7 ms·

All well and good, but are these kind of 'middleboxes' unequivocally unethical? For example, some ISPs might want to block highly illegal content - let's use th

All well and good, but are these kind of 'middleboxes' unequivocally unethical? For example, some ISPs might want to block highly illegal content - let's use the typical examples, e.g. child porn sites, malware domains, and so on. It's not inherently unethical (or, at least, there are plenty of reasonable people who would say it is ethical) to install a middlebox that will make it more difficult for users to access these sites. So now your company has got a content blocker installed. What exactly are your network engineers meant to do now? Demand personal refusal over any additions to the sites that these boxes will block? That seems highly unlikely to happen, and how could that even work in practice? Are all the engineers meant to vote on blocks, and only those unopposed sites get added to the list? Can ethical network engineers usefully oppose content blocking?

walrus01 6y ago
> let's use the typical examples, e.g. child porn sites, malware domains a futile game of whack-a-mole that only serves to make politicians feel good, and so they can claim they're "doing something" about social threats. malware domains can be adequately addressed at the application level through things such as: https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=google+safe+browsing+api+malware+domain https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=goo...
- joosters 6y ago
  Devil's advocate response: If these content blockers are just 'futile games of whack-a-mole', then why are you getting up-in-arms about their existence? Should be easy to avoid them if you truly believe what you say.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    Stuff like what the UK is trying to do with a DNS based "black list" of bad things on the internet? Futile game of whack a mole. Authoritarian regime that forces all ISPs in a country to run networks funnelling all traffic through a government run central point where they do DPI and flow analysis on it (Chinese GFW for instance)? More of a real threat. For instance there is one ASN in Iran that has transit connections to the outside world. All ISPs are forced to be downstream of it. https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880
    - joosters 6y ago
      Well, yes, the original article is about funneling traffic through a centralised DPI content blocker, and not a trivial DNS blacklist. Agreed, the UK's DNS filtering is definitely a simple to defeat by anybody whack-a-mole (e.g. thepiratebay.org is blocked? Oh no! Let's just google for Pirate Bay and pick one of the many, many unblocked mirrors) But the kind of DPI, forced blocking utilised by these middleboxes is certainly a step above that, to the point that most people will not be (say) using measures like a VPN to bypass the block.
  - conception 6y ago
    Because they create tools governments will use to restrict legitimate speech and freedoms. As history has shown they do.
    - joosters 6y ago
      ...So, again, they can't be 'futile games of whack-a-mole', if they work, then?
      - jmholla 6y ago
        I think it's more like taking the whack-a-mole bat and going and beating up people all around the arcade.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        There are easily measures that will cause the closure of your small business if used against you personally that would not stop A drug dealer let alone all drug dealing.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Create and normalize. "What's one more site to denylist?"
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Because they will block unintended things. "Oh, you want to do breast cancer research, sorry, boobies R bad, the sky God said so"
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    Because whacking even 5% of moles looking for ways around government[0] censorship is a unconscionable travesty. 0: eg, China, Iran, etc; if you don't think people getting caught is a problem then I question your basic human decency; if you don't think 5% of people getting caught is a problem then I question your sense of scale and/or ability to multiply numbers by other numbers.
- addicted 6y ago
  Whack a mole can be a highly successful strategy if there is a cost to having the mole appear somewhere else and the whacker has more resources than the one controlling the mole.
  - bpmooch 6y ago
    Successful does not imply sustainable. There is an argument to be made for doing manual strategies like whack-a-mole until you have a generic solution, but if you don't have the generic solution coming down the pike, it's time to go back to the drawing board.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> some ISPs might want to block highly illegal content There is no way - not even a theoretical way - to allow blocking of illegal content (for any definition of illegal) that won't allow for blocking of any other arbitrary content. Censorship is binary. You can accept either none of it, or all of it.
- joosters 6y ago
  At some level, everywhere has some form of censorship. For any country you could name, there are, or could easily be, content in any kind of media - books, audio, video, games, whatever, that is so abhorrent that it would either not be published, or would be shut down as soon as possible. So if you say censorship is binary, it's already here, and has been here for ever. But I would guess that few believe that censorship is truly binary like you say.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    Censorship is fine if it's opt in. I don't use facebook and censor myself from it. I opt in to use a pihole and adblocker. It filters many things I otherwise would see. You can't often choose your ISP so this makes it extra important for censorship of any kind of to be opt in rather than forced.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      My kids will not opt-in to censoring "Thomas the Train" videos when they should be doing their school work. I think I just got everyone to take a step down the slippery slope.
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        You can opt in to parental control software :) https://wellbeing.google/ https://wellbeing.google/ https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208982 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208982 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210387 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210387
cryptonector 6y ago
ISPs should help LEAs find illegal content all day long, but developing this sort of blocking technology is not the same thing, and neither is using it. There are legitimate uses of it though, namely in employers' networks, for example.
rhizome 6y ago
How do you propose to determine that a new, never-seen-before URL hosts child porn? In the US, viewing child porn is a strict-liability offense, meaning you are guilty of a serious felony just by looking at a page with the image(s) on it. There are also civil and criminal liability concerns at the corporate level by assuming the responsibility for constructing and/or maintaining these filters.

walrus01 6y ago

> let's use the typical examples, e.g. child porn sites, malware domains a futile game of whack-a-mole that only serves to make politicians feel good, and so they can claim they're "doing something" about social threats. malware domains can be adequately addressed at the application level through things such as: https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=google+safe+browsing+api+malware+domain https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=goo...

joosters 6y ago
Devil's advocate response: If these content blockers are just 'futile games of whack-a-mole', then why are you getting up-in-arms about their existence? Should be easy to avoid them if you truly believe what you say.
- walrus01 6y ago
  Stuff like what the UK is trying to do with a DNS based "black list" of bad things on the internet? Futile game of whack a mole. Authoritarian regime that forces all ISPs in a country to run networks funnelling all traffic through a government run central point where they do DPI and flow analysis on it (Chinese GFW for instance)? More of a real threat. For instance there is one ASN in Iran that has transit connections to the outside world. All ISPs are forced to be downstream of it. https://bgp.he.net/AS12880 https://bgp.he.net/AS12880
  - joosters 6y ago
    Well, yes, the original article is about funneling traffic through a centralised DPI content blocker, and not a trivial DNS blacklist. Agreed, the UK's DNS filtering is definitely a simple to defeat by anybody whack-a-mole (e.g. thepiratebay.org is blocked? Oh no! Let's just google for Pirate Bay and pick one of the many, many unblocked mirrors) But the kind of DPI, forced blocking utilised by these middleboxes is certainly a step above that, to the point that most people will not be (say) using measures like a VPN to bypass the block.
- conception 6y ago
  Because they create tools governments will use to restrict legitimate speech and freedoms. As history has shown they do.
  - joosters 6y ago
    ...So, again, they can't be 'futile games of whack-a-mole', if they work, then?
    - jmholla 6y ago
      I think it's more like taking the whack-a-mole bat and going and beating up people all around the arcade.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      There are easily measures that will cause the closure of your small business if used against you personally that would not stop A drug dealer let alone all drug dealing.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Create and normalize. "What's one more site to denylist?"
- pixl97 6y ago
  Because they will block unintended things. "Oh, you want to do breast cancer research, sorry, boobies R bad, the sky God said so"
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Because whacking even 5% of moles looking for ways around government[0] censorship is a unconscionable travesty. 0: eg, China, Iran, etc; if you don't think people getting caught is a problem then I question your basic human decency; if you don't think 5% of people getting caught is a problem then I question your sense of scale and/or ability to multiply numbers by other numbers.
addicted 6y ago
Whack a mole can be a highly successful strategy if there is a cost to having the mole appear somewhere else and the whacker has more resources than the one controlling the mole.
- bpmooch 6y ago
  Successful does not imply sustainable. There is an argument to be made for doing manual strategies like whack-a-mole until you have a generic solution, but if you don't have the generic solution coming down the pike, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

commandlinefan 6y ago

> some ISPs might want to block highly illegal content There is no way - not even a theoretical way - to allow blocking of illegal content (for any definition of illegal) that won't allow for blocking of any other arbitrary content. Censorship is binary. You can accept either none of it, or all of it.

joosters 6y ago
At some level, everywhere has some form of censorship. For any country you could name, there are, or could easily be, content in any kind of media - books, audio, video, games, whatever, that is so abhorrent that it would either not be published, or would be shut down as soon as possible. So if you say censorship is binary, it's already here, and has been here for ever. But I would guess that few believe that censorship is truly binary like you say.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  Censorship is fine if it's opt in. I don't use facebook and censor myself from it. I opt in to use a pihole and adblocker. It filters many things I otherwise would see. You can't often choose your ISP so this makes it extra important for censorship of any kind of to be opt in rather than forced.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    My kids will not opt-in to censoring "Thomas the Train" videos when they should be doing their school work. I think I just got everyone to take a step down the slippery slope.
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      You can opt in to parental control software :) https://wellbeing.google/ https://wellbeing.google/ https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208982 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208982 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210387 https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210387

cryptonector 6y ago

ISPs should help LEAs find illegal content all day long, but developing this sort of blocking technology is not the same thing, and neither is using it. There are legitimate uses of it though, namely in employers' networks, for example.

rhizome 6y ago

How do you propose to determine that a new, never-seen-before URL hosts child porn? In the US, viewing child porn is a strict-liability offense, meaning you are guilty of a serious felony just by looking at a page with the image(s) on it. There are also civil and criminal liability concerns at the corporate level by assuming the responsibility for constructing and/or maintaining these filters.