Firstly the filter is voluntary. That means that people in NZ are still free to view internet content however they wish, and others are not.
That throws out the whole arguement about trying to stop people from getting access to material, even more so than the arguement about which protocols it supports, and which it doesn’t.

Does changing ISPs give the Police and DIA proof of ‘intent’ that people are wanting to view illegal content? That’s a very long bow to draw.
A lot of people will change ISPs simply because they feel having an internet filter is abhorrent, and so proving either way becomes a further drain on the legal system in NZ.

And secondly, with your statement that you know quite well how the child exploitation market works, you are either a member of such a market, or a member of DIA staff.
So why don’t you state which one it is, and make these comments clearer for everyone, on which bias you hold.

Let’s examine the claims one by one:

1. Filtering will affect child porn viewing and is simply another enforcement angle.

That’s false, for reasons that have already been explained. Filtering will not stop it, nor will it affect the habits of anyone choosing to engage in that behavior. The only thing that can stop that is enforcement of existing laws.

At the same time, it introduces a weak point into national Internet infrastructure and means any unencrypted information I send across the Internet is accessible to the DIA. That’s simply an unacceptable trade-off for myself and for quite a few other people. China and the UAE do that. We’re supposed to be a progressive Western democracy, not an authoritarian police state.

2. Filtering won’t affect Internet performance.

Questionable at best, especially on a national level. Deep packet filtering through a single point of failure, in a country with already limited bandwidth?

I wouldn’t bet on that.

3. Filtering won’t be abused.

This is perhaps the most laughable of all. Filtering is abuse by definition. To suggest that it won’t ever be used outside its defined scope is ridiculous. Yes, I’ve seen InternetNZ’s report on the matter and the safeguards in place to prevent that.

It doesn’t matter. At some point in the future, it WILL be abused and it WILL be used for some shady purpose. Not if. When.

The only way to limit that kind of power is for no one to have it in the first place.

Frankly this entire thing seems like a way to slip it in under the radar, both by making these ridiculous claims about “protecting children” (it won’t) and making it appear “civil liberties friendly”. Convenient enough that at some point down the road, that can easily change.

This has to be stopped here and now. Once it’s allowed to go into place, that’s the end of it.

And having done it for one noble cause, the wishlists then start.. First it’s just a bit more material that groups don’t like…

http://www.familyfirst.org.nz/index.cfm/Media_Centre/Media_Releases/Releases/17_12_09_NZ_Should_Join_Australia_To_Censor_Internet.html/17_12_09_NZ_Should_Join_Australia_To_Censor_Internet.pdf

Then it’s stuff on the Internet “we” don’t like:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3464723/Aussie-bid-to-shut-offensive-site

Then pretty soon we’re filtering for just about anything an industry wants:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/10/livingston_deb/

Note this paragraph in the last item:

“The peers behind the amendment have argued that since all major ISPs already block a list of URLs carrying images of child abuse, they have the technical means to comply with injunctions demanding copyright blocking.”

Or suppression orders:

http://www.internetnz.net.nz/issues/newzealand/HarveyPresentation.pdf

Or political speech.

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/whiskey-tango-foxtrot/36904-i-am-muzzled

That’s where these good intentions lead.

Now you’re right that there was a fad with blacklists for SMTP. ORBS and others. Most fell out of favor for the same reasons this filtering will end up like: used for purposes far beyond original claimed reasons, ineffective at the problem.

Some ISPs do still cling to SMTP blacklists, but it’s a dying practice. Sadly, this filter won’t be a dying practice once it’s widespread, it will only expand in use.

Also, I do know quite a bit about how the marked of online commercial child sexual exploitation material is organized – and they absolutely do. Remember that many of their customers are not necessarily computer savvy and need to have easy access to graphic material, and what other protocol is better suited at that then the http? They do not use https, VPNs or other less available variants – they want to punch their credit card number into a java text box for instant gratification. Its really as easy and open like that, shying away from encryption – as it would complicate things for their customers. Hosting the stuff in countries that does not have legislation or with non caring hosting companies is also a good strategy for these guys, and when you get deleted and banned – you just move to another country or hosting company in minutes.

Blocking will not affect legitimate users of any protocol, nor will it affect your searches – it will only affect you if your browser tries to open a domain or address that has already been checked and found to have illegal material in it. If you have been hacked and abused by a criminal, you damn well need to fix it yourself before your domain is available on the Internet again, imho.

If you have any connections with any ISP you will know that your friendly neighborhood ISP is constantly denying access to domains, defined by themselves, spamhaus or somebody else. Due to phishing, fraud and other undefined reasons, you are constantly being censored on the internet. Where is the protest marches against that? A corporate actor that by its own accord decides what you will get access to? I am more concerned about that. In my country any blocking is accompanied by a warning page that tells you what your browser tried to access, and the transparent way of doing this is enough to keep me pleased with the service.

I am curious to know how you can be sure that your politicians are “hiding behind children to erode your civil rights” and introducing fascism through the back door? Could it be that the politicians, police, government have a genuine wish to protect children and the victims of abuse?

Yes any site that is blocked would be a success, but for the small amount of times someone stumbles on that site, is it really worth the cost of implementing a filter, and putting the freedoms at risk?

All the major child porn traders would be stupid to use a plaintext openair protocol such as http as that would get them caught in no time flat.

Also, what do you mean people who circumvent the filter would stick out like a sore thumb? They would slide under the radar as VPN or HTTPS is encrypted and so hard if nigh on impossible to see the content. Proxies aren’t as secure but it would still be impossible to examine every single connection to every single worldwide proxy in use at any given time.

And these technologies have legitimate uses, business uses. You can bet the shit will hit the fan if they call everyone using them a child porn trader and ban their use.

A more effective way to combat child porn is to send a takedown request to all the addresses on the blacklist that the DIA is keeping from us. So does that mean they are keeping it under wraps so only they know where the child porn is so they can keep an eye on it?

This is just another classic case of politicians hiding behind children to (in this case) erode our civil rights.

Mom and Dad Luddite are holding the door open for Facism.

People who produce hard core sexual abusive material of children do this because they have a sexual desire for children and wants to have sex with them. When they do get the chance, their documentation of the their crimes is to fulfill their own fantasies, to be used as currency to gain access to other groups where a payment of unknown material is required, to increase their own standing within the group of their piers or to generally “support the case”. This production is difficult to stop, especially since digital cameras eliminated the whole development process. On the other hand, there is a sizable commercial production of less abusive “child erotica” – produced solely to feed the need and demand for such imagery. By blocking the customers to both types of child sexual abuse material, you will achieve the following:

1. Children who are victims of hands on abuse already will be less likely to be repackaged and resold again and again on commercial sites – and thus will have their rights as humans better protected by the government.
2. There will be less demand for children to be commercially photographed and traded, and as a result fewer of them will have to be pimped by their parents into “erotic posing”.

If a person circumvents a blocking, that is all well and good. It will show your intent to view children being sexually abused and will make you stick out like a soar thumb to the police when they come across you. The police routinely get access to customer lists, access list and webserver logs from colleagues around the world – and if you are on one of them after setting up your own proxy – I am pretty sure you will be visited by the police. The hit percentage will increase for the police as well, as they will not have to wade through the masses of accidental viewers generally “I click all blue links”-kind of people.

Also, by preventing the crime the police can free up resourses to go after the criminals on the other protocols, the ones that such filtering does not cover – resulting in all over better protection of the children and better policing of the Internet. Imho, the Internet needs policing, just like the rest of the society – as it IS only a part of society, not an alternative reality. The Internet is so integrated in our daily lives now that we expect it to be as available as electricity, and we do want somebody to keep an eye on whats going on with our electric network, right?

Why does every one always believe that any tool will be abused? There must be some sort of control with the content being put on such a list, but it should not be made public. The police are answerable to your parliament, so why not make them have to defend their decisions on this topic to them?

Brenda: If you were a criminal operating a successful operation where you sold the images of abuse of children, do you think you would benefit from discrediting the blocking of your service? In my country we have had many examples of bad guys hiding their highly illegal material in a complicated URL and when the government block the domain, you have to know the whole address to see it. The first page may be totally legal, religious, political, adult pornography or something else – and for the casual passer by (and the ones that believe that everything posted on wikileaks is the truth :) it will seem that the government/police are blocking access to legal material. If I was a criminal, I would do the same – as I would then get heaps of people yelling about the limiting of information availability that they are subjected to, without knowing that they in fact are being somewhat used to secure my continued services and criminal behavior. Also, the content on the domains in a blocking list will change, its in the nature of the network – so what was illegal yesterday may have moved and been replaced with the “information on abortion” web site today. There is a need for continued and regular monitoring, a possibility for the public (user) and domain owner to complain and have the site revised. This is a given.

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but not everything on the Internet is wonderful. I would rather have a slightly screened Internet with relative safety rather than a network where I can get hijacked and phished into a child abuse site at any time. That is my two cents, anyway :)

However, we don’t think internet filtering is the right approach. It doesn’t work to stop the people who do produce and trade in this material – they can easily circumvent it by using proxies, peer to peer file sharing or other means.

So if it doesn’t work, I can’t see how it is worth implementing a system that costs money, can be abused by future governments, and has the potential to weaken the NZ internet.

I come from, all though I do not live there now, a country that has had blocking of child sexual abuse material for many years (and only that, I might add – there has been no feature creep or expansion of material being blocked) and the public does not object. The main reason being that most will never see or notice it at all. The ones that do, will not complain – as their goal is to financially support the criminals behind the distribution on the Web, and therefore are criminals themselves. Any democratic society must accept some forms of content control, and we gladly roll over for whatever the law makers, the editors, the TV producers and others decide is good for us, while we have a misconception that the Internet is something else, another dimension where normal laws and rules does not apply. On the contrary, my dear Watson – any cable, person, PC or other stuff venturing on the Internet is covered by whatever law that applies in that area, and in NZ its NZ law. Just like it would if you stood outside your local grocery shop and asked every nine year old passing “wanne suck me for 100 dollar?” or spammed the local notice board with pictures of your marvelous sex life with your preteen daughter.

Laws and rules are meant to protect the sane part of the population from the other type of people out there, both on and off the Internet. I, for one, have no problem with accepting this :)