[AusNOG] Confirmation of govt blackholing. Was: Re:Understanding lack of Aus connectivity to melbournefreeuniversity.org.

[Mark Newton]

On 16/05/2013, at 10:57 AM, "Pinkerton, Eric" <Eric.Pinkerton at baesystemsdetica.com> wrote:

> I agree with Renai that ultimately this procedure is ripe for abuse, and that the shroud of secrecy surrounding it's use is unhelpful and does nothing to engender trust in it's legitimacy.

Why was there a shroud of secrecy in this case? The law doesn't require it.

The ISPs involved were all staying mum, behaving as if there was some massively important national security or child protection reason for not disclosing what they were blocking and why. And now that we know the answers to those questions, I can't for the life of me see why the cloak and dagger behaviour was justified.

For example: why couldn't AAPT have said, "ASIC have asked us to block an IP due to suspicion of a website promoting a scam," when they were asked about this? They could even have cited the website's URL, given that ASIC had already put out a press release which named them. The fact that enforcement action was being carried out wasn't a secret, the only secret was that the enforcement action happened to include an IP blacklist implemented by certain ISPs.

This case was CLEARLY an abuse, and ASIC wholly overstepped its authority. But the only reason it happened so unaccountably is because certain ISPs behaved like enablers.

> As it stands it's inefficient and ineffective (every ISP has to consider every request, and not all of them will decide on the same outcome) so I would suggest that ISP's should form a working group together and consider such requests/agree on an action/raise objections as a whole, much like the way our banks are sharing info on threats etc.  

It only takes one ISP, acting on their own, to announce their belief that a regulator is making an unreasonable request.  The fact that different ISPs would decide on different outcomes is a feature, not a bug.

    - mark