[AusNOG] Conroy censoring dissent?

[Mark Newton]

On 12/11/2008, at 11:50 AM, Andrew Edington wrote:

> Also, I haven't really read into this too much, but does anyone know  
> the
> legality of running (even selling) VPN/encrypted connections  
> overseas to
> bypass the proposed filter? Or hasn't Conroy been upfront with those  
> sorts
> of details (I can't seem to find any details)?

Conroy has given every indication of being completely unaware of the
possibility.

I'm pretty sure that's part of his schtick, though, because pretty much
everyone who has talked about this has been atwitter with the  
possibilities
since the news first broke.

Not even China bans VPNs (they understand that that'd be bad for
international trade if they prevent overseas companies from building
secure networks back to head office).  So if DBCDE makes any plans
in that direction I'm pretty sure there'll be a tidalwave of opposition
from all quarters.

The Technical Testing Framework asks participants to detect and log
"Circumvention attempts".  It doesn't offer any guidance about what
a circumvention attempt might be, however.  For instance, does employing
the use of a protocol that the filter doesn't know about (e.g.,  
BitTorrent)
count as a circumvention?


   - mark

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