Australian Government Censorship 'Worse Than Iran' 516
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?
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct. Australia doesn't have free speech, and never pretended otherwise.
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]
Re:Free speech (Score:2, Informative)
Indeed. Child porn wasn't even illegal in the US until 1977. Why should it be illegal?
If a person under 18 takes a nude/suggestive picture of themselves and sends to their girlfriend/boyfriend, why should that be a felony with the long term repercussions of registering on the sex offenders list?
I suggest it would be better if the images were be perfectly legal, but usable by police as evidence of child abuse if that appears in the picture.
In the US we have gotten way to tolerant of censorship: campaign finance reform, the FCC fining people for showing a female nipple (isn't that sexual discrimination, since a male nipple is perfectly OK?), the FCC fining some people for their speech, child porn, "obscenity", using perfectly innocent words like niggardly [wikipedia.org], and such.
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!
MD5 is not that broken (Score:4, Informative)
Barring a major advance in cryptography theory, at least a millenium. While the MD5 hash function has been broken, in the sense that you can generate two files which collide with eachother, this only works when you generate both files; generating a file to match a particular hash is still infeasible, and if it were feasible, MD5 would be completely abandoned overnight.
Re:Dear Federal Government: Bring It On... (Score:4, Informative)
Just like we have to do already, with the fucking stupid "this video is not available in your country because we're scared of the world outside the United States".
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:2, Informative)
I can't stand to see such blatant deception moderated so highly. Bush and his cabinet pushed for war, and manipulated intelligence to make it look more desirable. No one ever suggested that there was a link between Saddam and 9/11; rather, Bush's administration manipulated evidence to falsely suggest that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He most certainly did not push for diplomacy.
People didn't complain because he had a legitimate reason to attack in those cases. That's the difference.
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.
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.
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?
Re:Parent post is not off-topic (Score:3, Informative)
'Worse Than Iran' is in quotes precisely because it's a quote. Doing this with a headline is fairly common practice in all forms of media.
Re:Come on already (Score:3, Informative)
I for one will be "writing" to Sen. Conroy and Co, once I figure out how one "writes" a "letter". I've also been plugging this [nocleanfeed.com] to everyone that'll listen, which is a surprising amount of people. Once you throw the aforementioned numbers at them, and tell them they're paying for this crackpot's scheme, they start to get rather irate about it.
Re:Communist rises again (Score:2, Informative)
What drugs are you on mate? Obviously not from the great southern land, thats for sure. For starters, Kevin Rudd served the Department of Foreign Affairs and was stationed in China back in the 80's. Hence him speaking Chinese. He also had business dealings with China.
The ALP (Australian Labour Party), as already stated was founded in 1891 NOT 1991 (kinda 100 years difference mate) and is the OLDEST active political party in Australia.
Should I be looking for commies under my bed? OH NO! GOSH! The ALP has close ties with the Unions!!!! That MUST mean they are communist and maybe they will lock up foreign immigrents in desert prisons! Wait - that was the last government (Liberal).
You, my sir, should crawl back under the rock you came out from and stop your FUD.
Re:Australians: Idiots or Morons? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, mostly Australia is filled with vast areas that remain empty because of the harsh environment. The places that have an easy going environment, and regular rain, fringe the coastlines. The interior is harsh and brutal but, at the same time, beautiful. Along Australia's eastern coastline there is subtropical rainforest (both temperate and cool-temperate). Further north there is true tropical rainforest. Along the coasts there are huge areas of coastal heath. In the mountains and in place where rainforest is absent (mostly on rhyolitic soils) there is montane heath. Further south there is the montane snow fields. In Western Australia there is vast plains of heath like vegetation. In the centre where it is HOT and very dry, plants still thrive.
Every inch is inhabited by fauna that adapted and diversified over time to deal with the diverse conditions. Along the north-eastern coast there is the Great Barrier Reef which caused Captain Cook no end of grief--living "rocks".
So to answer your question: I think that Australia is full of life. Hope that helps.
How to walk around censorship (Score:1, Informative)
Re:As a person in AU (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the thing. Have you been keeping track of whether or not Rudd has been keeping his election promises. I have, for the most part. And you know what's really, really scary? He's actually following through on them . Seriously. And this is one of the promises he made, so if history is any guide, he's going to do everything in his power to make it happen.
I don't think anyone knows how to handle this new breed of politician that seems to have ended up PM this time around. I seriously am not sure whether or not I like it yet - on the plus side you can predict what they're going to do once elected, on the minus side stupid promises are made every election that most people don't expect to be followed through on, so having those stupid promises actually realised is fairly disturbing.
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.
Re:Even if it did... (Score:2, Informative)
The issue here is to stop people access child porn.
From what I'm aware the idea is supposed to be about providing internet which is rated as suitable for persons of any age.
That it's degenerated into a 'we have one filter, lets just regulate the rest too' scenario is incredibly worrying and indicative of another agenda.
The fact that the government is hell bent on providing global, mandatory, ISP level filtering is ludicrous considering the claimed goal.
Conservative *CHRISTIAN* (Score:1, Informative)
OP here. I said "Conservative Christian" but the subeditor didn't realize the significance and edited out "Christian" and let's face it: the Labor party is supposed to be left-wing but don't you think censorship on this scale is fare more CONSERVATIVE (with or without the Christian part) than anything ever attempted by the Liberals? The ALP and Liberals are so close on together, the distinction is a moot one. Rudd told is he was going to be a conservative leader, and that's one promise he's kept.
Re:Parent post is not off-topic (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say that's 'forbiding discussion' as you said...
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:3, Informative)
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.
I'm just curious, which resolution are we talking about? This site lists all U.N. Security Council resolutions [casi.org.uk] against Iraq prior to 2004. I don't see anything on September 13, except one drafted in 1990 regarding foodstuffs.
Perhaps this link doesn't have everything, but it seems comprehensive.
Many suggested the security council was immediately ready to approve military action against Iraq if the US wanted to pursue it.
Many? MANY?? Who would this 'many' be? Think tanks? Newspaper Op-Eds? National Security experts?
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.
Cool, I agree with this. Several "leaders" were drawing links to Iraq and they were wrong because they had zero proof.
The sentiments changed greatly because we pursued diplomacy instead of immediately charging in on trumped up charges when support was higher.
We pursued diplomacy? When? As far as I can recall, the U.S. kicked out the weapons inspectors [salon.com] in 2003 before the bombs dropped, because they weren't finding anything. The fact that they were on the verge of announcing that there were no WMD's in Iraq scared the crap out of the Bush administration, as it destroyed any case they had for war. This is further shown when the Bush administration changed their reasoning for war, going from finding WMD's to "ridding the world of a tyrant."
Also, while the 9/11 Panel [msn.com], President Bush [bbc.co.uk], and Paul Wolfowitz [antiwar.com] have publicly denied or questioned that there was any link between Iraq and 9/11, Dick Cheney [chinadaily.com.cn] is still TO THIS DAY spreading this lie in some shape or form.
The Bush Administration tried their hardest to make it seem like they exhausted all of their options, but in reality, they sent in a group of weapons inspectors, Saddam let them in, they couldn't find anything, and so Bush immediately called them ineffective and declared war.
Re:Come on already (Score:4, Informative)
Letter writing info (plagiarised links from one of my mailing lists)
http://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/lobby.html [efa.org.au] and http://www.actnow.com.au/Tool/How_to_write_a_letter_to_a_politician.aspx [actnow.com.au]
Re:"You have completely lost your grip on reality" (Score:1, Informative)
There's 9 million people in the Baghdad metro alone and Iraq has just over 29 million which is countless more people alive than have been killed in the sectarian violence that has wracked the country.
I'd say the deaths are down as a result of coalition and Iraqi operations than just lack of "anyone left to kill". Perhaps the Shia/Sunni segregating themselves made some difference too; the rate is down due to several variables.
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:4, Informative)
Except for the marines the others usally dressed in business suits and work out of local government offices or rent local office space the US does consider them military assignments if only for the paperwork.
Re:Free speech (Score:4, Informative)
Any healthy male up to a certain age will be sexually attracted to a sexually mature female regardless of the age of the latter (and regardless of the local age of consent laws) - it's simply normal. And sexual maturity in humans is long before 18. So there...
Re:Come on already (Score:2, Informative)
The Labour party is capitulating with the Christian Fundamentalist Family First party to ensure their support in the Senate, where they hold the balance of power. Just like the Liberal (conservitive) party did with the Useless and Unused Porn Filter they commissioned.
This time it is a 110 million boondoggle rather than a 30 million dollar boondoggle. It is about as relevant.
The sale of the national telco Telstra cost John Howard's Liberal (conservative) party a few million dollars worth of Anti-Abortion literature, harsher porn laws and the outlawing of internet gambling. The support of the minor right wing cooks will be bought with lip-service and tax dollars, and (hopefully) nothing much will change.
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:4, Informative)
Here you go, every scrap of tangential evidence pertaining, even remotely to WMDs. Clicky [conservapedia.com] If this is the best that the world's right-wingers can come up with, I'd consider Enderandrew throughly debunked.
Re:People get the government they deserve (Score:2, Informative)
This whole situation is atrocious. Sadly all we are able to do is bitch and moan and hope someone who can do something listens. This topic came up on
Sorry to come on and link-drop, but as many people as possible should visit this [nocleanfeed.com] and write to Conroy. If you're lazy at least sign the petition [takingitglobal.org]. 7616 signatures and counting...and its gone up 10 sigs since I started posting.
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]