Transcript: Conroy explains his net censorship regime

Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy details the Federal Government's plans to filter the internet.

Ben Grubb:
Thank you very much for taking the opportunity to speak with us Senator Conroy.

Senator Conroy:
No worries.

Ben Grubb:
I understand that your mandatory ISP-level filtering scheme for blocking refused classification rated content from all Australians would see blocking of approximately a thousand or so URLs mandatorily by all ISPs.

Am I correct in saying that?

Senator Conroy:
Because we are working with international agencies I’m not sure, and because we’ve only just announced the decision, I don’t know that anyone has put a final figure on that yet.

I mean, I’ve talked with international agencies that are very active in this area and I think you are probably drawing off a number that’s roughly around what the ACMA blacklist [is] at the moment.

But let’s be very clear.

What we’re proposing to mandatorily block is not the ACMA blacklist.

We’re only blocking material that is illegal in libraries, in news agents, you can’t buy it in book stores, you can’t buy a DVD of it, you can’t watch it on television and you can’t watch it on the cinema.

And importantly, it is currently illegal to have it on Australian ISPs.

So to be very clear, the material we are talking about in refused classification is child pornography, sites like pro-rape web sites, bestiality web sites and web sites that advocate criminal acts like a terrorist act.

That is what falls within refused classification today.

That is what is illegal to buy in a book store, go to a film or a watch on telly or a DVD or in a library [or] in a news agent.

Ben Grubb:
Now obviously you just said there that it was “illegal”.

Refused classification and material that is “illegal”, I understand, they are two separate things.

Refused Classification is content that...

Senator Conroy:
You are simply trying to follow a complete furphy.

Refused classification is very clear.

It is illegal to have this material in a library, refused classification in a library or a news agent.

And what you are following is an attempt to try and confuse people.

Only the material I’ve just described is included in refused classification.

Lots of things are illegal.

But that is not what we are blocking.

We are blocking material that is currently refused classification.

It’s very simple.

If you can’t buy in a book store, if you can’t watch it on television, if you can’t buy a DVD, if you can’t go to the cinema or the television to see it , and you can’t see it today on an Australian hosted ISP; that is the material we are very specifically blocking.

Ben Grubb:
As I understand it, the Broadcasting Services Act requires illegal content, as you’ve just pointed out there: child pornography, to be reported by the ACMA or the Classification Board to the police and dealt with straight away. Now, currently...

Senator Conroy:
Unfortunately international servers where this material is hosted take no notice of the police or ACMA.

Ben Grubb:
So it’s dealing with international jurisdictions?

Senator Conroy:
If an Australian web site - an Australian hosted server ISP - was to put this up, it would be subject to a take down notice and potential police investigation.

But unfortunately there are many servers in countries that don’t respect Australia’s laws and don’t agree with Australia’s laws and host this material.

And we have no jurisdiction for ACMA or the police to deal with those.

Ben Grubb:
Can we assume that the RC-rated list that will incorporate URLs that the Classification Board will look at international ones and consider whether that needs be added.

Can we, I guess, assume that as new URLs are added it would be expanded over time?

Senator Conroy:
I think that what the evidence shows internationally is that many of these sites are quickly put up and then quickly taken down.

So what is important is that we maintain vigilance in this area.

And so I would anticipate that many web sites or individual web pages to be more specific - people use the word web sites in a more general sense - but individual web pages would come down as they ceased to be used.

I mean, particularly in the last few years a number of Australian web sites have had individual pages hacked and, particularly, child pornography has been put up on them.

And then what has happened is internationally we have been advised that this is the case and they have been added to the existing blacklist that exists in Australia today - has for nine years - there’s actually been a blacklist for nine years [of which] most Australians don’t even know it exists - and so they have actually hacked into existing Australian web sites, targeted individual pages, and they’ve put material up and then they have advertised it.

Then quickly when people realise what has happened then ultimately they stop using those addresses and then material is delisted.

Ben Grubb:
And I guess that’s what happened with the Maroochydoore dog web site?

Senator Conroy:
That’s exactly what happened.

International agencies contacted us and identified individual pages within that web site that had been hacked.

And genuinely offensive material that all Australians would say was offensive.

Individual web pages, not the whole web site, but an individual page was identified.

Now what happened when the ACMA list, which included this site but it goes much broader than the list we’re talking about today, was leaked - and there were a number of lists that were leaked - not ones that were the ACMA blacklist.

Ben Grubb:
Not the refused classification list?

Senator Conroy:
No, no, no, no.

What happened was a number of individual ISPs had added material of their own because they run their own filtering.

And so a lot of the sites in the original Wikileak were not actually ever on the ACMA blacklist.

Something reasonably resembling the ACMA blacklist was ultimately leaked as well.

And that is where some of the dog catcher and the dentist became famous.

But what people didn’t want, in some cases, to understand was they had been actually hacked by overseas predators and individual pages on the websites had offensive material; they were listed.

The international predator then went away.

They removed the material themselves and ultimately these web pages were delisted.

And that’s the way it should be.

Ben Grubb:
I understand that it was only delisted until someone was told at the ACMA.

What will happen in the future?

Senator Conroy:
There were a couple of important points there.

And we’re very conscious of wanting to, if we’re moving to the new regime, we need greater transparency and accountability measures.

We put out a discussion paper and for all Australians who are concerned about the thin edge of the wedge argument, for all Australians that are concerned that Stephen Conory or any future Minister might want to secretly slip things onto this list that is why we’ve got this paper out.

And we invite everybody to put in a submission outlining how we can have stronger transparency and accountability measures.

So as an example.

Some of things we are suggesting that should be done and we want feedback on is it will have where a page has been identified on the blacklist as having say a child pornography site on it we would put up a note that says ‘hey, you’ve been blocked. if you have a complaint or you think it’s unfair contact this address’.

So instead of there just being nothing there would actually be a mechanism for somebody to appeal.

So if the Queensland dentist or the dog cleaning agency felt that their site, in actual fact, had been incorrectly targeted they would know and they would have the capacity to appeal.

So that is one of the mechanisms we think would be important in a new regime.

We think it would be important that there is external scrutiny of the list.

At the moment refused classification is a classification that is determined by the Classification Board.

Now they are a body which is independent of Government.

They are a body that is not run or controlled by the Federal Government.

They are a body that’s operates with the support of all of the State’s and Federal Government.

Now, they have got fifty years or so of experience at making these judgements.

Have, sometimes, the Classification Board made a decision; the rating of a movie or the rating of a book that I’ve disagreed with?

Absolutely.

And I am sure they have made some decisions that you have disagreed with.

But they have a whole range of experience over time.

They constantly review the content that is refused classification against community standards and they make judgements against what they believe are community standards.

But this is an NSD, an organisation that is separate and not part of a government department or a bureaucracy.

And what is important is that because, and this something I have really struggled with: Should you release the list?

There is content insinuation this is a secret list therefore Conroy can do whatever he wants with it.

This has been probably the toughest part of my discussions around this topic.

When you list book titles or movie titles that are banned you don’t give immediate access to the content by definition.

But if you list the web pages that are blocked you give immediate access to the content.

And on balance after a lot of thinking about it we decided that we wouldn’t publish it as some of the critics have called for.

But what we accept entirely is that in this new regime the community needs to be confident that the list isn’t being manipulated for bad purpose.

And so we are inviting people to say what is a mechanism so the list can be scrutinised by someone other than Stephen Conroy or his department or ACMA or anybody else.

So we have invited submissions on what process.

So, a couple of examples that I’ve cited in the discussion paper: Should a cross-parliamentary committee look at the list and produce a parliamentary report?

Should it be the Classification Board themselves [who] look at the full list and they report?

Should there be an industry body set-up so that the ICT sector can nominate some people who would then have a look at the list.

So we are very conscious of people’s concerns in this area.

The thin edge of the wedge is an important argument and it is important that if anybody discovered as part of that process that Steve Conroy had slipped in Stephenconroy.com[.au] - which has been set up in the last few days - and it suddenly had offensive material that I didn’t like but wasn’t RC - now I can’t suddenly slip that on.

It is important that we have those processes; those independent tests.

So for any Australian who is concerned about that, and many are concerned about this issue, there is an avenue to put in a submission and tell us your thoughts about these transparency and accountability measures.

Ben Grubb:
If people can't access these web sites to begin with, why not publish the list?

Senator Conroy:
Because they can at the moment.

Ben Grubb:
How can they?

Senator Conroy:
Because in Australian - they're not hosted - there's a difference between accessed and hosted.

They are not hosted in Australia because they can't be.

Ben Grubb:
But what I mean is, when your filter is in place if you pwere to publish those URLs people wouldn't be able to access them because they would be censored or blocked.

Senator Conroy:
That's a fair point but we don't think by putting the list up and inviting people to go and have a look and...

Ben Grubb:
But they won't be able to?

Senator Conroy:
Look, we're not suggesting for a moment that this is a foolproof guaranteed way to stop access to child pornography.

Nobody is suggesting that.

I've repeatedly stated this it is not a silver-bullet.

We need education programs, we need education for kids, for parents [and] for school teachers.

We need more research in this area.
 
We need more police in this area.

And we have put 125[.8] million dollars towards all of those things including the filter.

Obviously the filter has taken the majority of the publicity but this is a modest part of a larger package.

And as I said at the beginning of the discussion, this is material that is illegal in Australia today.

You can't go into a library, you can't go into a news agent, you can't buy it in a book store, you can't buy it at a DVD store, you can't watch it on telly and you can't watch it at the cinema and it is not hosted today on Australian ISP's servers.

Ben Grubb:
If we could just get to the live pilot because there were two tests that Enex conducted...

Senator Conroy:
There were a number of tests.

Ben Grubb:
Exactly.

Now the test - the live pilot - that was tested on the nine ISPs - they only tested speeds of eight megabits per second.

Now, as I understand it, that was the fastest speeds they could offer.

If other ISPs had decided [to participate in the test] they [Enex] may have been able to test up to 100 megabits per second...

Senator Conroy:
My understanding is this is scalable.

But again, there are those who are trying to suggest, and these are the same people, the same people who said it couldn't be done; that it would slow the internet down and they were wrong last time.

Telstra did an independent test independent of Enex.

And what they found was that you can block up to 10,000 URL addresses with no over-blocking, no under-blocking, 100 percent successfully and the impact on net speed was, and this is using Telstra's words, 'one seventieth of the blink of an eye'.

For those who have failed to prove their case.

And more importantly some of these individuals knew this wasn't the case when they made their claims the first time.

They are now trying to back track, they are now trying to say 'oh the test was flawed, it didn't look at this, it didn't look at that speed'.

This is scalable and there is no argument that it is scalable.

Ben Grubb:
Is there evidence that shows 100 megabits per second in the Enex TestLab [report] that it is scalable?

Senator Conroy:
We have spoken to Enex and we are confident that this is scalable.

Ben Grubb:
You were saying that Telstra were able to test 10,000 URLs, what I would like to know is: Is there going to be like a cap on the amount of URLs that can be on the refused classification list?

Senator Conroy:
We said from day one we would be evidence-based.

And again, what a number of people have been deliberately misleading about is they're looking at the Enex report and saying 'how can Conroy say it's 100 percent, the Enex report shows there is slowing down in a whole range of areas'.

That is if you do the extra optional filtering [where] there begins to be degradation.

So that is why we haven't made that mandatory.

We said that is an option.

Ben Grubb:
With [regards to] the extra additional optional list that ISPs aren't required to add, which is the one which ISPs can apply to grant funding [to block] - If this is about protecting children, why aren't you making it mandatory for people [ISPs] to offer it as an optional service; that additional list?

Senator Conroy:
Because we said from day one we would be evidence-based.

And we said that if it showed substantial depredating of the internet in a mandatory sense then we wouldn't go down that path.

And again what the tests show and Telstra has looked at this a fair bit, was that if the list exceeded 10,000 [URLs] you could begin to encounter a degradation of some significance.

Ben Grubb:
So you would never allow for degradation to occur?

Senator Conroy:
As I've said: it's one seventieth of the blink of an eye.

Now, if the list started to approach 10,000 [URLs] at some stage in the future then we would have to consider how we handled that and we would probably have to have a technical study.

But filtering technology advances like everything else on the net advances.

I mean that has been one of the really frustrating parts about this debate.

Everyone has tried to claim that a test that was done in 2005 meant you could not do something today.

Now, if we took that view on all the technology involved on the net and said 'well that's as far as we're going to advance the technology' then we wouldn't have this incredible, educational and socially advancing tools that is the internet.

So we wouldn't want to go past 10,000 [URLs] unless it was possible to do without the degradation.

So if it reached that point at some stage in the future then any government would then have to undertake further testing to ensure that we didn't get the degradation.

But let me be really clear about this: For those people who have tried to claim for the last year that there was an 85 or 87 percent slowing in the net by having a filter they have been exposed as frauds.

So, organisations that have run campaigns, circulated petitions, advertising that there is going to be an 87 percent degradation in speed on the net are frauds.

And they have been exposed and they are scrambling to try and find new arguments at the moment.