[Chapter-delegates] Internet Filtering

Mon Jun 30 11:55:45 PDT 2008

Hello Marcin Cieslak,

My response is inserted in the body of the message below:

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 9:42 PM, Marcin Cieslak <saper at saper.info> wrote:
> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:
>>
>> I am far from a person who advocate control of the Internet
>
> I will refer to the points below because I think they are important to
> improve our understanding of the "malicious activity" on the Internet.
> Please do not treat this as a personal response to Sivasubramanian -
> I am actually taking opportunity to quote some sentences to engage in
> a bit more deeper discussion.
>
>> There is a lot of malice around, that arises out of the power placed
>> on the malicious underground (here again I would like to say that the
>> "underground" per se is not malicious, but a section of the
>> underground)  that brings down computers and whole networks down with
>> destructive malware.
>
> It is important in the discussion we have with the stakeholders that various
> kinds of malice should be treated appropriately. Once cannot put  DDoS,
> hacking, unwanted content into one category. I believe that we should stress
> each and every time that the particular issue should be identified and
> appropriate measures taken and no "catch-all" solutions exist.

There is a lot of validity and reason in whatever you have said. Yes
DDos and other destructive attacks are one category, session hijacking
or information theft would be another, spam would be yet another
category. There would be numerous categories, and/or levels of malice.
>
>> On extreme issues such as child pornography I believe that the Internet
>> community
>> needs to find a way to keep these untraceable content completely out of
>> the net.
>
> I have trouble understanding why "child pornography" made such a career in
> recent times. Mentioning this over and over as the example of the
> "universally accepted wrongdoing" brings more harm than good; I wonder how
> many people started looking for such content just out of curiosity.

I agree.

>
> The Internet reflects more and more accurately human activities in the real
> world. It is not the issue to remove the content out of the net.
> It is the issue to root-out the particular criminal activity. There has been
> lots of expertise in tracking particular kinds of criminals in the real
> world.
>
> One very often forgotten fact is that Internet brings also new possibilities
> of combating crime; for example it is much easier and safer for police agent
> provocateur to act on the Internet. They do not need to risk they lives to
> engage with the wrongdoers.
>
>> It requires some form of regulatory mechanism. I am not suggesting
>> that such powers be vested with the Government.
>
> There will not be and cannot be a single regulatory mechanism, since we are
> dealing with very different policy issues:

There is a valid point here as well. But at the same time we can not
have disjointed regulatory mechanisms with overlapping functions or
unassigned functions.
>
> 1) Network and protocol-level vandalism
> - is handled today to a some successful extent by the network operators by
> managing excess traffic for example.
>
> 2) Preventive (ex-ante) censorship - blocking the content before it can be
> seen
> - is handled in the best way by the end-user.

>
> Filtering out pornography is no different than popular spam- or
> ad-filtering. I would advocate the use of Privoxy (http://www.privoxy.org/)
> or similar solutions to many end-users. Actually, removing pop-under and
> pop-up advertisements makes it much more difficult to reach unwanted web
> sites.
>
> In my practice since many years I have not been able to reach any explicit
> pornographic content by accident, mainly because I use appropriate host
> security, spam and ad filtering software. Maybe I am lucky, but I could
> access specific content only by explicit request and even with some effort.
>
> In general I advocate the use of personal filters because of the very fact
> that every user should be able to define his/her own filtering rules. Every
> user should also be able to temporarily turn off the filtering should there
> be a need to access specific normally unwanted content. This way those
> users' policies (what's unwanted and what's wanted) can be personalized and
> can change over time, in order to become more effective.

There is a fallacy here. Marcin would set up filters and firewalls in
his computer effortlessly as an Information Technology Expert. I have
trouble installing even a click and install firewall. Infotech experts
who are responsible for policy and technical standards often make the
unconscious mistake of judging the rest of the world from what they
are

For every two expert users there are eight "common" users The tasks
that are ludicrously simple for Marcin is a complex task for many and
way too beyond the expertise of several others What kind of an
Internet would you offer me, Marcin, if all I know is typing with one
finger with eyes on the keyboard, use the mouse, launch a browser icon
and navigate around by clicking on the links? I have difficulty
understanding terms such as spam, virus - I think a computer virus is
one that infects me when the computer gathers dust. Would you engineer
an internet for me?
>
> Whoever takes the responsibility to take care of others (being that ISP, the
> government etc.) by providing a shared policies (global, nation-wide or
> per-site filters) is taking the possibility of free choice off the
> end-users. This, among from free-speech disadvantages mentioned already by
> Oliver, generates also the false sense of security - "we are safe because
> somebody ELSE takes care of us".

It takes at least 14 or 16 years of age to have the capacity to judge
and choose. This is the reason why the laws of the world have made
parents responsible till a child reaches a certain age. In the case of
adults, a very large proportion of the adults who are already on the
net and soon to get into the Internet are sort of technically
inadequate. Don't only think of your fellow citizens in Europe,
consider for example a tribal village in India or a remote region in
Africa that is hardly electrified, suddenly connected to the Internet
by a Government's program for access. It would take a generation for
this and several related classes of Internet users to be in a position
to take care of themselves.

>
> We - in Poland  - have analyzed the rules of one the software "blessed" to
> be used at the Polish public schools (unfortunately in Polish:
> http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/6430). The result? It blocked access to many
> popular blogging sites and everything about homosexuality.
> The Internet community here has managed to cause that issue to be petitioned
> officially on the parliamentary forum (http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/6984).
>
> 3) After-fact (post-ante) take down mechanism.
>
> This works only for the best for the most obvious and universally regarded
> as malicious content (for example worms, viruses). Traditionally in the
> early days of the Internet this was handled with the so-called
> LART-mechanism - the informal process of exchanging information between
> network operators. Today this process has been largely replaced be some sort
> of cease-and-desist letters, being generated manually or automatically, with
> limited success.

Why do you have an Internet environment "too-free" for anyone to have
a presence, set up an anonymous server, break into a network, steal
email addresses, spam, DDOS and cause havoc? There is a lot of
resistance to the very idea of very basic, very essential controls,
simply because of the fear that the fundamental character of the
Internet would be lost. This need not be the case. You have a license
plate for your car and your information is printed on a driving
license. Without this requirement for everyone who wishes to drive,
you will drive through chaos and might not make it home ....For the
roads to be safe for everyone to drive, the basic measure is ensure
that everyone plays by some basic rules. In the Internet there seem to
be no rules, no obligations, no conventions....  ( don't take this
literally )

All the essential measures that I am talking about, ( my suggestions
are presented as debatable, not presented as full, wholesome solutions
) are measures that the INTERNET COMMUNITY - not the Governments -
needs to examine, without being shy of scrutinizing the causes for
some of the unwanted ills of this wonderful Internet.

>
> The issue with #3 is similar to that one of the global filtering - no one is
> able (and I presume will never be able) to provide a global set of policy
> rules stating what's right or wrong.

May be we can examine the possibility of a global mechanism.

>
>> But would there be any harm if such powers are vested with the Internet
>> Community
>> - you and me and those from the Internet Community renowned for their
>> values of
>>
>> freedom and privacy and other rights and values that are
>> characteristic of today's Internet?
>
> Yes, but finding a universal solution to the wrongdoing on the Internet is a
> special case of solving the general philosophical question "What's right and
> what's wrong?". While it is easy to name few unquestionable cases, things
> are getting really nasty when the edge cases come to play, for example as
> regards to political, religious or sexual content.

This is a very valid observation. Yes, "what is right and what is
wrong" is a philosophical questions You and I may not agree on whether
a certain movie is right or wrong, but we both might agree that
stealing credit card information and depleting the balance available
in someone else's bank account is wrong We will both agree that "how
to make bio-weapons in your own kitchen" or "how to make a a bomb from
common salt" are disagreeable content. May be we can start there and
discuss as we go along.

On the philosophical question of what is right and what is wrong:  Did
the ambiguity of the distinctions deter the Judiciary of the world
from framing a fundamental set of rules that you and I live by ?

>
> Therefore I believe that the general strategy of ISOC should be to empower
> and educate users about making their own explicit choices and the
> possibilities to apply appropriate technology.

Educating the users is important. But for the Internet to become an
Internet of even 80 or 90% 'educated' users, it is going to take ten
to twenty years, may be even longer. This is necessarily an important
agenda item, but needs to be combined with an essential look at
essential measures.

Once again, most of what I wrote could be wrong, these views are
merely thrown for a debate, that I am sending it to the list without a
spell check or a re look, so to speak.

Thank you Marcin. Though I have mentioned your name in several places,
my response is an objective response in spirit

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy.

> --
>              << Marcin Cieslak // saper at saper.info >>
>
>
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