Australian Internet content filtering - Cleanfeed

December 15, 2008 by Aaron

Australian Internet content filtering - Cleanfeed

What is Cleenfeed?

Clean-feed is the Australian government's $70 million national Internet content filtering scheme, which will impose blanket filtering for all web connections at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level.  There are two lists, a 'child' safe list which filters both illegal content and hardcore pornography and a second which users can 'opt-out' to which only filters unwanted content.

Senator Stephen Conroy, the Government Senator responsible for this project has stated that they will also be looking into the possibility of filtering other content that may be illegal in Australia. Which would for example include: euthanasia, abortion, drug-use, etc.

Email, Peer to Peer, Instant messaging, newsgroups and any other custom application protocols are on the ACMA report as things that the Government is also planning to apply the ISP-Level filtering to.

iiNet and Optus have applied to participate in the ISP Level filtering trial, however have maintained they are doing so to prove the inability of the system.

The ACMA Closed Environment Testing of ISP−Level Internet Content Filters which can be viewed here shows the degree of degradation introduced by a filter averages at about 30% loss and can hit up to 70% reduction in performance.

Existing technologies such as open proxy's can bypass this cleenfeed filter though this would add an additional performance hit to the users already reduced internet connection.

Cleenfeed Roundup

Protest

The rallies, organised by members from activist groups including the Electronic Freedom Project and Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC), saw hundreds gather at Sydney's Town Hall, Brisbane Square, Melbourne's State Library, Adelaide Parliament House, Perth's Stirling Gardens and at Tasmania's Parliament Lawns to voice their opposition to the scheme.  Source

httpvhd://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gUt2RvpUKkk

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