The Inquisitr » internet censorship

Anonymous targets Australian Government over Internet Censorship

Duncan Riley — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:38:44 +0000

Anonymous is planning to launch an attack on Australian Government websites to draw attention to Australia’s proposed draconian internet censorship laws.

The DoS attacks are due to begin at 7pm Australian Eastern Time (2am US PDT) Wednesday and will target the websites of The Department of Broadband, Communications & the Digital Economy (DBCDE), Minister for DBCDE Stephen Conroy, and the website of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA.)

In a message attached to the raid information posted to the “Operation Didgeridie” page on Insurgen.info, those behind the attacks start by noting that “Australia’s internet future is at stake. Kevin Rudd is attempting to execute a plan in which every part of Australia’s internet will be censored; even though you may not care about Australia, the world (i.e. USA and others) will eventually follow suit until free information ceases to exist.”

In a section titled “Decleration of War,” Anonymous writes

On the morning of September the 9th, the Government of Australia, pursuing its course of internet censorship, have shown to us that they have no response nor intend to provide one concerning their plan. The long-known and the long-expected has thus taken place. The forces endeavoring to belittle and undermine the freedom of the internet are now moving towards their final goals. Never before has there been a greater challenge to freedom of information, liberty and civilization. Delay invites great danger. Rapid and united effort by all of the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will ensure a world victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the covert powers of censorship and of oppression. Australia is not alone in this regard: countless governments from across the world can also be exposed as fascists and dictators in this regard. Therefore a state of war between Anonymous and the Australian Government, and between Anonymous and all other governments which find themselves so inclined to impose censorship upon the internet, will be recognized.

I legally can’t say I’m in favor of what Anonymous is doing here, and I won’t be participating in the raid, however there will be many who support any effort to highlight the Australian Government’s attempt to introduce Chinese style censorship in a country that is suppose to be democratic and free.

The means used here are illegal, but likewise so should any attempt to censor free speech in Australia be as well; Anonymous are no more criminals morally than the Rudd Government and Stephen Conroy are, and I wouldn’t be the only person to suggest that Rudd and Conroy are the bigger criminals in this case.

More info on the raid when we have it.

Censorship comes to America: AT&T blocks 4chan /b/

Duncan Riley — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:54:15 +0000

The global internet censorship debate landed in the home of the free Sunday with news that AT&T has censored the popular 4chan /b/ image board.

The censorship was first reported on Reddit, where users confirmed with AT&T that the site had indeed been censored, and was not being blocked due to a technical issue. 4chan owner Moot later confirmed the news, saying that the /r9k/ was also blocked and that AT&T users should “call or write [to] customer support and [AT&T] corporate immediately.”

The censorship at this time extended only to AT&T DSL customers, with wireless (3G) customers believed to be unaffected. Erling Løken Andersen notes that 15.5% of all US internet users use AT&T DSL, meaning that /b/ is now blocked somewhere around 40-60 million people in the United States.

There is no official word from AT&T on the decision yet, and given that it’s Sunday still in the US none is likely until business hours Monday. 4chan users though aren’t particularly happy about the decision, with /b/tards currently discussing ways to fight back against the imposition of censorship.

The decision by AT&T to censor /b/ may also further spark further debate around net neutrality; love or hate 4chan, the decision by a provider to start censoring sites is the beginning of a slippery slope to unaccountable corporate imposed draconian censorship that should have no place in allegedly free democratic societies.

There is also the question of why censor /b/ now and not previously? Could a third party such as Scientology have lobbied for the decision?

Confirmed: Second Life, online adult games to be banned outright in Australia

Duncan Riley — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:44:19 +0000

The Australian Minister for Censorship has today confirmed what I’ve been reporting for nearly two years: online adult games including Second Life will be banned in Australia.

A spokesman for Censorship Minister Stephen “Goebbels” Conroy confirmed to Fairfax newspapers that “under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.” In Australia, the MA15+ rating means that the content is restricted to those aged 15 and above. Australia does not have a R 18+ or similar rating for computer games, with all adult games automatically being classified as RC (Refused Classification.)

I wish I hadn’t been right here, so I take no delight in being so. However I was derided by more than a few bible bashing ALP voting Conroy lovers (in a platonic sense of course, cock sucking will be banned under the censorship regime) as being extreme and wrong in the past, so here’s two examples of things I’ve written previously about what Conroy was planning to do:

December 2007
To be censored by the Australian Government is “pornography and inappropriate material.” X rated pornography is illegal online in Australia, as are casino style internet gambling, certain forms of “hate” speech and R rated computer games.

January 2009
We know that among other “unwanted” things, the following falls into the censorship regime: porn, R rated games, certain types of political speech (for example discussion of methods of euthanasia) and possibly copyrighted content.

I am though surprised this is news today, as the policy was ALWAYS THERE in the fine print from day one. Conroy has waffled and avoided ever giving a direct answer about until now, but he’s also very good at that.

That at the half way point of 2009 this is even still on the agenda in Australia is a fucking disgrace, and the more the Government confirms the details, the more totalitarian the proposal becomes, and even China starts to look more open and free.

Oz Wrap: TPN Broke, Wikileaks Censored, Fake Stephen Conroy outed

Duncan Riley — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:39:06 +0000

This is the first of our occasional posts on Australian web, tech and related news.

TPN Broke: The Podcast Network, the first podcast network on the planet is in dire financial straights. The company is unable to meet its monthly hosting bill and is soliciting donations, needing $3,000 to keep the door open…until next month.

The network had a difficult 2008, first suffering a hacking after security patches weren’t applied to WordPress installs, then in December losing the majority of its back catalog when a server failed.

Wikileaks Censored: pages on Wikileaks has been censored in Australia, although technically there’s no way to enforce the ban…yet. The pages banned relate to a list of banned sites from the censorship regime in Denmark (ironic really). To make matters worse, the Australian Communications Media Authority is threatening sites with a $11,000 AUD fine per day if they link to the page on Wikileaks.

I’m not going to link to the page, even if this site is hosted in the US, however you can read Wikileak’s response to the ban here. In Australia, it’s illegal to link to content that might be illegal, even when you haven’t published the content yourself. Proto-fascism cometh.

Fake Stephen Conroy outed: Australia’s favorite Twitter imposter Fake Stephen Conroy has been outed as Telstra engineer Leslie Nasaar. Telstra, who’s as popular as herpes in Australia, have naturally reacted in their usual fashion, which is to force the account offline and shut everyone up. Still, at least they haven’t sacked him yet, the fate handed to one worker/ blogger a couple of years back who dared to speak the truth on Telstra’s corporate blog.

Australian Minister confirms legal content may be blocked by Censorship Regime

Duncan Riley — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:31:36 +0000

Despite saying previously that “unwanted” content would be included in the Great Firewall of Australia, Australian Minister for Censorship Stephen Conroy had also claimed that the proposed Internet censorship regime was focused on blocking “illegal sites.” Until now.

At an estimates hearing of the Australian Senate’s Environment, Communications and the Arts committee Monday, Conroy said that the trial of the filter now underway was based on blocking “illegal sites,” but the censorship of other content would be “determined after the trial”.

Some have incorrectly suggested that this other content would include X and R rated pornography, for the purposes of the internet, this content is already illegal in Australia. X rated pornography is illegal to sell in Australian states (but legal in the Northern Territory and ACT, it’s also legal to possess), and R rated pornography is legal but only with strict age verification which websites would not meet. See our run down of what might be blocked in this post.

Crikey also suggest that “additional content that will be considered after the trial relates to illegal content such as gambling sites, websites that counsel suicide, seditious material and material banned at the behest of multinational copyright owners,” however this content is already technically illegal, so it hardly counts outside of illegal content as defined by the Minister. Take it as a given that they will likely end up on the blacklist.

The implications of what Conroy is said is far more serious again.

The opposite of illegal content is legal content the last time I checked. Legal “unwanted” content (unwanted being the criteria given by the Minister) could well include political speech where that speech may constitute hate speech in some Australian states. It may include debate on immigration, the debate on global warming, discussion of the links between Organized Crime and the previous Government…it could just about mean anything the Minister decides he doesn’t like. That open door can and will be abused by do-gooder groups who want things banned, after all the criteria now isn’t illegal content, but unwanted content.

There’s one thing though to take away from the Ministers disclosure: the do-gooders like Clive Hamilton and the Christian Lobby can no longer seriously claim that this filter is all about child porn when the Minister himself has clearly confirmed that it’s something far more wide reaching than that.

Not long now until Australian joins China, Iran and other progressive places.

When in Rome, you may not be able to get on Facebook

Duncan Riley — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:39:53 +0000

The Italian Senate has passed a law that will force Internet providers to block access to sites if they incite or justify criminal behavior.

While the law provides the right to block any site, Facebook is squarely in the firing line, after Italian prosecutors began looking into Facebook groups dedicated to convicted Sicilian Mafia bosses Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore Riina last month, according to Bloomberg.

“The Internet must be free, but it can’t be a jungle where good people and murderers are indistinguishable,” Senator Gianpiero D’Alia said “It’s indecent that Facebook said that it won’t allow pictures of mothers breastfeeding while there are no rules about removing groups of delinquents…It’s only right that Facebook be blacked out.”

The bill allows for the Government to first demand that inappropriate content be removed, and then if it isn’t, for a ban to be put in place.

The measure must pass in the Chamber of Deputies before formally becoming law.

Typical though of censorship regimes: they always start with a basic premise, but end up blocking a whole lot more. Coming soon to the internet in Australia I might add.

Australian Minister talks Internet Censorship as Victoria burns

Duncan Riley — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:45:31 +0000

As we’ve reported regularly over the last two days, Victoria, Australia has experienced the worst natural disaster in Australian history. As I type this post, the official death toll has risen to 130, with up to 200 people believed dead.

It’s a tragedy beyond all reckoning. So what do you think the Australian Minister for Censorship Senator Stephen Conroy was doing?

Well he was promoting the Australian Governments censorship proposal.

In a release titled “Australia participates in Safer Internet Day 2009″ Senator Conroy promoted the Rudd Governments $125.8 million cyber-safety plan to help create a safer online environment. The cornerstone of that policy is the Great Firewall of Australia.

In case some bright spark in the Government picks up on the sensitivity fail, the screen capture above captures Conroy’s fuck the fires, censorship stands in the way of no man press release.

I’ve sent a message to the Australian Prime Minister on Twitter at @kevinruddpm calling on Conroy to be sacked, and I’d encourage others to do so.

The Economic Cost of Internet Censorship in Australia

Duncan Riley — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:51:09 +0000

Much has been written about the social cost of the proposed Australian Internet censorship regime, but far too little on the economic cost.

As the Rudd Government attempts to pass a $42 billion AUD stimulus package in an attempt to stave of recession, it continues to back a plan that has negative economic consequences for Australian businesses.

Calculating the cost isn’t easy; most studies consider the economic benefits of increased broadband speeds, as most sane Governments would never look at slowing internet speeds down, but that is exactly what will happen in Australia when internet censorship is implemented.

The first test paper released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found that under trial conditions (so not a full black list), filtering reduced speeds between 2% and “in excess of” 75%, with three of the 6 products tested coming in at between 20-30%. Since that report it has been suggested that the filters with the lowest success rate are the quickest, so a proper implementation of a censorship regime would likely, at best cause a 20% drop in internet speeds, but likely significantly higher again.

Direct cost

Australian ISP’s have already stated that they are likely to pass on the cost of filtering data directly to users (ref). Further, a broad scale filter proposed by the Government may also drive up related costs, such as data center staff needed to deal with an increase in customer complaints when they can’t access sites.(ref).

No hard figure has been proposed by the industry, but even a small increase in internet charges would create a negative impact on the Australian economy.

At the end of June 2008, there were 7.23 million internet subscribers in Australia (ABS). An increase in costs of only $10 per month would immediately cost Australian internet users $867.6 million a year in additional direct costs. A $25 increase in internet access would result in an additional $2.169 billion in direct costs.

Indirect costs

Australia already has some of the slowest internet speeds in the developed world. A 2008 study (link) found that average internet speeds in Australia was 1.7 mbps, up from 1 mpbs in 2006, when Australia was ranked 26th out of 27 developed countries (ref).

The amount of the indirect cost will depend very much on the amount speeds drop. A 75% cut would bring the average speed down to 425kbps, where as a 25% cut to 1.275mpbs.

The cuts in speed would punish small businesses and the less well off more deeply than large businesses and those who can already afford high speed access. The June 2008 figures from the ABS found that only 43% of Australians have speeds higher that 1.5mpbs, and 21.7% of “broadband” subscribers only have speeds between 256kbps and 512kbps. A 75% cut on a 256kbps account would result in a 64kbps connection, basically dialup.

Remarkably, some 2 million Australians are still using dialup, with a maximum speed of 56kbps.

Slower speeds mean quite simply that it takes longer to do business, and that has a negative effect on productivity.

Inverse benefit

It’s slippery to presume that the loss of internet speed in Australia will result in the direct opposite of the benefits gained by increasing them in the first place, but we can take some of those figures as some indication of a potential loss caused by slower speeds, particularly when the net result of the censorship regime will be slower speeds.

The Federal Government sponsored Broadband Advisory Group found in 2003 that high speed (or “next generation”) broadband could produce $12-$30 billion per annum to the Australian economy. (KPMG pdf)

Paul Puddle Communications in 2004 put the figure at $90 billion (KPMG pdf)

The American Government found in a report Measuring Broadbandʼs Economic Impact (pdf) that “the results support the view that broadband access does enhance economic growth and performance, and that the assumed economic impacts of broadband are real and measurable other economic indicators.”

It’s not a huge leap then to suggest that crippling speeds would have an inverse effect to increasing them.

Competitiveness

Even if we may struggle to put a solid figure on the indirect economic cost on internet censorship in Australia, we can consider factors reducing speeds have on various aspects of business.

A report from the Australian Local Government Association by consultants National Economics (ref) found in 2005 that

“If Australia falls behind, an increasing number of exporters may well feel that they cannot operate as efficiently in the supply chains as other firms elsewhere in the world who do have access to best practice infrastructure”

“This will result in the enterprise being dropped from the supply chain at the cost to the nation’s export performance.”

Governments also recognize the benefits of high speed broadband, and the pitfalls of not having it, remembering that the censorship proposal will slow significantly slow speeds. Auckland City Council (link): “Economic development in any city depends upon access to fast, high capacity broadband infrastructure and services. Due to the lack of high-speed broadband, Auckland is losing economic opportunities.”

Australia is already at a disadvantage in terms of distance from major markets; making businesses less competitive through slower internet access can and will cause lost opportunities, and even lost jobs.

Downward pressure

Julie Schwartz for the Progressive States Network (link) says that broadband access “Can help rejuvenate a lagging economy: Spurs economic development, increases economic equality and increased job opportunities.”

Would then reducing broadband speeds, and making it more expensive not have the opposite effect?

Conclusion

There are many fine reasons why the Australian Government should not introduce the Great Firewall of Australia, and yet freedom of speech doesn’t seem to be high on the Prime Minister’s agenda. The economy though is, and any basic analysis of the figures, even when we may not be able to pin down the exact costs, show that introducing Internet censorship in Australia will have a negative effect on the economy, both in direct and indirect costs.

At a time of economic crisis, Australia cannot afford to risk the introduction a scheme that will contribute to costs and work against the economy.

(img credit: Tamar Leaver)

Australia’s Internet Censorship Scheme Takes Money Allocated to Pursue Pedophiles

Duncan Riley — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:11:37 +0000

The Great Firewall of Australia, the Australian Government’s Internet censorship scheme that is being sold as protecting children has resulted in significant budget cuts to a dedicated anti online child abuse police team.

$2.8 million AUD ($1.86m USD) originally allocated to the Australian Federal Police’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team (OCSET) has instead gone towards Internet censorship. A small figure perhaps, but the total budget for the team in 2007 (without the $2.8m) was $7.5 million AUD ($5m USD).

But it gets better: according to research from Stilgherrian, without that money, OCSET simply doesn’t have the staff to investigate all of the suspected pedophiles it already knows about. Some cases get palmed off to the states — that is, to police who don’t have the specialist training and experience of OCSET, and the rest are simply dropped.

So the Australian Government, in the name of protecting children with a scheme that blocks millions of sites, has created a situation where pedophiles get away, even when they are known to exist, because funding that would have been allocated to pursuing them has been spent on internet censorship.

Won’t somebody think of the children?

I’ve said it before, but this whole scheme is a farce and the Minister should be removed from his position. Even the do-gooders who are backing the censorship regime should be disgusted by this gross misallocation of funds by the Australian Government, as most Australian’s will be. Imagine inversely if the $44 million allocated to censorship was given to this taskforce, and the real outcomes that could be achieved.

Germany to Introduce CP Internet Censorship

Duncan Riley — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:39:35 +0000

Germany has announced that it will introduce compulsory Internet censorship starting in March.

The censorship scheme will block access to child pornography, and will follow a similar model to Norway, where the Government decrees a list of child pornography sites to be blocked by ISP’s.

Germany Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) addressed concerns that the censorship regime could exclude other content by confirming that it may be extended: “We must not dilute the issue. Child pornography is a problem issue and clearly identifiable. [However] you can not exclude what the federal government may wish to block in the future” (note, translation tweaked via Google Translate, so may not be perfect).

Notably the model does not go anywhere close to the proposed Australian Internet Censorship scheme, which will block pornography, adult games and “unwanted content.”

(via Der Spiegel)

Australian Censorship Regime could block over 20 million websites: Testing therefore Useless

Duncan Riley — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:35:44 +0000

As the debate around the proposed Great Firewall of Australia censorship scheme in Australia continues, the Government’s long awaited censorship trial is due to begin shortly.

While some ISP’s are participating only to prove that the filter is flawed, it’s the testing procedure itself where things are completely wrong. The number of sites to be filtered in the trial: 10,000.

While 10,000 may be 10,000 too many, it’s also no where near close to how many sites the filter will have to block to comply with the Government’s guidelines.

We know that among other “unwanted” things, the following falls into the censorship regime: porn, R rated games, certain types of political speech (for example discussion of methods of euthanasia) and possibly copyrighted content.

We can’t count every category, in part because we simply don’t know exactly how the Government will define what stays and what gets blocked, but we can estimate block rates for porn, because we know R and X rated porn (R Rated stays only with strict age verification, which 99.99% of sites won’t meet) is out.

According to Netcraft, there was 182,226,259 sites online in October 2008. “Active” sites (not defined) come in at around 73.6 million.

Estimates of the number of porn sites online vary from 1% through to a massive 35% of all sites online. The most common figure used is 12% (one ref, but common figure)

12% of pages to be blocked by the Great Firewall of Australia would total:

All sites: 21,867,151
“Active” sites: 9.12 million (est).

Even if we take the minimum figure of 1%

All sites: 1,822,263
“Active” sites: 736,000 (est)

Do any of these figures sounding anything close to 10,000 sites?

I’m told that the more sites listed on a blacklist, the slower the filter becomes because each website requested must be checked against the list. 10,000 sites vs 21.9 million: there is no way the trials can give a representative result of what the implementation of the Great Firewall will do for internet speeds in Australia.

The Government may well say in response that they will not be filtering that many sites, and that may be the case. But if true, how will the firewall be effective if some sites are blacklisted, and others aren’t? And that’s ignoring finer points like the filter not blocking non-web content, and only maybe blocking P2P, but with filtering technology in its infancy.

The stupidity of this plan goes from bad to worse. If this does occur, god help everyone in Australia, because we might be returning to internet speeds closer to dialup than our already sorry excuse for broadband.

And a little perspective: the number of sites blocked in Iran is said to be up to 20 million, and the figure isn’t known for China (and censorship isn’t centralized there to complicate things) it is believed to be at a similar level. Soon we’ll be adding Australia to the list.

(image via Queen of the Desert on Flickr).

Great Firewall of Australia: What’s not mentioned makes it even more scary

Duncan Riley — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:24:35 +0000

Many in Australia, and those overseas interested in censorship would have now read a post from the Australian Minister for Censorship Stephen Conroy responding to concern over the implementation of the Great Firewall of Australia.

I won’t rehash what’s already been reported, but having read it several times since publication, it’s what’s left out that makes the proposal even more scary.

Free Speech

The Minister has stated that political speech will not be filtered under the proposal, but fails to define acceptable free speech and does nothing more to articulate his previous comments that “unwanted” material will be filtered under the scheme.

The problem here is the extraordinary mish-mash of Australian laws relating to open speech. In Victoria for example inciting religious hatred is an offense, so theoretically arguing against a particular religion would constitute hate speech instead of fair political speech.

Australia has a long track record of banning books, but for all the hatred are we now not better today having access to something like Mein Kampf so we can understand how wrong it is. There is a blurred line between political and hate speech, and blocking such speech on the internet will not stop people accessing it.

Conroy is disingenuous in suggesting that the Government is pro-free speech, yet pro-censorship: the price of free speech is that we must put up with the stuff we don’t like. The alternative system is not free speech, it’s totalitarianism.

Adult Games

Australia still has the bizarre situation of refusing to categorize video games for adults. The Minister says nothing of such games online, so we can still only presume that adult games online that would be refused categorization in Australia will be blocked under the filter.

Such games include online virtual world Second Life among many.

It should be remembered that Australia is a country that refused classification to Duke Nukem 3D, let alone far more seriously violent games.

Pornography

Whether you like pornography or not, the hypocrisy of the Governments proposal remains the same. Senator Conroy continues to point to existing guidelines being extended to International content, but ignores the absurdity in the current guidelines.

R rated pornography is legal in Australia and can be purchased at newsagents or service stations. Under the guidelines proposed, R rated pornography online would be illegal unless those pages included a thorough adult verification scheme. That doesn’t mean enter your date here to proceed: as has previously been the case for age requirements for mobile content and R rated content hosted in Australia (of which there is little to none) that would include handing over credit card details, or in some cases being forced to register with the provider first, including the provision of adequate identifying measures to prove ones age.

The net affect is that 99.99% of R rated pornography, or any R rated material under this proposal will be blocked by the filter, as overseas providers will not bend over backwards to cater for a small market like Australia. Secondly: Australian’s will be none to keen to hand over details to these sites should they meet the criteria.

X Rated pornography is treated more strictly in Australia currently, but is quite legal, and available for purchase from the ACT and Northern Territory. X rated material under this proposal will be completely banned: so while it is legal to possess, look at or own in print or video, it will now be completely blocked online. Again: whether you agree with porn or not, the hypocrisy is rich. In terms of freedom of speech it also raises other issues: who is the Government to play moral guardian online over a picture of two consenting adults having sex? Presuming they are doing nothing illegal, why in the 21st century does the Government seek to prevent others seeing it? Government finally got out of the bedroom in the 80s when homosexuality became legal, some would argue that X Rated porn is no different again.

Secret Blacklist/ Due Process

The Minister points out that the blacklist to be maintained by ACMA will remain a secret, and cites legislation supporting this. His reasoning, as it seems to be for everything, is that it’s all about kiddie porn

Publishing the title or internet address of child abuse material would constitute distribution of illegal material and is therefore protected from release. To do otherwise would allow a person to view and download the material in jurisdictions where ISP-level filtering was not implemented.

That may well be the case, but the Minister fails to address concerns about due process should a site be added to the list. If there is no access to the list, there is no way to appeal a site being blocked incorrectly. Imagine a commenter leaving a lurid comment or pic on this blog, or a forum, and the site being added to the list based on this one instance. No transparency can only equal unfair and arbitrary justice that remains the hallmark of totalitarian Government.

Selection Criteria

The Minister refers to the National Classification Scheme, a system where by content providers must seek classification of content prior to publication. He then refers to content complaints being made to ACMA, and ACMA making the call on classification. One again the Minister fails to address properly the selection criteria under the scheme: will website owners need to seek classification on content prior to publication? If so, this would be an onerous burden on new media owners and businesses in Australia, costing time, money and putting those businesses at a strict competitive disadvantage compared to overseas operators.

If ACMA will decide on content classification, will they only act on complaints as is currently the process (again the Minister swaps and changes between the current and proposed system). If so, how exactly will the filter know what is acceptable and not acceptable content given the millions of porn sites alone that may fall under the censorship regime.

Likewise, will the filter then decide to block content based on keywords? Could we not see the case, as has happened before that a site about breast cancer is blocked because the filter considers breasts to be pornographic?

Overblocking

The Minister notes that in the last round of tests, overblocking, that is filters blocking legal content came in at 3-6%. He only notes that this is an advance on previous tests, but fails to address the very serious implications.

Under the scheme, three to six percent of perfectly legal content gets blocked. Anything other than a 0% rate is unacceptable.

Imagine the Australian Government waking up one morning and deciding that 6% of Australian businesses could no longer open their doors to their customers, and the outcry this would cause. This is EXACTLY what this proposal will do to online businesses, and companies with a primarily Australian focus online could find themselves out of business for no other reason that the Government’s filter has decided to block them, even though they were doing no wrong.

BitTorrent

The Minister now states that P2P filtering technology is in the mix, despite its relative infancy. The question then becomes one of “unwanted.” Will the Government now extend the censorship regime to content presumed to be in breach of copyright as well? We can bet with absolute certainty that the Record and Movie Industries already have a letter on the Ministers desk.

Like general filtering, the question then becomes one of identification and process. How does the Government identify “unwanted material” and given that the blacklist or decision process is secret, what happens when content is incorrectly tagged. As we know the music and record industries don’t have a great track record of respecting existing copyright laws when it comes to accusations (for example, the defense of Fair Use, or Fair Trading in Australia).

Further will P2P network speeds be adversely affected for legal traffic?

Internet Speeds

The Minister notes falsely once again that in other countries running ISP filtering using blacklists that there was no discernable decrease in speed, despite noting the tests here proving otherwise.

What the Minister continues to fail to mention is that the countries running blacklists he mentions were running child porn blacklists in some cases on non-compulsory feeds. What the Minister is proposing is far more reaching than anything any of these countries are running, and every time he quotes those figures it’s a lie of context.

Conclusion

While it’s a positive that the Minister has finally spoken on some of the points raised by the Great Firewall of Australia proposal, it’s what he doesn’t answer that makes the proposal even more scary.

The implementation of this scheme can and will take Australia into an elite club of totalitarian societies that value state control over free speech. The Rudd Government seems hell bent on implementing a scheme with no recourse, that may kill legitimate businesses, and slow internet speeds so that Australia can truly take its place as an online backwater in the digital age.

Today I am ashamed to be Australian, ashamed that my Government should seek to implement draconian 19th century style censorship laws over the marvel of the modern age: The Internet. Free Speech may not be totally dead in Australia yet, but it’s about to be placed on life support. Conroy can say all he wants that this isn’t about free speech, but speech censored by Government isn’t free, no matter which way you want to spin it.

Australian censorship minister tries to censor critic: time to go Conroy

Duncan Riley — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:35:57 +0000

Australia’s ongoing debate over internet censorship has taken an interesting turn, with the Minister in charge of implementing internet censorship attempting to censor a critic of the Government’s proposal.

The Labor Government elected in late 2007 promoted a policy that would make it mandatory for internet service providers to offer a “clean feed” to homes, that blocked content deemed illegal, pornographic and inappropriate. Until recently, Minister Conroy had publicly stated that internet users would be able opt-out of the filter, but in a backflip has since disclosed that the filter will be compulsory, with two levels: one for children, and one for adults. Australia’s strict and sometimes bizarre censorship regime would see online adult games blocked (such as Second Life) because Australia doesn’t offer an R (adult) classification for games, and would also see soft pornography banned online despite being freely available a petrol (gas) stations.

The latest drama was reported by the Fairfax newspapers, who obtained copies of an email, and details of a phone call from the Ministers office directed towards a critic of the Government’s plan.

Mark Newton, an engineer at Australia ISP Internode, has heavily criticized the Government and its filtering policy on popular Australian broadband forum Whirlpool, and went as far as saying that the censorship regime would enable child abuse by ignoring non-web applications which are will not be censored under the plan (the tech behind the censorship plan doesn’t block P2P and chat for example).

The Ministers office wrote to the Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton based on Newton working for Internode, despite his criticism being offered in a personal capacity.

“In your capacity as a board member of the IIA I would like to express my serious concern that a IIA member would be sending out this sort of message. I have also advised [IIA chief executive] Peter Coroneos of my disappointment in this sort of irresponsible behaviour ,”

The email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed on to senior Internode management.

As Asher Moses points out in The Age, the irony in the Ministers response is that the Minister himself has constantly branded critics of the censorship plan as being in favor in child pornography.

Although this shouldn’t come as a great surprise, it is none the less unacceptable in a democratic country that a Minister would seek to censor critics who are doing nothing more than exercising their rights to publicly disagree.

Enough is enough. I call on the Minister to resign, or should he not do so, I call on the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to sack the Minister at the first available opportunity. This abuse of power has no place in a modern, free and democratic society in the 21st century.