

New Zealand's Internet filter goes live - bootload
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3434754/New-Zealands-internet-filter-goes-live

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jurjenh
Yet another country (unfortunately mine) joining the bandwagon of "protecting
people from themselves". While I can see some potential reasons for it, I am
beginning to see it very much as a sort of censorship on free speech, which I
believe is a _BAD THING_ in any modern society.

If this is here to stay, then what needs to happen is for there to be a way
that each and every person can for themselves decide to bypass the filter.

Does anyone know how these filters work? Ways around them? Things that show up
the effect of the filter at work? This would seem to me a first step in seeing
how big brother is trying to manipulate society / protect us from ourselves...

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fendrak
Ben Franklin's essential liberty/temporary safety quote comes to mind here.
Sure, it's in place for noble reasons (protecting children), but what happens
when "feature creep" starts to set in? "Just one more site can't hurt, can
it?"...

~~~
ErrantX
Sadly it doesn't do much of a job in it's stated aims. In fact is only a lack
of hard data that stops me saying it has no effect at all...

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fendrak
It's all well and good to say that it's just for filtering the One Thing, but
once the door's open, there's no shutting it. Hillary Clinton's recent
suggestion that the US view freedom of information as an essential human right
and impose sanctions to encourage (enforce?) it doesn't sound so crazy. What
are the upsides of this (besides the obvious child pornography thing)?

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mixmax
There's a similar filter in Denmark. The good thing is that I don't stumble
into illegal sites by accident, since they're blocked. I have absolutely no
problem with child pornography sites and the like being filtered out since it
deprives the sites of eyeballs and thus presumably income.

The problem with this approach comes down to "Who decides what goes on the
list?" For obvious reasons a list of illegal sites can't be publicly
available, so it's hard for free speech organisations, watchdog organisations
etc. to look into it. A few years ago the list was leaked and someone went
through it to see how much of it was actually illegal content. According to
the blogger who wrote the article less than 50% contained illegal content.
Since there's no way to complain it raises some serious questions.

~~~
hexis
"For obvious reasons a list of illegal sites can't be publicly available, so
it's hard for free speech organisations, watchdog organisations etc. to look
into it. A few years ago the list was leaked and someone went through it to
see how much of it was actually illegal content."

I'm not familiar with the legal system in Denmark, but it isn't obvious to me
why you couldn't have a list of illegal sites. I assume the objection would be
that you would thereby make it easier for people to then visit those sites.
But, considering the significant inaccuracy you mention above, it seems like
there are obvious reasons for the list to be public. Sunlight is the best
disinfectant.

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mixmax
your assumption is correct, I would say that a publicly available government
approved list of child pornography sites is a really bad idea.

I agree that there should be more transparancy though. Maybe through some sort
of intermediary, making the list available to lawyers and organisations that
could have an interest, such as the EFF. And of course notifying webmasters
that they're on the list so they can plead their case if they feel wronged.

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simonw
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if someone explained SSH tunnelling to
these government agencies. I doubt it would be pretty.

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philk
These things are generally about politics rather than "technical
considerations" or "reality". People have explained that these things aren't
going to work but it doesn't seem to slow politicians down if they think
there's a vote in it.

To have any effect, SSH tunneling needs to be explained to, and understood by,
the population at large.

~~~
simonw
I agree there's no way the general population would ever understand SSH
tunnelling (they have enough problem understanding URLs) but it isn't
inconceivable that a desire to avoid these filters could lead to successful
mainstream software workarounds. "New in Firefox 3.8: the 'skip government
filters' button"

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Concours
what about proxies? I guess they will be block, I've just set one as a
sideproject, so if a NZ Guy is around, just try it and see if it works for
you: <http://www.serversproxy.org> . I think information should be free,
peoples should educate their kids and themselves, protecting peoples from
themselves is not the path to take, because most of the peoples looking for
those infos know how to find them.

