Kevin The physical links to the rest of the Internet are not some vapourish, unfathomable sort of web. They are real bits of optical fibre cabling (with a smattering of satellite for backup) that terminate on real routers in real data centres. They are certainly enumerable, probably only numbering in a few hundreds at most. Already every large ISP and phone carrier will have some sort of demarc room that allows the feds, state police or spooks to execute wiretapping warrants. Given the judicial go-ahead, a little time and resources pretty much any digital communication is already traceable and able to captured for whatever analysis.
That said, at anyone time I am sure that there is only the resources to ever capture (and analyse) a thousandth of percent of such traffic. >From a technical point of view, I think the main issue with Conroy's proposal will be maintaining a filter list that is actual credible and able to be justified by any normal measure. There will need to be a tradeoff between the fine granularity that *might* be useful, but which would need a lot of processing grunt (both from humans and the necessary hardware/software to implement) and what is more likely to happen which is a very coarse filter that satisfy neither side of the debate. Regards, Martin [email protected] On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 10:49 PM, Kevin Shackleton <[email protected]>wrote: > I'm confused. > > I thought the whole idea of DARPANet was that it was bomb-proof - there > was always another route open. How exactly are the Thought Police going > to sit on every possible route into Oz? How well does the Chinese > government censorship work, in terms of bandwidth filtered? I bet it's > significantly under 100%. > > It seems to me, like metropolitan area wireless networks instill a > little bit of honesty into ISPs, to be up to sites with links to > international satellite service providers to resist any control from the > government and pass packets not just because they can but because they > should. > > Kevin. > > On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 17:46 +1100, meryl wrote: > > Heracles is right. The Filtering problem is more about stifling freedoms > > of speech and censoring the Net than it is about blocking child porn, > > and it is bound to be extended into other areas so freedom of speech > > will become a thing of the past for us in Australia. Apart from slowing > > down our already sluggish Internet speeds, if it is introduced it is > > likely to be extended down the track to include all manner of sites; > > possibly even political dissenters... if they get away with this and > > they'll add more and more sites to the list to the point where we may > > one day envy the freedoms that the Chinese have! > > > > Really the child porn issue is just being used as an emotional ruse to > > effect censorship controls because the purveyors of such material for > > the most part would most likely use VPNs and other evasive methods to > > avoid detection, as such their heinous activities will be totally > > unaffected by the filter. How about the government catch these crooks > > and lock them up instead of punishing all of us with this net-nanny > > filter. > > > > By and large the Filter will be way more detrimental to the > > average honest Internet user and the child pornographers will just sit > > back and laugh at the stupidity of Australian government. > > > > for more info see: > > http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25773857-953,00.html > > > http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/312845/statistics_experts_label_isp_filtering_trials_unscientific?fp=16&fpid=1 > > > http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/careful-big-brother-is-editing-you/story-e6frg7go-1225792964441 > > http://www.openforum.com.au/content/firewall-lies > > http://libertus.net/liberty/ > > http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/ > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8AZ21hCkIg > > and as always there's a "Downfall" video on the subject! > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH35CVig3fQ > > > > cheers, > > Meryl > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
