Australian Internet censorship

[Heresy]

Has there been a thread on this that I've missed? I'm surprised that it isn't generating more discussion.

What do our Aus-based cohorts (Ab/TnT et al) think about the Aus government filtering all Internet access for all Australians?

Background: http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/...html?source=gs

[Hemebond]

They deserve it.

[a-tech]

That is George Michael Gay.

[Phantom]

Australia's IT/IP laws are fucked up across the board - they need all those old people that don't understand tek-noll-odd-geey yet make the laws about it to die and get replaced by people that know that the tubes aren't actually tubes, asap.

[Genesis]

Originally Posted by Phantom

Australia's IT/IP laws are fucked up across the board - they need all those old people that don't understand tek-noll-odd-geey yet make the laws about it to die and get replaced by people that know that the tubes aren't actually tubes, asap.

QFMFT

Fucken lame shit indeed. The political internet heroes over here haven't a clue.

[TnT]

Originally Posted by Heresy

What do our Aus-based cohorts (Ab/TnT et al) think about the Aus government filtering all Internet access for all Australians?

I think it's absolutely fucked, and the insidious way it's being brought in shits me to tears. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Combine this with the fucked censorship laws here and you'll have me frothing at the mouth before long. I can guaran-damn-tee you that in the ACT, (Hi Clay), you'll be able to get unfettered access to whatever you like. Uncensored porn is legal in ACT, marijuana is decriminalised in ACT, and guess where all the politicians hang out? Yep ACT.

[DrTiTus]

Originally Posted by The Article

According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,0000 Web pages from one million.

Heh, I think (would hope!) there is an extra zero there... :P

[Heresy]

Originally Posted by TnT

I think it's absolutely fucked, and the insidious way it's being brought in shits me to tears. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Those are my feelings as well. I hadn't heard of it till yesterday, and was surprised; firstly because how does something this manage to get voted into a democracy such as Australia, and secondly how does it get done without people kicking up a stink?

From a Kiwi perspective, I often think of Australia as just a bigger version of NZ - but it isn't, at least when it comes to censorship.

There's some discussion regarding it over on the SA forums, and someone says this:

"People here are so fucking apathetic about anything that gets put on the plate that doesn't immediately fuck them over. As much as I sometimes get RSI in my eyes from them rolling heavily over hearing you Yanks carry on about your "freedoms and rights" and "founding fathers' intentions for this country of democracy" and all that crap, at least you guys get up in arms if you notice a slippery slope coming flying towards you.

Here, no one gives a toss. "Internet filtering? Well I can't directly see how this'll stop me going out to the pub on a friday to watch the footy, so whatever." That's the situation here for a lot of people."

How close is that to the truth?

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Phantom

Australia's IT/IP laws are fucked up across the board - they need all those old people that don't understand tek-noll-odd-geey yet make the laws about it to die and get replaced by people that know that the tubes aren't actually tubes, asap.

QFT. I must confess I don't know much about this proposed law but it's the sort of thing that's been bubbling around for a few years now as every politician falls over him or herself to be the one who Tinks About De Chiwdwen. When Labor first announced this policy back in 05? I wrote to the Labor party with a blunt "way to go genious, kiss goodbye to the votes of myself and people like me" (and I didn't vote Labor in the last election, fuck them).

Commentary from informed sources usually goes along the lines of

a) this law will only affect people who are too stupid to get around it

b) this will result in massively degraded network performance for every computer user in Australia

c) there's no way anyone can possibly filter THE ENTIRE FUCKING INTERNET you retards

d) links to genious_at_work.jpg

With the way the Australian economy is going at the moment, I suspect that retarded shit like this -- shit that will have a real detrimental effect on the ability of Australian business do DO business -- will mysteriously vanish. If not, the convicts deserve their recession.

[TnT]

Originally Posted by Heresy

How close is that to the truth?

Bang on.

The thing that really fucks me off is, two fold. "Oh the children, won't someone think of the children", yeah how about their parents fucktards. It's the same line of thinking that we have here fucking up censorship left right and centre.

It's not the gummints place to parent. Parents should be monitoring what their kids do. Hell I have 16 and 14 year olds, they do not get unsupervised access to the 'net. (The joys of having an IT Geek for a father).

"Oh Grand THeft Auto is violent and kids shouldn't play games like that", NO FUCKING SHIT SHERLOCK, that's why it carries a MA15+ rating. Would you let your 10 year old watch SAW? No? Why not? Oh the rating...

The other side of this is 'We need to protect the children from the porn and the PDF Files", ok so you supervise your kids. Problem solved. BUT BUT THE EVIL PDF FILES WILL LOOK AT NAUGHTY KIDDIE PICS, WE MUST STOP THEM. Dickheads, these people will get around your stupid filtering,you're inconveniencing them, not stopping a god damn thing.

Keving Rudds views on what actually constitutes child porn are concerning, but that's a different thread. Hey Krudd, you want to stop the children from being exposed to sexualised images, some art in an art gallery is not your biggest problem there buddy, how many children do you know who go to art galleries? Try turning on the TV on Saturday mornings and watching a few music videos, check out tween magazines and the advertising in there. You've got waaaaay bigger problems there.

And frankly, as Ab says, this filtering comes in, the network is going to be throttled, my business is going to suffer significantly.

See I told you I'd start frothing.

[Rivertrog]

australia is turning into china? crikey.

despite the ISPs saying NO THIS IS BAD KTHX, gvt just goes right ahead.. uhhuh.. sounds like this 3 strikes and you're out bollocks over here.. More stink plz, now. kthx. This kind of shit is unacceptable in a DEMOCRACY.

How long before they expect to be able to get lists of all the people trying to access illegal shit from the ISPs huh? This is just a slippery slope to doooooooom.

[Genesis]

Originally Posted by Heresy

How close is that to the truth?

I'm surprised we didn't hear more about how censorship protects the nation from terrorists. That seems to be a popular justification for crazy legislation over here.

[Biff]

-USA war on terror
-AUS coalition of the willing
-AUS signs secret pact to give America full unfettered access to all AUS internet data (to hunt the turrurusts)
-Hmm, well say it's an "internet filter"
-WIN!

[Juju]

[Baal]

Australia fail.

[BloodDonor]

Originally Posted by Baal

Australia fail.

NZ's not doing much better... and it wouldnt take much for NZ and Australia to adopt each others policies as well... NZ gets a couple of Black Lists, and Aussie gets laws random companies only needing to accuse ISP's that users are downloading illegal content, for them to turn off their interwebs

[Ab]

See, all we need to do now is make sure that the terrorists and paedophiles never ever learn about anonymous proxies, VPNs, or tunneling IP traffic over SSH. I'll keep it a secret if you all will.

[BloodDonor]

Originally Posted by Ab

See, all we need to do now is make sure that the terrorists and paedophiles never ever learn about anonymous proxies, VPNs, or tunneling IP traffic over SSH. I'll keep it a secret if you all will.

im semi related news... Four out of the five Al-Qaeda online forums have disappeared. The terrorist group used these forums to relay messages to its supporters. The four that have gone missing seem to have taken a hit back on September 10, the day before the annual video marking the 9/11 attacks was due to be disseminated. No one knows who is responsible for the sites' disappearance

[Ab]

Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics

The Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography.

Internet providers and the government's own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent.

Documents obtained by us show the office of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, tried to bully ISP staff into suppressing their criticisms of the plan.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technolog...351430987.html

Comedy gold from the article:

- Australian Internet network performance to be degraded by up to 86 percent
- up to 13% of blacklisted material still gets through
- up to 8% of whitelisted material still gets blocked
- unable to filter P2P (luckily P2P traffic makes up only a teeny tiny fraction of the data moving around the Internet)

But yeah, fuck. The Government is threatening ISPs when their network staff make complaints on web forums about this shitty plan. Looks like Australia is trying hard to turn into the USA.

[_Incubus_]

Oh this is seriously fucked..why bother rolling out a national broadband network...

I only ever feel this angry normally after watching a George Lucas film.

[Baal]

Soon China will have a more lenient internet policy than Australia.

[drac0s]

All seems a bit pointless, i'd assume the people who do kiddie porn are slightly clever about it. The ones who type it into google are probably caught fairly fast regardless and if anything saying it's been monitored probably makes them more careful.

Any whitelist/blacklist stuff it's always going to be pretty prone to error and unless they are going to break all encryption and monitor everything pretty much impossible. Most SSL stuff they could probably do without people even realising with cooperation by verisign etc... but private certificates would have to be brute forced not to mention all the other ways stuff can be encrypted.

[Markh]

I am glad I don't live in the Peoples Republic of Australia.

[BloodDonor]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technolog...351430987.html

interesting read

[a-tech]

Originally Posted by BloodDonor

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technolog...351430987.html

interesting read

Was just as interesting, if not more, 5 posts above yours

[BloodDonor]

Originally Posted by a-tech

Was just as interesting, if not more, 5 posts above yours

indeed, fuck... friend sent me it, and i didnt pay attention to the thread

[a-tech]

Anyway, standing aside from being a smart arse for a moment...

Can anyone give me any reasons why a govt would want to do this apart from pandering to mothers and inciting FUD in the population? Is this the kinda thing that keeps you in parliment or something?

Surely there are *some* smart people in the ministries that will mention to those without a clue that all of this is a bad idea.

[Logik]

You can bet they say they want the filter for "child pornography", but more will be censored.

From here:

Senator Conroy has since last year's election victory remained tight-lipped on the specifics of his $44.2 million policy but, grilled by a Senate Estimates committee this week, he said the Government was looking at forcing ISPs to implement a two-tiered filtering system.

The first tier, which internet users would not be able to opt out of, would block all "illegal material"

So what is "illegal material"?

Interesting that at the same time, the EU votes for Internet safety measures (also to 'protect the children').

I seriously hope NZ doesn't get closer to Australia in the future!

[BloodDonor]

Originally Posted by Logik

You can bet they say they want the filter for "child pornography", but more will be censored.

From here:



So what is "illegal material"?

Interesting that at the same time, the EU votes for Internet safety measures (also to 'protect the children').

I seriously hope NZ doesn't get closer to Australia in the future!

i dunno but if its run as well as my old Tech's firewall (doing a computing course, i did an assignment for hardware on how GFX cards were outpacing GPU's for processing power... and if a website reviewing GFX cards mentioned QUAKE or unreal tournament fpr benchmarks, etc, BLOCKED BY WEBMARSHAL FOR NON BUSINESS TYPE CONTENT was the result

heck, google got blocked for 3 hours cos someone used image search to search for something they shouldnt

[Markh]

Originally Posted by Logik

I seriously hope NZ doesn't get closer to Australia in the future!

I hope that NZ carefully edges away from the USSR (Union of 'Stralian Socialist Republics).

I agree that some sort of option for blocking bad stuff from children makes sense, but universal censorship for adults?

[Rep]

http://petitions.takingitglobal.org/oznetcensorship

[xin]

Oooooh an internet petition.

They'll really listen to that!

[_Incubus_]

They need to change the Senators ministry responsible for this to the Ministry of Truth.

[Macca@Work]

http://torrentfreak.com/kiwi-3-strikes-law-081017/

Maybe not in the same league as filtering maybe..but food for thought non the less

[Hurtuso]

[zeekiorage]

ZDNet Article and video interviews

The leaders of three of Australia's largest internet service providers — Telstra Media's Justin Milne, iiNet's Michael Malone and Internode's Simon Hackett have, in video interviews with ZDNet.com.au over the past few months detailed technical, legal and ethical reasons why ISP-level filtering won't work.

[MadMax]

oh noes the people have too much information available to them!

[CCS]

Rudd is getting ideas from his Chinese mates!

[Ab]

This is either funny, or tragic.

Australian government bans coverage of Iran election protests

[Ab]

Bump. It's happening.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...15/2772467.htm

The (Australia) Federal Government will introduce compulsory internet filtering to block overseas sites which contain criminal content, including child sex abuse and sexual violence.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced the changes today following a controversial trial to filter the internet which was conducted earlier this year.

Senator Conroy says some internet content is simply not suitable in a civilised society.

"It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material," he said.

"The Government believes that parents want assistance to reduce the risk of children being exposed to such material."

This has gone past genious-at-work, past facepalm, even past rage-fuuuuuuuuu.