Here are some preliminary notes from interviews so far that paint a picture of an optimistic, but fearful Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyzstan is hurtling towards Central Asia’s first parliamentary elections on October 10, but the situation remains fragile.

People worry that the inter-ethnic violence that began in June between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, killing more than 300 people and displacing nearly half a million, will continue to affect the historic poll. People are wary of old political forces manipulating the vote through bribery and intimidation. The interim government must convince a skeptical public that it has purged corruption and can restore KG’s failing economy. US and Russia – who see this nation of over 5 million people as straegically important (the US airbase at Manas outside the capital Bishkek, provides a launchpad for operations in Afghanistan) – are watching the outcome closely.

Fearful ahead of elections

Karakul Lake, in the far west region of China that borders Kyrgyzstan. James West 2007.

“I think the biggest thing we’re afraid of is conflict”, says Aida Alymbaeva, the director of the Social Research Centre of the Amerucan University of Central Asia. After April’s demonstrations forced the once-lauded President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to flee the country to Belarus, opposition parties sprouted promising to deliver change to Kyrgyzstan, a post-Soviet republic suffering from unemployment, a poor economy and a dramatic rise in energy costs.

But with new parties come old tricks, says Alymbaeva.

“We are not very optimistic because we know who these parties actually are. And we don’t actually see new faces, and we don’t see new programs from the parties. We see the old faces, elite groups who are fighting for their power”.

Alymbaeva says parties are prepared to do whatever it takes to gain power: organising riots and paying militia. Parties are out-bribing voters in regional areas – where 70 per cent of the population lives – with cash offers.

Alymbaeva says political groups like the newly-formed Ata-Jurt Party are simply assemblies of old politicians that served under the now-discredited and overthrown Bakiyev government. “We see their faces, and we see their slogans saying that they’re the party for prosperity and for development etcetera et cetera, et cetera”, she says. But we don’t believe them. Because these are the corrupted people.”

Alymbaeva is hesitant, but optimistic. “The best scenario will be if it’s a true and open election process, so we can start rehabilitating our country”.

Mirsulzhan Namazaliev, the 22-year-old director of the Central Asian Free Market Institute, a think tank promoting market reform advocacy across the former Soviet republics, also lacks faith. “Big government is not working, because it’s always accompanied by corruption. So the only way that we see the way forward, is to minimise it”. He admires the Rose Revolution in Georga in 2003, which saw a younger, more professional band of post-soviets come to power. He wants that to happen in Kyrgyzstan.

Namazaliev once took to the streets to protest. During the Tulip Revolution in 2005, when he was 17, Namazaliev was arrested twice. In all, he’s has been arrested seven or eight times. “It also made me very politically active, and very stubborn”, he says.

This time, he won’t protest. “Everyone can go out”, he says. “It’s very easy. I did it before. But right now what I need to do is help to save the country. I need to help the propose reform ideas”.

One such way his think tank is helping – with assistance in part from the US government of US$7000 – is to promote peace in Osh, a city regarded crucial to the country’s future stability. His group made 2,500 t-shirts bearing the slogans “I Want Peace in Kyrgyzstan” and “One Country, One Nation, One Future” in three languages.

Namazaliev says the purpose was to stop locals “listening only to their emotions”, and promote the idea that “ethnicity and nationality doesn’t mean anything for us, because we’re all living in Kyrgyzstan and we’re all citizens of Kyrgyzstan”.

Recriminations in Osh

The situation in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s southern city of a quarter of a million people, a mix of Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, remains tense.

One long term expatriate resident of five years recently contacted me by email claiming, “the police and army is systematically taking in custody young Uzbeks, beating them up, some have died”. The expat writes that the Uzbeks are then forced to pay ransoms (he claims up to US$20,000) to get out of jail. “Nationalistic groups are freely driving/walking around and are threatening Uzbeks,” he claims. He told me to keep his identity confidential for fear of reprisals.

Alymbaeva agrees that there have been violations of human rights and recriminations in Osh. Both sides blame each other for starting the violence, brewed by simmering resentment between the groups over status, pay and official representation in the government. Now, Alymbaeva says, local Kyrgyz police and security forces are performing random arrests on Uzbeks in retaliation. “For example, they seize anybody, especially young Uzbek people, and they seize them and put them into into the prison and then say, ‘these crimes were committed by you’. Even innocent people are blamed for the crimes.”

Roza Otunbayeva, the president of Kyrgyzstan’s interim government has admitted that security services in the south of the country are targeting Uzbeks.

“Yes we have violations of human rights,” she told AFP in a recent interview. “I must tell you that there are some such cases. I can’t deny this. I am in struggle with all my law enforcement myself,” she said.

Linar Zairov is a Kyrgyz voice that has become prominent on Twitter. The 32-year-old Assistant Professor of Economics now living in America says the Western media isn’t presenting the whole picture. “It has become a tradition for many journalists stationed in Central Asia to take a rumor or unsupported claim and present it as a fact. I am hoping that my commentaries and tweets will force journalists to differentiate between opinions and facts,” he wrote to me by email.

In another interview over Skype he asked, “Why is it that Kyrgyz victims who were just as brutally murdered are not being reported? Not even mentioning them, there’s no acknowledgement that they even suffered”.

“As of today, every claim that has been made by every media outlet is just plain false, because they don’t know. No body knows right now. Everything’s based on eye-witness accounts, and most of these eye-witness accounts are from the Uzbek side”.

Zairov blames poverty. He says that the armed forces is Osh attract uneducated employees. “They have a lack of moral judgement, they blur the line between right and wrong. So you have these guys out there consistently violating basic civil rights of citizens. That’s the key issue, that these guys are really underpaid”, he says.

Humanitarian Response

The road to the Karakul lake, in far west China. James West 2007.

But NGOs continue to witness intimidation of Uzbeks in the south, making is hard for Uzbeks to seek help.

“The worst issue however is the invisible but permanent state of fear in which people, especially the Uzbeks, live”, says Anja Wolz, Médecins Sans Frontières Field Coordinator in Osh in a media statement. They are the target of frequent raids by security forces, followed by arrests and terrible abuses in detention centres. This fear, along with the remaining presence of armed men in and around some health facilities, renders access to health care very difficult for them.”

Olga Grebennikova, the media liaison officer for UNICEF in Bishkek, the capital, says people are still afraid. “Mistrust is tremendous, tremendous”, she says in an interview from Bishkek. “The level of fear is tremendous”.

In response, UNICEF opened a field office in Osh, diverting most of their resources to the south of the country. UNICEF medical kits helped around 6,000 deliveries by midwives, and the organisation trained 2500 medical staff around the country. Forty-two child friendly spaces have played host to 5000 children, to ensure they’re safe. And a new back-to-school program is being rolled out, but they only have 20 per cent of the funding required to launch the US$4.8million program.

“This impact on children is long-lasting. If we don’t take any measures, especially for children, it will last forever for them: this feeling of distrust, this feeling of fear, this feeling of conflict around them.”

The man who would tell his three daughters that virginity “is the greatest gift that you can give someone”, now appears to have been given a campaign gift by the Virgin bike team.

Tony Abbott confirmed an arrangement on Triple M’s The Cage show in Brisbane this week.

PRESENTER: Is that a Commonwealth bike you were riding?

TONY ABBOTT: Look, I was riding a beautiful bike that was lent to me by the Virgin cycling team.

He’s talking about the Virgin Blue RBS Morgan Cycling Team. It comprises 13 competitive riders from each mainland state. The bike and kit was loaned to the opposition leader by team manager and owner, Chris White, from Pegasus Racing. White met Mr Abbott through a business associate, and bonded – how else? – over a bike ride.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Tony and his ability to keep fit and healthy in a busy schedule,” says White, from Brisbane. “And I’ve got a lot of respect for the drive and enthusiasm he has. So I think he’s really well positioned to lead the country well. He leads by example.”

The bike kit given to Mr Abbott is built for speed. Perched on a Merida Scultura road bike, a series that can retail for up to $8,500, Mr Abbott wore a 2XU Custom Spec racing jersey, worth up to $160, featuring “compression Lycra for less muscle fatigue and increased endurance”.

White has accompanied Mr Abbott five times on Brisbane streets. They roll out at 5am, ride for no more than an hour and a quarter, and notch up 30 kilometers. White says they’ve been trailed by reporters twice.

“It’s pretty inspirational what Mr Abbott is able to achieve in a day”, says White. “I’m happy to help out to make that work for him, wherever possible.”

But during a campaign, with its added financial scrutiny, does Tony Abbott need to declare this “help” under the Commonwealth Electoral Act?

The Funding and Disclosure Guide for Candidates and Senate Groups, handed out by the AEC, stipulates that detailed disclosure must be made of gifts totalling more than $11,500.

Chris White says no commercial arrangement was made between his cycling team and Mr Abbott or the Liberal Party, and says he only has only a “vague understanding” of the electoral rules of disclosure.

The deal is beyond politics, says White. It’s pure cycling.

“The cycling community you’ll find where ever you go in the world, is really a close-knit community. Being a Brisbane-based team… we’re happy to help out when he’s in town from one enthusiast to another.” White also adds it’s rare for a racing jersey to appear without corporate sponsorship on it.

“I get nothing out of it except for an hour, or an hour and a quarter of exercise”, says White.

Regardless, Virgin admits their brand has been getting a lot of screen time on Abbott’s chest. And while Chris White says he has a “fair degree of autonomy” from Virgin Blue when dishing out its brand (“I don’t need to go seek their counsel on things”), the exposure hasn’t gone unnoticed over at the airline’s marketing team.

Virgin Blue says it was unaware of the deal before Mr Abbott began cropping up in early morning press photos. Nevertheless, they see it as a plus.

“We’re thrilled to have such a prominent figure who is at the moment in the spotlight wearing the Virgin cycling uniform with pride”, says Danielle Keighery from Virgin Blue.

So does Virgin Blue see any – is it irony? – in Australia’s outspoken opponent of sex before marriage wearing the word Virgin?

“I don’t like having those connotations”, says Keighery. “When it comes to Virgin Blue, it doesn’t necessarily have sexual connotations with it. Virgin Blue’s one of the biggest airlines in the country, and the brand is known for other things rather than that”.

Does Virgin agree with his policies?

“This isn’t a political thing. It’s literally him wearing our cycling jersey. He’s a very fit guy, we’re quite happy for him to do that.”

Electoral law expert, and author of the forthcoming book “The Law of Politics”, Graham Orr from the University of Queensland, says this kind of arrangement may need to be declared for public scrutiny.

“It’s arguable that it’s a provision of a service, just like leasing a car is providing a service,” says Orr. “And it’s also arguable that it’s a gift to him as a candidate… it’s sort of all part of his campaign strategy to appear like a robust and healthy character fit to be Prime Minister”.

Even then, says Orr, the value of the loaned bike and kit would need to have a cumulative commercial value of over $11,500 for it to be declared, which is difficult to prove.

In any case, we’ll need to wait and see whether Mr Abbott chooses to disclose the gift to the Registrar of Members’ Interests 28 days after he is re-elected into office.

That threshold is lower, at just 300 dollars, and covers gifts for which there may be a perceived conflict of interest, or any sponsored travel or hospitality received where the value of the sponsored travel or hospitality that exceeds $300.

Brisbane, city centre. From the 27th floor of the Brisbane Sebel on Charlotte Street, taken on a small Flip Mino HD camera from 4.15pm-5.15pm, near the shortest day of the year.

Springwood, Logan City. Taken out the security mesh of Room 10 at the Springwood Hotel and Tavern. From bed you got two things from Maccas: a bar of their free wifi, and the constant waft of the deep frier.

Until earlier this week, the Sex Offenders Search application was placing several sex offenders on Sydney suburban streets. At Byran Avenue in Normanhurst, a leafy cul-de-sac leading to a park, the application listed a six-foot two white male with a record of indecent solicitation of a child. In San Souci, a man was listed as being guilty of “lewd or lascivious battery” of a victim aged between 12 and 15. Another was a blue-eyed man, supposedly living in Fairfield West on Corona Road, with convictions involving the rape of teenager.

The high-rating app is designed by Florida-based company LogSat for American families, using publicly available, privately maintained American data. It’s also available from the Australian store as a free “lite” version, or for purchase as an extended-feature version for $2.49.

The application page in the Apple iTunes store claims: “Our world can be a dangerous place. Knowledge and awareness are our first line of defence”.

One resident (who didn’t want her name revealed) was gobsmacked that sex offenders were being pinpointed near her Kings Langley address in Sydney’s western suburbs. “It’s pretty scary that any company can create an application like that and put it on the internet,” she told Crikey, “because then that information is available to anyone who can start harassing people.”

Residents along her street in Kings Langley were being listed by the application as living alongside 12 registered s-x offenders, each in a different house. In her case, next door was the house of a man guilty of sexual contact with an individual younger than 11 years old.

“I can tell you no one of that name has ever lived here,” she said.

iTunes states the application was released here on December 9 last year, with updates for the iPad coming at the beginning of April. In the States, the app enjoyed a run in the top paid applications in the US shop and received national media coverage. One Fox report called it “a new powerful tool to spot sex offenders”, featuring a mother who even recognises one of the men in her search.

The application designers say there were 44,231 downloads from the United States in the last week. There were 51 downloads from the Australian store.

Using red pins embedded in a Google Map, the application locates almost 600,000 s-x offenders in America, including photos, descriptions of their crimes and even height and weight information. The sex offender located by the software on Bedford Avenue in Normanhurst actually lives on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn. Similar glitches are apparent in London, Paris and other cities checked by Crikey.

Roberto Franceschetti, the designer of the application, confirmed by email that the addresses had been mapped incorrectly. After reviewing his database, Franceschetti discovered about 200 incorrect entries in the southern hemisphere.

“At first glance it does appear that the majority of these 200 individual[s] are listed as ‘deported’ by various law enforcement agencies here in the US, and have been assigned an incorrect address in their records that resolves (again, incorrectly), to Australian co-ordinates,” he said. The company is now manually double-checking the data.

The application is downloadable in all countries that have access to an iTunes store. Franceschetti said all false searches have been removed from Australia, but problems persist in other countries.

He has not been contacted previously by Apple Australia about the erroneous results, which doesn’t ask designers to tailor products for different jurisdictions (Apple refused to comment when contacted by Crikey). The accompanying blurb on the iTunes store does let the customer know that the application only uses US data.

Stephen Blanks, secretary of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, is concerned the product is available to Australian consumers. He told Crikey: “Companies such as Apple, which deal in products that reveal personal information, have an important obligation to ensure that their products comply with Australian privacy standards. Apple needs to demonstrate a commitment to privacy by removing this app from its Australian store immediately, and disabling the app for anyone who has purchased it in Australia, and refunding the purchase price.”

Blanks also highlighted the problem of mistaken identity, saying the application posed a risk to people with a similar name in the vicinity of a search.

In response to the so-called Megan’s Law (named after a seven-year-old New Jersey girl was raped and killed by a paroled s-x offender in 1994) , all states of America are required to make information available regarding registered s-x offenders. While individual states decide what information is shared, and how, the federal Department of Justice runs a national s-x offender database.

The Australian National Child Offender Register (ANCOR) allows police to share information between jurisdictions on convicted offenders, but there are no publicly accessible registries. In 2007, the Australian Institute of Criminology raised several concerns with a public registry, including that offender compliance varies, offenders can still “go underground” and that the focus on a few known offenders may distract attention from the more common intra-familial abuse. That was backed by research from the New Jersey Department of Corrections, which found Megan’s Law has no impact on reducing sex crimes.

The Sydney resident thinks Apple should apologise. “This is something you can’t ignore. You can’t sweep it under the rug,” she said.

“Maybe he likes it up the poo valley,” jokes Cosmo, a restaurant worker downing midday beers on Sydney’s Oxford Street.

Cosmo, 24, couldn’t give a toss if Tony Abbott feels threatened. Same old, he says. “I honestly think he’s a dickhead. Period. He just wants attention.”

Shoulder shrug, eye roll, nasty jibe. The gay cafe set is unflustered to learn that they challenge the “right order of things” (Abbott’s words). “The guy’s a tool,” said one. Another: “Got other things to worry about, mate.”

Off the street, Tony Abbott’s remarks hit home-sweet-home in the online comments to news articles. “Whether you agree with him or not, at least Tony Abbott says what he thinks,” posted one Herald Sun reader. Another: “It is threatening. It always will be, as it goes against what is natural in procreation.”

If elected, will a threatened Tony Abbott wind back gay rights? Gay activists don’t think so. In fact, according to one gay historian, Abbott would find it hard to battle the rising tide of acceptance — even if he did have an anti-gay plan.

It started on Sunday night with a profile piece for 60 Minutes. Asked about homosexuality by Liz Hayes, Abbott replied, “I feel a bit threatened … as so many people [do]“.

The next day, Lateline anchor Leigh Sales asked a pink tie-clad Abbott to explain. “Well, there is no doubt that it challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things, but as I also said on the program, it happens, it’s a fact of life and we have to treat people as we find them,” Abbott said.

Gay alarm bells rang. “I’m very surprised”, Corey Irlam from the Australian Coalition for Equality told me. “This is some of the strongest language we’ve heard from any major leader of a party in the last decade against homosexuality.”

Another case of the hip-shooting honesty that pollsters say gives Abbott traction? “I take it on face value that the initial comment was off the cuff,” says Irlam. “But the second time was atrocious and calculated.”

“Wildly irresponsible, but not calculated,” is the way Dr Graham Willet puts it. He’s Deputy Director of the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne. He published Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia in 2000.

“You can’t take on anything very seriously,” he says. “He just seems to say stuff.” But in this instance, Abbott probably “said something he really feels”.

Irlam and Willet agree about the negative impact of comments like these. “For people who are vulnerable — young queer people — it says that, yes, there is something wrong with what you do … and that view is being endorsed by our leaders,” says Willet.

“I’m worried about the validity his comments give to someone in the country who perhaps personally feels threatened, and that turns into actual discrimination,” says Irlam.

But the more we learn about Abbott, the more we realise we know him already. We’ve heard this language before.

In 2000, as Employment Services Minister in the Howard government, Tony Abbott pledged to protect Christian agencies’ right to hire and fire those who lived “openly at variance with Church teaching”, including gay and lesbian workers.

In September 2003, the Howard government voted against amendments to a bill allowing same-sex couples equal access to superannuation. “Look, I’m in favour of human rights, but I’m not in favour of putting gay relationships on the same pedestal that you put traditional Christian marriage,” Abbott said at the time.

In 2004, a mix of perceived ABC political correctness and gay visibility inflamed Abbott once more. The ABC aired — twice — a 30 second clip of a group of girls heading to a fun fair on Play School. “My mums are taking me and my friend Meryn to an amusement park,” said the narrator, Brenna. That single “s” in “mums” sparked an election-year storm. As Health Minister, Abbott said, “I think that if I’d been watching it with my kids, I’d have been a bit shocked.” (The then federal opposition leader, Mark Latham, also criticised the program, saying parents, not TV producers, should choose when to expose children to society’s diversity).

In 2006, Abbott characterised the gay rights movement as an “adult hang up”, and a burden to kids. The Tillman Park Children’s Centre in Sydney was using books that feature children with gay, lesbian and transgender parents. “I think it’s really pretty wacky stuff,” Abbott told reporters. “Kids of that age just want to get on with being kids and why should we inflict all our adult hang-ups and angst on kids. Let children be children. Let them worry about all that stuff later. Let’s not force it on them.”

Abbott certainly isn’t the only vocal opponent to some aspects of gay rights but, as Willet points out, it’s not solely the government of the day that determines the progress of gay and lesbian rights in the community. There are many stakeholders involved and it’s worth remembering, says Willett, that “[during] the Howard years we made enormous progress in terms of gay and lesbian rights, [which demonstrates that] the federal government is not the be all and end all”. Willett doesn’t believe that an Abbott government would sound the death knell of the gay rights movement: “Even if he had a plan to stop gay and lesbian rights, I don’t think he could do it.”

It was in fact the independent Australian Human Rights Commission that prompted Rudd’s 2008 omnibus review of laws relating to financial and workplace benefits and entitlements for gay people, says Willet. “You can see lots of ways in which the cabinet and the federal government don’t have a lot of power.” It happened on their watch — but it was the work of another government organisation.

Australia has been “swamped by a rising tide” of acceptance of gay and lesbian rights, says Willet. In a 2003 poll, just 34 per cent of Australians were in favour of legal recognition for same-sex couples. A poll a year later found 38 per cent of Australians in favour. By February 2006, 53 per cent of Australians thought the government should introduce laws recognising same-sex relationships. In 2007, that number had risen to 71 per cent. Most young people support equal partnership rights. The trend is clear.

Gabi Rosenstreich from the National LGBT Health Alliance agrees. “The majority of Australians are fairly sensible people and I doubt that many of them share his views of being threatened.”

While Abbott’s comments are alarming, she says, they don’t change the focus of activism. The Liberal Party doesn’t have a history of being proactive, she says, “but people learn, and we’re happy to work with them on that. At the same time we shouldn’t become complacent about the rights we have achieved.”

“The concern isn’t about Abbott’s comments rolling the clock back, its about not letting the ball roll forward,” says Corey. But he too is willing to work with anyone in power. His organisation has invited Abbott to meet “ordinary gay and lesbian Australians and their families”. No response, yet.

“We will work with anyone who is interested in the health and well being of all Australians”, says Rosenstreich. “We are not a threat to society, we are society”.

“We can’t go back,” Willet says. “We have changed spectacularly. You can hold the line. But there’s no going back.”

[pic credit: screen grab from from Casey Neistat on Vimeo; video below]

The Web Ecology Project researches social interaction and communities on the web; an interdisciplinary group based in Boston and New York City (lucky buggers). They hold research ‘camps’. This is one of the results. The report [pdf 628kb] is intended as an initial survey with some analysis – 30 interviews (why does no one stop to chat with me, but they stop for researchers?) and 201 sample sessions for data collection.

The results are interesting (if unsurprising if you’ve been on CR before – but it’s nice to get something academic). The basic trend? If you’re an English speaking young man surfing alone, who wants to speak to another English-speaking young man surfing alone, you’re in for a real treat. ChatRoulette is for you.

Here are some take outs:

There ain’t that much dick so stop whinging

Well, depends on what you think is a lot of dick. I’ve got a high threshold. 5 per cent of encounters were genitals. The researchers say that this suggests that – in spite of common assumptions – that the large majority of CR users are not nudie freaks who just want to flash and bat. Dick was outpaced by “nothing” (blank screen, empty room) at 7 per cent, and 9 per cent were altered videos, objects, masks and other weird shit like that. The vast, vast majority were actual humans (80 per cent).

Together Alone

I’ve always found ChatRoulette to be the collision course for extroverts and introverts. Exhibitionists and voyeurs. ChatRoulette isn’t a group activity for most (though it is fun to install a pretty girl and watch from the sidelines, thanks Sophie, thanks Kirsty). Of the encounters that were human (not gimp or plushie or suicide attempt), 86 per cent were surfing alone. The rest were twosomes, threesomes or more.

It’s a (young) man’s world

Unsurprisingly, for any one that’s been on CR, dudes rule big time. 87 per cent of users are male. Even in groups, you’re more likely to see the same gender – boys hanging out together, or girls (giggling) together (and making boys do rude stuff to each other — that’s not in the report, that’s just a fantasy). No analysis of sexual orientation was done in this report – are more straight guys getting their dicks out than gay? I’d like to know. Most users are aged 18-24.

Speak English

Four of the top twelve ranked countries (accounting for 34.6% of all traffic) use English as their primary language. The top user is the United States, followed by China, which maps against Internet users more generally. Europe is well represented in the top ten, in fact aside from China and the US, half are in the EU. Australia comes in at number 12.

Predictions

The report goes on to theorise that ChatRoulette is a “probabilistic online community”, “a community shaped by a platform which mediates the encounters between its users, specifically by eliminating lasting connections in the framework of the platform”. Any deeper connections must happen elsewhere.

The researchers predict a decline in dick, as more and more users come on to explore the community, rather than use it to exhibit. They predict a rise in the creative elements of the community – people playing games, music, linking to websites, and doing things to stimulate emotion (more of the crazy guy in the mask scaring you). The researchers say that if you’re on CR for sexual content, you’re going to have to click ‘Next’ more and more times to get it, which will turn you away to other websites where it’s a bit easier to get off, making CR even ‘cleaner’.

Look out for certain genres of content emerging. Like mask-wearing. The idea is that if enough users see the same thing again and again, a culture will build around that behaviour. Outside groups will start lobbing content into CR – like the blog CatRoulette, which encourages users to surf with their cat. And look out for celebrities too (the guy in the cat suit? the guy with the nazi flag). The researchers are predicting that identities will form if someone is seen by enough people.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

I produced Richard Glover’s Drive program around Sydney today. Recriminations were growing louder against Facebook for not taking strong enough action after the memorial sites for two dead Queensland kids were defaced with porn and offensive comments. And in another instance in Queensland, a Facebook user is claiming to be able to deliver a long-lost missing boy Daniel Morcombe, if the group attracts 1 million members. The Premier there has warned Facebook will loose popularity if they don’t do more to reduce offensive material.

It’s a serious question: If something happens to you or your family online, who do you complain to? Can you pick up the phone and call someone? What about this idea: an online ombudsman – a kind of referee of the Internet. Would that make you feel safer?

That’s what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he will look at.

The social networking giant will apologise, it says, and respond directly to the Queensland Government, but they say it’s hard to control individual actions on its site.

David Vaile is the Executive Director of the Cyber Law Centre at UNSW, and we interviewed him today about if this is a good idea.

The main problem, David says, is that it’s a fast moving thing, predicated on the disclosure of personal information. ‘It’s a very profitable model for them,’ he said, ‘and a lot of people particularly young people find that to be a lot of fun.’

But with increased level of the use of personal information, more risks are generated, and young people ‘have difficulty joining the dots’.

‘You may not realise that you’re hurting them… or yourself’, David said about young users of Facebook, who face a fundamental lack of understanding of the consequences online, which can push right out to criminal behaviour like stalking, harassment, and claiming responsibility for crimes.

On the other hand, he said ‘there’s a great danger that adults get into a complete panic’. While it’s tempting to lump Facebook with trying to regulate the darker stuff put up by users, David said ‘it’s not the role of Facebook to play the role of a policeman.’

It’s a balancing act, David argues, between keeping online businesses free flowing and profitable (and with 7 million users, and millions of individual transactions every day, that’s important), and picking up what different communities around the world find unacceptable.

The problem: ‘The earlier you to get it, the more expensive it is… it’s a real commercial issue,’ he said. ‘The reality is that you need a small trouble-shooting call-centre’.

Eariler, from my notes, David didn’t think putting an ombudsman in charge was a good idea. The regular ‘needs to be activist’, he told me, to achieve results on behalf of the public, like it has been in Canada. The status quo right now in Australia is decidedly un-activist, David told me.

He called it ‘another magic bullet… holding up something heroic’. But nothing can replace the more prosaic approach of educating young people about the consequences of what they do online while still protecting people’s right to privacy.

Another layer of bureaucracy won’t be the panacea.

Europe

A massive 3 year research project for the EU by Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon (from the London School of Economics), EU Kids Online, says exposure to porn ranks second amongst ‘online risks’, behind plain old giving out of personal information, and before seeing something ‘violent or hateful’. Meeting an online contact in the offline world – which is probably the greatest fear in the community – is the least common risk (though admittedly one of the most dangerous). Across Europe, 4 in 10 teenagers have been exposed to online porn, although there ‘is considerable disagreement’ about it’s harmful impact on children. Far fewer teens report this exposure as distressing in any way.

America

(This info is drawn from the US Internet Safety Technical Task Force, and their 2008 report Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies.)

Roughly the same as the EU, 42 per cent of American teens have either sought out or accidentally seen porn, or done both of these; of these, two thirds had only stumbled upon it inadvertently. Nearly 1 in 10 were ‘very or extremely upset’. Older teens are more likely to seek out porn than younger teens. In fact, despite fears in the community, younger kids are more likely to see mags and movies before they see online porn; the Internet comes in third. It’s a sexy world offline, and online it seems. Of the teens that do see stuff online they don’t want to see, they don’t go back to it. So once seen, they tend to steer well clear of damaging material.

One of the great ideas behind the filter is protecting children, presumably from adults. But there’s evidence to say that when it comes to unwanted sexual solicitations, it’s not adults to be feared, it’s other kids. Most sexual solicitors are other adolescents (up to 48 per cent), or young adults (in the 20s%), with only 4%–9% coming from adults. The vast majority are dealt with by kids well, according to other research. Youth typically ignore or deflect solicitations; 92% of the responses amongst Los Angeles–based youth to these incidents were deemed “appropriate”. Chat rooms and instant messaging are still the dominant place where solicitations occur (77%). (NB. these solicitations wouldn’t be covered by a Net Filter – it’s just interesting to gauge what young people think are threats online).

The researchers included two questions with two ideas of how young people use the net. One: surfing. The other: emails and private communication. The numbers in the American report are for both. A note here: no private email or IM communication would be included in any Government attempt to filter the net. It also wouldn’t be considered classifiable by the Classification Board (personal communications are exempt).

Australia

In Michael Flood’s 2007 report on 16 and 17 year olds (Exposure to pornography among youth in Australia, Journal of Sociology, 43;45) he found that 84 per cent boys and 60 per cent of girls say they have been exposed accidentally to sex sites on the Internet. Flood does recognise that the younger you are, the less likely you are to inadvertently stumble across porno online, by drawing comparisons with the UK and the US.  He cites an Australian study among Internet-connected households with children aged 8 to 13 years, where 19 percent of children said that they had accidentally found websites their parents would prefer them not to see ‘a few times’. Almost half of the sites contained nudity or pornography.

It’s disingenuous to say a filter that blocks RC content at ISP level is to protect children. The vast amount of porn (described in most research as simply nudity or sex) would remain unblocked and freely available for kids to keep on stumbling across. The especially ‘harmful’ category of RC would be blocked for everyone; the rhetoric of child-protection is watered down when you look at the stats, and the case for more education, and a whole-population approach to empowering users comes into startling clarity.

I was actively seeking out porn at the age of 15 and 16, none of which would be blocked under the proposed scheme. Kids do it all the time, cos they’re horny; so I’m now looking into research about what teens themselves report as harmful, or not, to get away from adult perceptions of what porn means to kids.

“The good news is that those not wanting the government to filter their feed can work around any proposed filter so easily that one wonders why the government is even bothering”, writes Anthony Caruna in Hydrapinion.

“Any motivated user will be able to get around it, it will be quite easy, so who is this being targeted at?” asked Electronic Frontiers Australia vice chair Colin Jacobs.

They are right, of course. Getting around the filter makes the Government’s attempt look silly. There are loads of ways to circumvent Internet control – and you’ll get a list below. But there are are few problems with the assumption that these tools will render state control irrelevant. Biggest of all is the fact that – as if! – Australians aren’t going to re-route their entire internet experience through a proxy, in the rare likelihood they’ll stumble across uncensored RC content they don’t want to see anyway. Besides, not every one is technologically proficient, or motivated enough, to use proxy servers (there’s evidence of this in China).

Another problem is the live question of whether there will be end-user penalties if you do want to get around the filter. If you’re dodging the filter to see RC content, will the police come knocking if you’ve found access to it? What are the privacy implications of that? Will your ISP report you if they find out?

The extra steps involved in getting around net censorship are annoying, to say the least, and are only needed in the most oppressive Internet regimes that filter political content, like China. Your net slows. Graphics and video are limited. Naturally, getting around the filter will become a major story if it gets up and running (like when a 16 year old kid spent half an hour hacking and getting around the $116 million anti-porn initiative based on PC-based filters in 2006). And it will definitely show the absurdity of the filter.

But for those interested in the censorship debate, getting around the net doesn’t solve the problem of the filter in the first place. It’s still censorship. And once in place, it will have the full weight of the law behind it if you do anything wrong.

Getting Around The Filter

When I lived in Beijing, I was kicked off the internet a few times. In my mind, a giant police squad in a space-age control room was monitoring every tit and ball. In reality, the limited dynamic filtering in China may have flagged some key words (like Tiananmen, or Tibet) and traced my IP. My individual IP was blocked sometimes for hours, even up to a day. I started routing most of my risky browsing through a proxy server, which in China is itself considered a crime.

How does it work? In a great post yesterday by Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkley lays down the basics of circumvention:

Circumvention systems share a basic mode of operation – they act as proxies to let you retrieve blocked content. A user is blocked from accessing a website by her ISP or that ISP’s ISP. She wants to read a page from Human Rights Watch’s webserver, which is accessible at IP address 70.32.76.212. But that IP address is on a national blacklist, and she’s prevented from receiving any content from it. So she points her browser to a proxy server at another address – say 123.45.67.89 – and asks a program on that server to retrieve a page from the HRW server. Assuming that 123.45.67.89 isn’t on the national blacklist, she should be able to receive the HRW page via the proxy. During the transaction, the proxy is acting like an internet service provider.

(picture from Security In A Box: Tools and Tactics For Your Digital Security)

I used a service called Anonymouse in Beijing. But there are plenty of others. Reporters Without Borders publishes a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. I’ve combined their suggestions with those from a fantastic chapter in Security In A Box: Tools and Tactics For Your Digital Security, for this list. Feel free to add you favourite by commenting below.

(Also check out the brilliant Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship (PDF 1.5mb) from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto for even more suggestions).

Most Popular

Probably the most popular circumvention tool is a piece of software called Tor (China head Rebecca Mackinnon calls it “the tool of choice for circumventing Internet censorship in places like China these days”). It will provide anonymity as well as circumvention. Each time you connect to the Tor network, you select a random path through three secure Tor proxies. For cyber-dissidents, it offers sustained identity protection, and despite some online fearing for its flaws, a Uni of Colorado research team has declared it: “the most secure and usable privacy enhancing system available” (also via Mackinnon).

Databases of Proxy Servers

Public Proxy Servers (http://publicproxyservers.com) – a comprehensive live of anonymous and non-anonymous proxies, plus figures on their reliabilty and rating.
Samair (http://www.samair.ru/proxy/) – only anonymous proxies.
Rosinstrument proxy database (http://tools.rosinstrument.com/proxy/) – searchable
Anti Proxy (http://www.antiproxy.com/)
Multi Proxy (http://www.multiproxy.org/)

Public, Web-based circumvention

Anonymizer (http://www.anonymizer.com/)
Unipeak (http://www.unipeak.com/)
Anonymouse (http://www.anonymouse.ws/)
Proxyweb (http://www.proxyweb.net/)
Guardster (http://www.guardster.com/)
Webwarper (http://www.webwarper.net/)
Proximal (http://www.proximal.com/)
The Cloak (http://www.the-cloak.com/)
Psiphon2 (http://www.psiphon.ca/) is a private, anonymous webproxy servers system.

Other software downloads:

Sesawe Hotspot Shield (https://sesawe.net/Anchor-Free-Hotspot-Shield.html) is a public, secure, non-web-based, freeware circumvention proxy.
Your-Freedom (http://www.your-freedom.net/) is a private, secure, non-web-based circumvention proxy.

Problems with proxies

There are a few problems with proxies. Like any company, a proxy business is subject to the jurisdiction it operates under, and subject to investigation like any other. Rebecca Mackinnon writes a lengthy piece about the funding for some of these companies, especially tools supplied for the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC).  She writes that GIFC is funded by Falun Gong affiliates and the US government. Hal Roberts from The Berkman Center for Internet and Society also raises the possibility that your proxy service might sell you out: “Three of the circumvention tools — DynaWeb FreeGate, GPass, and FirePhoenix — used most widely to get around China’s Great Firewall are tracking and selling the individual web browsing histories of their users” (While this has later been denied by the specific companies involved, it makes the issue about trust, and how much you know about the service you’re using. These services aren’t the cure-all solution to filtering).

It’s also a game of cat and mouse. According to the Security in a Box site: “the government agency in charge of Internet censorship in your country (or the company that provides updates for its filtering software) might eventually learn that this ‘unknown computer’ is really a circumvention proxy. If that happens, its IP address may itself be added to the blacklist, and it will no longer work”. Bang, there goes your free-ride.

In China, you’d expect users of the net to regularly use proxies. But they don’t. Evidence shows that there is little knowledge of them, or a wide acceptance of net restrictions. 95% of total traffic is to domestic Chinese content – so to begin with Chinese people aren’t looking very far for content. So it shouldn’t be surprising that according to a 2000 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) survey of Internet use in five Chinese cities, 10 percent of users surveyed admitted to regularly using, and 25 percent to occasionally using, proxy servers to circumvent censorship (via Human Rights Watch PDF 4.5mb). My experience was that those around me only used it when they really had to. Most Chinese just viewed the major domestic websites in China, and didn’t want their net slowed by a proxy. Certainly, I began accepting the limitations of riding in the Chinese internet ‘car’ — there’s just less to see, and less expression, harder to use… I better come to terms with it. While China is very different, it would be interesting to see whether the average Australian net user would want to opt-out of the filter by regularly using proxies. I seriously doubt it.

Another significant problem is that proxies themselves don’t always offer unfettered access (just when you thought you could get away with it!) — because the bandwidth required to run them (like mini-ISPs) is expensive. As Zuckerman explains in his most recent post:

Proxy operators have dealt with this question by putting constraints on the use of their tools. Some proxy operators block access to YouTube because it’s such a bandwidth hog. Others block access to pornography, both because it uses bandwidth and to protect the sensibilities of their sponsors. Others constrain who can use their tools, limiting access to the tools to people coming from Iranian or Chinese IPs, trying to reduce bandwidth use by American high school kids who’ve got YouTube blocked by their school.

The other major concern is if the Government decides to enforce penalties for people using tools to get around the filter. Using proxies may in fact flag you to authorities. Like using a torch in a dark room to see things, it’s easier for others to see you and grab you. It’s illegal in China to use proxies, so you’re facing further risk there. In Australia, it is yet to be seen whether circumventing the internet filter will attract penalties.

But there is some precedent for some circumvention tools being illegal. Once law, the filter could be vulnerable to what’s called ’scope creep’, explains David Vaile from UNSW: “As powerful stakeholders lobby globally for a copyright filter, the potential for Australia’s ISP-level filtering project to extend to this area is cause for concern”. In the states, there is already legislation as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes it illegal to use circumvention technology to reverse-engineer rights controls on, say, your CD collection. Because of the free trade agreement with the US, Australia has taken on these regulations too. Writes the digihub blog of the SMH, ‘It’s now illegal to bypass Digital Rights Management technologies, which means TV broadcasters, record companies and movie houses are entitled to block any legal right you might have to make copies, and it’s illegal for you to bypass this.’ The DMCA prohibits even the possession of a circumvention device. So if scope creep happens, should we watch out when using circumvention software to get around the net filter?

And finally, circumventing censorship through proxies just gives you access to stuff overseas. Take down notices in Australia would still be issued – as they always have been – for any prohibited content hosted within Australia.

In the end, a government filter could just turn some Australians into fey cyber-dissidents by proxy. But I doubt many, if any, would regularly try to circumvent the internet in this way. We’re more likely to cop it on the chin.

Proxies do make the filter look silly, but they still leave the deeper gnawing question of the filter completely in tact.

[picture credit: via Flickr creative commons user atopeconlatxabaleria]