The full text is at the link above, however, of particular note is points 4 and 5 (emphasis added):

4. Direct or indirect government interference in or pressure exerted upon any expression or information transmitted through any means of oral, written, artistic, visual or electronic communication must be prohibited by law when it is aimed at influencing content. Such illegitimate interference includes politically motivated legal cases brought against journalists and independent media, and blocking of websites and web domains on political grounds. Calls by public officials for illegitimate retributive action are not acceptable.

5. Filtering systems which are not end-user controlled – whether imposed by a government or commercial service provider – are a form of prior censorship and cannot be justified. Corporations that provide Internet services should make an effort to ensure that they respect the rights of their clients to use the Internet without arbitrary interference.

These two statements are important well beyond the realm of Wikileaks. Essentially the New Zealand DIA DNS-based porn filter and the Australian Government’s proposed filter both violate international law. This news is not new, but it is nice to see it reinforced by the UN.

The federal government is hiding controversial plans to force ISPs to store internet activity of all Australian internet users – regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing – for law-enforcement agencies to access.

The next thing they will try is for everyone in the country to wear a GPS tracker so we always know where people walk, drive, train or cycle so that we can fine them when they jaywalk or fail to indicate.

As every day goes by it seems the Rudd government is becoming more and more successful at achieving the impossible – losing the next election. For me being a computer geek all it means is that I am much more aware of my actions online and wherever possible I am using encryption for data transfer. It is not an argument about having nothing to hide and therefore needing no privacy. It is a matter that the government wants to data mine our every single action, watch our every single step and monitor every little thing we do in our lives.

I have no issue with sharing my browsing habits with people who I opt to share it with; more often than not I opt into anonymous data sharing of software usage. However, this is not what the government intends, what the government intends is complete mind control of its population. This is not censorship, censorship is a public list of banned material and the reason why they are banned which is debatable in court, this is well beyond censorship and amounts of thought control. The government is not telling you what is blocked, why it is blocked, or any way of being able to appeal sites being blocked. All in all it is a very scary idea that you would expect from a mad dictator not a democratically elected government.

However it is rare for the technological blog and news websites to complain. They complained about Buzz and within days Google had changed its policies giving users much more control. However, with Facebook something else is happening, there is a massive turn off in the technology community against Facebook.

On the weekend I removed all my photos, applications and personal information from Facebook. Twitter is no longer linked into it and I am no longer posting status updates. At this moment I have not yet deleted or deactivated my account. But everyday I am getting a little closer to doing so.

Articles complaining about Facebook’s new information selling regime are now stretching across the web, last week wired.com ran a number of pieces about Facebook. Now readwriteweb is running an article on how to completely delete your Facebook account – They also have a screenshot of the emotional blackmail when you try to deactivate.

The torrent is also appearing on Twitter. Nearly every post I see about Facebook is about how to delete or deactivate your account. Check this search on Twitter for an example (edit: search may not work, can’t link to a search on twitter).

I saw a prediction on the weekend that Facebook would be dead within 6 months – dead as in dead like MySpace, alive but on life support. At the rate people are getting angry over these latest changes the exodus of tech people could be complete within the month.

On the internet privacy concerns have existed since its birth. In the past in order to protect peoples identities many users operated behind aliases and screen names. I have had a few the two most prominent being kiwikidbrad and more recently nzv8fan. However, there are two main problems with screen aliases. The first is they can still quite easily lead back to you, for instance kiwikidbrad suggests my real name is Brad, and I am a kiwi, and still reasonably young (okay I started using this name when I was around 10 or 11 years old). When I switched to nzv8fan it was a little less obvious who I was other than I was from NZ and into V8 Supercars, but still over time you slip and sign off a post as Brad or accidentally post from somewhere that lists your real name alongside your screen name. The second problem with aliases is not knowing the true identity of who is behind them. Even though I just said I could be worked out, if I had a phony identity to start with, and then built an online alias on top of that I can become quite a credible fake.

To get around these problems Facebook did something quite radical when it launched. You would not have screen names rather you would use your actual identity. This is both a good and terrible idea. It is a good idea because it means you can rapidly be found my people in your past who may not know you currently and therefore would have a hard time finding out your screen name. It is also a terrible idea because of how easy it makes you to find.

Initially Facebook introduced some good privacy controls around this, firstly anyone accessing any data on Facebook had to be registered on the site, there was no such thing as a public profile. Secondly a lot of your data was hidden to people who were not your friends and only a limited amount was supplied to people so they could identify you as an actual friend and add you. This system worked quite well.

As a result of this openness about identity but strictness in privacy a lot of people flocked to Facebook as it was a genuine site where you could actually trust people, but as people flocked to Facebook it became too popular for its own good. It got greedy and power hungry. As a result of this over the past two or so years the high walls of privacy that protect users on Facebook have come tumbling down. Now in the latest development (see my immediate prior post) Facebook’s desire to connect everyone to everyone else has seen the creation of public pages that connect anyone with any remote common interest that they list. Essentially everything you write on Facebook will be connected. Forget 6 degrees of separation Facebook is aiming for 1.

The next developments in Facebook’s history will be interesting. I am wondering if a new player will arrive on the stage that brings back the privacy controls that users once had. I wonder if Facebook will buckle and bring in a whole lot of strict privacy controls not the complex mess they have now that is confusing and doesn’t give you much control at all. I wonder if they will be sued by some government department, state, company or individual.

If I were to start some form of Facebook clone there are a few things I would do:

• Use people’s real names.
• Allow people to list their birthday – birthday wishes are cool, but not publicly list their year of birth.
• Allow people to upload and tag photos – but photos tagged of other individuals must have their permission for the tag first.
• No public profiles.
• You must be registered on the site to access any other members.
• People can search for others but only on name, email address (not publically listed but searchable), workplace, school, college or sports team, but not common interest.
• Not allow applications that access other user’s private details. If you want to do some sort of quiz that is cool, but having third party applications mine other user’s data without their permission is wrong.
• Have fan pages for companies, and political causes. But disable pages that require you to join something before you can see all the details – and irony with facebook is fan pages often have more privacy controls than user pages.

These are just a few thoughts, I don’t have time, or energy, or the will power to start my own clone and have it reach a critical mass. However, these thoughts are welcome to be used by anyone who is willing too – and please do. I am planning on deactivating my Facebook account in a week’s time.

And for those people who think Facebook is too big to fail just look at what happened to MySpace. This Alexa traffic graph shows it nicely.

Visit the jungle and check out their massive grand opening sale.

They also have a very active community on Facebook and Twitter.

It is time to go Ape!

The screenshots below are from Ubuntu and show it attempting to download updates. Unlike BitTorrent when the connection drops the entire update fails until you press the cancel button and then manually start the download again after the connection has been restored. Here we have 11 disconnections while downloading 180mb of data. It appears that the data is coming in roughly 25mb bursts between disconnections.

Thanks to @orcon through twitter they are investigating the matter, however, I am not the only one suffering these disconnection issues since connecting to the Orcon+ Network.

This is the orcon log of all our connections this morning during a 3 hour period.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10587417

AC/DC fan Tamar McKewen was not impressed to discover her credit card had been maxed out with three times as many tickets bought than she was after, after a blip in Ticketek’s online booking system for the band’s Wellington concert.

A number of ticket buyers have complained about the overloaded system that either had buyers unwittingly purchasing too many tickets – or not able to buy any at all.

Tickets for the ageing Aussie rockers’ January concert went on sale at 9am yesterday, but the massive volume of customers left many frustrated with faults on Ticketek’s website.

However, Ticketek general manager Brendan Bainbridge said the day was a “success” and although he did not know the figures, only a small number of people were probably affected.

Ms McKewen said she logged successfully onto the website before 9am.

However, after she entered her credit card details and was waiting for confirmation from the site, the webpage timed out.

Ms McKewen was trying to buy three $160 tickets to the show.

She repeated the process two or three more times before a note appeared advising her to call Ticketek before attempting to buy any more tickets.

So at the start it appears that Ticketek had a problem. But they didn’t. It just appears that the customer does not know the basic rule of online shopping. Once you have pressed purchase only ever press it once, do not press it again because it is going sow, or reload it. This is clearly the customers fault not the fault of Ticketek. So why the media beat up?

The company would refund the cost of the extra six tickets.

That’s nice of them, again so why the beat up?

“As much as I’ll never use the Ticketek website again because of the hassle, I know it was all worth it to see AC/DC.”

May I suggest you learn to use a computer before going and having a cry.

I guess it is a slow news day.

Another good post is here: http://thomasbeagle.net/2009/07/09/nz-internet-filtering-faq/

To make a quick summary this is a very scary development. The great firewall of China is well known. There every single site that is accessed is filtered and if the content is determined to be in anyway, real or imagined, offensive to the Chinese Government then the site is blocked. It is a form of restriction on the people of the country and is heavily criticised.

So I am failing to understand why the Department of Internal Affairs wants to go down the same path in NZ. Who gave the government the power to determine which websites I visit or am allowed to visit? Now I know that there are some bad things on the net, but surely as an adult I should have the wisdom to determine which is websites are appropriate to visit and which are not. And as for kids surely this is the responsibility of the parents not the government.

Some excerpts from Geekzone:

What really worries me is that it looks like there isn’t an oversight of this process, there isn’t a publicly available list of blacklisted websites.

Internet filtering gives the government – any government – the resources they need or want to prevent people connecting to each other by the means of the Internet, one of the most liberating tools available to its citizens.

Burning books was bad. Breaking the Internet may be worse.

Some excerpts from the FAQ:

Does New Zealand have internet censorship?

New Zealand’s censorship laws forbid viewing or owning certain types of material (e.g. depictions of bestiality or sex with children) and this applies to material accessed over the internet too. A number of people have been convicted for possessing material they have downloaded over the internet.

When will the internet filtering be implemented?

The Department of Internal Affairs is intending to implement the scheme in the 2009/2010 government financial year. The exact date is currently unknown.

Who decided to implement internet filtering in New Zealand?

The decision was made within the Department of Internal Affairs.

Okay so a government department made the decision. Public Servants. Nobodies. Whoever gave them to power to determine something that will affect every single New Zealander who accesses the internet with no consultation?

Has an internet filtering law been passed?

No it is being done under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993. This gives the responsibility for enforcement to the Department of Internal Affairs.

Okay so why do we not get each website to have a classification you know G, PGR, R13, M, R16, R18 if we have to, but just randomly blocking sites. Now that makes no sense.

What happens if I go to a banned site?

You will see a message saying that access to the site has been banned. Your internet address will be logged. This will be able to be tracked back to your internet account.

Big Brother is always watching.

Does the internet filter only apply to web browsing or does it apply to other traffic as well?

All traffic (web, email, P2P, etc) for a filtered internet address will be forwarded to the DIA’s server.

The software only mentions filtering based on web traffic. Whether the other traffic is filtered, forwarded or discarded is currently unknown.

Does the word privacy exist anymore? How can someone trust the DIA? With everything going through it how can we be sure someone won’t steal our Credit Card Numbers, Bank A/C Details, Read our emails (oh wait they probably already do that). Do they have the power to break encryption too?

Is the list of banned sites available?

The Department of Internal Affairs has refused to release the list of banned sites. They claim that they are allowed to do so under section 6 (c) of the Official Information Act. This allows them to refuse on the grounds that the release would be “likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law, including the prevention, investigation, and detection of offences, and the right to a fair trial”.

This can be contrasted with the legal responsibility that the Chief Censor has to publish their decisions to ban films and publications.

So in other words this website could be blocked, and I would never know why.

Is it possible to check whether a website is on the filtered list?

The only way to check whether the website is filtered is by attempting to access it.

If a website is filtered is it possible to find out why?

No.

Can other types of material be censored in the future?

There is no reason why the same technology could not be extended to block websites with other types of content.

What makes me most concerned is less than six months ago we had the Internet Blackout dramas. Now it seems to have come again just in a different form.