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice.”

The above quote shows just how much misinformation is fed to politicians by public servants in their efforts to maintain huge IT budgets and justify the annual expenditure of $500,000,000.00, mostly to Microsoft, for proprietary software licences. The last sentence shows how incompetent Graham Fry is – denigrating open source software because it is free. Graham Fry asserts that because something is free it is incapable of performing the tasks it was created for. He further goes on to say:

While open source software may reduce licensing costs, the cost of support could be an issue.

Does this mean that there is no support cost to proprietary software? If Graham Fry truly believes this then I would expect to see mass sackings and a significant reduction in salary expenses because proprietary software doesn’t need support. Does Graham Fry realise how ridiculous he sounds to IT professionals? Does Graham Fry care as long as his mates at Microsoft keep taking hundreds of millions of our tax payers money back to the US?

Ref: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/166884,open-source-not-free-senate-hears.aspx