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.
David Burt of filteringfacts.org posted a good roundup of the trend over the last few years by filtering software to address social networking. You can read the full article here:
Filtering Industry Adapts to Social Networking with Monitoring
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.
About a month after Symantec entered the parental control space with OnlineFamily.Norton, McAfee is today announcing a parental control product called McAfee Family Protection.
McAfee Family Protection includes features such as web blocking, program blocking, instant messaging controls, time limits, usage reports, instants alerts, and more.
McAfee has set their pricing at $39.99/year direct from the McAfee website. McAfee Family protection is available for the PC only, but they have announced support for the iPhone later this year.
McAfee Family Protection was built through a partnership with InternetSafety.com and combines InternetSafety.com’s award winning parental control technology with McAfee’s TrustedSource database for web filtering.
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
Norton is today dropping the “Beta” moniker from their “Online Family” product. The product appears to now be named OnlineFamily.Norton. The product will remain free through the end of the year. While pricing hasn’t been officially set after the free period, the USA Today and PC Magazine both reported it is expected to be $60.
The product seems to have many of the same features as established market products like Safe Eyes, NetNanny, etc.
Public school students in Tennessee are being blocked from pro-gay websites by the school’s filtering system. The ACLU has stepped in and threatened to sue while the school system and the filtering vendor stand around pointing fingers at each other for who should be sued.
Educational Networks of America provides the filtered Internet service and contends that the school district sets the policy on what will be filtered. Jason Callen, ENA attorney said:
The decisions on whether to block certain websites are made solely by the school districts. ENA does not participate in these decisions in any way and is instead simply told which websites to block.
Meanwhile, Oliva H. Brown, the spokesperson for the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools said it is the responsibility of ENA to set the filtering policy:
The vendor is responsible for the interpretation of the CIPA requirements and ensuring compliance. Under the contract MNPS can request additional sites to be reviewed for blocking or unblocking.
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.
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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