Rubénerd!

"Here is an opportunity to to make your arguments. I trust to the common sense of the Australian public with respect to the classification system."
~ Stephen Conroy, as reported by Renai LeMay for Delimiter.

Mr Conroy has it backwards. He can ask for our opinion, but the fact is he has repeatedly failed to prove the financial and technical feasibility of his filter, to say nothing of the threat it poses to civil liberties. In the words of Christopher Hitchens: "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof."

Therefore I submit the only common sense thing to do, is scrap it!

Given the veracity and frequency of my posts on the proposed mandatory internet filter in Australia I'm surprised it took me so long to sign their online petition. The record of online petitions doesn't suggest this one will do anything towards changing attitudes, but it's still critically important we all show our support.

Reading the excellent Open Internet blog by Electronic Frontiers Australia, I came across this excellent piece about the proposed mandatory filter that puts it into some badly needed perspective. It doesn't protect children, it patronises them.

The whole post is worth reading, but for those in a hurry:

After all, while children may be vulnerable to certain elements of the internet, they are typically more digitally savvy than the rest of us, precisely because they have grown up with the World Wide Web.

But conservative moralisers rarely acknowledge this. Instead they tend to hinge their arguments on the patronising, victimised view of children as inherently vulnerable and corruptible. Even worse, by using the figure of the innocent child as a political pawn to advance their own agenda, conservatives are guilty of exploiting children.

Whether or not Senator Conroy cynically is aware of this and is exploiting it or he's genuinely ignorant, the result is the same: some of the internets most savvy users are being ignored and will be opressed by a system being designed and proposed by people who probably don't even know how to program their microwaves to reheat the meals their poor wives and husbands may have made for them while they were debating this nonsense in Parliament.

It's easy to blame the voting public for not being aware of these issues, but who can blame them when their primary sources of information are the Government who have a vested interest in keeping them in the dark, and when [most] of their media on television and newspapers believe the issue is worthy of debate despite all the technological flaws guaranteeing such a scheme wouldn't work even if the dubious ethical grounds it stood on were more solid.

Forgive the huge long sentences, I haven't been able to blog for a few days and I have a lot of pent up language in my brain stack. Whenever I talk about stacks I think of pancakes. If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then the way to mine would be epic pancakes. And a wicked sense of humour. And striped socks. Wait, what does this have to do with the filter? Nothing? Or everything?

Can you imagine if Conroy got his cronies to write a filter to heuristically block illogical nonsense? Not only would most of my site here be blocked, but he probably wouldn't even be able to access his own. That'd be kinda funny.

I've briefly mentioned this particular issue in passing with regards to the Great Firewall of Australia and to a lesser extent the persecution of South Australian gamers, but now I'm going to rant and complain about it for an entire post. Two words: caramel macchiato. Wait, I got distracted. Two words: brain drain.

A quickie recap thing

So far we've figured out Senator Conroy's filter won't work for the following reasons:

• It is trivially easy to be technologically circumvented
• It will drastically cut Australia's already terrible internet speeds
• The blacklist will be private so we won't know about false positives
• Oh yeah, false positives
• It puts Australia in the same league as the PRC and North Korea
• It makes Australia the laughing stock of the world

The Conroy hits the fan

Despite all the conspiracy theorists who claim governments are secretly coordinating to keep track of us, as globalisation takes hold governments actually have less control over their people and what they can and can't do. If the case is made that Australia values lip service to blocking material they [secretly] deem inappropriate over the viability of Australia's fledgling IT industry, intelligent people will actively avoid doing business in Australia. This will hurt everyone.

It gets worse than that. I grew up in Singapore and went to the Australian International School with several hundred other expatriate children. Most of them decided to return to Australia, but a statistically significant number chose to remain overseas. I have friends living in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and Canada; we consider ourselves global citizens without obligations to any one state. It would be naive to say these people avoided returning to Australia primarily because of the filter, but if they're focused on IT it would be crazy to consider returning, and they've said as much.

In high school economics we learned about Australia's brain drain problem, that many of Australia's best and brightest would move overseas to work. This filter will act as much as a push factor as overseas opportunities act as a pull, and if Steven Conroy, Michael Atkinson with his rabid obsession with labelling gamers as evil and the Labor party are aware of this (heck, even if they're unaware) they should be held responsible for the further flight.

The bottom is the best place for an ending

Welcome to the 21st century Steven Conroy and Michael Atkinson. If you piss off well educated people who have the means to travel, they will simply wave, move away, apply themselves passionately to their jobs in a society that values their contributions over lip service and pay their taxes to them instead. It's your call.

Now if you'd excuse me I'm off to take the subway three stops then grab a cup of coffee in a cafe with free WiFi that's faster than the home internet connection I pay a small fortune for in Adelaide. I don't need to worry about a timetable because if I miss the train there will be another one in two minutes.

I apologise, I know I only just posted about The Great Firewall of Australia again, but this quote was just too good to pass up:

Conroy also stated in Senate Estimates yesterday, "Google were very happy to block China's material right up until they found out they had hacked their source code and suddenly discovered that censorship was a bad idea — after they had hacked their source code. But they block in a number of other countries.

You read that right, no more smoke and mirrors: after dodging the question so many times in Senate debates Senator Steven Conroy has openly (though backhandedly) admitted his plan is just like the one in the PRC. To afford myself some current internet language: it was a Freudian slip of EPIC FAIL-ness.

His explanation that Google left China simply because of source code theft also shows his breathtaking lack of computer knowledge, politics and current events. And he is the minister in charge of The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. And while we're at it, Australian department names are far too long.

Be afraid, be very, very afraid.

Just when we thought this nonsense couldn't get any worse, ZDNet Australia is reporting 80% of respondents to a phone poll support Labor's plan for a mandatory internet filter.

Unfortunately I'm not surprised. Most of the voting public aren't tech savvy and all the information they're getting about the plan are from government sound bites and talking points that misleadingly tell them such a plan will protect their kids. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Much like the republican referendum ten years ago, I think the wording of the question is critical in a situation like this. 80% of people may support this proposition:

Do you support a mandatory internet filter?
YES / NO

But what about this?

Do you support a mandatory internet filter that:
- is similar to ones in China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea
- will slow down internet access
- drive IT investment out of the country which will cost jobs
- does not prevent access to material secretly deemed inappropriate by the government?

YES / NO

I've heard the argument that voters don't like reading long, complicated sentences and are much happier to answer a simple question such as the first one above, but I figure they'll see big scary North Korea there and change their mind.

The Brockman Factor

Speaker: Then it is unanimous, we will approve the bill to [defend Australian children against questionable material by creating an internet filter...]

Senator: Hold on, I'd like to tack on a waiver to that to that bill. [Can we make it mandatory regardless of its effectiveness?]

Speaker: All those in favour of the amended mandatory internet filter say aye? [80% aye! Motion carried.]

Kent Brockman: I've said this before but I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

"This is a fabrication. We all know [Australian currency] can be used to buy food, drink, houses, and cars. And it can also be used to buy drugs, guns, ammunition, and even prostitutes. Can you say that the [Aussie Dollar] is illegal and committing obscene acts?"

That in fact wasn't a quote regarding the upcoming Great Firewall of Australia, it was originally about the Great Firewall of China. That the same point can be made for both should be terrifying.

It's that nonsensical idea we thought common sense and overwhelming evidence against its effectiveness would kill once and for all, but here we are on the brink of the introduction of the Great Firewall of Australia. Whooptie-friggen-do.

From Liam Tung's ZDnet Australia article Mandatory ISP filter due mid-2011:

Mandatory ISP filtering legislation will be introduced around the middle of 2010, after which there will be a one year period to implement and activate the filtering technology.

Also from ZDNet Australia, Colin Ho made similar remarks to what I've been saying about Australia's global standing in his article EFA: Filtering 'damages Australia's reputation'

Civil rights and online free speech lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today criticised the government's internet filtering report, claiming civil rights implications should be the focus rather than the technology's impacts on internet speed and performance.

"It damages Australia's reputation as a free and open democracy and as a technologically advanced and savvy 21st century country" ~ EFA vice president Colin Jacobs

I've talked about this issue many times before using the nocleanfeed and great australian firewall tags.

In case you're unclear as to what my response has consistently been throughout this debacle, allow me to demonstrate with the help of my friend Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya fame.

It seems with each passing year since 2007 things have happened that have made me less optimistic and more cynical about the world. In an attempt to find the good in it, I've attributed this slide in my opinion of humanity to simply growing up and becoming more realistic. Well, another thing has happened -__-.

If you recall, Senator Conroy wants to filter the internets here in Australia to protect children from pornography, free speech and all that. Leaving aside the dubious justifications, even if it was a noble cause such a national filter simply would not work.

From a press release by Scott Ludlam, a Greens senator from Western Australia:

The Australian Greens today reiterated their strong concerns over the Government's internet filter plan.

"The Greens position on the Government's proposed internet filtering plan remains the same - we have serious concerns over the viability of the scheme being put forward by Communications Minister Conroy," said Australian Greens communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam.

So far so good.

"Dr Hamilton has, in the past, outlined his support for any system designed to prevent children accessing pornography online - a sentiment that the Australian Greens fully support.

Whoa, wait a minute. Are you saying Dr Hamilton, the person the Greens is backing for a contested seat, actually supports the idea for a filter?

To put this post in context, I registered to vote in Australia as soon as I was living back here again and was eligible and had an address here again. I've voted for The Greens in one national election and one South Australia state election. Why?

• I inherited my mum's hippy green save the earth and all its creatures attitude
• I intensely dislike the conservative coalition
• The ALP has slipped a bit too far to the right and is in the pockets of big polluters
• The Democrats, the small third party designed to "keep the bastards honest" in the own words is no longer effective at all
• I admire Senator Bob Brown (pictured above with the Dalai Llama) and support all but a few of The Greens positions

All those positions are just fine and peachy, but the primary reason was that The Greens were the more honourable, upstanding and honest party I could vote for. Granted the bar is set painfully low which means such a comparison is essentially meaningless, but there you go.

Anyway it seems the Greens have finally decided a gamble to win another seat is worth sacrificing some of their principals by welcoming into their ranks a person such as Dr Hamilton. In other words, The Greens have just made a move the ALP and the coalition would have.

They're probably still the lesser evil in Aussie politics, but if they were a bright green pear before, they now have a large blemish on their side. It's disillusioning, if inevitable. :P

This is probably an Optus phone company problem and not an issue with the iTelephone, but on the off chance that I actually got a 3G signal here in Mawson Lakes over these last few days the data connection is so unreliable nothing finishes loading before I'm given an error. Case in point, my Twitter clients routinely return a secure connection failed error, and it took me over 45 minutes to download the latest Into Your Head episode over 2G. The irony was 45 minutes was still faster than 3G because the latter just kept timing out.

I'd call Optus using my iTelephone to complain, but the phone connection is so spotty I keep having dropped calls. I would hate to wait on hold with Optus for 6 hours only to have the call drop when a customer disservice representative finally answers.

So here's my idea, why not spend the money Stephen Conroy wants earmarked for the Great Australian Firewall to fix Australia's lousy phone networks? Because the other irony is crappy networks are doing a much better job than his proposed filter at blocking content and communications!

I sense a conspiracy brewing.