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Colin Jacobs in, on and about the Internet

Archive for category Internet

Question Time Cameo

Mar 17

Posted by Colin in Internet, Politics

The campaign against mandatory internet filtering, which any loyal reader will know has consumed a good portion of my life these last few years, has heated up in recent days in exciting ways.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, RSF), after writing an open letter to Kevin Rudd late last year, last week added Australia to an “under surveillance” list of countries showing worrying trends in the field of Internet censorship. Although it doesn’t label Australia an “Internet Enemy” like China, Cuba or North Korea, it is a clear expression that our move down this path is viewed with alarm by those overseas concerned with freedom of expression. The Government is sensitive on this issue, and the Minister took issue with my reporting of the open letter in Crikey last December, firing off a volley to Crikey shortly thereafter.

In a clear sign that we have really touched a nerve, Senator Conroy has attacked both EFA and myself for our campaign in the Senate this week. After having a clear go at EFA for “misleading” RSF in question time Monday (summary here, including my rebuttal; also covered in ZDNet) on Tuesday he lambasted myself, and my colleagues at EFA for what he calls a “disgraceful misinformation campaign”.

Following the government’s announcement last year, civil libertarian group Electronic Frontiers Australia repeated the claims of reporters without borders in an article written by its CEO Colin Jacobs in Crikey. While one could possible excuse Reporters Without Borders for being ignorant of the government’s policy, the same cannot be said of the locally run EFA who through Colin Jacobs, chairman Nic Suzor, and board member Geordie Guy, have run a campaign to deliberately mislead the Australian public.

They have argued there is no child abuse material traded on the open internet yet the latest count there were 355 child abuse URLs on the ACMA blacklist and therefore the open internet.

They have argued that filtering will slow the internet and will result in over blocking despite the independent live pilot trial showing that internet filtering can be done…

Here’s Hansard, or an audio clip of this question time snippet. I believe the Crikey article in question may have in fact have been tabled. A document detailing our purported lies was tabled.

The issues the Minister mentions are ones I am comfortable debating. Although others have used the slowing of internet speeds as an argument against the filter, since the filter’s details became known I have been careful to avoid this topic as I don’t believe it is a major factor. Of course, there is child pornography on the open internet; just not very much, and the evidence shows it does not remain there for long. Nor would the filter prevent deliberate access. I am therefore not inclined to modify my arguments based on this broadside.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, this is good news. Not only does the legislation appear to be temporarily delayed, the Minister has all but conceded our campaign against the filter has succeeded in swaying public opinion. Because we have swayed it against the filter, he has labelled it misleading, basically accusing us of lying to the public. We, of course, don’t see it that way, and will stick to our guns.

I am proud to take part in what appears to be a tradition; EFA has managed to equally piss off one or two of Conroy’s predecessors. This document details EFA’s response, via the Senate Privileges Committee, to remarks made by Senator Alston in 1999.  The situation was much the same, with the Howard government coming under criticism by the ACLU for internet censorship plans. Senator Alston accused EFA of being “low grade, undergraduate political activists” and “maniacs”. “Misleading” seems a bit tame by comparison.

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Are Australians a bunch of internet wusses?

Mar 2

Posted by Colin in Internet, Media, Opinion

There’s a depressing cycle repeating itself in the Australian news. Something nasty happens. The media report the outcry about how nasty it is. Then comes the depressing bit; the politicians, wanting to be seen to respond to the confected crisis, propose some sort of ill-thought-out, knee-jerk regulation to mitigate it.

A good example is Senator Nick Xenophon’s reaction to the tragic murder of Carly Ryan. Apparently, her killer lied about his age online to entice her into a meeting. The Senator’s proposal, therefore, was to outlaw lying about your age to minors online. Can anything be said in defence of such a proposal? Never mind that the crime is vanishingly rare. Isn’t it enough that rape and murder are already illegal? How many murderers would balk at a little lie, legal or not, in pursuit of a victim?

The trend is worse when it comes to the internet. Recently we’ve had flaps about racist speech, and do you remember the furore over a stupid web game called “Muslim Massacre”? If there is a politician who can resist the temptation to forcefully condemn something so obviously tasteless, I’ve yet to see one.

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Internet racism a symptom, not a cause

Feb 24

Posted by Colin in Internet, Opinion, Politics

If you’re a politician, and something nasty is brought to your attention, what do you do? The best and sometimes only tool in your toolbox is the one you reach for. The tool is this: to pass a law banning it. Therefore, although it’s always discouraging, a story like this one, is far from unusual or surprising. ”Laws to tackle racism on the Internet are set to be beefed up,” it announces.

“Authorities warn they are often powerless to act against online content, which is responsible for almost one in five racial vilification complaints,” it continues, then:

Attorney-General Robert McClelland has ordered the Australian Human Rights Commission to conduct a sweeping review of ”arrangements for dealing with racist material on the internet”.

”While freedom of expression is one of the most fundamental rights, this is not at the expense of the rights of people, while using the Internet, to be treated with equality, dignity and respect,” Mr McClelland told The Sunday Age.

Certainly, nobody likes hate speech. But these words, by our Attorney-General, are concerning. Firstly, they show a terrible lack of  consideration of the complexities of the issue, and secondly, they demote freedom of speech in a significant way.

Banning racist content on the Internet might seem like a good idea on the surface, but you don’t have to dig very deep before the idea becomes problematic. The existing laws throughout the states grapple with some thorny issues. How do you define hate speech? “Kill all Jews” certainly counts, but what about “Liberate Palestine”? Is Holocaust revisionism hate speech? What about an honestly held  opinion on the undesirability of immigration from a certain part of the world? Does this inspire “hatred, contempt or severe ridicule” against a group of persons? These ambiguities will become more problematic if a new national law is introduced that applies to every blog on the Internet.

The proposal also shows a considerable lack of understanding about the realities of censoring the Internet. The Internet, it should go without saying, is global. Billions of web pages are out there, far beyond the reach of Australian lawmakers, and reflecting a multitude of different cultural values. Content hosted in Australia can be removed, but it can just as easily be moved or copied overseas by its authors. It is therefore questionable whether any law could have a meaningful impact.

The comments by the AG and others pay lip service to freedom of speech, but their words lack conviction. Freedom of speech is fine, but “not at the expense of the rights of people… to be treated with equality, dignity and respect.” That sounds like a noble sentiment, but are we certain that freedom of speech shouldn’t include the right to be mocking, disrespectful and offensive? There are definitely limits to freedom of speech that we can all agree on. But the above comments seem more like a dismissal of free-speech concerns than a debate of their merits.

We need to ask ourselves, is this the best way to tackle racism in Australian society? Is racist web content a cause of racist attitudes, or merely a symptom of it? In our view, other, more substantive and community-based policies are needed if we want to see a real improvement in this area.

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The Missing Party

Feb 9

Posted by Colin in Internet, Opinion, Politics

Stilgherrian has been covering the iiNet trial for Crikey (good job, Stil), and wrote yesterday about Conroy’s rather worrying remarks on the subject indicating that the ISPs and entertainment industry should get together and sort out a way to solve this problem.

This makes some sense if the two parties get together and and discuss a new business model that brings entertainment to Internet users in a way that is convenient and fairly priced, or even if it allowed users to opt-in to a revenue sharing deal that legitimised peer-to-peer file sharing. It seems highly unlikely, though, that the copyright lobby will suddenly wake up and smell the reality. Instead, if they get together with ISPs at all, it will be to find a way to spy on users and shut down Bittorrent any way they can. They will wield the cudgel of legal action without restraint.

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The battle for an open Internet

Jan 25

Posted by Colin in Internet, Opinion, Politics, Writing

Recently the trends in Internet freedom have been all bad. China’s censorship regime escalated dramatically over the last 12 months, with a more aggressive Golden Shield, tumultuous events in Iran and of course Australia’s own filtering plan. It is therefore extremely heartening to see the tough new stand on Internet freedom taken by the USA.

The new approach was outlined last week in a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who declared the free access to information online as critical a human right as the freedom of assembly or the right to publish. Although barely mentioning China in her speech, Clinton was clearly setting the stage for a showdown with Beijing, declaring that “countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences.” The Chinese government responded angrily, declaring the Chinese internet “open”, demanding the U.S. “respect the facts” and calling the speech”information imperialism” in an official newspaper.

This is a pretty bad look for the Rudd government. It is my belief that they thought the filtering plan would be relatively uncontroversial, would wedge the opposition, and would allow them to check a few boxes to do with election promises and helping kids. Suddenly, they find themselves swimming against a rapidly accelerating tide.

Senator Conroy, I believe, hates it when Australia is compared to China in these sorts of debates. Conroy has no plan to censor political speech in Australia (I certainly believe this), so he sees any comparison to China or Iran as a cheap shot, dishonest and unfair. I think it simply doesn’t occur to him that the system itself is a danger. If you created a secret police force with the express purpose of weeding out terrorists amongst the population, would that be of concern if that was the extent of their mission? Of course it would. People are people, and regularly exceed their mission or their authority. (It’s happened before here – google “special branch” and “cold war”.)

To borrow a phrase from Bruce Schneier, it’s bad civic hygiene to allow our rights to be eroded without an excellent reason. In a free democracy the default position should always be to preserve openness and transparency. The government needs to make a watertight case if they want to take new powers onto themselves.

That case can’t be made for Internet filtering, and the Government knows it. This explains the amusingly defensive tone of Friday’s media release. It’s pure, panicked spin.

I made similar comments to the ABC on Friday. My full take on the subject can be found over at EFA here, or in today’s Crikey here.

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Filtering questions left unanswered

Jan 20

Posted by Colin in Internet

In a debate as nuanced as the one against filtering, it can be hard to penetrate the sound bites about kids and get some focus on the real policy underneath. With the filtering moving from policy to law, though, we can hope that scrutiny will increase. Here are my suggestions (over at EFA) for some urgent questions that need answering.

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Google article on New Matilda

Jan 19

Posted by Colin in Internet, Writing

There’s a piece by my today over on New Matilda on the Google/China fight. It’s nice to write about someone else’s filtering problems for once.

Have a read here.

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Flowers for Google – reactions inside China

Jan 15

Posted by Colin in Internet, Writing

Note: Colin lived in China in 2009 and as EFA’s internet censorship spokesman has previously commented on China’s Internet Censorship regime.

Google’s threat, in the wake of apparent Chinese government espionage, to withdraw from the Chinese market completely has created a storm of comment in the media and blogosphere. Google has been praised for a principled “don’t be evil” stand at the same time they’ve been lambasted for political naivete, opportunism or profit-seeking.The truth is no doubt a mixture between corporate pragmatism and idealism, as one would expect.

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Blurring the lines

Dec 23

Posted by Colin in Internet, Media

The Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was published in today’s Crikey, firing back at several pieces run over the last week about his government’s mandatory ISP filtering scheme, including one of my own. I’m very happy to see the minister respond personally and at length; over the last year we have been starved of information on the plan, and the debate, such as it was, has often been in the form of quick sound bites. Discussing the real facts for a change is a welcome development. (Plus, it’s nice to know that a slightly miffed Commonwealth Minister is amongst my readership.)

The fact is that this is a complex policy and there are a fair few misunderstandings out there on both sides of the issue. If I were minister, factual inaccuracies and exaggerations would annoy me, too. Sometimes in dealing with the media it’s hard to get a nuanced point across and things get inadvertently misrepresented. Personally, and as a representative of EFA, I sincerely regret any inaccuracies, and even the “cheap shots.” But it’s no point raising a fuss about them, then making your own. Sure, I slip up from time to time, but to suggest I am “blurring the lines, burying the facts and wilfully misleading the Australian public” seems the sort of exaggeration Senator Conroy is himself complaining about. So let’s see how many mea culpas I owe.

Senator Conroy implies that perhaps the reason Australia’s image is suffering is due to my own rabble-rousing. I wish this were the case, but the Minister has to share some of the blame. It’s an inescapable fact that this filter is censorship, and that such censorship in a free country like Australia is unsettling to observers overseas. The Minister, of course, sees the policy as benign; that’s fair enough from his point of view, but that doesn’t change how the rest of the world sees it. Yes, “Iran of the South Pacific” is an obvious exaggeration – but the filter is tarnishing our reputation.

In my piece I was reporting on the letter from Reporters Without Borders, and their Secretary-General used words I wouldn’t myself (the reference to aborigines is confusing to me, too). However, the anorexia, abortion and marijuana sale examples could all fall under the categories mentioned by the Minister in his very next paragraph (crime, self-harm, drug use). Surely it is a legitimate concern to speculate about what’s at the margins of the RC system? It’s neither interesting nor helpful to confine our attentions to the “worst of the worst”, the unavailability of which is uncontroversial.

This is also a little strange:

Jacobs argues that the government’s policy will “block access to inappropriate websites”, the same language he criticised the government for using months ago as being unclear.

Am I being criticised for using vague language to describe the scheme, even though the words are his own, and I’m expressing concern about their very vagueness?

Most galling is the Minister’s outrage at my statement that in the past he has implied filter opponents are “all card-carrying members of the Child Pornorgaphy Apologists League”. Of course, that’s not a direct quote – hence my use of the word “implies” – so I can’t produce such a quote. But how about this?

If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.[1]

Doesn’t that imply that filter opponents are advocates of more liberal child porn laws (they aren’t). Or in answer to a question in the Senate as to whether the filter will be opt-out, the Minister replied:

I trust you are not suggesting that people should have access to child pornography. [2]

Senator Ludlam, the questioner, was indeed not suggesting that. So why smugly bring it up? The debate has never been about the legal status of child pornography, and to pretend that it is is, as I wrote, a distraction that simultaneously smears the filter’s opponents. Those are two examples I remember and I know offended many. If you can remind me of any further examples, I’ll chronicle them here.

The Minister’s kind query about my whereabouts for the last nine years seems pretty irrelevant to substance of my argument. As it happens, I was in the USA, and I did not join the EFA board until 2007. Nevertheless, EFA was certainly a vocal opponent of the 1999 amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act that gave us the equally useless system we have today, including the infamous ACMA blacklist.

The fact is, the reason there is so much confusion about this policy is that while it has changed markedly over time, the government have tried to maintain that it was always as it is; and the vagueness of the original, pre-election policy document is used to help prop up this illusion, rather than acknowledging it and providing a more detailed document for the community to dissect.

The minister concludes with the following rhetorical question:

Let me repeat the government has been clear that mandatory filtering will only apply to RC-rated content. This content is not available in newsagencies, on library shelves, at the cinema or on DVD and you certainly can’t watch it on TV. Why shouldn’t Australian ISPs be required to block access to such content?

Because it’s pointless, it’s expensive, it’s done in secret, and there are no guarantees the scope will not increase under this or a future government. And these are exactly the points I am trying to make in the public debate. If this is misleading, then it’s up to you, Minister, to demonstrate why that is so.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm

[2] http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/greens-senator-quizzes-conroy-on-filtering/

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Cleanfeed op-ed in the The Oz

Sep 3

Posted by Colin in Internet, Writing

The pressure is still on Conroy over his plan to censor Australia’s Internet. The public and the opposition are still calling for the plan to be abandoned and the Government to come clean. My own contribution, which takes a Western theme today, is an op-ed in the Australian. Despite all the noise, though, I think Conroy will use the test results to announce that filtering is feasible and going ahead. We’ll see in the coming weeks and months.

Read my piece here.

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