And we never saw this coming … NBN to be filtered for National cyber security purposes
Posted on May 19, 2009 by by jr
At a recent AusCERT security conference on the Gold Coast the Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has let the cat out of the bag, intimating that the NBN will likely be heavily filtered.
The Minister is quoted as saying: “Securing the networks and services of Australia’s connected economy is of great importance to the Federal Government as the Australian economy becomes more connected and reliant of digital technology”
Obviously trying to sell the concept of filtering to allegedly protect the nations children from nasty content is becoming far too hard to sell.
But the target audience at this conference wasn’t your typical audience, it was a gathering of security specialists and professionals, most of which would probably not bat an eyelid at the thought of intercepting and inspecting (filtering) network traffic in order to undertake their daily work. A subtle point that our main stream media conveniently seems to have been missed.
So it appears that once the government run NBN goes live with all internet traffic by default traversing it, filtering will already be in place from the get go (in the name of national security of course).
No longer any need to get those pesky, argumentative, private enterprise sector ISP businesses to do your dirty work when you control the network backbone on which all their traffic will travel yourself…
12 Comments to “And we never saw this coming … NBN to be filtered for National cyber security purposes”
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That quote seems less than conclusive to me … but then, I’m not a politician either.
L
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It wouldn’t surprise me if they do have some kind of filtering, I understand some of the reasons why “protect the nations children” but will it also mean they will block websites like the Chinese gov does? so if someone says something the gov doesn’t want you to either talk or know about will they shut down these sites or block them?
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we will find out soon enough. maybe it’s already #$$%%^@%$#
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Filtering etc bothers me. The Canadians have a level of inter-agency competition on public interest issues (eg security versus privacy) which is useful for providing information to citizens – a much more open process than here. For example, the Privacy Commissioner has published a collection of essays on deep packet inspection here: http://dpi.priv.gc.ca/
It presents a variety of views – much better than the single message we seem to get here. But whether it makes a difference or not is arguable.
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Interesting Twitter comment on this article from Renai leMay, News Editor at ZDNet.com.au.
http://twitter.com/renailemay/statuses/1844986465
http://twitter.com/renailemay says:
@typeboard I think you’re misquoting Conroy there when you claim he said the #NBN will be filtered.
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@valeri – a journalist that failed to pickup on the point?
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Good point. I can’t wait to see what happens.
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I think this interpretation is off the mark, its about coordination of responses to cyber attacks, not filtering.
A better article is here
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Otoba’s link says:
A rapidly increasing number of highly sophisticated electronic attacks directed at Australian government and corporate computer networks has led Canberra to embark on a shake-up of the nation’s fron-line cyber-defences and early warning systems.
But is that true or is it just an excuse to have a filter?
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Sounds very much like we are heading down the track that the UK wants to go:
October 5, 2008: Sunday Times UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882622.ece
May 3, 2009: The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/03/gchq_mti/
May 3, 2009: Sunday Times UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6211101.ece
Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) is the Australian equivalent of the UK GCHQ, (and the USA’s NSA) and already does a lot of the behind the scenes heavy lifting in terms of “intelligence” work for a number of other Government agencies.
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[...] network You can hide this advertisement by registering. The NBN will be filtered: Typeboard First the budget, now this. I’m slowly watching my country disintegrate into a nanny state. [...]
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