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Australian Government Censorship 'Worse Than Iran'
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:20 PM
from the but-the-people-there-are-so-nice dept.
from the but-the-people-there-are-so-nice dept.
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.
The same reader continues: "Conroy's plan involves censoring at the ISP level to product 'Child-safe' Internet feeds. Initially he said that adults would be able to opt out. He since reversed that position, saying instead they can only go onto an 'Adult-safe' feed censoring 'illegal material', which another senator warned could include 'euthanasia material, politically related material, material about anorexia.' Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia said 'I'm not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure [note: forum membership required] than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.'"
Another anonymous reader suggests this answer to the proposed clone of China's great firewall: "Some of the tested systems use md5 hashes to find illegal content. As proof of concept, how long will it take Slashdot users to create an image with the md5 hash of 5ff742a58529efa02ba00ec8fa2e89bf? This md5 was picked because it is the hash of the current picture of the Prime Minister on his party's web site. A couple of points: The created image should be a jpg. It must be safe for work. It needs the correct MD5. It shouldn't break modern browsers. Its copyright should be free." Any takers?
Another anonymous reader suggests this answer to the proposed clone of China's great firewall: "Some of the tested systems use md5 hashes to find illegal content. As proof of concept, how long will it take Slashdot users to create an image with the md5 hash of 5ff742a58529efa02ba00ec8fa2e89bf? This md5 was picked because it is the hash of the current picture of the Prime Minister on his party's web site. A couple of points: The created image should be a jpg. It must be safe for work. It needs the correct MD5. It shouldn't break modern browsers. Its copyright should be free." Any takers?
Related Stories
Submission: Australian Government Censorship 'Worse than Iran' by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Politics: Australian Government Backing Down On Censorship 116 comments
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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Come on already (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Interesting)
That and Conroy is too busy getting caught rigging Senate hearings over Treasury issues. My worry is he'll push this to get some cover from the other stuff-ups.
Parent
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Informative)
From the summary: "The Government Minister in charge of the censorship plan, Conservative Stephen Conroy"
For the edification of non-Aussies, Stephen Conroy is a federal minister in a left-wing government, the conservatives (known as the Liberal party) are currently in opposition - clear as mud?
Parent
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, he's Labour, but the ALP is more a party of religion[1] and unionism. It has a right wing component that is just as conservative as the official conservative parties, including the Liberals. The summary used a worthless label. The major political parties in Australia have conservative and liberal parts and both would be left-wing to Americans.
[1] There's some correlation between Irish-Catholic-Worker --> Labour and English-Protestant-Manager / Owner --> Liberal / National. Given that most people vote the same way their parents vote, it's something of a self-perpetuating system.
Parent
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Informative)
It worthless because it's incorrect.
To be sure Americans would call him a "moderate" in his own party and Liberal vs Labor doesn't give the voter a lot of choice but the Labor party is definitely to the left of the Liberal party. They were born from the union movement, strongly support social welfare and are no more or less religious than the Liberals.
This traditional view has changed over the last couple of decades mainly because Labor governments have campained on a platform of fiscal conservatisim and social liberalisim. The last real left wing government was in the 70's.
Personally I grossly generalise Australian politics as: White collar = Liberal, Blue Collar = Labor, Farmers = National, Bush Bunnies = Greens.
Parent
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Funny)
An amusing quote from the relevent Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
Parent
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much everyone in Australia knows this is not actually going to get implemented.
I wish I could share your optimism. I'd guess most people in Australia are more-or-less oblivious to the whole thing. "Anything that stops those nasty paedopiraterrorists is a good thing, right?"
Parent
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Interesting)
I voted for them at the last election, based mainly on their other policies. I knew that the filtering was something they were going to do, but if I had of know it was going to be this bad, I would of changed my vote.
Conroy has to get with the times and to stop using the 'nothing to hide' argument (in another light here: if you don't agree with us, they you are a pedo).
I'll point out here, but this is aimed at Enderandrew's post a couple down. Australian's don't have the right to free speech. We have a concept of free speech and there are some laws supporting it, but its nowhere near the level that America does.
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Conroy's flawed argument (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Conroy's flawed argument (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even if it did... (Score:5, Insightful)
What will pedophiles turn to if you take child porn away from their browsers at home?
Personally, if something like this ever went through, I would become more worried about kids on the street.
Put offenders into rehabilitation, or stop their contact or do something with a little common sense. This sort of knee jerk reaction solves nothing and generally creates more trouble than anything.
Parent
Re:Even if it did... (Score:5, Interesting)
The very few studies I've seen about child porn users/viewers is that there's no link between that habit and their personal likelihood to abuse actual children.
That said, they'll find their taste in porn somewhere, its just very unlikely according to current data that they'd go abuse children to get it.
Parent
Re:Even if it did... (Score:5, Interesting)
More to the point, who should they really be pursuing, the deranged viewer or the sadistic photographer. Of course the reality is it has nothing to do with child porn, or terrorism it is all about control. Control what people can read, controlling what people can say, controlling dissent, controlling criticism of those in power of being able to take control of the public mind scape to promote what profits them most.
At least they have giving up of the lie of trying to make an internet designed for adults suitable for toddlers. A bit hard to say content suitable for a 17 year old is also suitable for a 5 year old, precisely to what level do they really intend to censor the internet. Most important of all how much is going to cost, what corporations will be profiting by it, who will be sued for illegally blocking legal sites and, who will profit by illegally blocking legal sites.
Parent
Re:Even if it did... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
You contradict yourself....
"Viewers of adult porn don't usually go out and become rapists do they?", then "your implication that blocking child porn would increase child abuse doesn't seem credible, in fact it is more likely to reduce it. The current situation probably tends to lead pedophiles to believe that their mindset is relatively normal which is far more dangerous to children."
In reality, most paedophiles don't molest children for the same reasons that most men don't rape women. Even those who think that sex with children is inherently harmless avoid sexual contact because of the effects of a socio-legal response for both themselves and children. From Freel (2003 [oxfordjournals.org]):
I suspect that blocking internet access to child pornography would increase rates of child sexual abuse, but not necessarily in the way many would imagine. Digital storage and distribution means that any scannable or digital material can survive forever and be distributed on a much wider scale than would be possible without the internet. This means that there will be less interest in new material being produced, which is obviously a good thing if the material in question is child pornography.
There will clearly be some paedophiles who would abuse children regardless, but they are in a tiny minority of what is a large but hidden demographic of paedophiles.
"The current situation probably tends to lead pedophiles to believe that their mindset is relatively normal which is far more dangerous to children."
What "current situation" are you referring to? I am a paedophile, I know that paedophilia is normal, but I don't molest children. Believing that a fantasy is normal doesn't mean that one considers acting on the fantasy to be acceptable. Freel's research also shows that:
From Hall, et al (1995 [ipce.info]):
"citation needed"
If you're referring to the argument that most child porn viewers don't molest children, see a collection of quotes here [newgon.com]
Parent
That settles it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Parent post is not off-topic (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not FUD. The scheme proposed requires total interception of web traffic. That is more than Iran does, and puts us in the same league as the Great Firewall of China.
The point is not *what* is being filtered, it is that it is being filtered at all. Doing so is incredibly intrusive, has a deadening effect on free speech, and leaves open the door to police-state control of Australians' internet connectivity. We're supposed to be better than that.
As an aside, political speech is protected by the Constitution, according to the High Court of Australia.
Which raises an interesting point about whether this is constitutional, considering that this scheme will inevitably cause blocks to political speech due to false positives.
Parent
Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
It is an absolute. Either you have it 100%, or you don't have it at all. And the idiots who think that censorship stops child pornography neither understand pedophiles nor censorship. It is akin to DRM, where you don't stop the problem (pirates/pedophiles/whatever) and instead punish everyone else.
If you're upset by kiddie porn, then treat the problem. Don't shut off the internet.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're upset by kiddie porn, then treat the problem.
And how exactly do you propose that governments go about doing that?
Because I assure you, they'd be very interested in the answer.
Parent
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
And how exactly do you propose that governments go about doing that? Because I assure you, they'd be very interested in the answer.
Find the people who MAKE it. That's when the damage is done, and the crimes are committed. If some people enjoy looking at such images, that may be repulsive, but no body is getting hurt. If you want to ban that, why allow gore and splatter movies and serial killer novels? Or disturbing (to your) news photos?
Catching sad lonely guys who whack off over images on their PCs does absolutely nothing except make the cops feel they've done something. "500 arrested in Internet pedophile bust" makes a great headline. And except for destroying the lives of the 500, is nothing more than that.
It's exactly like most responses to terrorism, (harassing Muslims, confiscating nail scissors and shampoo) completely futile in addressing the real dangers, while creating immense collateral damage.
Parent
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we have this discussion EVERY time we discuss pedophiles on Slashdot?
A pedophile is simply someone who is *attracted* to children. Doesn't mean they're gonna have sex with a kid. You know, kinda like how the Slashdot crowd is attracted to women, but doesn't have sex with them.
What you want to execute are child *molesters*. note the difference!
Parent
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a very simple reason why the current approach doesn't do us ay good: Prohibition doesn't solve problems, at least not alone. It doesn't help when you prohibit alcohol or drugs - it just pushes the users underground, away from any legal control and it also causes them to commit secondary crimes to cover up their drug usage. It helps even less when you prohibit a part of someone's nature. You can't tell someone that everything he's into is illegal and expect him to magically turn off his sex drive.
As prohibition and the vilification of the affected will not eliminate the problem but rather ensure that virtually all victims end up getting killed afterwards (as well as that there wil be victims in the first place) we really need to rethink some policies. Psychological support, self-help groups and maybe even the distribution of controlled-quality kiddie porn (= drawn or rendered with occasional governmental checks ensuring that no actual children are involved) could help reduce the problem and make paedophiles safe and stable members of society instead of sexually-repressed potential killer rapists.
Of course that would require society to stop knee-jerking, think about a very emotional topic and treat the offenders as human beings - and as long as media like Fox News or the German BILD exist we are guarateed that won't happen, 1 GG be damned*.
It's amazing how the people shouting "someone think of the children" are the ones whose policies are guaranteed to end up hurting children later on.
* A reference to the first paragraph of the German Basic Law ("Grundgesetz"), which is our equivalent to a Constitution. 1 says: "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." If violating someone's dignity was directly punishable, the BILD editorial staff would have a debt of several billion Euros because of that alone.
Parent
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct. Australia doesn't have free speech, and never pretended otherwise.
Parent
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
By that definition, any country that censors anything in the media/press, too, doesn't have free speech.
So then, how to "treat the problem"?
Parent
The real story is more interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The real story here is not that the government wants to censor the internet, but that the government has moved to gag a critic of the plan [smh.com.au].
I think the anonymous reader in the final paragraph of the summary needs to read up a little on the MD5 vulnerability. It's possible to generate two files with the same hash containing a 16-byte block of differing code (where you have no control over the contents of that block in either file), but the rest of the file needs to be identical to the original. That's fine for dynamically generated HTML or even executables where a decision could be made on the contents of the varying block, but doing anything useful with jpeg is a pretty tough ask. Or are they suggesting we brute force it?
Re:The real story is more interesting (Score:5, Informative)
I happen to know Mark Newton, the guy they want to gag.
Good luck with that!
The only way to shut him up would be to hit him with a brick. Good on him!
Parent
Here's my internet filter solution (Score:5, Funny)
People get the government they deserve (Score:5, Insightful)
In a Democracy, the people get the government they deserve.
The idea of censoring the internet, especially for the laughable justification that its "for the children" simply indicates to me that the people of Australia need to start taking responsibility for their government and elect candidates who will not pull this kind of crap.
Don't get fooled into thinking that "the government" did this. It was the people of Australia who elected politicians who are doing it. It is up to the people of Australia to un-elect those politicians, by force if necessary.
Re:People get the government they deserve (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh, yeah. Actually, we voted out the previous Government Most Likely To Censor The Intarwebs in favour of this lot, on the basis that of the two evils this one was lesser.
I mean, sure, I'd love a Greens-majority parliament -- I even voted that way -- but given achievable goals, getting RatBastard Howard the hell out of power was pretty good too.
Now we just have to convince our not-as-bad-as-the-other-lot parliamentarians exactly how stunningly bad this idea is, and that this was not one of the things they have a mandate for.
(Actually, that's one of the things that pisses me off most about the party-based government systems: you can't vote for specific policies, you either pick the Liberal package, or the Labor package (Labour/Tory, Dem/GOP, whatever). If one party is better than the other on most accounts, and has some really stupid ideas as well, then -- given that the other party has its own stupid ideas -- there's no way to tell them "Don't get cocky, we voted for you on the basis that you don't try that"... until it's too late. Or unless there is a huge popular outcry, which is what we're doing, so if you're going to bitch about us 'taking responsibility' for our government, then watch closely: this is what it looks like.)
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Re:People get the government they deserve (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get fooled into thinking that "the government" did this. It was the people of Australia who elected politicians who are doing it. It is up to the people of Australia to un-elect those politicians, by force if necessary.
You know, that's a wonderfully simplistic view of the situation, that doesn't really match reality.
Take Ireland as an example in this topic. The country has a national referendum on whether to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. They say No. The Government wants to ratify it but the people have spoken. However, every single major political party is for the treaty. And they will pass it regardless of the wishes of the people. There is no credible political party which is anti-Lisbon, even though the majority of the population doesn't want Lisbon.
The problem is, people choose a party based on more than just one position. And it can happen that there is simply no other option for the public.
If Australia had a legitimate opposition party, perhaps measures like this would not continue, because the public could go to the other party on this issue. But I suspect Australia doesn't have much of an opposition. Like America, the opposition is only different on wedge issues, like immigrants and gay marriage. This is the illusion of choice.
Like a magician that says "Pick a card, any card" and you wind up picking the one he wants, we are told "Pick a party, any party" and we get shafted.
Parent
My first Federal Election (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi,
First time posting a reply so be kind :)
The Australian Federal Election last year was the first one I had actually voted in (I'm 21).
I am now sad to say that after watching what has occurred in australia in relation to the NBN (National Broadband Network) and this...filter, I am seriously believing that I made the wrong choice in voting for Labor.
This is an absolute disaster...I was always under the impression that no matter who got into power here, neither side would actually attempt such a radical censorship let alone be completely willing to implement it.
Does anyone have any ideas on what little me can do to perhaps turn this around? Writing / calling Conroy or my local MP perhaps?
Kind Regards,
Eliminatrix
Re:My first Federal Election (Score:5, Informative)
Write to Conway directly. If he cops enough backlash from enough people, and from a wide enough cross section of the community, then he's going to have to reconsider his position.
The ABC has an article up about it now, and a lot of people have vented on it http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/24/2399876.htm [abc.net.au] . Contact details for Conway's office is there. It's also suggested that you write to your Federal Member. The more people the better.
Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Ministerial office
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
Tel: 03 9650 1188
Fax: 03 9650 3251
minister@dbcde.gov.au
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/contact [dbcde.gov.au]
Parent
Child pornography? (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what I don't understand: why should the overwhelming majority suffer because of a few perpetrators? And ultimately, blocking child pornography accessibility doesn't help the root of the problem. The offenders will still be there. It's like blocking conventional pornography to fight the sex addicts, but people won't stop being horny just because of that.
Dear Federal Government: Bring It On... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything outside of Australia I'll route over a VPN to a VPS in the states.
As a person in AU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Funny)
We're talking about Australia here. You know, the country that rides along every time the Americans 'go it alone.' But not to worry, we're well ahead of you. We invaded ourselves a couple of years ago to save America the trouble.
Parent
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll be coming to the UK within a month or two and it will be here in the US not too long after that. Don't get too smug:/
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Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Informative)
I also really hate the notion that Americans are war-mongers.
Perhaps not the American people, but the American government (with the consent of the people) certainly seem to be war mongers.
Look how much money they US spends on war compared to the rest of the world [armscontrolcenter.org] (more than the next 45 highest spending countries in the world combined!)
Have a look at the number of countries with a US army base [current.com] (willing hosts or otherwise).
These is not really the actions of a peaceful country.
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Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Interesting)
America is a peaceful country. As long as you do what it tells you to do and don't get in its way. Then, nobody gets hurt!
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Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Insightful)
Not in the weeks immediately following 9/11. On September 13th, the UN Security Council passed yet another resolution against Iraq, even though Iraq hadn't done anything new, but members of the council were drawing conclusions because Saddam publicly praised the terrorists. Many suggested the security council was immediately ready to approve military action against Iraq if the US wanted to pursue it.
Your article suggests people were against the war in 2003, which is true. What I'm suggesting is that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, several leaders were vocally drawing links to Iraq, even though they had no proof.
The sentiments changed greatly because we pursued diplomacy instead of immediately charging in on trumped up charges when support was higher.
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Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:5, Insightful)
Good lord, you don't actually believe any of the crap you just spewed do you?
WMD did exist. Talk about old rhetoric.
Of course they existed -- past tense. That was never at question. That's why we had the UN inspectors there. But as the inspectors told us, and we later found to to be the case, most of those WMDS were either destroyed or not in any condition to where they could actually be used.
Two weeks before we went into Iraq, Bush held a speech saying that we'd go into Iraq in two weeks. Immediately after that, we watched caravans of vehicles leave Baghdad heading for Syria and Colin Powell immediately said that we'd likely never find the huge stockpiles now as they were leaving the country.
That never happened. The announcement that we were going into Iraq was 48 hours before we did, not 2 weeks.
Despite that we still found missiles filled with Sarin gas, documentation for WMD, storage facilities for WMD, training manuals for WMD, etc.
We found chopped up missiles with sarin gas residue in the warheads. That is not the same as what you are suggesting. We found defunct, destroyed, and useless old chemical weapons. We never found ANYTHING that could have been used against us. Ever. That's a fact -- look it up.
And in fact, those destroyed warheads we did find were, right where we were TOLD they would be. It's not like it took any great detective work to find them -- we demanded documentation of all of Iraq's WMD programs before we invaded and amazingly -- they complied. Remember the footage of a table full of thick files, books, and covered in cd-roms that Iraq said was all of the information on all of their WMD programs? Remember how, just hours later, without even taking the necessary time to be able to pretend they had actually read all of that information (even with a team of a hundred people they would have needed a few days to process all of that) the Bush Administration immediately announced to the press that it was incomplete and false?
Yeah, we found documentation on WMDS -- they gave it us when we asked for it. We barked. They rolled over. That was the whole idea behind the resolution giving Bush the authority to go to war. We wanted to show Iraq we were serious so that they could capitulate and we could *avoid* war. Guess what? It worked. And, despite that, we went in anyways because the Bush wanted the war. He said from day 1 he was going into Iraq and he found a way to make it acceptable to the public -- he just had to lie a lot.
Bush won the war without ever going into Iraq, then somehow snatched defeat from the Jaws of victory. Whether this was due to some sort of "democracy will flourish in the middle east" naivete or just "daddy issues" as others have suggested, I have no idea and won't guess -- but the facts are the facts: We won the war in Iraq before it was a war -- and we threw that victory away when we went in.
We never found any documentation on WMDs that suggested the programs were still active. We never found any sort of weapon of mass destruction that wasn't just some rusted old hunk of metal in a scrap yard. We killed far, far more civilians (accidentally, of course -- don't suggest I am suggesting otherwise) than Saddam could have killed if we let him live out the rest of his life (he was clearly already knocking on Deaths door anyways). We've spent nearly a trillion dollars on the war. I won't even tell you all the ridiculous things we could do with that much money. It's 25 times the ammount we spend on education per year, and we spend more than anyone else. Don't even get me started on the cost to our troops. There's simply no metric by which you can look at this war, or the Bush administration by extension, and not conclude that it has been an unmitigated disaster for this country. It disgusts me, as does your willful ignorance and gleeful repetition of republican talking points and right-wing radio misinformation.
Parent
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:5, Insightful)
A serious shortfalling of Western democracies is that if the government (and associated media) manage to misinform the majority of the public to believe a lie, they are allowed and expected to act on that lie.
If I hadn't wasted all my modpoints on a debate of the finer points of copyright yesterday, you would certainly be getting a +10 True.
Parent
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:"You have completely lost your grip on reality" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in this particular instance, its just complete and utter garbage.
There's about 1 million people living in detroit and about 400 murders per year. That's fairly bad.
Here's a link to 2006's muder rate: http://detroit.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm [areaconnect.com] -- it was actually less than 400 in 2007. So we'll just say, about 400.
Now what someone is saying, when they make up a bullshit statistic like this one, is that there were fewer than 400 SOLDIERS killed. This is bullshit for a couple of reasons. This would be like comparing the number of police killed in Detroit to soldiers dead in Iraq, not civilians to soldiers. But moreover, there are about 8 times more people in Detroit than soldiers in ALL OF IRAQ -- and far fewer than that in just Baghdad. So of course, on a per capita basis, its just nonsense to say its "more dangerous" in detroit. Complete nonsense.
There have been over 29 civilians CONFIRMED as killed in the past WEEK (from last friday to this thursday) in baghdad. Just one week. At that rate, we're looking at about 1500 per year. Way higher than Detroit in a city with a much smaller population.
It turns out, that's a *GOOD* week. Check this out
From April 14th to 31st August, 2,846 violent deaths were recorded by the Baghdad city morgue. When corrected for pre-war death rates in the city a total of at least 1,519 excess violent deaths in Baghdad emerges from reports based on the morgue's records.
And last year? Try over 20 thousand confirmed civilian deaths. It's no wonder the fighting has died down since the surge -- there's hardly anyone left to kill. All the neighborhoods are now completely segregated because anyone who didn't flee is dead. That's one way to put an end to ethnic infighting -- not the one I would have chosen.
Nevertheless, suggesting the murder rate in Baghdad is less than Detriot for any period of time in the last 50 years is just a ridiculous joke. Like I said, the only way you could come even close to such a ridiculous number is if you ONLY COUNT American troop deaths in Baghdad. The most up to date information I could find suggests that we have roughly about 13,500 of our troops in Iraq in Baghdad. This falls WAY short of the 1 million people in Detroit. So saying that fewer of those 1 million people were shot than of the 13,500 troops is saying very, very, very little. It's per capita that matters here and that clearly has been ignored.
That's how easy it is to make a statistic lie -- thus explaining your Twain quote.
Parent
Re:posting link to unrelated penny arcade comic (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow, I don't think you've thought your cunning plan all the way through.
Parent
Re:MD5 is not that broken (Score:5, Insightful)
True enough. But as a filtering mechanism it clearly shouldn't even be an option. How hard would it be to write an apache module that adds a random seed to every file served? Seriously.
Parent
Re:Communist rises again (Score:5, Informative)
You're quite incorrect.
The Australian Labor Party was founded in 1891 as a centre-left, social democratic party representing the trade union movement. The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920, never found electoral success and disbanded in 1991.
Parent
Re:Communist rises again (Score:5, Funny)
This is an absolute and complete fabrication. Nothing but pure slanderous bullshit.
Bullshit? On the internet? Are you SURE? Wow. I'm shocked.
Parent