Porn filters no barrier for net users
"A MELBOURNE schoolboy has cracked the Federal Government's new $84 million internet porn filter in minutes... Tom, a year 10 student at a southeast Melbourne private school, showed the Herald Sun how to deactivate the filter in a handful of clicks. His technique ensures the software's toolbar icon is not deleted, leaving parents under the impression the filter is still working."
"Tom stressed the filters were missing the mark by a long way regardless of how easy they were to break. "Filters aren't addressing the bigger issues anyway," he said. "Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I'd fix."
Smart kid. If only the government would listen to him. Porn filters on PCs are useless, just like anti-virus programs, especially on Windows PCs running as administrator (most still are). If it was that easy to stop people doing things, we would've solved the whole virus, worm, trojan and malware threat crisis long ago.
The computer was designed as a multi-purpose tool, one that is infinitely flexible. For every reason that we shouldn't do action X, there's an opposing valid reason for action X. That's why computers have always been designed around warnings, warning you if you do something dangerous, but it generally won't stop you. In certain circumstances it might, e.g. lack of permissions or UAC, but they're just roadblocks for anyone determined.
And that's what porn filters are - road blocks. And bloody ineffective ones too. All the ones available from the government work essentially on a updated-daily blacklisting system. But blacklists are inherently useless at blocking something as massive as the internet. It would be impossible to block all the 'bad' content, even a significant amount given how fast websites change is impossible, and who are they to decide what 'bad' content is? If a site with gory pictures is banned, then a CNN news article with gory pictures should be banned as well right? Chances are, the CNN news article won't be.
They all allow whitelisting as well, but this is just as flawed. What are you gonna do, limit your 13 year-old to disney.com only? They're gonna need to do research for their project, and unless you're gonna be there watching him the entire time he's doing his project (highly unlikely given how timepoor most parents are now), you will have to disable the whitelist temporarily.
Don't get me started on keyword blocks. It'd be a fun trick to post a message on a mate's facebook wall saying, 'check out the hot naked girls having hardcore sex at www.hothornygirls.com!' and wait to see them complain the next day from being blocked from their own facebook profile by the porn filter.
At most, porn filters give parents a false sense of security, that's it. Every 13 year-old now either is, or probably knows a mate geeky enough to know how to hack these things (and it's really not that hard - google any porn filter plus the word disable and watch in horror). It's like leaving a child with a cupboard with a 'child-proof lock' alone. They may not be able to open it immediately, but over time they will.
And even if they can't, many porn filters can be bypassed by using web-based proxies, or proxy software like Tor. They might be able to block some proxies, but with the massive list of ever changing proxy servers available out there, you're fighting a battle you've already lost.
Here's a nice trick - language translation websites are usually left unblocked because they have a very useful legitimate purpose. So navigate to one, e.g. http://translate.google.com, enter in the blocked website address in the 'website to translate' box, then tell it to translate from a random language to English. Click translate, and ta-da, you're blocked website just loaded intact, because by default, language translation websites ignore all words it can't translate.
So to fight back, the Government says,
"Senator Coonan said the Government had anticipated children would try and find ways to get around the NetAlert filters, and suppliers were contracted to provided continuing updates."
I can't wait until some desperate developer under pressure from management who wants to keep the government money flowing, implements a root-kit solution with bigger holes than the Titanic did, then wait for the lawsuits to come in from angry parents whose computers have been hacked and destroyed. First4Internet anyone?
Our favourite conservative Christian politician that many uni students despise and isn't often that switched on, decides to chime as well,
"Family First Senator Steve Fielding, a long-time campaigner for cyber safety, said cracking the software showed the need for compulsory filtering by internet providers.
"You need both. You need it at the ISP and at the PC level," Senator Fielding said."
Great, so instead of me being in control of what I or my kids see using ineffective filtering software, my ISP has the power? And given how disgusting ISP tech support is already, I can't wait until I need to call them up all the time just to unblock a legit site, or when parents think they can shift the blame and call up the ISP to abuse them for not doing their filtering job properly!
But this appears to be the government's grand plan. See, once it becomes apparent to the dumb but influential people out there that parents and ISPs are incapable of filtering the internet properly, the government gains support to take over control of the internet in this country. After all, we're already seeing the start of it,
"PM's net porn war: Australian families will have access to free internet filter systems under a $190 million Howard Government crackdown... Terrorist groups also will be under further pressure with the technology to be used to block sites. (emphasis mine)."
Sounds like China to me. But if it prevents our poor, innocent kids from viewing porn, it's all ok right? Wake up people, if you think your kid hasn't seen a person of the opposite sex naked by the age of 13, get your head out of the sand.
When will the stupid government fix the actual fucking cause of these problems instead of stupid band-aid solutions to appease the idiots out there, the same ones that will be whinging to the government when these band-aid solutions become useless very soon. Stupid politics.