The Washinton Post is reporting that China has backed down from its July 1 mandated distribution of the Green Dam Internet filtering software. The Chinese government didn’t give a new date when the program might launch, leading some to believe it will never launch.
The Internet was buzzing over the weekend that the new Green Dam Internet filter mandated by the Chinese government contains stolen CyberSitter code. There is a PCMag article that goes over some of the technical details about Green Dam and CyberSitter. It seem as though they didn’t only steal the filtering DLL’s, but they also seem to be updating via CyberSitter’s servers.
CyberSitter indicated that they are exploring their legal options to keep the software from being distributed.
China has been known for its stringent, politically motivated Internet filtering policies. But this week information surfaced that China will be requiring all new PC’s sold in China to include a new PC-based Internet filter called Green Dam Youth Escort by July 1, 2009. While the government claims they are doing this for the good of the children, their motivations are being called into question based on past experience.
This new filter was developed by Chinese company Jinhui Computer System Engineering. Many different stories have been circulating around the Internet about Green Dam, so I thought I would download the software and manual and check them out for myself. The entire software is in Chinese, so much of what I gained was through the use of Google translate. If anyone would like the translated manual, please contact me directly.
What I found out is that on the surface (I haven’t gotten any deeper than the surface) this software seems to be a rather typical parental control suite with features such as:
The software is customizable by the end user in terms of how sensitive different filters are and the ability to allow or deny sites as the end user chooses. The software also comes with an uninstaller.
The software seems to be very old feeling. For instance the interface of the software feels very 1990’s and very technical to use. This software lacks the usability polish that you see on mainstream parental control packages. It also installs most of its files directly into the Windows system folders, which also seems pretty old school.
Green Dam isn’t very clear about blocking. With most parental control utilities if you try to visit a banned site you will be told with a message of some kind. With Green Dam, basically the browser just never navigates and no message is ever displayed.
From the website it seems that this is currently only supported on the Windows platform (I used XP for my tests) so I wonder what plan the government has for Mac and Linux systems.
I wasn’t really impressed with this product. If I lived in China and this software came free with my PC I think I would just uninstall it and get a mainstream product like Safe Eyes instead (assuming I spoke english). Green Dam just feels clunky and it really only covers web browsing, which in today’s environment just isn’t enough coverage.
The Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation (NSGC) today announed a new prevention program to limit a child’s access to online gambling. Research has shown that young people in Nova Scotia are gambling online three times more often that adults.
The fact is, youth are gambling online in increasing numbers, a reality that should not be ignored. That’s why we proactively developed this effective prevention tool. This world-first is another example of NSGC’s commitment to social responsibility. These are unregulated gambling sites where there are no guarantees of safeguards or controls to prevent access by kids. As the steward of the industry in our Province, we couldn’t sit by and let this continue,
- Marie Mullally, President and CEO of NSGC
The new software is called BetStopper and was developed through a partnership with InternetSafety.com. Technology from our award-winning Safe Eyes product was adapted to target online gambling.
The software is available for free to residents of Nova Scotia at http://www.betstopper.ca
Australian news sources are reporting that the ACMA Blacklist (the sites that Senator Conroy wants to ban as part of his nationwide filtering plan) has been posted to the Internet. The particular version in question is supposed to be from August 08
ACMA release a statement saying:
ACMA has previously investigated and taken action on material—including child pornography and child sexual abuse images—at some of the sites on this list of 2300 URLs. However, the list provided to ACMA differs markedly in length and format to the ACMA blacklist. The ACMA blacklist has at no stage been 2300 URLs in length and at August 2008 consisted of 1061 URLs. It is therefore completely inaccurate to say that the list of 2300 URLs constitutes an ACMA blacklist
It will be interesting to see what impact this has on the nationwide filtering plan in Australia.
Live trials of ISP level internet filtering are moving forward in Australia. The six ISPs that will conduct live trials are: Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. Noticably missing are Australias largest ISPs Optus and Telstra, although Telstra decided not to participate.
Customers at these ISP’s will have the option to be included or not be included in the filtering trials. Two different trials will be run: one that blocks ACMA blacklisted URLs, and one that filters additional inappropriate content.
Don’t expect results anytime soon though. Primus is on record stating that they won’t begin the trial until April and will likely complete the trial in June.
The UK has a voluntary Internet filtering system that has been deployed by ISP’s. The core of the system is blacklist powered by data from the Internet Watch Foundation.
In the last month or two the ISP filtering system in the UK has been scrutinized over two different filtering mistakes.
The first came when they effective blocked Wikipedia because of an image of on the cover of the Albulm Virgin Killer by the german heavy metal band The Scorpions. Since the UK system works by filtering all suspect traffic through proxy servers, in this case all traffic to Wikipedia, editing of Wikipedia articles was not available to users in the UK because Wikipedia doesn’t allow proxy connections to edit Wikipedia for security reasons.
Most recently the Wayback Machine was blocked, but it appears to be only limited to one ISP this time. The Wayback Machine is an archive of Internet sites that allows you to view old versions of websites. There was a small amount of content in this archive that the Internet Watch Foundation felt should be blocked, but it led to the entire site being blocked by the British ISP Demon Internet. It appears that the root cause of this block was an incorrectly configured proxy server and the problem was corrected within a few days.
I think these two incidents reflect some of the challenges ahead for Senator Conroy’s plan for country-wide ISP level filtering in Australia. The Wikipedia incident shows how easy it can be for overblocking to occur. But in the case of the Wayback Machine, the list data from the Internet Watch Foundation seems to have contained only a small subset of the archive. However a technical error on the part of hte ISP caused a larger issue. I think we will see similar issues out of Australia if Senator Conroy’s plan becomes a reality.
Back in June I wrote about the FCC’s plan to create a free wireless broadband network. Part of the plan required the provider to include Internet filtering to protect children and families.
As expected this has been met with some opposition. Last week, in an effort to win more votes for his plan, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said in an interview with ars technica that he was dropping the filtering requirement from the plan.
Since 2007 the Australian government has been giving away PC-based filters to residents of Australia for free. The new year brought with it an end to this program. The program was terminiated by Senator Conroy about 6 months before it was originally scheduled to terminate.
No government sponsored program is available to replace the NetAlert program as Senator Conroy continues to investigate the possibilities of ISP level filtering. The future of the ISP filtering plan remains uncertain as it faces public opposition and technical hurdles.
In the meantime, parents interested in protecting thier kids online wil have to look to commercial solutions like Safe Eyes.
This week the Australian government called for “Expression of Interest” from ISP’s in Australia to begin a live pilot of ISP Level filtering. They have asked all ISP’s to lodge questions by November 18th, and hope to begin testing as early as December 24th 2008. The estimated length of the pilot will be 6 weeks. The pilot would ideally look at broadband, wireless, and dialup Internet access.
As previously speculated, the government is asking for ISP’s to participate in two different levels of filtering: one that blocks only ACMA blacklist sites, and one that extends the filtering to cover unwanted Internet content.
The government has indicated that limited funding will be available to help defray the cost associated with the pilot program, however, they don’t detail the specific amount available, which likely means it will be negotiated with each ISP.
Another interesting element is the fact that ISP’s will be able to charge customers during the pilot period for any filtering provided that goes beyond simply blocking the ACMA blacklist or illegal content.
Aaron Kenny
As the CTO of InternetSafety.com I have led the design and development of ISP, Consumer, and Business level Internet filtering products. More About Me
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