Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on in the current internet filtering debate in this country, you would have to be incredibly naive to think it is a clear-cut yes or no question. There are certainly benefits to either filtering or not filtering internet connections.
Although most will already know my position in the debate, in the interests of full disclosure, I am completely against the filtering of the internet at a “mandatory ISP” level in any form whatsoever. Although government swear that they would never allow the scope of the filter to widen from their currently plans – (which incidentally is already far too wide) – it is always difficult to trust anyone who says “trust me”. This particularly applies to politicians.
Being a person who tries to see both sides of an argument, I’ve spent a bit of time lately thinking about how a filter in the style of what is proposed by the government could be implemented, yet make it completely optional. To make it a choice of parents to control what their children can and cannot see online – and to even take it further than the current government plans.
Say what? Seem odd that someone who is completely against the current government plan suggesting a way to take their idea further? Well, here’s my thinking.
The first thing that MUST change is the positioning of the plan. To mandate that all internet connections in Australia must be filtered against a government controlled list of banned URLs is, well, un-Australian. So the POSITIONING of the filter should change, and become non-mandatory.
The filtering mechanism, if it exists at all, should exist within the home. Everyone with a broadband connection has a home network, even if it is a simple modem-to-computer connection. This is where any filtering device should be placed, at the choice of the owner of the connection.
What I propose is a simple networking device, which I am calling the “Non-Conroy Filter”, or NCF. An NCF-enabled device would be a fairly simple piece of hardware, which implements a fairly rudimentary firewall. I will apologise in advance if this gets a little technical for the non-technical minded.
Basically, through a web interface that parents can access, they configure a list of all machines on their home network via the MAC addresses of their network interfaces. They can then categorise each machine as “filtered” or “unfiltered”. Filtered machines (such as those linked to the network with red connections in my diagram) would then lookup DNS names via a managed DNS service such as OpenDNS. Unfiltered machines (connected in green) would lookup DNS names via a “normal” DNS service, probably provided by their ISP.
Then, the NCF device would simply block all DNS connections from BEHIND itself – (ie: the home network) – so that the kids cannot set any DNS old settings on their computers to get around the NCF device. It literally forces the “filtered” machines to use the managed DNS server in proxy behind the NCF device.
OpenDNS is a very clever service – it allows you to set up an account, and nominate specific categories of sites they have catalogued, that you choose to allow access to. Say you’ve got “Adult Sites” blocked for filtered connections behind the NCF device. Since those devices are forced to use your OpenDNS account for forwarded DNS lookups from the NCF device, and your OpenDNS account says “don’t allow access to adult sites”, then when your kids go to lookup up the latest porn site, they are shut down. Cannot access.
When you yourself use the unfiltered computers behind the NCF device, you are using a normal, public DNS server in proxy from the NCF device, you get access to the porn site. If you wanted that is.
If the government wants to have their “RC Blacklist”, they can set up a DNS farm – (much like OpenDNS) – with their list of sites filtered, and then the parents can opt to have the filtered devices registered in their NCF device filtered with that DNS service also.
Simple. Effective. Allows for the government “RC Blacklist”. Maintains parental control.
Early in the article, I said you could use this system to take the idea of filtering internet connections further. Say you don’t want your kids accessing Facebook between getting home from school, and say, eight o’clock at night, when they should be doing their homework.
Well, the NCF device could have time-based filtering – where certain sites, groups of sites, or categories of sites are only allowed to be viewed by the filtered connections between those times.
Don’t want your kids to ever access a certain site, which is not blacklisted anywhere? Add a filter on that one too. Every attempted access to the internet – (successful or not successful) – would be logged so that parents can actually see what their kids are viewing online.
As long as you maintain secure access to the NCF device – (ie: don’t let your kids have the password, or physical access to it) – then the internet is filtered, and importantly – ONLY FOR AND BY THE PEOPLE WHO WANT IT FILTERED!
There are other questions a device like this would raise, but here is a solution that would be a perfect compromise that SHOULD suit everyone. The problem still is, the government still thinks their way is right, and the only way to do it.
Internet filtering in the home should be controlled by the parents. This is how you do it.
