Committee Formed To Scrutinize Australia's Web Censorship Law 24
Bismillah (993337) writes A government inquiry has been launched into whether or not Australian authorities are using Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act inappropriately. Last year, the Australian securities watchdog used Section 313 powers to force ISPs to block a quarter of a million web sites — in order to prevent access to just 1,200 sites the authority deemed harmful.
From the inquiry page: "How law enforcement agencies use section 313 to request the disruption of such services is an important public policy question. Section 313 is also used for other purposes, but the Committee will inquire solely into and report on government agency use of section 313 for the purpose of disrupting illegal online services. The Committee invites interested persons and organizations to make submissions addressing the terms of reference by Friday 22 August 2014."
Of course they are ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments, when given a tool like this, will always abuse it.
They'll expand the scope of it. They'll use it for things it was never meant to be used for.
They'll claim up and down they're following the letter and intent of it, while ignoring both.
Once you give a government a tool for this, you can pretty much expect it to be abused. And since increasingly these kinds of powers are also there to benefit the interests of corporations, even more so.