Clean Feed is a Waste of Time & Money
by speed ~ October 31st, 2008. Filed under: censorship/clean feed.
What about instant messaging systems such as common ones like Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo etc, will that content be filtered?
If those services are filtered then what about the case where private instant messaging networks are created. Using free software such as www.igniterealtime.org and a low cost VPS it is possible to create private instant messaging networks around the Jabber protocol. These networks can connect to Google Talk with near zero configuration and with the addition of the appropriate gateway software connections to MSN and Yahoo networks is possible.
Therefore if the VPS is outside of Australia then these inter network connections will not be filtered. If a secure connection is formed from inside Australia to the VPS then how can content be filtered? Files, pictures, text etc can all be passed through the network.
One option would be to block all Jabber ports but then how would businesses interact on legitimate networks. Plus if the Jabber ports were blocked it is trivial to use port 443, the normal port for secure web traffic are they going to block all secure traffic because it can’t be filtered.
SSH
Web professionals require SSH access to servers outside of the country in order to run their business, it is trivial to have the web browser pass requests through a SSH tunnel to the remote server.
Therefore the content being downloaded can’t be filtered as the data flows encrypted between the server and client, again what are the government going to do block all SSH traffic? If they did then those businesses would need to move off country or again move SSH traffic to port 443.
The information for setting up a SSH tunnel for web browsing is freely available for most computing platforms.
For Linux, the command ssh -D 9999 user@sshserver creates a tunnel from the local machine to the remote server. All that now needs to happen is Firefox connection settings need to be changed to use a SOCKS proxy and now web browsing takes place from the remote server with data flowing encrypted between the client PC and the sshserver.
With the availability of VPS for less than $10 p/m any semi intelligent person could follow the instructions and have unrestricted net access.
VPN
Virtual Private Networks can be set up allowing secure connections between PCs. The creation of these networks isn’t hard with the availability of products such as LogMeIn Hamachi makes it almost a point and click exercise.
Again the data flowing through these networks in encrypted so while well know providers of VPN services could be blocked what about lesser known networks and if blocking well known VPN providers what about businesses trying to use them?
Other
All data flowing over SSL, port 443, is secure that is they can’t filter the data therefore what stops the use of proxies for browsing restricted sites?
Secure FTP also exists and may be utilised by companies moving sensitive data between branches, so again data can be moved unfiltered.
Sum Up
In this day and age many businesses have employs or are working with people from all around the world, limiting secure communication between these dispersed groups would result in businesses having to use local only staff which would then lead to cost or personal availability issues.
Therefore realistically the blocking of secure connections is not an option and they have to be accepted as needed in order for the IT industry to function.
If these technologies are available for business then there’s no reason your average school child can’t make use of these technologies to view the content they want.
So filtering my stop some content but it’s trivial to circumvent, therefore if parents assume the content filtering works they are taking less interest in their childs online activities and therefore in my opining increasing the risk of the child encountering unacceptable content or individuals.
My personal opinion is forget filtering and spend the money on educate parents in their responsibilities, that is to guide their child to adulthood in a well balanced way knowing right from wrong, knowing the dangers in the world and not shirk their responsibilities to some sate run robot that may or may not work. Finally how do these adults that have been sheltered from the undesirable side of the web cope should they ever be exposed to it?
