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AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.

The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.

The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.

The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the Global Network Initiative, bringing together leading companies, human rights organisations, academics and investors, committed the technology firms to "protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users".

Mr Conroy said trials were yet to be carried out, but "we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material."

The net nanny proposal was originally going to allow Australians who wanted uncensored access to the web the option of contacting their internet service provider to be excluded from the service.

Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate "there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it"

Groups including the System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it would unfairly restrict Australians' access to the web, slow internet speeds and raise the price of internet access.

EFA board member Colin Jacobs said it would have little effect on illegal internet content, including child pornography, as it would not cover file-sharing networks.

"If the Government would actually come out and say we're only targeting child pornography it would be a different debate," he said.

The technology companies' move, which follows criticism that the companies were assisting censorship of the internet in nations such as China, requires them to narrowly interpret government requests for information or censorship and to fight to minimise cooperation.

The initiative provides a systematic approach to "work together in resisting efforts by governments that seek to enlist companies in acts of censorship and surveillance that violate international standards", the participants said.

In a statement, Yahoo co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.

"These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted," he said.

"Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people's lives, and the principles we unveil today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world."

Yahoo was thrust into the forefront of the online rights issue after the Californian company helped Chinese police identify cyber dissidents whose supposed crime was expressing their views online.

China exercises strict control over the internet, blocking sites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and those with information on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

A number of US companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Yahoo, have been hauled before the US Congress in recent years and accused of complicity in building the "Great Firewall of China".

The Australian Christian Lobby, however, has welcomed the proposals.

Managing director Jim Wallace said the measures were needed.

"The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must be placed above the industry's desire for unfettered access," Mr Wallace said.

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New internet filter imposed on all web surfers

Australian internet users will be subjected to the new nationwide World Wide Web filter, whether they want to participate in the scheme or not.

Web users will only be able to opt out of a secondary layer of internet censorship affecting adults-only material under the revised plan and both web filters will apply by default.

The admission, aired in the Senate last week, has been slammed by civil liberties and internet groups, who brand the change a "creeping" and "unprecedented" attack on personal freedom.

The Federal Government announced its ambitious web censorship plan in December 2007, committing $44.2 million and four years.

The filter was due to be implemented by internet service providers, such as Telstra BigPond and OptusNet, who would block inappropriate material as determined the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

Following the announcements, ACMA conducted a laboratory trial of six internet software filters, reporting in June that the software had improved in accuracy and speed since a 2005 survey, but still had significant problems.

The six software filters slowed the speed of internet access down by at least 2 per cent and as much as 87 per cent, the report found. Filters also unnecessarily blocked access to between 1 and 8 per cent of legitimate sites - a glitch that would significantly restrict web access.

Despite these issues, Senator Conroy told a Senate Estimates Committee last week that the Government was now pursuing "live" trials of internet filters. Large and small internet service providers will be asked to participate by testing different filtering technology - hardware and software - on web-surfing volunteers.

Conroy says the live trials will be designed to "ensure that we do not have the impact that some wild claims make", although he admits the Government has not set benchmarks for what is an acceptable level of "overblocking" or unnecessarily banning websites.

The live trials are due to begin before the end of the year, with results due early next year.

Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos says some ISPs are keen to participate in the trials as "they want to know for themselves what the issues are and they want to provide some quality input back to the Government on what the real issues are".

Senator Conroy says the Australian internet filter will block access to some sites for all Australian internet users, canning the option to opt out.

"We are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material," he says.

"We are in the early stages, but we are looking at two tiers: mandatory (blocking) of illegal material and an option for families to get a clean feed service if they wish.

"In terms of the policy, what we are investigating is whether it is possible to ensure that people can opt out of an ISP filter if they wanted to look at material that is legal, as opposed to not allowing an opt-out for material that is illegal."

Senator Conroy says guidelines for banned material in both tiers is yet to be determined, with controversial subjects such as euthanasia and pro-anorexia websites falling into grey legal areas.

Electronic Frontiers Association board member Colin Jacobs says this lack of information over which material will be banned is one of several concerns the civil liberties group has with the Government's proposal.

Mr Jacobs says the "creeping scope" of the internet filter was a serious cause for concern and would mean that any internet speed decrease as a result of the scheme would be felt by all Australian internet users.

It is a concern echoed by the System Administrators Guild of Australia, who argue that the scheme will increase the cost of internet access as ISPs pass on the cost of filtering websites.

SAGE president Donna Ashelford says the scheme will also fail to filter two-thirds of internet traffic, much of which is carried over peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent.

"Aside from the commercial and technical impact such legislation will have on a variety of sectors within the IT industry in Australia, technical Band-aids are invariably ineffective in addressing the root causes of social problems," Ashelford says.

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In Australia's muddy Internet waters, you don't know what's being filtered

An Australian law expert has warned that under the government's proposed mandatory Internet content filtering scheme Australians will have no way of finding out what "illegal" content has been censored and blocked online,

The warning comes as Greens party Senator Scott Ludlam voiced concern over Communications minister Stephen Conroy's ambiguity regarding exactly what content will or won't be blocked, and who will be able to opt-out of the filtering.

Conroy's mandatory Internet filtering proposal caused a stir last week when it was revealed a member of his department had tried to censor severely critical comments made on the Whirlpool broadband forum by an Internode network engineer regarding the merits of ISP level filtering.

Graham Bassett is a barrister at Byron Bar Chambers and has taught Internet Law at Queensland University of Technology. Bassett told Computerworld Australia that under current non-digital censorship laws a schedule of content that has been censored is made available to the public. However no such freedom of information will be available for public access to monitor what is censored and blocked under the government's mandatory Internet filtering scheme.

Bassett pointed to a Freedom of Information (FOI) application lodged by the Electronic Frontiers Association (EFA) in February 2000 to obtain information about Internet content that had been the subject of a complaint to the then Australian Broadcasting Authority (now ACMA) under Internet censorship laws that came into force on January 1, 2000.

EFA chair Dale Clapperton told the magazine that the government refused to provide that information and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal accepted the government's argument that making that information public would undermine its work with international law enforcement agencies.

"The government at some stage along the way actually amended the Freedom of Information Act to say that this type of information could not be FOI'd," Clapperton said, warning that the ramifications of that ruling mean the list of Web sites put on Conroy's proposed blacklist will not be accessible to the public.

"We're not permitted to know what is on it - essentially we have to take their word for it. That was bad before when the blacklist was just being provided to manufacturers of filtering software, but now that the government is proposing to block access to everything on that blacklist by every Australian, it is unspeakably bad."

Bassett confirmed that Australians will have no recourse to determine what has been blocked, once it is on the blacklist. "If you have a situation where what is being banned is never made public, then how do we know that there hasn't been an extension beyond material which infringes censorship publication, for example a political party or some people that might be defined as a terrorist organization? The content becomes based upon whatever might be the whims of the people controlling those filters and the services that report to the filters," he said.

Bassett said the EFA's unsuccessful bid to access the ABA's list of banned online content under FOI laws means that particular legal avenue to establish what falls under mandatory filtering is a no through road. Australians, he reminded, have no explicit freedom of speech within the constitution.

"There are cases under the constitution where for example there is freedom of speech in relation to political expression, and that's been held in a number of cases. For example, in the future if you did find or were able to get evidence showing that some political group has been added to these filters, particularly at the ISP level that never gets seen by people, there might be some room for challenge there. But if those filters don't get published, how will you ever know?"

Bassett said the term "illegal" in an online context is ambiguous, where child pornography, defamatory material or content that violates copyright infringement could all be considered "illegal" content.

Clapperton warned that we are already seeing special interest groups pressuring the government to add so-called "illegal" content to the blacklist. "[Independent Senator Nick] Xenophon has said he wants to block access to Internet gambling sites because they are supposedly illegal; the copyright holders will want to block access to all the Web sites on their sh** list; the Muslim lobby groups will probably want to block access to the Catch The Fire Christian Ministries because they are inciting racial hatred; the Jewish lobby groups will want to block access to Frederick Tobin, any other holocaust-denying Web sites and Hamas; and the Family First Senator [Steve] Fielding has said he wants to block access to "pro-anorexia" Web sites.

"Every organization with an axe to grind and any kind of political clout will be lobbying the government to extend the blacklist to block access to whatever it is that pisses them off. They don't even tell the operators of a site that it has been blacklisted, which as a practical matter means there is no appeal for these decisions. In the case of a false positive it is really dependent on somebody discovering it by chance," he said.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam grilled Senator Conroy during a Senate Estimates hearing last week over the details of what will be considered "illegal" under the filtering scheme, and what level of filtering users will be able to opt-out of. "I'm no clearer than I was before the conversation I had with the Minister last week. What I think they are trying to do is have two levels: One level where everything which is "illegal" would be blocked, and there would be a less restrictive list of material that would be automatically blocked and you can opt-out of that. I don't think they are all that clear themselves how that is going to be technically possible," he told Computerworld.

Ludlam questioned Conroy's comparison of Australia as following other countries such as the U.K., Canada and New Zealand where filtering of blacklist material had been introduced. "It got really muddy around the subject of what other countries were doing, and what would be considered mandatory and what would be opt-out. He really muddied the waters on the countries that they are trying to compare us to. My understanding is not a single one of them has instituted or even seriously tried to institute mandatory content blocking. As far as I am aware they are all trialling optional content blocking," he said.

"None of them are really having a proper go at mandatory filtering. When you look at the countries that are attempting mandatory filtering of "illegal" content on the Net, it's a very different set of countries: China, Burma, the UAE and other places."

One gaping chink in Conroy's filtering armor is its inability to block data transferred over peer-to-peer networks, which is estimated to account for upwards of 60 per cent of all Internet traffic.

Ludlam believes Conroy's lack of clarity over what will and won't be blocked can be attributed to the government still being at the early stage of trialling the filtering technology, which also explains why no path has yet been set for the mandatory filtering to make its way into legislation.

"My understanding is that the tests they have conducted to date weren't all that promising; I don't think they know for themselves exactly how this is going to work. My personal opinion is that it's probably going to fail, and if it doesn't fail it's going to be dangerous. In the meantime we should really be spending the money that they are putting towards this on old fashioned law enforcement, and on the education programs that we already have," he said.

"I'm all for opt-in blocking. If parents want to be able to choose the level of protection in their own homes or if people just basically don't want to run the risk of being exposed to objectionable material they should be given world-class opt-in provisions."

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Human history 101 --

Since the dawn of human history...
- Lesson #1: any power and means to enslave people, in whatever forms, will always be exercised someday by somebody in authority for some reason.
- Lesson #2: it's always easier to prevent the chains of enslavement from being created and put in place than to remove them after they're around one's wrists and lives.
- Lesson #3: mankind simply will not learn from lessons #1 and #2 taught to earlier peoples.