[Infowarrior] - Aussie ISPs refuse to join government's filtering test

[Richard Forno]

Aussie ISPs refuse to join government's filtering test

By Joel Hruska | Published: December 11, 2008 - 01:58PM CT

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081211-aussie-isps-refuse-to-join-governments-filtering-test.html

The Australian government's plan to censor the entire Internet hit  
another major snag this week after two of the country's largest ISPs,  
Telstra and InterNode, announced they would not participate in the  
government's proposed filtering tests. Many of the ISPs in Australia,  
in fact, are either refusing to join the test, joining it only to  
prove it won't work (iiNet), or only testing a scaled-down version of  
what's intended to be the final model (Optus).

We've covered the numerous flaws in Australia's plan in some detail,  
and the ISPs are citing some of the same issues as reasons for why the  
plan won't work. At present, the government is planning a two-tier  
system. The first tier (compulsory for all Australians) would block  
all "illegal" material (as deemed such by the Australian  
Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The content blacklist is  
not to exceed 10,000 URLs, but when the ISP Optus begins actually  
testing the first tier next year, it will be working with a cut-down  
list of 1,300 rather than the expanded list of 10,000.

The second tier of censorship filtering is meant to be an opt-out  
system that will block both the illegal content and "content deemed  
inappropriate for children." Said content will again be deemed  
appropriate or inappropriate by ACMA.

The government seems to be completely out of touch with the  
technological requirements and logistical flaws of its own plan.  
Filtering for just the first tier of this plan is problematic enough— 
clearly the ISPs think so—but filtering all Internet traffic for those  
on the second tier of the plan will consume a disproportionate amount  
of ISP resources for a small group of customers. Deep packet  
inspection (DPI for short) doesn't just require additional processing  
resources and expensive equipment, it creates latency problems that  
aren't easy to address. Adding more bandwidth to the the network, in  
this case, does nothing to increase performance and might actually  
retard it; more incoming packets means still more data that must be  
inspected and properly routed. Faster DPI equipment can theoretically  
speed the process, but the window in which such inspection can take  
place without impacting the end user's experience is small.

According to The Age, Communication Minister Stephen Conroy's office  
is long on rhetoric but a bit dicey on the actual facts. The minister  
himself has apparently written to critics and told them that the  
upcoming tests would be "live trials over a closed network test that  
will not involve actual customers," but has neglected to explain how  
one performs a live test without deploying the service to a group of  
customers. The government's plans are opposed by a coalition of non- 
majority Australian parties, the aforementioned ISPs, and anti- 
censorship protesters. The recent flurry of negative publicity  
surrounding the Internet Watch Foundation's decision to block  
Wikipedia based on a single image (since retracted) won't do anything  
to help the government's plan, either. To date, Senator Conroy  
maintains that the government's filtering system will use the same IWF  
blacklist as Britain, opening the country to the same sorts of  
filtration issues.