Thursday, November 13, 2008

Radio Democracy Playlist 12/11/08

This week we spoke to Jess Maynard, who is in the NT community of Yuendumu participating in the ActNow Challenge – a youth empowerment and community development program. Jess is in the Territory for 10 weeks learning the Warlpiri language, working and sharing a whole heap of artisitic and cultural experiences with the local indigenous mob. She said as a city-slicker, visiting this part of Australia is a bit like going to another country – I imagine she's right. Yuendumu has been in the news lately because of a series of claims and counter-claims in an article in the Melbourne Age, which quoted Yuendumu woman Peggy Brown as saying: ""It’s working, no doubt about it", in relation to the ongoing clusterfuck that is the NT Intervention.

Next, death row inmate and radical activist/journalist Mumia Abu Jamal gave us his take on the ongoing financial catastrophe. Mumia's regular dispatches are available at prisonradio.org.

Radio Democracy was delighted to have a new ratbag in the studio this week. Dave came by to give us the lowdown on the proposed "Clean Feed" – a mandatory internet filter the Federal Government is hoping to introduce to 'protect the children.' Dave's story is posted below, and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam's questions for Comms Minister Senator Steven Conroy here.

Today's program was dedicated to Mama Africa – the longtime civil rights and anti-apartheid activist and musician Miriam Makeba, who sadly died after performing in Italy this week.


Sounds
Blister - Axe to Grind
Flow & Plenty - Busker
The Drones - I am the Supercargo
The Upsteppers - World at my Feet (playing at 4ZzZ fundraiser Dub Day Afternoon!)
Combat Wombat - Corruption Dub
Miriam Makeba- Pata Pata


Mandatory Internet censorship
David McLagan
The Labor Government is proposing to introduce mandatory internet censorship, which will require all Internet Service Providers (ISP's) to provide a mandatory filter, blocking access to 'blacklisted sites'. The 'blacklist' will be initiated and monitored by the Australia Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). This latest campaign to control the final frontier of totally free media is being championed by Labor Senator Stephen Conroy, who has coined this 'you’re with us or against us' quote "If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree."

So this is about trying to protect our family's children from things such as internet pornography, child pornography rings and internet predators. Taking the freedom of speech question out of the equation just for a second, this proposed legislation is a pathetic attempt to stop a problem that didn't even stem from the internet. Child pornography and paedophilia exist in the real world; they were around before the internet. Now no one is arguing that these things are very wrong and yes children need to be protected. Nor is anyone arguing that the internet has undoubtedly increased the amount of this content that is out there. But child pornographers are not caught online due to the invisible nature and secrecy of child pornography ring. They are caught through police breaking into human networks and the information and contacts that they get from these people and their computers.

As we can see if this is to be done then it must be effectual or it’s simply not worth doing. So how well can the ACMA control the internet when there are currently around 8 billion web pages? Currently there are two types of filtering techniques that could be used; firstly index filtering. This involves blocking all content on a pre-determined 'blacklist' of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs - the address), Internet Protocol addresses (IP addresses - the numbers identifying points on the internet) and Domain Name System (DNS - used to associate human-readable or memorable names with the IP addresses). The second technique is content analysis filtering. As the human resources required to read through every potentially 'dangerous' page is impossible this is done by artificial intelligence, which uses a complex system of algorithms to determine whether a page is ok or not. These systems are commonly referred to as "guessing engines". Therefore if the policy is implemented our internet access will be censored by a meagre 'blacklist' that is meant to keep up with the highly dynamic environment of the internet, where new pages are born everyday and previously banned pages can simply move to other unknown locations or alternately by software that guesses whether a page is ok or not.

Another major issue related to this protection is the ease of getting around content blocking. Onion-routing is technology that can allow you to roam the internet with freedom and privacy. Simple downloading of a program called the TOR-project allows this. The messages you send and receive are encrypted, using onion-router technology, your messages are sent through layers (like an onion) to remove the encryption and therefore allow the content, origin and destination of the message to remain anonymous. This has been frequently used in countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, where web browsing is tightly filtered and monitored. Countries, which our government has hypocritically accused of preventing freedoms of speech.

Internet censorship requires additional software, so this leads to the question whether or not this will slow down connections. The government claims that a recent report of ISP content filters showed that this didn't affect broadband performance. But the truth of the matter after reading the findings of the report indicate this to be very misleading. The report 'Closed Environment Testing of ISP - Level internet content filters' involved six different ISP content filters. Results showed even when the programs were connected and not filtering there was a reduction, be it small (generally less that 10%). When filtering the performance of broadband speed was reduced by 2% in one case, 20-35% in three of the cases and in the remaining two performance speed was reduced to less than 15%. The effectiveness of content blocking from a pre-determined 'blacklists' was too questionable - around 88-90% for three products and around 95% for the other three. Two of the products also blocked 8% of 'non-blacklisted material, whilst the others blocked around 3%. Notably performance speed didn't correspond with the level of security.

All these points on this very poor legislation aside and back to our rights, our freedoms of speech. I'm an adult over the legal age of 18 and have the choice to look at pornography if I care to do so. I have this right to do so because as I stated I am not a child. The Labor government is telling us that we all need to be treated like children and that they are our parents so they will tell us what we can view. There is a clear solution to the problem of protecting our children from the 'evils' of the internet. Let parents, who have a responsibility to help their children grow and make better decisions do so. Don't let a government trying to play mummy and daddy to the whole country tell us what we can view. On the governments own website there is a page with a link to download free content filters. A perfect response, case closed. The government has provided a free, adequate response to a relevant issue they feel may affect children and parents get to make their own decisions in how they actually raise their kids. Therefore why take this legislation to another level. This clearly indicates there is more to this policy, more sinister issues. If the government softens us up with a first level of content filtering it makes the next level that much easier to bring in. Contrasting political views, religious views, swearing, music, even past historical events that don't sit quite right, anything that the government deems inappropriate could be eradicated from our access. It would make it very easy to govern if people didn't even know any alternate existed.

This is clearly a case of politicians who simply don't know anything about the position they are in trying to blindly push forward without even considering the reality of the situation. The Labor government is trying to close the eyes of the people in this country and tell them that everything will be warm and fuzzy in there. People need to keep their eyes open and use the last bastion of totally free media to view the reality of this situation what they are trying to do.

http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf
http://www.netalert.gov.au/
http://www.efa.org.au/
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2138157.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/10/2414895.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/24/2399876.htm

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