Oz Pirate Party Tells the Elderly How To Bypass the Net Filter 275
mask.of.sanity writes "When Exit International discovered it was earmarked for Australia's Internet filter blacklist, it wanted to ensure its members could access its pro-euthanasia material, but its members share an average age of 70 — not exactly from the tech generation. So Exit International turned to the filter-hating Pirate Party of Australia, which supplied a 'hacker' who taught a crowded room of grandmas and grandpas how to use proxies and advanced VPN tunnels to access Exit International's material — which the Australian government thinks breaches the moral compass of society. Computerworld has the presentation."
DEBtastic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Crazy Australians. (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yes, the other problem we share with most democracies is that we're normally limited to voting for a party, not particular policies. This works okay if there's a party which has policies you mostly agree with, but not so well otherwise. Since both of the major parties seem to be in favour of the Great (But Ineffective) Firewall of Australia, all you can do is vote for one of the minor parties (e.g. the Pirate Party) and hope they get the message about why you didn't vote for them. However, that only makes sense if the filter is a major issue for you -- but more likely, the Liberal party might actually come up with some kind of Health policy before the election and a lot of people will choose to vote based on that, since most people don't care one way or the other if the filter goes ahead (it may not achieve anything worthwhile, but it won't affect me, so what do I care?).
And of course, whichever party wins will believe it has a mandate to put in place a national internet filter with no public oversight.
IMHO, democracies really need to start leveraging technology to provide voting on policies, not on parties. Parties are popularity contests that no longer provide a benefit to the democratic process, IMHO.
Re:Moral campass (Score:3, Informative)
"Good" to current governments when applied to a particular view (and the laws which stem from that view) is a function with the following variables, in order of importance from most to least:
1. Ability to reduce power of the people relative to the government;
2. Value of income from lobbyists;
3. Number of votes from people;
4. Adherence to locally established ideological principles.
1 and 4 are often confused by dabblers.
Remember, boys: we're sufficiently democratic that we got to choose the representatives with these priorities. We Australians, British, Americans, French alike need to stop blaming "them" and start blaming ourselves. Our people want these governments. "I didn't vote for them!" perhaps, but your brother, your mother, your neighbour, your boss and your co-worker did, by and large. Why do you tolerate the people in power, but have nothing to say to or about those who put them in power? Are you worried to speak up at a personal level, where it matters and where you can make a difference?
another step in Australia's euthanasia saga (Score:5, Informative)
The federal government of Australia, due to some sort of religious-conservative influence, has been really, really anti-euthanasia for some time now. The last major time the issue came to a head was in 1995-97, when the Northwest Territory passed the Rights of the Terminall Ill Act 1995 [wikipedia.org], which allowed euthanasia for the terminally ill, under certain conditions and with a lengthy process. The federal government attempted to pressure NT into repealing the law, and when it refused to do so, in 1997, the federal parliament amended NT's territory charter to specifically remove its ability to pass laws relating to euthanasia (this was possible because NT is a territory, not a state, so its powers of self-government can be reduced by simple legislation).
Australian Opposition may back Web Filter (Score:5, Informative)
Like the one how Conroy gave a plum job for the Governent's Broadband network to Mike Kaiser, a Labor Party stooge who was previously convicted of electoral fraud. A $450K a year job without an interview for a guy who knows nothing about IT or comms and who should be sitting in a prison.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/i-recommended-mike-kaiser-for-nbn-job-says-stephen-conroy/story-e6frgczf-1225827983520 [theaustralian.com.au]
Submitted this next story to Firehose but it never ran:
"Stephen Conroy's Internet Filter has received an unexpected boost from the Australian Opposition. Instead of voting down the Filter in the Senate, the Opposition Party Leader Tony Abbot refused to articulate a definitive position on the Filter saying he would "await the final legislation and seek technical assurances from the government on the operations of the filter". Both Tony Abbot and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy who is implementing the Filter have affirmed their strong Christian faith, overwhelming anti-censorship moderates. This raises the question for those opposed to the filter: How can a Democracy work if the only two viable parties both offer the same thing?
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/web-filter-splits-opposition-20100406-rpf7.html [smh.com.au]
At least Conroy recently got a taste of his own medicine when Trend Micro's parliamentary web filter blocked politicians from accessing news commentary and train timetables."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/parliamentary-services-to-probe-trend-micro-filter/story-e6frgakx-1225850540731 [theaustralian.com.au]
In related news ... (Score:3, Informative)
Australians where raided after isp's where required to submit logs of users frequenting known 'proxy' sites.
The office of Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy announced a new partnership with Nokia Siemens and Narus to better understand https and onion routing.
The only way around this "wall of faith" is an encrypted tunnel to a end user in the USA.
As most Australian ISP's limit all usage to 10's of Gigabytes per month your donation of left over bandwidth could help millions of Australian net users gain access to life saving literature and multimedia.
not blocked... yet (Score:3, Informative)
While we still can
http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/faq.htm [internatio...kforce.org]
Re:Tech Generation? (Score:4, Informative)
What percent of 70-year-olds you know would have the first clue about bypassing an Internet filter?
Probably around 25%. Among younger people, maybe 5-10%.
Re:He already copied China (Score:3, Informative)
Are you actually in China? Because I am, and it doesn't seem like you know anything.
All you need to do is use a VPN connection, and there are many free and cheap alternatives easily available on the web. You can get to anything you want that way.... yes, even "sensitive items".
You should try to avoid posting about things that you have absolutely no knowledge of.