[LINK] Internet Filtering SLAs

[George Bray]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at melbpc.org.au> wrote:

> I just saw on Q&A that Conroy is going to front up next Thursday live
> in Melbourne. Any linkers game to show up and confront him?


I posted a question intended for him next week.  It's a 55 word version of:


Filter Trial Should Test What is Proposed

The government's internet filter trial is supposed to evaluate the
performance of the filtering technology, both with regard to
censorship accuracy and the latency imposed on the end user’s web
request.

However, by selecting ISPs with such low numbers of subscribers and
only trialling subscribers that opt in to be filtered, the results
obtained will never reflect the intended scenarios and be inconclusive
at best.

To perform an accurate test of the filtering performance the
government needs to test the filtering environment they are proposing:
i.e. mandatory filtering for all users on all requests. No opting in
or out. What should be tested is what the government is proposing.

Secondly, the test must be performed using example ISPs from all
capabilities in the market, including top-tier ISPs with millions of
users.

It is only by simulating the mandatory proposed filtered environment
for a significant number of users that the trial can determine the
censorship accuracy and request latency of the intended system.

George Bray








-- 
George Bray, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.