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Australian Government Backing Down On Censorship
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed May 27, 2009 04:26 AM
from the won't-work-won't-scale-but-besides-that dept.
from the won't-work-won't-scale-but-besides-that dept.
Combat Wombat sends the news that the government in Australia has begun waffling on whether country-wide Internet censorship will be mandatory. "The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory Internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. ... [The shadow communications minister] said he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system. ... Senator Conroy's statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content." The censorship plan, which has been called "worse than Iran," was bypassed even before trials started. A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation.
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Your Rights Online: Australian Government Censorship 'Worse Than Iran' 516 comments
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to Censor the Internet is producing problems for ISPs, with filters causing speeds to drop by up to 86% and falsely blocking 10% of safe sites. The Government Minister in charge of the censorship plan, Conservative Stephen Conroy, has been accused of bullying ISP employees critical of his plan: 'If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.'" Read on for more, including an interesting approach to demonstrating the inevitable collision of automated censorship with common sense.
[+]
Technology: Australian Censorship Bypassed Before Live Trials 184 comments
newt writes "The Australian Government is planning to conduct live trials of as-yet-unspecified censorship technology. But as every geek already knows, these systems can't possibly work in the presence of VPNs and proxy servers. PC Authority clues the punters in." Maybe the ISPs secretly like encouraging SSH tunneling — and making everyone pay for the extra bandwidth used. Not really; Australia's major ISPs, as mentioned a few days ago, think it's a bad idea.
[+]
Your Rights Online: Australian Internet Censorship Plan Torpedoed 308 comments
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation needed to start the scheme. Anti-Gambling Senator Nick Xenophon previously supported the filter because it could also block gambling web sites, but today withdrew support saying 'the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this.' This week surveys found only less than 10% of Australians supported the censorship. Censorship Senator Stephen Conroy has consistently ignored advice from technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online. Conroy expanded the list to block Adult R18+ and X18+ web sites, and this week said it would also block sites depicting drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence or 'revolting and abhorrent phenomena' that 'offend against the standards of morality.' Last week an anti-abortion website was added to the blacklist, and Conroy said he was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond."
Submission: Australian Government backing down on censorship by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Your Rights Online: Australia Considering P2P 'Three Strikes' Law 101 comments
caitsith01 writes "ITNews reports that Australia's ever-unpopular Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, has foreshadowed new action by the Australian Government to crack down on illegal file sharing under the guise of promoting the digital economy. Options apparently being considered include the controversial and previously reported French three-strikes approach and an approach which sounds suspiciously like New Zealand's even more dubious guilty-upon-accusation approach to filesharing. Needless to say, although the Government is consulting with 'representatives of both copyright owners and the Internet industry in an effort to reach an industry-led consensus on an effective solution,' arguably the most significant group — ordinary Internet users — are not being consulted. Senator Conroy is the man behind the crusade to 'protect' Australians from the horrors of the Internet with a mandatory, government-run blacklist, an effort which recently earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year for 2009."
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!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping back dumb censorship plans, in otherwise democratic countries, is an eternal struggle.
Re:!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. There was no need for it in the first place. Sometimes politics is like when you dangle a person over a cliff, but then pull them back up and act like the hero.
Parent
Re:!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes politics is like when you dangle a person over a cliff, but then pull them back up and act like the hero.
Reminds me of the old joke about "moderate" Democrats and Republicans:
A moderate is someone who throws you a ten foot rope when you are fifteen feet offshore and later tells all of his friends that he went more than halfway.
Parent
Re:!victory (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:!victory (Score:4, Insightful)
Good analogy...note that Obama considers himself a moderate - and his actions generally match. People are drowning 15ft. away on both sides of the sandbar he's on and he's not willing to use more than 10ft. of rope, even on those who voted for him.
Don't mod me Flamebait, I expected more of him too, But here we are and there's the ACTA agreement [wikipedia.org] - a textbook example of corruption ("Corporate Lobbying" as they call it nowadays) and policy laundering; Guantanamo acting as a handy distraction while other "secret" prisons [wikipedia.org] remain open, an Iraq deadline that he only used 10ft. of rope on, the list goes on...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Guantanamo acting as a handy distraction while other "secret" prisons [wikipedia.org] remain open
I guess as long as we can get links like that, it's fair to say that freedom of speech is still alive.
Thanks for the info, it's infuriating, but I'd better be mad than be ignorant.
Re:!victory (Score:4, Insightful)
I was also sorely disappointed when the point of closing guantanomo became divorced from ending indefinite imprisonment.
To think that there would be anything but indefinite imprisonment was pretty naive. Prisoners of War don't have habeas corpus rights and it's generally accepted that they will remain prisoners for the duration of hostilities.
Parent
Re:!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Suspected terrorists are not prisoners of war. The "war on terror" is a fabrication which can be extended indefinitely as long as there is one nutjob on the planet who has the United States in their sight
Yes, it can. And I find that troubling. More troubling though is the notion that people who aren't citizens and whose only connection to our country is their professed desire to do it harm deserve the full protection of our constitution and criminal justice system.
When non-citizens seek to do us harm from overseas I do not regard that as criminal activity. It's not state-directed activity either and falls somewhere in between. An appropriate response would be to issue letters of marque and treat them l
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Agreed. There was no need for it in the first place.
Yeah, cause if there was a need for it, it would've been just fine. No censorship without a pretty good reason, that's what I always say.
Re:!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping our civil rights, in otherwise democratic countries, is an eternal struggle.
Fixed that for you. I don't think anyone can look at the "War on Drugs", gun control or just the expansion of Government in general and say that it's only free speech that we need to worry about.
Parent
Re:!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think a non-expanding government is a fundamental human right?
Because an expanded government starts to stick it's nose into things that should be outside of it's mandate. A good example would be policies designed to protect us from ourselves. Seat belt laws, vice taxes on tobacco/booze, obesity taxes, laws that criminalize you if you put certain substances into your body, etc, etc, etc.
We are supposed to be citizens, not children that need to be fussed over to make sure we are taking good care of ourselves. As far as I'm concerned if my behaviors harm no one but myself they really aren't any business of the Government. And please don't give me some bullshit rationalization like "obesity drives up costs for everyone" -- that's only true when government forces "charity" down our throats and I personally want no part of "charity" that comes with strings attached.
Parent
I laugh at politics (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Make no mistake, this was all about lining the pockets of the companies that were involved, nothing else.
How could they not know this would fail? Fiasco was written all over it.
Canada had the gun registry that failed miserably [wikipedia.org]. It was supposed to cost about $120mil, but ended up costing the (now poor) tax payers $2 billion. Yep. 2. Billion.
My question is - who got paid...someone did...a lot. Every man, woman and child alive today would have to register two guns for this money to be recuperated.
The sam
Re:I laugh at politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Canada had the gun registry that failed miserably [wikipedia.org]. It was supposed to cost about $120mil, but ended up costing the (now poor) tax payers $2 billion. Yep. 2. Billion.
Had as in past tense? I thought it was still around?
Can't say that I'm really surprised. New York State has CoBIS [state.ny.us], a program to collect fired brass from all handguns to enter into a ballistic databank. This program has had numerous cost overruns and has solved zero crimes since introduction. So naturally our fearless leaders in Albany want to expand it to cover more types of firearms......
Parent
Re:I laugh at politics (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Could someone invite that guy over to Germany? (Score:3, Insightful)
So he could tell their government how good incompetently implemented filtering mechanisms worked for them? Maybe, just maybe, they could learn a thing or two.
Re:Could someone invite that guy over to Germany? (Score:5, Funny)
Tell you what, on behalf of a vast majority of Australians I invite you to keep him.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If we lock him up in Germany, I'm sure the average politician IQ in both countries would suddenly increase dramatically.
Say what you want, but he at least had the smarts to realize when he makes a huge blunder. The German government didn't achive that evolution step yet.
Who didn't see this coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew it would happen.
Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen.
Something like this won't get off the ground as long as there are people willing to fight against it, and we've got no shortage of those around here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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Re:Who didn't see this coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
You knew it would happen.
I knew it would happen.
Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen.
Something like this won't get off the ground as long as there are people willing to fight against it, and we've got no shortage of those around here.
Not really.. It has been very close to getting through, even recently there was a TV show about it and it gave a definite impression of an idea which is unpopular but will go through.
Remember it was (I think still is?) actually implemented on several small ISPs, and I won't be happy until I hear a definitive no; watered down filtering isn't a victory, an opt-out clause isn't a victory, and it could still well end up that way.
Also I don't know about "people willing to fight it" being the real reason. In the TV show debate about the internet filter (and in mainstream online news forums) the audience were largely in favor of censorship, but it was the glaring impracticality that swung it slightly in the opposition's favor.
Maybe the debate audience was a biased sample, but there really wasn't (and isn't) the fierce opposition to the filter that would make a senator do a U-turn.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The day public mass media reports anything even close to reality will be a cold one in hell.
Don't assume that a "TV show debate" represents anything even close to reality.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The particular debate refered to was the SBS show insight. This is of a much higher standard than the average TV debate show. It even had Network engineer Mark Newton, one of the leading opponents of the scheme there, and he managed to get this main points accross. Conroy did not look happy at having to respond to well informed crticism.
Re:Who didn't see this coming? (Score:4, Funny)
Citation required. How many were polled, what was the species make up and how many were just sheltering from predators when the clipboard people came to call and were just answering the questions to avoid drawing the "outsider" tag and being forced outside?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
None of the things living under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean that I asked said they didn't know about it 'til I told them.
This is a good example of how opt-in and opt-out are "technically the same"...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Something like this won't get off the ground as long as there are people willing to fight against it, and we've got no shortage of those around here.
Just because there is a lot of vocal opposition to some proposal, doesn't mean it doesn't stand a chance of passing. There is a lot of unpopular legislation in many countries that get passed despite significant protests. For example, the DMCA in the USA, and the Australian free trade agreement that gave us DMCA-like crap of our own to live with.
Besides, the article doesn't say for sure whether the plan would be dropped. Conroy basically just said the legislation wouldn't be needed if the ISPs just agreed
Bad summary: no minister's defection (Score:4, Informative)
The summary says "A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation."
But that link refers to Senator Nick Xenophon. He is an independent senator, not a Minister in the government.
Re:Bad summary: no minister's defection (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If it wasn't for the honesty of my member it would be difficult to distinguish between them.
Balance of Power (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, great... try that in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm really pleased to read this story, but sadly I think the only reason this "backing down" has come about is because the politicians in question were so bare-faced and blunt with the proposals in the first place. I suspect that has a lot to do with the character and nature of Australians in general. I may get criticised for stereotyping, but most Australians of my acquaintance take pride in the blunt honesty prevalent in their culture, so I don't think I'm out of line.
Unfortunately this culture of an honest (if ineffective and ill-considered) approach to government implementation of web-filtering - and indeed of all privacy-crushing legislation - is rather rarer elsewhere. I'd love to see our ministers "back down" from the measures being artfully and insidiously emplaced under the auspices of all sorts of other harmless- or necessary-sounding legislation, but I just don't see it happening.
I'm not saying Australia is the land of enlightenment and open government or anything, but somehow the top-coat of bullshit and whitewash over there seems to be somewhat shallower on the whole.
Good on yer, Oz. Now please, expose some of the hypocrisy and skullduggery going on in the rest of the developed world for what it is - an ingrained attempt at tightening power and control over the voting public.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As for your theory, well, I dunno really. Our low population density tends to give us a slightly different attitude to waste and security issues. It really is possible to walk away from your problems here. Its different from the UK where people are crammed in a lot more and have to live with their mistakes. Also we make our living from mining, basically. We dig stuff up and flog it to the Japanese and Chinese who sell it right back to us with a million percent markup. Eventually the s
Re:Yeah, great... try that in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm another Australian.
Unfortunately it's mere incompetence. They actually want to have all the fun "security" bells and whistles you have in the UK, they're just hopeless at getting it through without being noticed. Our politicians are no less sneaky and dishonest than anywhere else, but perhaps the apparatus to hide such intentions isn't as well developed here. We don't have that grand tradition of bill riders as in the US or the UK in our legislative conventions, so far.
The tradition we do have is assigning problematic (read: politically ambitious) ministers to a complicated technology-based portfolio where they can make fools of themselves while their rivals go on to bungling something else. The opposition did something good for a change and appointed the politically astute Nick Minchin as shadow minister and he's been ripping truck-sized holes in Senator Conroy's plans from day one.
The fatal mistake Conroy made was not to make sure this couldn't be done by bypassing legislation and farming it out to a statutory body beyond the reach of public opinion. And even that body is incompetent at censorship, so it's truly is a case of don't ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by idiocy.
What bothers me most is how difficult it was to get the story out in the media, its been relegated to tech pages and my efforts to raise the alarm among my non-techy friends met with disinterest. This isn't going to go away, they will try it again.
Parent
Re:Yeah, great... try that in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
> I suspect that has a lot to do with the character and nature of Australians in general.
> I may get criticised for stereotyping, but most Australians of my acquaintance take
> pride in the blunt honesty prevalent in their culture, so I don't think I'm out of line.
Speaking as an Australian, I'd say that it's not because the honourable minister is blunt and straight forward, it's just that he's a bloody idiot.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Speaking as an Australian, I'd say that it's not because the honourable minister is blunt and straight forward, it's just that he's a bloody idiot.
How true. If being blunt and straightforward disqualified Australians from anything, none of them would have any work.
Oh, and you're all bloody idiots, too, so I'm not sure what my point is, exactly.
Signed,
The blunt, straightforward Canadian idiot in the glass house across the water. 8^)
Re: (Score:2)
Not dead yet! (Score:5, Informative)
Trials are still being underway involving 4 tiny ISPs, one medium ISP, one Christadelphian ISP and one large ISP majority owned by Singtel [zdnet.com.au].
There is no engineering, vendor neutral specification giving trial design criteria or testing methodology as the basis for the trials. There is no requirement for the ISPs to disclose which method of censorship they selected. The ISPs have been supported to the tune of $AU300,000 but there is still a $AU887,000 consultancy contract for the testing and reporting of on a system to block up to 10,000 URLs. The IWF annual report lists between 1100-1300 sites blocked by their system. Rumour has it that much of the testing in the small ISPs is using equipment from the same censorware vendor [watchdog.net.nz] but this is not confirmed as several censorware vendors have been lobbying for the windfalls. Watchdog, using the NetClean [netclean.com] system was involved in some separate testing undertaken by another ISP, Exetel [computerworld.com.au]. The Exetel trial received a great deal of criticism in the Australian internet community [whirlpool.net.au] and Exetel customers [exetel.com.au]. The trial has not been cancelled and neither has the testing consultancy.
Any assumption that the scheme will disappear is premature.
A list of 1000s of banned films and publications is still in existence. [somebodyth...ildren.com] The censorship regime has become more and more repressive over the last 10 years. Realistically the entire basis of censorship needs serious review. It is managed by more than one government authority under several different pieces of legislation. The proposed censorship of the internet is under the control of the telecommunications authority which is yet another government authority.
You would have to try very hard to find a more incompetent approach to anything to do with IT, networking or civil liberties all in the same package.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice try, mate.
My comment about Optus/Singtel related entirely to the fact that Singtel is the Singapore government owned telco and Singapore certainly has no scruples about censorship which means that Optus participation may have a different corporate goal.
To be fair, Telstra, Internode and iiNet [zdnet.com.au] are on record as objecting to this proposal and all have refused to be sucked into this debacle and are not participating. Telstra's public comments have been generally
YAY (Score:3, Insightful)
Rarrrr! (Score:3, Informative)
We still have to fight this, but (Score:2)
Their evil backroom deals with the left and the right of Australian.
I still want to know if you get a pop up saying your IP has been passed onto a state or federal task force on the first attempt?
Start shredding cd's, dvds like an East German spy with a pile of files in the late 1980's or a US embassy worker in Iran
Or a "not found" and your IP is log
Bad shadow minister? (Score:2)
Is it just me or is the shadow minister lacking some knowledge of common government policy.
Surely that'd be the kind of thing we get in the UK, and I'm sure other nations do, where the government goes "There is a problem and we think the industry should volunteer to solve it. If it doesn't then we'll mandate a fix." It's entirely voluntary to create the solution, but not volunteering leaves you with the option of be
A better government solution (Score:4, Insightful)
would be a positive filter. Instead of trying to filter the entire internet for everyone, create a Government Certified Safe Internet that lists web sites deemed "appropriate for children" by a new bureaucracy, and make it available to anyone's private filter on a voluntary basis. Require all government internet terminals available to children (e.g. libraries) to subscribe to the filter. Yes, there are already private companies that offer this service, but the constituents driving this evidently trust a giant government bureaucracy more than they trust a somewhat smaller corporate bureaucracy.
There will still be a market for private filter companies because they can offer different censoring standards to parents. It could actually be a good thing to have a voluntary censoring standard backed by general consensus. Private filters could start with the government database as a baseline, then add sites that "really should have been approved" or subtract sites that "my kid(s) can't handle". (For instance, my daughter had nightmares about "ducks biting her" after an incident involving a goose. She was not allowed to view "Jurassic Park" until she was much older, even though it was appropriate for the other kids.)
Never officially announced policy (Score:3, Insightful)
Hang on a sec!
Labour never announced this policy beforehand, or at least not in the form it came up as. The core announcement they made was that they would abolish the former conservative government's near-useless web filter software scheme and "investigate options" for parents to choose blocking at an ISP level. (Which several ISPs already provided as a viable commercial service for those who wanted it.) It was only afterwards, when a significant majority was won in the lower house and a sway-able majority in the Senate that they pushed a policy of compulsory industry-wide filtering.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think its only a matter of time before he is dumped from the role, as he would be a large liability for Rudd moving into the next election.