The structure is really good, and the lively debate on this thread indicates that the work here is on the right path.
Thanks for your feedback Meredith, greatly appreciated. My hope is that, thanks to our work, RIPE can soon have its own document to support governments in outlining pros and cons of various content filtering methods and, above all, to help them in understanding limits [1] and collateral damage that most of the currently deployed measures have.
With that, I have one high-level, two-paragraph comment that I hope adds to the discussion.
I would suggest removing the target audience --
That's right, also the title ("An analysis on web filtering methods for law enforcement purposes") should be changed ;-)
Page 8 and 9 suggest means of using these techniques for "preventing access to illicit content." I would suggest removing this section
[...]
Insofar as this is a document focused on the means, not the ends, speculating on "good" vs. "bad" modes of filtering/blocking, even implicitly, leads quickly to our having to justify one or another ethical viewpoints
Perhaps changing it rather than removing it may have the same effect. "Illicit content" could be changed in "unwanted"/"undesired" and something like the introduction of [2] may be used to depict the scope of application. Since I wrote the whole text considering only the law enforcement perspective, as soon as I can I will review the whole document to have a more clear idea of changes to bring in in order to make it detached from any ethical viewpoint.
At this stage, I would suggest thinking of others we might want to bring into the discussion.
It may be useful to bring in both technical and non-technical people. Innocenzo Genna [3] might get involved in: I don't know him well, I just follow his blog [4], but, as far as I can see, he recently participated in the November coop-wg meeting with EU Parliament and he's active in the tlc and internet regulation & policies areas. He might offer a non stricly technical point of view about our work. Do you think he could be of help for the cause? [1] It looks like someone is already realizing them - https://publicaffairs.linx.net/news/?p=10264&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dutch-appeal-court-removes-pirate-bay-block [2] "Technical Considerations for Internet Service Blocking and Filtering" - http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-iab-filtering-considerations-05 [3] "Innocenzo is an expert of European regulation and policy in the areas of Internet and telecommunications" - http://www.innocenzogenna.com/en/bio.php [4] http://radiobruxelleslibera.wordpress.com/ -- Pier Carlo Chiodi http://pierky.com/aboutme The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of any organization, entity or committee to which I may hold a position.