Proposed Internet Filter

[Anonymous]

Quote:

Amanda, I was wondering if the proposed Internet filter will affect TR , perhaps if it picks up keywords we may come to their attention? I don’t know enough about it and perhaps you do??

It doesn’t work that way. The Internet filter (or the Great Australian Farcewall as I coined it.. http://www.michellesullivan.org/blog/284 ) is a list of banned URI’s. Everytime you request a web page the ISP will intercept the request check it against the banned list and then provide you with the correct page or a ‘this is banned’ page. It works in a very similar way to an RBL (Realtime Blackhole List for email) – I build, and continue to run one of the largest in the world.

URI means Uniform Resource Identifier eg:

http://www.michellesullivan.org/blog/284
ftp://src.doc.ic.au.uk/
imap://mail.sorbs.net/INBOX/?message=295
irc://irc.oftc.net/#sorbs
file:///etc/passwd
etc..

URL (Uniform Resource Locater) tend to be just the http and ftp varieties of an URI. However, the real difference between the two are that URLs are used to describe a resource address on the Internet where URIs are for describing the address of anything computer related (Internet, Intranet, local machine etc.) For example, the last of my examples above is not a URL, but it is a URI as it refers to a file called passwd on the local machine of the person using it.

Aren’t computer terms frighteningly confusing?

Regards,

Michelle

[Angie_1]

It appears that the internet filter is on hold for the time being, reason being the severe popularity swing in the current polling leading up to the next federal elections.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/12/2897761.htm

[Anonymous]

This filter was of concern, but I think our fears are nothing over what is done to China to get past the great China cyber wall.

What the concern is cyber attacks from other countries that have ill will to the west.

But this is not to say such powers would not be abused by government.

[Anonymous]

My only concern is that this list of banned sites is a secret one and that any site could end up on it due to simple public complaint. When a copy of the list was posted onto wikileaks, quite a few sites that should not be there – were.
So it only takes one or two people to decide what goes onto the list and you do not know until (with the filter running) that your site is on that list.

It’s good to see that this total waste of money, yours and mine, may not come to pass.

If it does then there is always the software used in both China and the modified vesion used in Iran that will tunnel through the wall anyway. Or VPN.

My biggest worry would be that a future government could really use it as a tool to block access to information that we may really need. It’s the thin edge of the wedge. But then that’s just my opinion I suppose.

Even google and the US Govt say it’s a bad thing and we should not do it and I certainly don’t like the fact that we join a list that contains China and Iran.