Wikileaks Pages Added To Australian Internet Blacklist 437
cpudney writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has added several Wikileaks pages to its controversial blacklist. The blacklisted pages contain Denmark's list of banned websites. Simply linking to addresses in ACMA's blacklist attracts an $11,000 per-day fine as the hosts of the popular Australian broadband forum, Whirlpool, discovered last week when they published a forum post that linked to an anti-abortion web-site recently added to ACMA's blacklist. The blacklist is secret, immune to FOI requests and forms the basis of the Australian government's proposed mandatory ISP-level Internet censorship legislation. Wikileaks' response to notification of the blacklisting states: 'The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.'" So Australians aren't allowed to see what it is that the Danes aren't allowed to see?
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
The fine article also states that Thailand's blocklist [wikileaks.org] has been leaked. I thought you'd want to read it for yourself in addition to the Denmark one.
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
Relevent info in amoungst the links...
"The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked. The Opposition has obtained legal advice that "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required", but others have said it may be possible to implement the scheme without legislation. Speaking at a telecommunications conference last week, Senator Conroy urged Australians to have faith in MPs to pass the right legislation."
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:1, Informative)
FYI, you say : "in addition to the Danish one."
instead of: "in addition to the Denmark one."
Regards
A Danish guy
Re:Happiness is Mandatory! (Score:5, Informative)
Lo and behold someone at the ACMA must of looked at the page, seen the pictures (I'm sure you can find much worse in any medical journal mind you) and decided that linking to the page was now illegal. So they sent a notice to the forum's hosting provider (bypassing the forum all together) informing them to take the link down within 24 hours or risk being fined $11K per day. The host then contacted the forum admin who obviously didn't want to put this on his provider took down the link.
I initially thought nothing would come of this ridiculous filter idea because it was just so plain stupid and so many people, including most ISPs, are against it. But I'm not so sure anymore.
No problem... (Score:3, Informative)
It's simple enough to proxy through SSH [suominen.com] and have access once again and (short of blocking SSH traffic) the Though Police can do very little.
Iain.
Fud, Fud, Fud (Score:1, Informative)
If you look in the original Whirlpool thread where someone posted their submitted complaint about Wikileaks site (As a test to see if they would block it) the response they posted is an automated reply to all online ACMA complaints. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1158941&p=44#r873 [whirlpool.net.au]
This whole thing is fud.
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't Australia have a constitutional document guaranteeing freedom of speech?
No.
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:1, Informative)
Not quite. Basically, who holds government is decided by the political party in control of the lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives. In the upper house, the Senate, the Opposition (the coalition of the Liberal and National parties, that's practically acted like they're one and the same party for so long most just call them the Liberals or the coalition now) and minor parties currently hold more seats than the government, allowing them to block legislation.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
"[...]many of Australia's rights are "implied" in the constitution and exist merely through the High Court's "creative" interpretations. Such as the implied right for Political speech in Australian Captial Television Pty Ltd v. Commonwealth (1992) which was also extended in 1994 in Theophanous v. The Herald And Weekly Times. Australia also took an active role in 1948 when drafting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Unfortunately, many attempts to introduce entrenched Human Rights into the constitution such Lionel Murphy in 1973 and 1985 with the Federal attorney-general have failed before they even reached the stage of a referendum."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=436328&cid=22244392 [slashdot.org]
Ironically it may turn out that my comment towards the end was a bit too quick to judge.
Re:Happiness is Mandatory! (Score:2, Informative)
Lots of countries have "freedom of information" laws. They might have different names, but the idea is the same.
Re:Happiness is Mandatory! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fud, Fud, Fud (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe you should read the whole post you linked to...
It's not FUD, sadly...
Finland is way ahead of you (Score:5, Informative)
The Finnish police have already censored the Wikileaks page on Finnish internet censorship; see my comment at the appropriate talk page [wikileaks.com].
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
Really. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Happiness is Mandatory! (Score:2, Informative)
I don't think this had anything to do with child porn, the ACMA merely ruled that the page contained prohibited content. Why pictures of aborted babies were ruled to be prohibited I'm not sure, the pictures certainly weren't something you'd want to see before you sit down to eat, but there was nothing whatsoever illegal about them.
Here's a link to a thread on the forum about the topic and the reply the ACMA sent to the person who submitted the complaint: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1161107#r4 [whirlpool.net.au]
Re:I'm sorry, I must be new here... (Score:5, Informative)
In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
I like that quote, but have never heard it before. It didn't quite ring right for Jefferson, so I dug. According to WikiQuote [wikiquote.org], it's actually from Gerald Ford's address to Congress in August, 1974 [bartleby.com].
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:1, Informative)
the Government can just force whatever they like through, as their thirty-something per cent voting share gives them greater than 50% of seats in Parliament.
Not entirely true. They can force whatever they like through the lower house - House of Commons (assuming their own MPs don't rebel, which in fact they do sometimes). They have no majority in the House of Lords. If the Lords reject a bill it can ping pong back and forth between the Houses until eventually the Commons uses the Parliament act to force it through. However, this takes time (?about a year). As we are now nearly in the last year of this parliament, we are getting to the point where contentious measures cannot necessarily be forced through before the election, and so quite probably cannot be forced through at all (given the likely loss of the current government majority).
Even at other times, when this particular circumstance does not apply, if the Lords feel strongly enough about a particular issue they can cause so much disruption to the government's other business that they can still in effect force the government to drop a contentious measure.
This has saved us a few times from some of the more extreme clauses.
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:2, Informative)
....... In the upper house, the Senate, the Opposition (the coalition of the Liberal and National parties, that's practically acted like they're one and the same party for so long most just call them the Liberals or the coalition now) and minor parties currently hold more seats than the government, allowing them to block legislation.
Just to add ...
both the House of Representatives and the Senate have the same powers the one difference is the Senate can not introduce supply bills.
The House of Representatives is elected using Preferential voting and the Senate is elected using proportional voting.
Re:I'm sorry, I must be new here... (Score:2, Informative)
I really don't understand it. Have we really fallen so far so fast?
No, it's been slow and steady ever since WW2. That was the great war against fascism. Most people forget that the
American industrialists were huge Hitler supporters and one of the reasons they hate FDR so much is that he manipulated us into war against Hitler, instead of adopting his policies.
So after WW2, we immediately started a national policy of rabid anti-leftism, which was exactly Hitler's starting point in creating his philosophy.
Never let yourself forget for one second that Henry Ford, Charles Lindburgh, and the grandfather of our former president, Prescott Bush, as well as much of the rest of the wealthy and powerful in America were rabid Nazis before WW2 and they, and their descendants intellectual and literal are still rabid Nazis to this day.
So there is nothing fast about it. This plan has taken over half a century to come to fruition.
Re:Happiness is Mandatory! (Score:5, Informative)
Score +5 Informative, because there's no score -HolyFuck GougeMyEyesOutWithASpoon.
4chan [4chan.org] Random image boards. Daily flood of random crap.
GNAA [www.gnaa.us] Internet Troll headquarters. Obnoxious text, but I'm not aware of any eye-gouging image content.
kids-in-the-sandbox [kidsinsandbox.net] Some men might scream in pain at the thought of a dildo being shoved INTO their penis.
2girls1cup.mpg [lucabartoli.info] The most famous video you really really don't want to see, unless you have a fetish for watching girls eat soft shit then vomit it into each other's mouths.
efukt [efukt.com] Tag line "Porn you wish you never saw". Assorted video collection: Anorexic sex, a donkey giving itself a blowjob, gay anal fisting nearly to the shoulder, etc etc etc.
Goatse [whitehat.net.nz] The original mammoth asshole you wish you never saw.
And how can we not include TubGirl [forumspile.com] Another image you really wish you never saw, unless of course you think getting blasted in your face with your own fountain of enema spray is really really HOT.
-
Re:Happiness is Mandatory! (Score:3, Informative)
You might be onto something there, actually.
The Southern colonies actually *were* used as prison dumping grounds. Interestingly enough, when the Revoultion happened, that's where the "Loyalists" were concentrated.
The British landed an army in Georgia and marched north, turning over pacified areas to the Loyalists as they went. The problem was that the further north they went, the less Loyalists they found. It didn't work at all once they got to Virginia. The army finally got bottled up in Yorktown, Virginia and had to surrender.
After that the Brits had to find a new prision dumping ground. That's where Austrailia comes in.
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
"Couldn't they just bring you before the Canadian Human Rights Commission? No jury there."
There is no jury there because it isn't a criminal charge, and sure, and just like any Federal tribunal I'd make application for judicial review under Section 18 of the Federal Courts Act. Charter rights clearly take precedence to a tribunal.
But you of course knew that, didn't you?
Re:I'm sorry, I must be new here... (Score:3, Informative)
Shortly after the government banned all useful weapons so that they didn't need to fear the people anymore.
Followed by;
Mod parent up. Note how Orwellian Orwell's home country has also gotten after the effective banning of all firearms and how they're on the verge of banning knives, now, too, in a desperate attempt to legislate civility.
Both posts make valid points.
Why are objections or alternative viewpoints to the idea of governments taking away citizens' means to defend themselves "Flamebait"?
Is it now crimethink to object to being at anyone with a weapons' mercy? Have the media and the progressives really done such a thorough job of convincing everyone they can't trust themselves with sharp, pointy things or things that go "bang!"?
I mean, c'mon! If *you* were to be handed a gun or knife, would you turn into a blood-thirsty, murderous criminal (barring being a criminal for the weapon possession alone)? If you're of the opinion that if you had a gun you wouldn't start knocking over convenience stores or shooting people in the street, why do you think it's different for your neighbor?
Banning weapons won't keep them out of the hands of criminals and won't stop violent crimes from being committed. The only thing that banning law-abiding citizens from owning weapons *will* accomplish is rendering them helpless against the government.
Strat
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting aside, many people who are descended from convicts in Australia actually take pride in it - possibly a colonial equivalent of being descended from people who came across on the Mayflower?
Re:Happiness is Mandatory! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
John Howard; One of the few leaders of the developed world who refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement. Liked to setup off shore detention centers. And do anything the Bush Administration asked him to.
And Kevin Rudd. A moderate politician. And also somewhat of a moralist and a prude (even if he has been to a strip club once).
We chose Rudd. On balance it seemed the better option, after 13 years of the Liberal Party. The idea of mandatory internet filtering is an unfortunate consequence of that decision.
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
Labour have a full majority in the house that the Lib's can't block, (that's what makes them the government of the day). However they need the support of the all the Green's and the two independents (ie a coalition) to pass legislation through the senate that the Lib's cannot block. The Lib's are in the same position but they only have to find one senator to join their coalition if they want to block the legislation.
Xenophon[sic] and Fielding (the two independents) both wanted a mandatory filter, (Xenophon has an anti-gambling platform). Labor set up a "trial" to keep them onside for as long as possible. Xenophon to his credit has seen the glaring human rights error in his plan to ban offshore gambling sites, Fielding has nowhere to go his vote is no longer of much value since the major reform is out of the way ready for the next election, Fielding has shut the fuck up, the Lib's, Labor and Greens are happy because they have collectively screwed "Mr 2%" for winning on their preference fuckery, Rudd is happy because Conroy is showing loyalty instead of challenging him in the back rooms like Costello did with Howard,....get my theory.....it's a YES MINISTER episode if ever I saw one.
Oh and check out the nude pictures of Hanson, unfortunately it's only funny because it's happening to someone I don't like.
Re:Oh great, there goes slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
I'm currently in Australia and can get to the list of banned sites on Wikileaks just fine. I'm at work and we use http://www.macquarietelecom.com/ [macquarietelecom.com]
The mandatory censorship scheme is not yet in place.
The blacklist referred to is the current list that is sent to the maintainers of local PC based child filtering systems. Until December last year, the government provided these free to any interested parents. The uptake was so poor that this scheme was canceled and the current censorship proposal is supposed to work better "to protect the children". The blacklist doesn't do anything else at the moment.
The current blacklist is entirely complaint based. By ACMA's own data, less than half the list is related to child depiction or child pornography. The rest of the list is material that would be legal (MA15+, R etc.) if it was in the broadcast media or it is material that has been refused classification. Refused classification material has not been reviewed by the Classification Board. ACMA assumes it would be prohibited if the Classification Board did actually see it. AFAIK none of the blacklisted material has been put in front of a court that would allow the word illegal to be applied.
If, and when, the mandatory internet censorship scheme is implemented the blacklist will form the basis of the "censored" material. There have been rumours of also using the IWF list or incorporating the IWF list into ACMA's blacklist.