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?
Come on already (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Interesting)
That and Conroy is too busy getting caught rigging Senate hearings over Treasury issues. My worry is he'll push this to get some cover from the other stuff-ups.
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:Come on already (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, he's Labour, but the ALP is more a party of religion[1] and unionism. It has a right wing component that is just as conservative as the official conservative parties, including the Liberals. The summary used a worthless label. The major political parties in Australia have conservative and liberal parts and both would be left-wing to Americans.
[1] There's some correlation between Irish-Catholic-Worker --> Labour and English-Protestant-Manager / Owner --> Liberal / National. Given that most people vote the same way their parents vote, it's something of a self-perpetuating system.
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:Come on already (Score:5, Funny)
An amusing quote from the relevent Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come on already (Score:4, Insightful)
Like speed limits in most of America. Let's make every citizen a criminal and choose which ones we want to target. We need fewer laws, more strongly enforced.
Re:Come on already (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much everyone in Australia knows this is not actually going to get implemented.
I wish I could share your optimism. I'd guess most people in Australia are more-or-less oblivious to the whole thing. "Anything that stops those nasty paedopiraterrorists is a good thing, right?"
Re: (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: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:Come on already (Score:5, Interesting)
I voted for them at the last election, based mainly on their other policies. I knew that the filtering was something they were going to do, but if I had of know it was going to be this bad, I would of changed my vote.
Conroy has to get with the times and to stop using the 'nothing to hide' argument (in another light here: if you don't agree with us, they you are a pedo).
I'll point out here, but this is aimed at Enderandrew's post a couple down. Australian's don't have the right to free speech. We have a concept of free speech and there are some laws supporting it, but its nowhere near the level that America does.
Conroy's flawed argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you can forget the technical effectiveness arguments though. The government's response is "does that mean we shouldn't try?" They've got nothing to lose.
Re:Conroy's flawed argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come on already (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if it did... (Score:5, Insightful)
What will pedophiles turn to if you take child porn away from their browsers at home?
Personally, if something like this ever went through, I would become more worried about kids on the street.
Put offenders into rehabilitation, or stop their contact or do something with a little common sense. This sort of knee jerk reaction solves nothing and generally creates more trouble than anything.
Re:Even if it did... (Score:5, Interesting)
The very few studies I've seen about child porn users/viewers is that there's no link between that habit and their personal likelihood to abuse actual children.
That said, they'll find their taste in porn somewhere, its just very unlikely according to current data that they'd go abuse children to get it.
Re:Even if it did... (Score:5, Interesting)
More to the point, who should they really be pursuing, the deranged viewer or the sadistic photographer. Of course the reality is it has nothing to do with child porn, or terrorism it is all about control. Control what people can read, controlling what people can say, controlling dissent, controlling criticism of those in power of being able to take control of the public mind scape to promote what profits them most.
At least they have giving up of the lie of trying to make an internet designed for adults suitable for toddlers. A bit hard to say content suitable for a 17 year old is also suitable for a 5 year old, precisely to what level do they really intend to censor the internet. Most important of all how much is going to cost, what corporations will be profiting by it, who will be sued for illegally blocking legal sites and, who will profit by illegally blocking legal sites.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue here is to stop people access child porn. While I hate to be a black sheep, if you take speed away from a speed addict, they turn to meth or cocaine. You take ecstasy away from an addict and they turn to heroin. What will pedophiles turn to if you take child porn away from their browsers at home? Personally, if something like this ever went through, I would become more worried about kids on the street. Put offenders into rehabilitation, or stop their contact or do something with a little common sense. This sort of knee jerk reaction solves nothing and generally creates more trouble than anything.
A similar filter has been applied in Finland a year or two ago, and just a month ago there was an article that police investigations on child abuse have increased dramatically. Now there was no mention of a link to the filtering in these child abuse articles, and I have doubts that the filtering is actually causing this rise, but it's definately an interesting coincidence.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
citation needed,
Whats an ecstasy addict? ok there are people who will snort and sniff anything going but they tend to be a minority. Most recreational drug users wouldn't go near heroin.
What will Peodophiles turn too if they can't get child porn through their browser?
The kids knicker section in a catalog maybe.
It's still wanking material to them i would have thought.
Viewers of adult porn don't usually go out and become rapists do they?
Most people are aware of the potential consequences of breaking t
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]
Re:Even if it did... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So we should ignore everything that we don't think they'll actually have the balls to do? Sorry, but that logic makes no sense to me. The entire reason it won't get done is because people will get so outraged over it. If nobody says anything, they'll figure nobody cares and do it.
Re:Come on already (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a sop to the Family First party Senator, Fielding. His mob are convinced porn is the Devil's Work. Idle playthings and all that.
To pass legislation in the Senate, the government needs its votes, plus the Greens, plus Nick Xenophon, plus Fielding. This is their way of trying to suck up to Fielding.
The last round of internet censorship laws came about when the previous government was sucking up to another god-bothering Senator who held the balance of power in his own right.
While the Greens are likely to strike this legislation down, it's important to stop it being introduced in the first place. You never know when Family First might get the balance of power -- so you want to teach major-party politicians the lesson that the Internet is a no-touch subject, thus stopping it from ever gaining traction in the *lower house*.
That's why the EFF campaign is important.
That settles it! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent post is not off-topic (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, I disagree with the title. Forced filtering of the internet is nothing like government control of political speach. If the Australian government were forbidding discus
Re: (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:Parent post is not off-topic (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not FUD. The scheme proposed requires total interception of web traffic. That is more than Iran does, and puts us in the same league as the Great Firewall of China.
The point is not *what* is being filtered, it is that it is being filtered at all. Doing so is incredibly intrusive, has a deadening effect on free speech, and leaves open the door to police-state control of Australians' internet connectivity. We're supposed to be better than that.
As an aside, political speech is protected by the Constitution, according to the High Court of Australia.
Which raises an interesting point about whether this is constitutional, considering that this scheme will inevitably cause blocks to political speech due to false positives.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Australian government were forbidding discussion of certain key political figures, or of certain religions, the claim world hold
Aren't they? How do you know? They may claim they're not filtering that, but how do you know for sure? Since Connors is already comparing his critics to child pornography supporters, the step to block his critics is a very small one indeed.
Re:Parent post is not off-topic (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say that's 'forbiding discussion' as you said...
Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
It is an absolute. Either you have it 100%, or you don't have it at all. And the idiots who think that censorship stops child pornography neither understand pedophiles nor censorship. It is akin to DRM, where you don't stop the problem (pirates/pedophiles/whatever) and instead punish everyone else.
If you're upset by kiddie porn, then treat the problem. Don't shut off the internet.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're upset by kiddie porn, then treat the problem.
And how exactly do you propose that governments go about doing that?
Because I assure you, they'd be very interested in the answer.
Re:Free speech (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish I had the answer, but if I were in charge I'd start with medical and psychological studies into pedophilia, and while sex offenders are the group most likely to repeat their crimes once released from prison.
Locally I keep seeing cities passing laws saying sex offenders can't live in their towns. I see sex registry laws that are doubly-unconstitutional (ex post facto and double-jeopardy). The current plan seems to be shoving sex offenders away and pretending like that will solve anything.
Chemical castration has worked in extreme cases, and if there is a medical issue with these offenders (biological or psychological) then you will most likely need to treat that problem. Instead of publicly vilifying these people, encourage them to seek out medical treatment anonymously before they victimize others.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a very simple reason why the current approach doesn't do us ay good: Prohibition doesn't solve problems, at least not alone. It doesn't help when you prohibit alcohol or drugs - it just pushes the users underground, away from any legal control and it also causes them to commit secondary crimes to cover up their drug usage. It helps even less when you prohibit a part of someone's nature. You can't tell someone that everything he's into is illegal and expect him to magically turn off his sex drive.
As prohibition and the vilification of the affected will not eliminate the problem but rather ensure that virtually all victims end up getting killed afterwards (as well as that there wil be victims in the first place) we really need to rethink some policies. Psychological support, self-help groups and maybe even the distribution of controlled-quality kiddie porn (= drawn or rendered with occasional governmental checks ensuring that no actual children are involved) could help reduce the problem and make paedophiles safe and stable members of society instead of sexually-repressed potential killer rapists.
Of course that would require society to stop knee-jerking, think about a very emotional topic and treat the offenders as human beings - and as long as media like Fox News or the German BILD exist we are guarateed that won't happen, 1 GG be damned*.
It's amazing how the people shouting "someone think of the children" are the ones whose policies are guaranteed to end up hurting children later on.
* A reference to the first paragraph of the German Basic Law ("Grundgesetz"), which is our equivalent to a Constitution. 1 says: "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." If violating someone's dignity was directly punishable, the BILD editorial staff would have a debt of several billion Euros because of that alone.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
And how exactly do you propose that governments go about doing that? Because I assure you, they'd be very interested in the answer.
Find the people who MAKE it. That's when the damage is done, and the crimes are committed. If some people enjoy looking at such images, that may be repulsive, but no body is getting hurt. If you want to ban that, why allow gore and splatter movies and serial killer novels? Or disturbing (to your) news photos?
Catching sad lonely guys who whack off over images on their PCs does absolutely nothing except make the cops feel they've done something. "500 arrested in Internet pedophile bust" makes a great headline. And except for destroying the lives of the 500, is nothing more than that.
It's exactly like most responses to terrorism, (harassing Muslims, confiscating nail scissors and shampoo) completely futile in addressing the real dangers, while creating immense collateral damage.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually some studies have shown that a sexual attraction to children occurs in something like 2-10% of the population at large (depending on the study) and attraction to minors would be a much larger subset than that.
If you disagree, I'm assuming you think everyone who thought Britney Spears was sexy at 17 is a pervert. Ditto for those who watched Rihanna's sexy videos at 16-17 yrs old. Not to mention the age of most models you see in magazines (stop assuming, look it up).
I don't believe I've ever come a
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:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we have this discussion EVERY time we discuss pedophiles on Slashdot?
A pedophile is simply someone who is *attracted* to children. Doesn't mean they're gonna have sex with a kid. You know, kinda like how the Slashdot crowd is attracted to women, but doesn't have sex with them.
What you want to execute are child *molesters*. note the difference!
Re:Free speech (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only that, but child pornographers might be neither pedophiles nor child molesters, but simple profiteers. All the medical and psychological screening in the world won't flush them out.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct. Australia doesn't have free speech, and never pretended otherwise.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
By that definition, any country that censors anything in the media/press, too, doesn't have free speech.
So then, how to "treat the problem"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I will agree that our sensibilities are out of whack that we treat sex as the ultimate evil in the media, while violence is acceptable. A game like Manhunt where you mock-stab with the Wii-mote is fine, but a sex mini-game that occurs with clothed video-game models and is only unlocked with modification is worthy of Congressional attention.
That being said, the production of kiddie porn involves victimizing the child.
The real story is more interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The real story here is not that the government wants to censor the internet, but that the government has moved to gag a critic of the plan [smh.com.au].
I think the anonymous reader in the final paragraph of the summary needs to read up a little on the MD5 vulnerability. It's possible to generate two files with the same hash containing a 16-byte block of differing code (where you have no control over the contents of that block in either file), but the rest of the file needs to be identical to the original. That's fine for dynamically generated HTML or even executables where a decision could be made on the contents of the varying block, but doing anything useful with jpeg is a pretty tough ask. Or are they suggesting we brute force it?
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!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well their efforts so far have been successful, in a Canberra kind of way.
Here's my internet filter solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When I got to step 3, I let the water slip through my fingers in order to pick up the blue dye dropper. None of the blue dye made it through my fingers. Do I lose?
People get the government they deserve (Score:5, Insightful)
In a Democracy, the people get the government they deserve.
The idea of censoring the internet, especially for the laughable justification that its "for the children" simply indicates to me that the people of Australia need to start taking responsibility for their government and elect candidates who will not pull this kind of crap.
Don't get fooled into thinking that "the government" did this. It was the people of Australia who elected politicians who are doing it. It is up to the people of Australia to un-elect those politicians, by force if necessary.
Re:People get the government they deserve (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh, yeah. Actually, we voted out the previous Government Most Likely To Censor The Intarwebs in favour of this lot, on the basis that of the two evils this one was lesser.
I mean, sure, I'd love a Greens-majority parliament -- I even voted that way -- but given achievable goals, getting RatBastard Howard the hell out of power was pretty good too.
Now we just have to convince our not-as-bad-as-the-other-lot parliamentarians exactly how stunningly bad this idea is, and that this was not one of the things they have a mandate for.
(Actually, that's one of the things that pisses me off most about the party-based government systems: you can't vote for specific policies, you either pick the Liberal package, or the Labor package (Labour/Tory, Dem/GOP, whatever). If one party is better than the other on most accounts, and has some really stupid ideas as well, then -- given that the other party has its own stupid ideas -- there's no way to tell them "Don't get cocky, we voted for you on the basis that you don't try that"... until it's too late. Or unless there is a huge popular outcry, which is what we're doing, so if you're going to bitch about us 'taking responsibility' for our government, then watch closely: this is what it looks like.)
Re:People get the government they deserve (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get fooled into thinking that "the government" did this. It was the people of Australia who elected politicians who are doing it. It is up to the people of Australia to un-elect those politicians, by force if necessary.
You know, that's a wonderfully simplistic view of the situation, that doesn't really match reality.
Take Ireland as an example in this topic. The country has a national referendum on whether to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. They say No. The Government wants to ratify it but the people have spoken. However, every single major political party is for the treaty. And they will pass it regardless of the wishes of the people. There is no credible political party which is anti-Lisbon, even though the majority of the population doesn't want Lisbon.
The problem is, people choose a party based on more than just one position. And it can happen that there is simply no other option for the public.
If Australia had a legitimate opposition party, perhaps measures like this would not continue, because the public could go to the other party on this issue. But I suspect Australia doesn't have much of an opposition. Like America, the opposition is only different on wedge issues, like immigrants and gay marriage. This is the illusion of choice.
Like a magician that says "Pick a card, any card" and you wind up picking the one he wants, we are told "Pick a party, any party" and we get shafted.
My first Federal Election (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi,
First time posting a reply so be kind :)
The Australian Federal Election last year was the first one I had actually voted in (I'm 21).
I am now sad to say that after watching what has occurred in australia in relation to the NBN (National Broadband Network) and this...filter, I am seriously believing that I made the wrong choice in voting for Labor.
This is an absolute disaster...I was always under the impression that no matter who got into power here, neither side would actually attempt such a radical censorship let alone be completely willing to implement it.
Does anyone have any ideas on what little me can do to perhaps turn this around? Writing / calling Conroy or my local MP perhaps?
Kind Regards,
Eliminatrix
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]
Child pornography? (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what I don't understand: why should the overwhelming majority suffer because of a few perpetrators? And ultimately, blocking child pornography accessibility doesn't help the root of the problem. The offenders will still be there. It's like blocking conventional pornography to fight the sex addicts, but people won't stop being horny just because of that.
Dear Federal Government: Bring It On... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything outside of Australia I'll route over a VPN to a VPS in the states.
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".
Email I wrote to the minister earlier today: (Score:4, Interesting)
Two fundamental design features of the multiple networks that make up the internet are "transparent encapsulation", and "path redundancy". The upshot of this design is that no filtering mechanism can prevent *simple* circumvention. None. It is simply not possible given the way in which the technology is implemented.
For the case of parents attempting to stop children looking at pornography this is not a drastic issue, as children likely will not know how this circumvention can be achieved.
Once you are attempting to filter out "illegal content" however, you have entered a whole new realm of pointlessness. If someone is attempting to access illegal material on the internet, they are presumably already technically savvy enough to find such material, and so will have no problems at all circumventing any filtering mechanism.
The point being, the government is currently opening itself up to vocal criticism over the implementation of a filter that will not actually do anything. That does not seem particularly clever.
Presumably it will get worse once the money has been wasted on the filter and videos explaining how to circumvent it start popping up on youtube.
I sincerely urge you to rethink this technologically naive and fundamentally flawed plan.
end
I realise some of this is mostly just magical handwaving. But I was trying to get my point across.
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:MD5 is not that broken (Score:5, Insightful)
True enough. But as a filtering mechanism it clearly shouldn't even be an option. How hard would it be to write an apache module that adds a random seed to every file served? Seriously.
Re:MD5 is not that broken (Score:4, Interesting)
We're a lot more advanced than you might think:
http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/SoftIntCodeSign/ [win.tue.nl]
This generates two programs (actually valid Win32 Executables compiled from source) and modifies them to have the same MD5. So you have "good.exe" and "evil.exe" of your own crafting with identical hashes but VERY different content.
Let's say you use MD5 to implement a "known good" program list in your software firewall/antivirus program, etc. You've just been compromised because now I can distribute a "good" program that a user allows after they have verified it's authenticity and then I can generate an "evil" program with the same hash that deletes his hard drive.
MD5 is dead.
As a person in AU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (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 o
Shutting Down Torrents (Score:4, Interesting)
According to reports: http://forums.mactalk.com.au/20/56127-coming-soon-censored-internet-15.html#post668070 [mactalk.com.au]
The list of excluded sites used in testing includes sites like: "The Pirate Bay, demonoid, mininova, Erowid (the web's best known haven of drug info) and 4chan"
Australia's 3 commercial tv stations are struggling under the load of huge debts and poor revenue, time to throw them a bone I guess.
Australia: The Iran of Australasia (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll notice I said "more technical interference", even our communications minister isn't as bad as the Ayatollah. :)
The quote appeared in the paper here [smh.com.au].
For anyone interested check out, our (Electronic Frontiers Australia) campaign site [nocleanfeed.com].
Australian Liberal Party are opposing scheme (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what the Opposition Broadband Minister said:
"Like anything in life it's about finding the right balance between the basic freedoms we all expect to have in a democracy like ours while at the same time wanting to protect minors from exposure to material we prefer they didn't see. We think the arrangements that we had in place when we left office struck that balance. We'll watch the government's trials of this and we are prepared to consider what comes out of those trials. But our presumption is this cannot and will not work, it's very heavy-handed." http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;879301684;fp;4194304;fpid;1;pf;1 [computerworld.com.au]
As for Conrad, I can't believe this guy. This is his testimony at a senate estimates hearing:
Senator Conroy: I trust you are not suggesting that people should have access to child p-rnography.
Senator Ludlam: No. That is why I was interested in asking about the law enforcement side of it as well.
Reply from Conroy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Funny)
We're talking about Australia here. You know, the country that rides along every time the Americans 'go it alone.' But not to worry, we're well ahead of you. We invaded ourselves a couple of years ago to save America the trouble.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We're talking about Australia here. You know, the country that rides along every time the Americans 'go it alone.'
And in all seriousness, we do appreciate it. You Brits, too. I think, in part, that's also why we're concerned when we hear about some of these Orwellian schemes your governments are scheming up. Er, not that ours is so shining and pure, of course.
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll be coming to the UK within a month or two and it will be here in the US not too long after that. Don't get too smug:/
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, nobody argued when we went to war because Bush _lied to us_. They knew Saddam had nothing to do with it. In fact, if you go back and look at their speeches and documents, they were _extremely_ careful to never specifically say that Saddam was responsible - they just implied it. Something like 80% of the soldiers in Iraq _still_ think they're there because Saddam was behind 9/11.
And speaking of Clinton, Bush knew 9/11 was coming. Clinton's administration warned him and his administration about it. So what was one of the first things he did when he got in office? Severely downsized our counter-terrorism forces. He knew it was coming, and he actively worked to make it easier for them to do it. And then, when it happened, he lied to the American people and to Congress to get them to approve what he wanted. Bush never pushed for diplomacy, Bush used the attacks to get what he wanted - and he still is. He pushed for diplomacy and intel? Really? He booted the UN out! How is that pushing for diplomacy and intel? He did just enough that he could say he tried. He did just enough so that people like you would be able to say he did something.
And yes, Clinton did some bad things too. I'm not a huge fan of him either. But nothing he did even begins to compare to Bush.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoa whoa. Maybe US citizens did want to go to war. But I distinctly remember *world* citizens - even the ones from countries that did send troops - being overwhelmingly against the war.
Here's what Europeans thought for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2747175.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Where's your proof? And you accuse
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Insightful)
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. Many suggested the security council was immediately ready to approve military action against Iraq if the US wanted to pursue it.
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.
The sentiments changed greatly because we pursued diplomacy instead of immediately charging in on trumped up charges when support was higher.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You assume the plan was to benefit Americans by invading Irak. It was quite the opposite, the plan was to use tax money to finance operations while profits went to private companies, this is not a new concept.
Understand that modern warfare is ultimately governed by profit of the few at the expense of the masses, the economy was artificially inflated to mask the cost of the war.
Sadly, it is only when personal pockets of comfort are affected that the public at large start to question their government, when is
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The original poster claimed we wanted to invade nations with oil.
That is a fallacy as we didn't get the oil, nor do we go around invading everyone with oil.
Those private corporations are still worse off today with the war, since the economy was worsened to the point that their stock values have plummeted.
Money does often motivate war, but not always. WWI was inspired by overall greed since the old empires were breaking up, and everyone saw an opportunity to redraw the map, which pretty much has happened in
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:A friendly warning from an American (Score:5, Interesting)
America is a peaceful country. As long as you do what it tells you to do and don't get in its way. Then, nobody gets hurt!
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
We haven't financially gained from invading Iraq.
Define we. I heard quite a few companies friendly with the Bush administration profited quite well.
People seem to forget that polls showed that US citizens, as well as many of the world supported going into Iraq immediately after 9/11 on a false premise that Saddam had ties to 9/11.
Which Bush didn't do. Unless your definition of immediately means waiting 2 years.
Clinton while in office bombed 4 different countries without pursuing diplomacy in any of those cases.
Did he do so under false pretences?
Re:A friendly warning from an American (Score:4, Insightful)
Those private defense contractors are still making a boat load of cash off the Iraq invasion. Good luck claiming nobody made money off Iraq.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That shows just how stupid the Bush administration is. They didn't even get the oil they went to war over. Fucking useless twats.
And, through their fucked-up policies, they completely lost to the Western market the greatest reserve of oil in the world, in the Caspian Basin.
Thanks a lot Bush!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have completely lost your grip on reality.
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"You have completely lost your grip on reality" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in this particular instance, its just complete and utter garbage.
There's about 1 million people living in detroit and about 400 murders per year. That's fairly bad.
Here's a link to 2006's muder rate: http://detroit.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm [areaconnect.com] -- it was actually less than 400 in 2007. So we'll just say, about 400.
Now what someone is saying, when they make up a bullshit statistic like this one, is that there were fewer than 400 SOLDIERS killed. This is bullshit for a couple of reasons. This would be like comparing the number of police killed in Detroit to soldiers dead in Iraq, not civilians to soldiers. But moreover, there are about 8 times more people in Detroit than soldiers in ALL OF IRAQ -- and far fewer than that in just Baghdad. So of course, on a per capita basis, its just nonsense to say its "more dangerous" in detroit. Complete nonsense.
There have been over 29 civilians CONFIRMED as killed in the past WEEK (from last friday to this thursday) in baghdad. Just one week. At that rate, we're looking at about 1500 per year. Way higher than Detroit in a city with a much smaller population.
It turns out, that's a *GOOD* week. Check this out
From April 14th to 31st August, 2,846 violent deaths were recorded by the Baghdad city morgue. When corrected for pre-war death rates in the city a total of at least 1,519 excess violent deaths in Baghdad emerges from reports based on the morgue's records.
And last year? Try over 20 thousand confirmed civilian deaths. It's no wonder the fighting has died down since the surge -- there's hardly anyone left to kill. All the neighborhoods are now completely segregated because anyone who didn't flee is dead. That's one way to put an end to ethnic infighting -- not the one I would have chosen.
Nevertheless, suggesting the murder rate in Baghdad is less than Detriot for any period of time in the last 50 years is just a ridiculous joke. Like I said, the only way you could come even close to such a ridiculous number is if you ONLY COUNT American troop deaths in Baghdad. The most up to date information I could find suggests that we have roughly about 13,500 of our troops in Iraq in Baghdad. This falls WAY short of the 1 million people in Detroit. So saying that fewer of those 1 million people were shot than of the 13,500 troops is saying very, very, very little. It's per capita that matters here and that clearly has been ignored.
That's how easy it is to make a statistic lie -- thus explaining your Twain quote.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually Bill Clinton came to Bush's defense saying that for years first hand he saw plenty of intel proving the WMD existed.
Don't you mean he saw plenty of Intel proving that *AMD* existed?
And apologies for straying on-topic, but... you know it's time to move countries when your supposedly liberal (but in reality, only barely left of central) government starts introducing socially conservative policies such as this. Can we please have the Greens in power now? Thanks.
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:4, Insightful)
Then where is it? That's right, it got away so no evidence is required!
We can be really thankful that Iraq had already been bombed into the third world over the course of a decade and that there were was no nerve gas to use on the troops. The reasons to go in were many, complicated and in IMHO mostly stupid but the WMD bullshit was a big PR campaign masquerading as intelligence information. Powell's presentation to the UN on the subject probably put back international trust about twenty years.
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:5, Insightful)
Good lord, you don't actually believe any of the crap you just spewed do you?
WMD did exist. Talk about old rhetoric.
Of course they existed -- past tense. That was never at question. That's why we had the UN inspectors there. But as the inspectors told us, and we later found to to be the case, most of those WMDS were either destroyed or not in any condition to where they could actually be used.
Two weeks before we went into Iraq, Bush held a speech saying that we'd go into Iraq in two weeks. Immediately after that, we watched caravans of vehicles leave Baghdad heading for Syria and Colin Powell immediately said that we'd likely never find the huge stockpiles now as they were leaving the country.
That never happened. The announcement that we were going into Iraq was 48 hours before we did, not 2 weeks.
Despite that we still found missiles filled with Sarin gas, documentation for WMD, storage facilities for WMD, training manuals for WMD, etc.
We found chopped up missiles with sarin gas residue in the warheads. That is not the same as what you are suggesting. We found defunct, destroyed, and useless old chemical weapons. We never found ANYTHING that could have been used against us. Ever. That's a fact -- look it up.
And in fact, those destroyed warheads we did find were, right where we were TOLD they would be. It's not like it took any great detective work to find them -- we demanded documentation of all of Iraq's WMD programs before we invaded and amazingly -- they complied. Remember the footage of a table full of thick files, books, and covered in cd-roms that Iraq said was all of the information on all of their WMD programs? Remember how, just hours later, without even taking the necessary time to be able to pretend they had actually read all of that information (even with a team of a hundred people they would have needed a few days to process all of that) the Bush Administration immediately announced to the press that it was incomplete and false?
Yeah, we found documentation on WMDS -- they gave it us when we asked for it. We barked. They rolled over. That was the whole idea behind the resolution giving Bush the authority to go to war. We wanted to show Iraq we were serious so that they could capitulate and we could *avoid* war. Guess what? It worked. And, despite that, we went in anyways because the Bush wanted the war. He said from day 1 he was going into Iraq and he found a way to make it acceptable to the public -- he just had to lie a lot.
Bush won the war without ever going into Iraq, then somehow snatched defeat from the Jaws of victory. Whether this was due to some sort of "democracy will flourish in the middle east" naivete or just "daddy issues" as others have suggested, I have no idea and won't guess -- but the facts are the facts: We won the war in Iraq before it was a war -- and we threw that victory away when we went in.
We never found any documentation on WMDs that suggested the programs were still active. We never found any sort of weapon of mass destruction that wasn't just some rusted old hunk of metal in a scrap yard. We killed far, far more civilians (accidentally, of course -- don't suggest I am suggesting otherwise) than Saddam could have killed if we let him live out the rest of his life (he was clearly already knocking on Deaths door anyways). We've spent nearly a trillion dollars on the war. I won't even tell you all the ridiculous things we could do with that much money. It's 25 times the ammount we spend on education per year, and we spend more than anyone else. Don't even get me started on the cost to our troops. There's simply no metric by which you can look at this war, or the Bush administration by extension, and not conclude that it has been an unmitigated disaster for this country. It disgusts me, as does your willful ignorance and gleeful repetition of republican talking points and right-wing radio misinformation.
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:5, Insightful)
A serious shortfalling of Western democracies is that if the government (and associated media) manage to misinform the majority of the public to believe a lie, they are allowed and expected to act on that lie.
If I hadn't wasted all my modpoints on a debate of the finer points of copyright yesterday, you would certainly be getting a +10 True.
Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason they got away with the lies in the US was because the public wanted blood.
Do you realize how stupid that sounds? Please, stop posting in this thread: some interesting comments are showing up but yours isn't one of them.
The real problem with democracy is that sheeple get to vote
Yes, because matters are so much better in countries where people don't get to vote.
Get a grip.
"WMD did exist. Talk about old rhetoric." (Score:4, Funny)
WMD did exist. Talk about old rhetoric.
You should tell W. before he leaves office. Last we checked, he was still looking for them under his desk.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When you next have something to say, attach proof or it shall be given the attention it earns -- namely none.
Sorry you use a different dictionary. We don't all live in your hole. Get used to it.
E
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:A friendly warning from an American (Score:4, Funny)
Plus we illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The Americans need to punish us.
Re:posting link to unrelated penny arcade comic (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow, I don't think you've thought your cunning plan all the way through.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who the hell modded this interesting? This is an absolute and complete fabrication. Nothing but pure slanderous bullshit.
Re:Communist rises again (Score:5, Funny)
This is an absolute and complete fabrication. Nothing but pure slanderous bullshit.
Bullshit? On the internet? Are you SURE? Wow. I'm shocked.
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
What percentage of the population supports this, anyway? Anyone have any figures?
Based on an extensive statistically sound survey I have conducted, I would say this percentage is zero, with a 95% confidence interval of between zero and zero.
More seriously, I don't think any non-politicians actively support _this_ plan. I think you can split them into two camps: those who are against, and those who don't have a sufficiently good understanding of the internet to be qualified to comment. Anyone qualified will quickly see that despite your views on child pornography, this is not an achievab
Re: (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 rainfores