A search-engine works by cataloguing content available on the internet by third-party publishers.

Some of those third-party publishers may indeed by subsidiary companies of the search-engine itself, but by and large the content is produced and hosted by publishers and web-hosting companies that have nothing to do with the search-engine company indexing the material for their search-engine results.

This process is largely automated through the use of web-crawler bots and ever-increasingly technologically proficient search result algorithms. All serving one single purpose: To give you, as the end-user, the most relevant and useful search-results possible.

Like a phone book, or a street directory, search-engines are hardly responsible for the content they index. It’s not like they’re creating it or publishing it, they merely catalogue it so that if others are searching for the material, they might better find it.

At least that’s what common sense would dictate.

Today the Victorian Supreme Court disagreed, holding Yahoo liable for cataloguing a website in its search-results to the tune of $225,000 AUD ($235,000 USD).

The landmark case between Michael Trkulja and Yahoo centered over Yahoo’s search results displaying a link to the now-defunct website, ‘Melbourne Crime: A journey into the Melbourne Underworld’.

This website in turn had a page on it that reprinted a Herald Sun (a local Victorian newspaper) article on a shooting involving Trkulja.

This article is still online and published ‘as is’ by the Herald Sun, dated November 20th, 2007.

To put things into perspective here, the Herald Sun published a news story about a shooting involving a hitman and a website about crime in Melbourne reproduced said article on their own website. Yahoo, a search-engine provider who catalogues content on the internet then indexed the ‘Melbourne Underworld’ site and Trkulja then sued Yahoo for publication of the offending material.

Neither the Herald Sun nor the owners and operators of the Melbourne Underworld website had legal action taken against them.

In his lawsuit, Trkulja pleaded three imputations (statements attributing something dishonest):

• the plaintiff is a criminal
• the plaintiff was so involved with crime in Melbourne that his rivals had hired a hit man to murder him
• the plaintiff is such a significant figure in the Melbourne criminal underworld that events involving him are recorded on a Web site that chronicles crime in Melbourne.

In a catastrophically stupid move, Yahoo

pleaded that, subject to the plaintiff establishing at trial that any person had downloaded and read the matter using the Yahoo! 7 internet search engine, they admitted that they published the matter to such person.

In order to establish that ‘any person had downloaded and read the matter’ on Yahoo, Trkulja simply supplied two witnesses who testified as such.

Thus accepting liability for entire publication of an article that was hosted on a website that had nothing to do with Yahoo, that in turn merely reproduced a newspaper article, the matter then turned to the three imputations listed above.

The jury rejected the first imputation because they were ‘not satisfied that the material conveyed‘ that Trkulja was a criminal.

They were however convinced that the second and third imputations held merit. That being the implication that Trkulja ‘was so involved with crime in Melbourne that his rivals had hired a hit man to murder him‘ and that he ’is such a significant figure in the Melbourne criminal underworld, that events involving him are recorded on a web site that chronicles crime in Melbourne‘.

Despite not having authored, published or hosted the material themselves, Yahoo was today ordered to compensate Trkulja $225,000 in damages.

A decision that will no doubt have far-reaching effects on how search-engines operate in Australia.

What Yahoo’s lawyers were doing I have no idea but accepting publication of an article they indexed on their search engine? Has Justice Stephen Kaye or Yahoo’s lawyers even ever used a search-engine before?!

The original article by the Herald Sun describes the 2004 shooting incident involving Trkulja (alias Milorad Trkulja) as follows;

Former music promoter Michael Trkulja was shot in the back by a hitman wearing a balaclava while dining at a St Albans restaurant in June 2004.

A Victoria Police document reveals detectives dropped the investigation because of a lack of evidence.

But Mr Trkulja, 58, claims he now knows the identity of the hitman and those who hired him.

He says he has passed the names to police.

“He (the hitman) was offered $10,000 to kill me. I know who sent him and they know that I know who they are,” Mr Trkulja told the Herald Sun.

Is it really such a stretch to suggest that $10,000 hired hitmen has something to do with Melbourne’s criminal underworld?

Especially when you consider that the same Herald sun also named Trkulja as ‘an associate of Mick Gatto‘ in 2010.

Who’s Mick Gatto you ask?

Domenic “Mick” Gatto (born 6 August 1955) is an Italian-Australian criminal and is known for his involvement in the Melbourne underworld.

Yet somehow cataloguing a website for a search-engine that merely reproduced a news article on an apparent assassination attempt on an associate of Mick Gatto, prominent member of the Melbourne underworld, involving hitmen and $10,000 bounties is defamation…

Again, I have absolutely no idea what Yahoo’s lawyers Allens Arthur Robinson were doing, but I can only surmise that they must have been asleep at the wheel.

Otherwise if anyone can explain to me how a search-engine is liable for indexing a third-party website (and a snippet of the website at that), that merely reproduced a news article published by yet another third-party, I’m all ears.

Looking forward, it’s noted that Trkulja is also suing Google for indexing the ‘Melbourne Underworld’ in their own search results. No doubt Google will be analysing today’s Melbourne Supreme Court ruling quite closely as they’ll have to defend themselves on the same allegations Yahoo failed to defend themselves against.

The Trkulja vs. Google case is set to kick-off in early June of this year.

Personally if I was running a search engine that was accessible in Australia I’d be seriously considering pulling out of the market until this nonsense was cleared up. I’m not sure whether Yahoo can appeal today’s decision but you’d want to hope that they are able to that they do.

And this time y’know, actually play the role of a search-engine rather than publisher of material they never published, authored or hosted?

The scenario as it stands now means that anybody can approach a search-engine available in Australia and demand that material they think is defamatory be removed.

Trkulja himself attempted this when he got in touch with Yahoo in late 2009 and ‘demand(ed) (inter alia) that the defendants (Yahoo) immediately remove all copies of the material from their search engine’.

Standard operating procedure for search-engines is to protect the integrity of their search-results and refuse to remove anything without a court-order against the allegedly defamatory material (not the search-results themselves).

The defendants responded by a letter dated 3 December 2009, stating that they did not accept responsibility for the images, which, by being linked through an algorithmic search, appeared on the Yahoo! 7 search engine.

The defendants suggested that the plaintiff should contact the operators of the Melbourne Crime web site directly, in order to have the material removed.

After the content is removed, typically within a few months (worst case scenario) the content is removed automatically from search-engine results as it no longer exists.

Furious at this response and alleging that ‘the material could have been easily eliminated from the defendants’ search engine by using a device known as an “abuse filter”‘ (whatever that is), Trkulja then went after Yahoo themselves and here we are.

An Australian Supreme Court decided to hold a search-engine liable for content they never published, authored or hosted. God forbid what appears in search-results are now dictated to Australian internet users by self-appointed defamation police.

If search-engines operating in Australia simply decide it’s easier to deindex material anyone complains about, then what? Even Stephen Conroy’s once proposed internet filter never held that much censorship power.

Words simply fail me when I try to further elaborate on the utter stupidity and technological ignorance evident in today’s decision.

The entire judgement against Yahoo can be viewewd over at the Victorian Supreme Court website.

The Australian Constitution does not have any express provision relating to freedom of speech. In theory, therefore, the Commonwealth Parliament may restrict or censor speech through censorship legislation or other laws, as long as they are otherwise within constitutional power.

The Constitution consists mainly of provisions relating to the structure of the Commonwealth Parliament, executive government and the federal judicial system. There is no list of personal rights or freedoms which may be enforced in the courts.

Since 1992 decisions of the High Court have indicated that there are implied rights to free speech and communication on matters concerning politics and government, e.g. permitting political advertising during election campaigns.

This is known as the ‘implied freedom of political communication’.

-Australian Parliamentary Library


Despite being a signatory member of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which guarantees free speech, Australia has no free speech.

This I wholly accept, as it appears unless we’re talking about illegal boat people’s rights, Australia being a signatory member to the UDHR doesn’t mean a damn.

That said, I distinctly remember being in taught in school that, although as a nation we don’t have freedom of speech, politics, and by association politicians, were fair game.

As mentioned above the High Court decided this back in 1992. Since then politicians and political parties have enjoyed slandering the buggery out of eachother everytime an election campaign rolls around, and the public and media are free to publish what they really think about politics without fear of legal retaliation.

Of course that doesn’t mean you can say anything about anyone in politics, but so long as what you’re saying falls within the framework of politics, it’s accepted that you come under the umbrella of the 1992 High Court decision.

At least that’s the way it currently is.

If Victorian Gaming Minister Michael O’Brien has his way, the Australian public’s right to criticise our politicians might soon be a thing of the past.

Upset over ‘abuse and insults‘ directed at himself and his staff, O’Brien (photo right) sought to change Victoria’s ‘Gaming Regulation Act’ because he felt his staff and himself needed further protection.

Protection against what you ask?

Apparently when you work for the Gaming Minister, assaults, obstructions, hinderance, threats, abuse, insults and intimidation are all just part of the daily job.

Now despite already having workplace laws in full effect meaning nobody should have to put up with this kind of crap on their job, O’Brien has taken it upon himself to propose an amendment to the Gaming Relations Act that

will make it an offence to “assault, obstruct, hinder, threaten, abuse, insult or intimidate” the minister or authorised persons exercising “due diligence” in monitoring gambling systems such as pokies.


As I mentioned earlier, all of the above is already covered by existing workplace laws, and Michael O’Brien, and all those who work in his Ministry are no less covered by these laws than any other employee working in Australia.

So what are we really talking about here?

Obviously, reading between the lines we’re talking criticism of Michael O’Brien and his staff.

In addition to the penalties already available to them under existing laws, O’Brien’s amendment seeks to dish out ‘fines of up to $11,945 to anyone found guilty of upsetting the minister and his staff‘.

Rather than follow the due process for such matters, under this new amendment, anyone who offends O’Brien and his staff at work will face the  streamlined legal repercussions of criticism as a neatly packaged fine.

I mean really, we all know gambling is big business in Australia and I can’t imagine trying to regulate the industry is difficult, but making it illegal to criticise politicians?

Overkill much?

If Michael O’Brien and his staff can’t handle the heat, or are too lazy to pursuit matters through the existing legal channels, that are apparently good enough for the rest of the Australia, then can I make a suggestion to the Liberal party that they need to replace these china dolls?

Unable to cope with criticism, perhaps the Ministry of Rainbows and Teacup parties would be a suitable position for O’Brien and his staff.

O’Brien’s amendment has already made it through the lower house and now is set to go before the upper house on October 25th.

Well gee, politicians voting on whether or not it should be illegal to criticise politicians… I wonder how that’s going to go.

Sound vague? You betcha, but here’s a bit more of a detailed explanation into the three steps of the Jade Lotus course;

The first step involves a full body massage. At the International Institute of Tantra, people learn the Chakra system of the body, gaining a deeper understanding and meaning behind why it exists and its methodology.

It is said that cosmic energy flows through the body via the chakras. These chakras control our mental and physical stability. As tantra is all about keeping things in balance, this is very important. The full body massage helps the cosmic energies flow correctly through the body and out of the microcosms from whence they entered.

The second step involves breathing techniques. The International Institute of Tantra teaches these different tantric breathing techniques to help purify the body with each breath taken, removing the toxins that poison it and find that all-important pathway between mind and body.

It is a pathway that many spend years trying to find, but through these breathing techniques, it can be found through intense meditation and breathing.

The third and final step involves waking the Kundalini, which is said to reside at the base of the spine. Through the lessons learned in the first step (full body massage) and second step (breathing techniques), the third step combines the first two steps and massages the spine slowly from the bottom upwards, the life force is stimulated and combined with cosmic knowledge.


Cosmic knowledge? Chakras? Kundalingus… er, Kunadalini? Microcosms and claims that breathing can remove toxins from the body?

Yeah, what you’ve got there definitely sounds like your typical serving of new age spiritual mumbo jumbo for the masses. Y’know, the kind of stuff that was popular in the sixties and today, really only resonates with people who haven’t quite yet realised the sixties ended a half century ago.

Well, at least that’s what I think. Delve deeper into the realm of Tantra massage and you’re going to find Phd studies, internationally recognised bodies of certification and some very, very precious practicitioners.

One particular practitioner is of the belief that absolutely nothing critical of Tantra massage should ever be published. Simply put, the public aren’t allowed to have a negative opinion of Tantra massage.

Well, at least not if the National Institute of Tantra have their way. In light of recent discussions criticising Tantra massage and the validity of the spiritual ideas that comes with it, the Institute decided to send me a thinly veiled legal threat…

…pending of course the removal of any and all criticism of Tantra massage, specifically the Jade Lotus method…

Hi.. my name is Jade Lotus on the threads on the website regarding happy ending massages.

I believe there are certain comments that are nasty and not professional and defamatory that are written in regards to the services that we provide and personal names are being posted on the threads also.

I do seek to have someone look into this.

And i request that it be removed… especially the name Suheyl Yekenkurul.

I request the writings that Jade Lotus is full of bullshit be removed. as well as National Institute of Tantra refrences.

I seek this as this email is a request.

I will also contact a legal representative as Jade Lotus Tantra is a trademarked name and a business operating in Melbourne.

Best regards

Jade Arslan

National Institute of Tantra


For those not familiar with the backstory, Jade Lotus Tantra massage is a non-erotic form of Tantra massage run out of a place in Melbourne, Australia.

I’d originally included them in an article asking ‘So… where can I get a happy ending massage?‘. I was confused as their site mentioned a whole bunch of spiritual sounding jargon but then essentially seemed to boil down to an erotic massage administered by multiple females.

Just as down and dirty as the rest of them it’d seem.

My confusion was sorted by a ‘Jade Lotus’ who began to contribute to the discussion in early February.

She clarified that

the erotic sessions are not jade lotus sessions.. they are exactly that… erotictantra.com and the jadelotus sessions are http://www.tantramassage.com.au different staff, different extablishment.. same venue.


Hmm, so what are the chances of a totally unrelated business to Jade Lotus massage, operating out of the same venue and being related to Tantra massage going to be I wonder.

Well, turns out not much.

Here’s erotictantra.com’s (which redirects to tantricsex.com.au) domain information, and here’s tantramassage.com.au’s domain information.

Both are registered to a ‘YEKENKURUL, SUHEYL’ using the ABN: 28117319788.

Why would two unrelated establishments, who just happen to share the same address, also be sharing an ABN?

Hmm.

It’s also interesting to note that the ABN 28117319788 appears to have been cancelled from the 3rd November 2008 and is no longer active.

Anyway, Suheyl Yekenkurul hey… wait, that name sounds familiar. Having not previously heard of this fella before I was a little curious as to why the email from Jade specifical mentioned him by name. And moreso why they wanted all references to him removed.

A quick Google search of very publicly accessible information reveals that Suheyl Yekenkurul is the author of the Jade Lotus program;


Note: The Sedona Temple listing was removed within 24 hours of publication of this article. Google is still caching the listing but incase that expires, I’ve also saved a screenshot below of the website for the record (click to enlarge);

Jade Lotus Tantra is a sacred sexuality program put together by Dr. Suheyl Aslan and was designed as a part of a Phd. Program for Somerset University.


Aslan hey? That sounds familiar, as in ‘Jade Arslan?’ (the author of the email I received).

Probably just the skeptic in me but it would explain “Jade’s” apparent specific interest in seeing any and all references to this Dr. Suheyl fella be removed.

On somewhat hilarious unrelated note, according to that site I just linked to, this apparently legitimate spiritual massage methodoly known as Jade Lotus requires just three days to become certified in (the dates listed are December 12-14).

After completing this presitigous course, which appears to be open to anyone, practioners are then able to

• Open your own business as a Tantra Therapist immediately
• Offer up to 7 Levels of Tantra, each level progressing to the next
• Become an empowered healer and teacher of Tantra – not just a sexual goddess
• Receive certification from the International Institute of Tantra


Holy crap, just three days and I can open my own Tantra business, exceed the title ‘sexual goddess’, be certified in 7 levels of Tantra and receive a certification?!

Wow, that’s some hard work right there. I can’t think of any three day period in my life that has thus far been more productive then what these guys are offering.

I mean hell, I’ve taken some pretty labour intensive dumps that left me feeling pretty good and certified, but nothing as extensive as three whole freaking days! And on top of that, apparently certification can be yours for a measly $270 US! OMG BARGAIN!

Additionally I’m also left a little further confused by ‘Jade Lotus” comments in the happy ending massage article, in which she states;

i WILL not divulge my real name for your satisfaction..
which is the name that the PhD was done by.


So ‘Jade Lotus’ wrote the PHD? Well, I guess that removes any shadow of a doubt that Jade ‘Arslan’ is none other then this Suheyl Yekenkurul chap I’m not supposed to talk about.

Finally Jade mentions that ‘Jade Lotus Tantra is a trademarked name and a business operating in Melbourne‘.

Now, unless I’m doing something wrong, it appears this claim is questionable as an ABN search for ‘Jade Lotus Tantra’ turns up nothing.

As for the legitimacy of Tantra massage, for some of us the very mention of spirituality calls into question the subject matter of whatever it is we’re discussing. Be it happy ending massages, personal development, personal connections or anything really.

There’s no doubt a lot of psuedo science out there and years of spiritual jargon and exploitative use of the ‘mysteries of the east’ to peddle all sorts of crap onto the ignorant populations in the west haven’t helped.

Jade Lotus Massage and Tantra massage in general might have very well helped individuals in finding their inner sexuality, but for others it could very well just be seen as a crock.

Myself I’m highly skeptical of a PHD carried out by an individual who has the vested interest in opening a Tantra business with the efforts of the finished PHD (the Lotus method).

Not withstanding the fact that Yekenkurul appears to own both the erotic and non-erotic arms of Jade Lotus massage as well as being the founder of the self serving International Institute of Tantra.

Isn’t it wonderful when people don’t declare their own vested financial interests and randomly contact you with demands that you censor criticism of said vested interests?

Not really.

“I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the Wikileaks website. It’s a grossly irresponsible thing to do and an illegal thing to do

The foundation stone of it is an illegal act.”

-Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia on Wikileaks


When Julia Gillard told reporters the above, the natural followup question was ‘what exact Australian laws has Assange or Wikileaks broken?’

To this, Julia Gillard had no response, instead she referred to an ongoing Australian Federal Police (AFP) Investigation.

Straight out of the mouth of the US embassy that had briefed her, the idea here was obviously to connect the words ‘illegal’ and ‘wikileaks’ in the publics mind and then insinuate guilt by way of a not yet completed Federal Police investigation.

Today the AFP released a statement regarding that investigation, and the verdict?

Not guilty.

The AFP examined material relevant to potential Australian offences to determine whether an official investigation was warranted.

The AFP has completed its evaluation of the material available and has not established the existence of any criminal offences where Australia would have jurisdiction.


Perhaps Gillard (and any of our politicians for that matter) should be properly informed (or at least make educated guesses), before they just spout out the puppetry press releases and briefs handed to them by the US.

I myself asked what Australian laws Wikileaks had broken after hearing Attorney-General Robert McClelland state

“From Australia’s point of view we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached.”


The fact remains that Australia doesn’t have a secrets act, and the Crimes Act that it does have requires proof that leaked information was done so with ‘intent to harm the Commonwealth‘. A charge widely open to interpretation and clearly not winnable as judged by the AFP.

With the release of Julian Assange just hours ago, I look forward to the continuing fascinating insight Wikileaks is providing the public into the scenery of our diplomatic landscape.

Here’s to freedom of the press and my congratulations to Assange and the Wikileaks team.

Naturally the Conroy camp were in favour of the filter whilst Google actively campaigned against it. The discussions between the two parties had been going on for a while but finally came to a halt with Google alleging that Conroy was simply ‘not listening‘ and Conroy accusing Google of ‘the single greatest breach in the history of privacy’.

This single greatest breach in the history of privacy (that’s the complete history of privacy mind you, since time immemorial, referred to Google collecting wifi network information as it’s Google maps car patrolled the streets.

Google always maintained that this data was collected ‘by accident‘ and last Friday the Australian Federal Police (AFP) finally released a statement in agreement.

Whilst the AFP do acknowledge that a potential breach of the Telecommunications Act might have occurred, they go on to state

Evidence exists to suggest that the potential breach of the TIA by Google was inadvertent.

Coupled with the difficulty of gathering sufficient evidence required for an examination of potential breaches, the AFP has concluded that it would not be an efficient and effective use of the AFP’s resources to pursue this matter any further.

The likelihood of a successful criminal prosecution in this matter is considered to be low.


That’s right, turns out the ‘single greatest breach in the history of privacy‘ was inadvertent and unlikely to result in a criminal charge if tested in a court of law.

Meanwhile the proposed internet filter will still impose on Australian’s privacy, require a massive amount of unfounded trust between Australian’s and the government and without a doubt restrict what Australian’s can and can’t see on the internet.

Stephen Conroy: 0

Google: 1


With Conroy now unable to divert attention away from his utter incompetence, no doubt somewhere in the offices of the DBCDE someone is silently watching the latest Wikileaks drama and waiting to see if it can be used to form a pro filter argument.

For the most part all Conroy has to do is lay low for now, but once the full scope of the Wikileaks drama is available, no doubt under the guise of national security and ‘helping the terrorists’, at some point Wikileaks will come up as a reason to censor the internet.

Traditionally though national security and terrorist threats haven’t gone down to well with the Australian public. We know we’re a backwater on the global political stage and that for a terrorist group, well there’s really not all that much out here for them to worry about.

Case in point, Wikileaks latest round of “Cablegate” diplomatic cables contained one which referred to a series of ‘Critical foreign dependencies…which if attacked could threaten US security and health‘.

Mind you we’re talking critical here, like the kind of facilities that if they were attacked could single handedly deal a massive blow to the US and its government.

So, what was the Australian facility listed as critical dependency of the US government?

Mayne Pharma – manufacturers of Crotalid Polyvalent Antivenin, or rattlesnake venom.

That’s right, Australia’s single greatest contribution to the stability and ongoing prosperity of the United States of America is providing rattlesnake venom.

I can see some terrorist group now in Afghanistan eagerly plotting away;

‘first we will bomb the Australians… and THEN THE RATTLESNAKE INVASION OF THE US BEGINS, MUWHAHAHAHAHAAHHA!’

Yes, devastatingly foolproof.

Not only is the importance of Australia in regards to terrorist threats perfectly encapsulated by the scope of what the US list as of importance in Australia, but then there’s the fact the information on the 2008 diplomatic cable is apparently grossly out of date.

Melbourne-based pharmaceutical company Mayne Pharma, listed as the sole worldwide supplier of a snake anti-venom “Crotalid Polyvalent Antivenin”, says it hasn’t produced the drug for more than 10 years.

Mayne Pharma’s chief executive Roger Aston today said: “The company is not providing this to the US Government and hasn’t done for years and years…maybe it was true 10 or 20 years ago but not any more.


Wow, so not only is Australia completely irrelevant to the national security of the US, but apparently we’ve been so for the last 10 to 20 years.

Over to you Conroy…

Somewhere along the line however this has since turned into layer upon layer of secrecy, backhand dealings and outright withholding of information from the public. So long as the tax dollars keep rolling in, why should governments feel the need to be accountable to the people they serve?

Lately Wikileaks has proven to be an ever growing thorn in the side of governments worldwide. They’ve achieved this by doing nothing more then the spreading of information. Information that has shed light on the oft closed doors of government, information that we were never meant to see.

At the heart of Wikileaks lies Julian Assange, an almost forty ex-hacker but more importantly, an Australian citizen. A citizen who’s time appears to be running out.

As the political noose tightens around Assange’s neck, standing as a fellow Australian citizen – I for one am definitely not happy with our own government’s actions.

A few days ago now Wikileaks began the drip release of a massive haul of sensitive political cables sent from government embassies all around the world. Shortly after this release, Australian Attorney-General Robert McClelland, announced that

the Australian Federal Police is examining whether revealing 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables could be criminal


The reason?

“From Australia’s point of view we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached.”


The big question of course is what criminal laws? Australia doesn’t have an explicit ‘Secrets Act’ so as far as I know it’s not a crime to leak classified information into the public domain. Let alone the fact that the information leaked in this case relates the US government and is being hosted somewhere in Sweden.

Anyone would five minutes worth of work by the AG office or the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would have brought this to light.

Ruling out any actual criminal charges though, no doubt the US are probably leaning heavily on Australia to do whatever they can diplomatically to incapacitate Assange and indirectly, Wikileaks itself.

Announcing to the world that the AFP are launching a criminal investigation into Assange is a pretty good start. Then of course there’s the issue of Assange’s Australian passport which the AG has also not ruled out cancelling.

Because y’know, it’s not like that’s not going to set a dangerous precedent for future whistleblowers or anything.

In a similar grandstanding vein, today Interpol issued a warrant for Assange’s arrest;

The France-based international police organisation has issued a “red notice” for 39-year old Julian Assange – the equivalent of putting him on its most wanted list.


I mean really, cmon. When was the last time you publicly heard about anyone being put on Interpol’s most wanted list? Does anyone really believe that if Interpol wanted Assange they wouldn’t already have had him by now?

Anyone would think Assange was the greatest criminal mastermind the world has every seen. Able to evade the authorities, yet speak at publicised events around the world…

- it’s Assange the Anonymous!

No doubt Interpol’s very public arrest warrant issuing holds about the same weight as the AFP investigating Assange for possible criminal action.

Meanwhile all of this detracts from the real culprits here. The various governments showcased in the Wikileaks release, dubbed ‘Cablegate’.

As of yet there hasn’t been anything really all that damaging or embarrassing to the Australian government made public. That however hasn’t stopped one and the same Attorney-General Robert McClelland from sending out a letter to every news organisation in Australia asking them

to consider a voluntary agreement to censor sensitive national security and law enforcement information.

In his letter the Attorney-General stresses that the Federal Government is not trying to legislate to impose a censorship regime, but wants the media to consider “mutually agreed arrangements” whereby some information will be suppressed.


For a government not trying to impose a censorship regime… they’re trying pretty damn hard. Just what the hell else is a ‘mutual agreement’ between the media and the government where the government dictates what information is ‘supressed’?

Uh, sounds like censorship to me guys.

Keep in mind this is the same mob that want to introduce a mandatory internet filter to Australia as well. Is there any doubt that had the internet filter have been in place that we wouldn’t have even been hearing about proposed suppression agreements?

It’s these very backhanded underground government policies that Wikileaks seeks to make public. And good on them.

The alternative is the Australian government adopting perhaps the more persuasive measures taken by the Chinese government in response to the leaks.

Earlier this year China categorically denied any involvement in cyber attacks carried out against Google.

“Accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China,” the official Xinhua News Agency quoted a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as saying.

“We are firmly opposed to that.”


These cyber attacks, during which Google claims some of their intellectual property was stolen, resulted in the search giant temporarily pulling out China.

Despite the strong assertions from the government that they had absolutely no hand in the cyber attacks, a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks paints a very different picture;

The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government.

They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002.


China’s response?

The government added any media coverage of the story to their firewall including the Wikileaks site itself.

“As for the content of the documents, we will not comment on that.”

-Hong Lei, Chinese Foreign Ministry


Despite this response being woefully inadequate, the Chinese government holds the luxury of ultimately not being accountable to its people. A luxury I imagine the US and Australia currently only wish they had.

As an Australian citizen I don’t recall having any say in the possible apprehension or investigation of Assange and Wikileaks. If anything, I demand to know why the hell my government isn’t doing more to protect him?

If Assange hasn’t broken any Australian laws, which I’m pretty sure he hasn’t, then he deserves nothing less than the full protection and support currently offered to all other Australian citizens.

If media organisations around the world weren’t in bed with governments, as evidenced by the sheer audacity of the Australian AG even daring to suggest mutual censorship between media organisations and the government, sites like Wikileaks wouldn’t need to exist.

Yet this is democracy in the modern era, and as little as our government’s would prefer to have us know, thankfully there are those willing to risk everything to hold our governments accountable.

The very name conjures up images of censorship, refused classification, information blackouts, technological incompetence, verbal gaffes and a general absolute discontent for the Australian general public.

In his latest assault on Australians, Conroy now sees himself possibly in contempt of the Australian Senate and just today he outright walked out of chamber during debate on the National Broadband Network.

After having long stopped listening to Australians, it appears now Conroy isn’t even bothering to listen to what parliament itself has to say. And so, in regards to anything related to the internet and technology, rolls on the authoritarian dictatorship that has become Australian government policy.

But how did we get here?

Conroy first blipped onto my radar when he announced he wanted to filter the internet for Australians. What was initially an optional opt-in system for Australians soon backflipped into a mandatory ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ filter.

Despite claims of extensive public consultation and the nation’s best interests at heart… to date I don’t know anyone other then religious nutjobs or the technologically indifferent that are in support of the filter.

Since this non-impressive first impression, there’s been an ever alarming series of events leading up to Conroy’s complete disregard of Australian politics and the general public.

In what was perhaps the biggest public display of his contempt, Conroy went and accused anyone who was against his internet filter as opting into child porn‘. And when challenged to an open debate on the filter, demanded that his opposition be removed from the debate.

After their secret discussions with ISPs about the viability of snooping on every Australian internet user was exposed, Labor even went so far as to declare that public discussion on their internet policies was completely ‘unessecary’. Oh and as for the leak, the document detailing the discussions between the government and various parties about snooping on us was finally made public, but not until 90% of it had been censored.

For years now Conroy and the government have been pushing their plans for the future of the internet in Australia with little to no consultation of the general public, and with a complete disregard towards their input or just what they can get away with.

With Conroy’s internet filter now firmly shelved until at least 2013, recent attention on his antics have now focused on the National Broadband Network.

The senate recently demanded that Conroy

1. make public an uncensored version of the Broadband Department’s “red book”, which details the extensive advice given to Labor after the election.
2. release all information relating to how sites were chosen for the early rollout of the network, particularly the commercial, construction and local authority acceptance criteria.
3. agree to a set of enterprise bargaining agreement principles that Senator Conroy said would prevent a wage cost blowout.

This might sound slightly rigorous but is it really all that much to ask for seeing as Conroy and co. want $43 billion dollars of taxpayer money to fund this project?

One could say it’s the very least Conroy could do considering he’s already ruled out releasing the NBN business plan or even an independent report by Greenhill Caliburn ‘aimed at testing the “robustness” of assumptions made by NBN Co‘.

$43 billion dollars leaves the door wide open to a lot of assumptions, but as the general public you don’t need to worry about that. Well at least not according to Conroy.

The deadline for Conroy to comply with the Senate’s demands was Monday and thus far nothing has been released by his department.

Today, amidst a barrage of criticism and ridicule, as mentioned earlier, Conroy actually decided to walk out of parliament mid debate.

I’m not sure what the punishment for being in possibly contempt of Senate is in Australia but surely we’re approaching the ‘it’s time to go’ phase of Conroy’s political career.

How Conroy has gone around the country for so long getting away with what he has I have no idea but enough is enough. I know I for one dread reading new news regarding Conroy as I’m always depressed somewhat to see just how much further political standards in Australia can sink.

Never before has secrecy, disregard for the public, suppression of criticism or continued censorship of information been such an integral part of any minister’s portfolio; all in the vested interests of protecting the policies and practices of said minister, rather than serving the best interests of the Australian public.

There simply has to be a point where Australians decide that there’s only so many cucumbers Conroy can shove up our collective arses.

Hopefully that time is soon.

Both were potentially to be up in jeopardy if Labor lost but fortunately for both policies, they won. With the election now over, the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy provided Stephen Conroy with a list of ‘shit he needs to get on with’ (yes that’s an official name).

Despite being made public, in what is fast becoming a disturbing trend regarding anything to do with Conroy and public reports, sizable chunks of the report were blacked out. What we did learn however is that in all probability, Australia isn’t getting a mandatory filter until sometime in 2013.

So just what the crap is going on between now and 2013 I hear you ask?

Well, not much.

Last I heard the internet filter had been shelved due to a pending review of the entire classification system in Australia. Shortly after this announcement however everybody shutup about the filter and got on with the election.

National Broadband this and National Broadband that was the order of the day with the hope of people forgetting that with Labor being voted back in power, the entire country once again would have a filter hanging over our heads.

With the election over and Labor back in power, it’s time to get on with things and the first order of business is kicking off a review of the classification review process.

Well actually no, the first order of business is deciding if we even want to ‘proceed with the RC classification review‘. Shock horror, just because Conroy said it’d happen doesn’t mean it will.

The decision rests with the standing Committees of Attorneys-General (SCAG) and they will decide yay or nay on the review in their November meeting. Presumably this meeting is sometime in the next two weeks.

If they vote yes, then they will do absolutely nothing until March 2011, upon which the review would begin. For whatever reason, this review and the resulting report will not be ready for analysis by SCAG until early 2012 – almost a full year later.

And knowing just how much anything Conroy touches develops massive delays, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the review timeframe extended even longer.

From here, the DBCDE estimate that it could take SCAG yet another year to decide on any of the recommendations made in the review report.

How on Earth it takes a year to review the classification system and then another year to review the review I have no idea. I mean what, are SCAG reading one page of the review a day? I’m pretty sure we could get even bloody kindergarten kids to do it quicker.

All in all any parliamentary legislation is not expected to be up for consideration until well into 2013. And remember, that’s assuming it all goes to plan.

Total cost? Well over ten million.

Seriously, another two and a halfish years and over ten million dollars on a filter that may or may not get crushed in the next election, should the Liberals win.

And even if Labor win the next election, all we’re talking about here is legislation into parliament. God knows how long the actual implementation of the filter will take. I suppose we’ll need another six years for that too.

…and here’s me thinking that I’d had enough of Stephen Conroy under Rudd.

So, with the internet filter on the backburner, what are the DBCDE going to get up over the next two years? Well there’s the NBN that nobody is signing up for and trying to record every Australian’s internet telephone calls and emails under OzLog still to sort out; that should keep them busy for a while.

Can anyone remind me why Australia even needs a Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy again?

The Australian public also rightly demands transparent government. That’s why the Rudd Government promised at the election to “restore trust and integrity in the use of Commonwealth Government information, promoting a pro-disclosure culture and protecting the public interest through genuine reform”. We’re working hard to fulfil these commitments.

-Joe Ludwig, Cabinet Secretary and Special Minister of State, January 2010.


To say the Labor government has been anything but transparent and open when it comes to policy is an understatement. Honestly I didn’t think things could get much worse after Conroy declared that a report on the viability of building the National Broadband Network wouldn’t be made public.

The disclosure of the contents of the panel of experts’ report before the completion of the process, particularly any negotiation phase, has the potential to prejudice the outcome of the process.


The above ‘slap-in-the-face’ reasoning got my back up when it first came out and even going over it again today, still fills me with absolute contempt for the Labor government.

Yet here we are months later, with an all new and improved Julia Gillard Labor prime minister at the helm and still nothing’s changed.

Back in June it emerged that the Rudd government were conducting secret consultations with Australian ISP’s over the viability of mandatory snooping on Australian internet users.

Despite having sworn any and all involved to absolute secrecy, details of the consultations thankfully leaked out. Unfortunately the details that were leaked didn’t extend much beyond an acknowledgement of the consultations taking place themselves.

Under the Freedom of Information Act however, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) put in a request to see a document. This document contains the outline of proposed government policy with which the Labor government hopes to spy on all Australian internet users’ online activity.

The good news?

The SMH received a copy of the document.

The bad news?

Roughly 90% of the document was censored by the government prior to public release.

The reason?

The release of some sections of it “may lead to premature unnecessary debate and could potentially prejudice and impede government decision making”.


This is straight from of the mouth of the Attorney-General’s office.

Not only do the Australian government want to exclude you from any and all discussions on monitoring your internet access, they also deem any such discussion as unnecessary. What’s more they believe that anything you could possibly have to say on the matter would just impede their decision making process anyway.

In short, the Australian Labor government wants you to shut up, bend over and take whatever they thrust at you with a smile.

Although our head of state is still technically the Queen I was under the impression that we were still somewhat of a democracy.

So how then did things get this bad? I never thought in my wildest dreams I’d be hearing any Australian government tell me that my input into a matter that directly concerns me is unnecessary and would only serve to impede the decision making process. How dare they.

Whether this is a Labor policy or a greater reflection of the state of Australian politics I’m not sure, but one thing however is clear;

Somewhere along the line the Australian government has forgotten it serves the people.

Come August it appears that voting a government in is as close as your average Australian will ever get to helping shape the future of politics in Australia. Vote them in and under a veil of complete secrecy they’ll do just whatever the hell they damn well please for the next three years.

You are not worthy, welcome to the new Australian politic.

From Asylum seeker policy (which is several backflips in itself), to resource taxes to now the internet filter, it’s getting hard to keep track of what exactly Labor’s policies are.

As far as the internet filter goes though, Conroy announced yesterday that the entire thing was going to be shelved until a review of the Refused Classification process was done.

On the surface one might take this as a review of the Refused Classification system itself but really what we’re talking about here is much more simple.

The Refused Classification system is here to stay, despite a classification process review it’s not going anywhere. What will be examined however is the scope of what exactly Refused Classification covers and more importantly ‘whether it adequately reflects community standards.’

This is where the review has the potential for disaster.

Currently classification guidelines are largely grey. Material goes into the classification warehouse and the factors that contribute to it being classified can be whether or not the reviewer’s coffee was warm enough that morning, how was the traffic on the drive in to work, what they had for dinner the night before and of course any personal bias the particular reviewer might harbor.

In short the Refused Classification process is a massively inconsistent grey area, let alone the classification itself.

On the surface then a review of the classification scope and guidelines for Refused Classification sounds like a good idea, but what if it goes the wrong way?

Community standards is never going to be definitive. Unless you live in some backwater town in the sticks, by nature and diversity itself, community standards are going to wildly vary.

Even having said that, Victoria’s suburban families probably have differing standards to say New South Wales’ suburban families. This in itself is another layer of problems when trying to measure something by community standards.

Whilst it’d be great to see a definitive measure for Refused Classification, is it really worth the risk of the process going wildly in the conservative direction?

Labor’s public consultations and transparency on any and all matter concerning the proposed internet filter has been abysmal to date. With reports being withheld for months, studies delayed and then declared to ‘n0t be in the public’s interest to view them’ and massive amounts of mistruth and technological incompetence showcased to the Australian public, do we really want to trust these guys to review any classification process? Let alone one that’s going to have a direct impact on what is and isn’t viewable on the internet.

Refused Classification works now mostly because it’s broken. The authorities can classify whatever they want but it’s mostly still not illegal to purchase material from overseas for personal use. So long as you don’t re-sell it or import it for commercial use, you’re fine. At least that’s how I take the grey interpretation of what Australian’s can and can’t do with RC material.

By tightening and properly defining the guidelines and scope of Refused Classification, Labor could be opening the door to tougher regulation and classification than ever.

With the internet filter now clearly shelved until after the next federal election, it’ll be interesting to see just how this review process takes place. If the past is anything to go by it’ll be done behind closed doors and never released to the public.

Next year sometime, most likely after a major worldwide event Conroy will then announce that after consultation with ‘millions’ of Australian’s the Refused Classification guidelines and scope are now tighter then ever.

Of course the millions of consulted Australian’s will never be found and any and all accountability into the accuracy or transparency of the review will be denied.

Worst case scenario I know but it’s worrying that given Conroy’s past performance it’s entirely plausible.

Opt-in requiring Australian internet users to put their hands up to have their internet censored and opt-out giving users the option to literally opt-out of a filter.

Stephen Conroy’s proposed filter as it stands will be compulsory for every Australian internet user.

Back before Kevin Rudd and the Labor party were elected in 2007, an opt-in filter is what was originally proposed to the Australian public. Sometime between then and now Stephen Conroy hijacked the proposal and began pushing for a universal mandatory filter.

So how did Conroy respond to Lundy’s attempts at offering Australian’s the choice to have their internet filtered or not?

Apparently Australians are a bunch of child porn supporters.

Conroy recently spoke at NeuroScience Australia after which he gave a quick press conference. When directly asked what he thought about Lundy’s opt-in/opt-out proposal, this is what he had to say:

I’m not into opting into child porn.


Despite being the original motivating factor for pushing the mandatory filtering forward, child porn has long since taken a back seat to ‘protecting our children’ and ‘limiting the scope of the filter to RC material’.

Over the past year Conroy has become aware that the moral child pornography argument wasn’t going to cut it with Australian voters and has broaden the argument for the filter to encompass material that falls under RC and is not available via other mediums.

Yet here we are in June 2010 and instead of actually answering the question presented to him, Conroy sums up his argument in one sentence;

It’s all still about filtering out child porn.

I for one take offense at the idea that anyone who thinks a mandatory filter is a authoritarian rubbish idea is ‘opting into child porn’. Seriously when was the last time anybody ran into random child porn on the internet?!

Child porn itself is opt in, continuing to use it as a scare tactic focal point in favour of the filter is only going to appeal to the paranoid and technologically incompetent religious demographic.

This ironically is why the focal point shifted away from child porn over the last twelve months to begin with.

When people are stumbling across child porn just by checking their emails, conducting non-related google searches or chatting to people on MSN then by all means think about a mandatory filter.

Until then how about you stop trying to protect us from an imaginary internet supposedly awash with child porn at every click of the mouse.

Not only are Conroy’s suggestion that people who opt out of an internet filter are opting into child porn offensive, they’re just downright misleading and manipulative.

Child porn is a dead argument, get over it Conroy.

I mean he doesn’t need to know the technical specifics on say an engineering level of how it works, but y’know, is a basic understanding too much to ask?

At the launch of Australia’s National Cyber Security Awareness Week recently, this is what Stephen Conroy had to say;

There’s a staggering number of Australians being in having their computers infected at the moment, up to 20,000… uh… can regularly be getting infected by these spams or scams, that come through the portal.


Read over or listen to Conroy’s statement again, just incase it didn’t completely not make any sense the first time around.

This is Australia’s broadband minister speaking in public about the internet. Forget speechwriters and slip ups, even on a personal knowledge level could you sound any more incompetent about the internet if you tried?

Forget Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran… it sounds like we need to be deploying everything we’ve got against this mystical internet portal thingy. Lest it engulf our internets at a staggering rate of 20,000 innocent Australian’s computers ‘regularly‘.

I wonder if Conroy’s internet filter would stop the attack of the portal?

Probably not.

In other news, the Labor government announced today it was considering an ISP level data retention system. What does that mean? Well it means that

One internet service provider (ISP) source told ZDNet Australia that the Australian regime, if implemented, could go as far as recording each URL a customer visited and all emails.

hey said the regime being considered by the Australian Government could see data held for much longer than EU Directive time of 24 months — it would be more like five or ten years.


So we’re looking at the early stages of the Australian government thinking about retaining every internet users browsing history and email communications for five to ten years. This after they’ve also censored our internet to buggery.

Thankfully however Internet Industry Association CEO, Peter Coroneos, is assuring everyone that

there wouldn’t be any intention, I wouldn’t think, to move to any policy position on this unless there was a full public debate about the proposal.


Right, because we all know how well that worked out with the internet filter. I’m still waiting for someone from government to ask me whether I want it or not.

It seems quite clear the direction the Labor government is planning to take Australia’s internet use over the next five to ten years. Yes you can have a lightning speed network but you can only visit sites we classify as appropriate. Oh, and just incase you get up to anything we don’t like we’re going to log your every movement and keep it on file.

Whoosh!

Sorry, that was the sound of my confidence in the government being sucked through the ‘portal‘…

Having said that, as far as dictators go, the world could do a lot worse then Google.

In the other corner you have Australian Senator Stephen Conroy. Stephen Conroy is the current Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy for Australia. Conroy’s current life ambition is to censor the internet in Australia with a mandatory ISP level internet filter.

Due to their inseparable link via the internet, Conroy and Google have for a while now been locked in an epic battle of discussion over internet filtering in Australia.

Last week this discussion completely broke down and came to an end.

Conroy accused Google of ‘the single greatest breach in the history of privacy‘ over it’s collection of unsecured wireless information.

Google meanwhile have maintained their stance on Conroy and his internet filtering plans. To paraphrase, ‘take your stupid internet filter and shove it’.

As the battle of words erupts and Conroy attempts to divert attention away from his filter antics via criticism of Google, Australia’s internet users are no doubt wondering who to trust.

Google or Conroy?

If the last week is anything to go by then it’s Google by a longshot. Over the last week Conroy seems to be doing everything he can to completely destroy public confidence in himself.

The week opened with Conroy announced the closure of an internet forum designed to facilitate discussion about internet filtering between Australian ISP’s and the government.

The forum was designed as a means to discuss technical aspects of ISP-level filtering, development of grants for optional filtering, developing of filtering tools and the secure transmission of the Refused Classification blacklist to ISPs


When asked if the finalised report based on the discussions held in the forum would be made public, Conroy put ‘the question “on notice” and effectively delay(ed) the answer‘.

From the guy who reasoned that a report that assessed proposals to build a public funded broadband network was not in the general public’s interest to be made public, ‘on notice’ is probably akin to ‘I’m going to bury this report so deep you’re going to need to give me a colonoscopy to get it out’.

Next Conroy proudly declared that via his internet filter he’d ‘consider blocking up to 50,000 websites based on new filtering technology that may become available in the future.’

One of the main criticisms of the proposed internet filter is that the scope of refused classification material is simply to large and that inevitably information that shouldn’t be on the blacklist will be blocked.

I don’t know about you but I have little faith in the government regulating (or overseeing the third party regulation) of a 100 strong website blacklist. The Australian government trying to manage a blacklist comprised of 50,000 websites sounds like a bloody nightmare.

Then just yesterday Captain Conroy informed us that regardless of public and corporate opinion, the proposed mandatory internet filter ‘is a policy that will be going ahead‘.

As an Australian voter and taxpayer, why do I feel like Conroy just shoved his penis into my mouth and told me to smile?

Speaking of corporate opinion, Conroy mysteriously claimed that

this policy has been approved by 85 per cent of Australian internet service providers, who have said they would welcome the filter, including Telstra, Optus, iPrimus and iinet.


Now I couldn’t find information or news of this near unanimous support of internet filtering by some of Australia’s largest ISPs anywhere. This leads me to believe that if true, the welcoming was expressed in the private forum (shut down last week) that was mentioned earlier.

The beauty of Conroy quoting information from this forum is that it’s not publicly accessible and from the sounds of it, a summary report that will be presented to Conroy won’t ever be made public either.

In short there’s no way to verify Conroy’s claims when he’s referring to his closed-to-the-public government internet filter forum.

Terrific.

Not that he needs any help digging his own political grave but Google have also weighed in and warned that Google TV might be the first indirect casualty of mandatory internet filtering.

With Google TV, Google aims to

bring the internet into the loungeroom of every TV-owning household in the world, with an ambitious new service that lets people mesh television viewing with surfing the web.


Naturally the service will rely heavily on sites like YouTube and this is where the problems start. One of the sore points between Conroy and Google has been the filtering of YouTube.

Conroy wants Google to internally censor YouTube but Google are refusing to agree to anything until they’ve seen some legislation. Conroy has previously admitted that filtering high traffic websites at an ISP level isn’t feasible, so he’s reliant on Google internally censoring the YouTube service.

The end result for Australian internet users is Google refusing to market Google TV in Australia due to potential degradation of the service as a direct result of Conroy’s internet filter.

…so much for just affecting access to refused classification material.

If my choices in who to trust are Stephen Conroy’s continual earth shattering parliamentary incompetence and Google harvesting unsecured wireless network data, I’m still going to side with Google.

Seriously who the hell runs an unsecured wireless network these days anyway?! These morons should be glad that some kids in a van outside didn’t blow their internet quotas downloading porn…

…at least they won’t have to worry about that happening once the internet filter goes live.

Naturally the man behind Australia’s proposed internet filter, Stephen Conroy, has done his best to assure people that this won’t happen under his government. He’s even gone so far as to guarantee it.


What Conroy doesn’t guarantee however is that future government’s wont hijack the filter for their own political agendas.

Now of course I don’t for a second expect Conroy to guarantee any and all future Australian government will leave the filter alone with any credibility. Conroy’s got as much control over future Australian government as the rest of us.

What he has guaranteed though is that the Rudd Labor government wouldn’t extend the scope of the internet filter to suit their own censorship needs.

So just how credible and trustworthy is Senator Conroy when it comes to non-censorship guarantees?

Recently Stephen Conroy did a little bit of television debate censoring of his own.

Yesterday morning Channel 7′s Sunrise program ran a short interview with Stephen Conroy over the proposed internet filter issue. Conroy appeared alone and was mostly unchallenged by the hosts of Sunrise.

Initially Conroy was set to appear on Sunrise with the vice-chair of the Electronic Frontiers Association, Geordie Guy. Guy was asked by Sunrise to appear on the show and debate the internet filter with Senator Conroy.

After agreeing to appear on the show and waiting for a confirmation call back from Sunrise, on the afternoon of the 13th May (the afternoon before the interview went live), Guy received a call from Sunrise advising him he wouldn’t be appearing on the show.

Stephen Conroy had contacted Sunrise and requested he appear on the Sunrise segment alone. Presumably this demand came with a ‘or else I’m not coming on your show’ clause.

Subsequently Conroy got his way and appeared in the Sunrise interview on his own.

Electronic Frontiers Australia are hardly new to the internet censorship game and would have no doubt put up a good argument against Conroy, on live television no less. Undoubtedly this is the reason Conroy requested to appear alone.

It’s one thing to take on technologically clueless people on pre-recorded television shows, and entirely another to risk being made to look like a fool on national live television by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

I can see Conroy’s PR department advising him appearing on Sunrise to debate with an EFA member as ‘probably not a good idea…’

So why did Channel 7 so readily and quietly cave into Senator Conroy’s censorship demands?

Earlier this year it was revealed that Senator Conroy had attended meeting with Channel 7 boss Kerry Stokes. Following the meeting the pair had gone skiing in Vail, Colorado, indicating that whatever was discussed in the meeting had gone well.

When queried about the meeting and previously secret skiing outing both Stokes and Conroy ‘refused to say what was discussed‘.

A month later however Conroy announced a $250 million no strings attached gift to Australia’s free to air television networks. Amongst them Channel 7.

Now I don’t know about you but I’d feel pretty obliged to anyone throwing me a free $250 million dollars. No doubt this went a long way in Channel 7 obliging when Conroy demanded he appear on Sunrise alone and unchallenged.

Ladies and Gentlemen forget censorship with internet filters, it’s already here. By stifling the public debate and choosing who he debates against Conroy is already demonstrating that he’s completely in support of selective censorship.

How seriously does Conroy think Australians are going to take his no censorship on the internet filter guarantees?

Senator Conroy was recently appointed to a UN led broadband internet taskforce. If he encounters any criticism I wonder if he’ll request his critics to be ordered absent when the taskforce convenes?

Osama bin Laden put in charge of a construction team rebuilding the Twin Towers.

Kevin Rudd being asked to judge diving at the next Olympics, except for the backflip event.

All of these are horrifying absurd scenarios the world wouldn’t want to be confronted with anytime soon. However they’re nothing compared to the absolute nonsense that is Stephen Conroy recently being appointed to a United Nations Broadband Taskforce.

The International Telecommunications Union’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development’s key aim

is to accelerate attainment of those goals — and more — by the target date of 2015.


‘Those goals’ being the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Amongst other things, these goals aim to

deliver results for the billions of people struggling to meet their basic needs and to live in dignity and peace.


In a broadband sense I’m assuming they’re referring to internet access as being a basic need, which is far enough.

So the UN have created a broadband taskforce aimed at accelerating internet access around the world by a specific deadline, and they’ve gone and appointed Stephen Conroy to it.

Let’s have a look at Conroy’s credentials on accelerating the national rollout of internet access. Here’s Conroy in 2007;


Back in 2007 Stephen Conroy went on Australian television and told the public that he’d be connecting people by the end of 2008.

It’s almost mid 2010 now and to date not one person has been connected to the National Broadband network. Infact two and half years after Conroy and the Labor government were elected, the National Broadband Network doesn’t even exist yet. Not even on paper.

Recently the $25 million McKinsey study which investigated the viability of a National Broadband Network (yes the government is only now investigating the viability of the network after it was promised to us back in 2007), was finalised and made public.

In response Conroy has given Australia’s largest ISP, Telstra, till the end of June to decide if they want to be a part of it. After that who knows what’s next on the ‘stall for time’ National Broadband Network agenda.

The good news is that whenever the government does decide to actually put a plan into action, the network itself is estimated to take about eight years to build.

Living in Australia, do you remember what you’re internet was like eight years ago?

All up if we take Conroy’s 2007 National Broadband network promise to start connecting people by the end of 2008, assume the government starts building the network by the end of 2010 and whack 8 years of building time onto the equation, Australian’s will finally have a broadband network nine years overdue.

Meanwhile the guy in charge of this disaster, Senator Stephen Conroy has just been welcomed onto a taskforce designed to ‘accelerate‘ the rollout of internet access worldwide.

Seriously is the UN full of freaking morons or what?

When asked what he thought about his recent appointment, Conroy stated

“I look forward to sharing Australia’s experiences in developing our national broadband network as well as contributing to the work of the Commission.”


To date the only other achievement Stephen Conroy has had in regards to the internet is the announcement of a mandatory ISP internet censorship filter.

Yeah, I wonder how that’s going to go down at the UN when Conroy ‘contributes‘ it.

The report by 4 Corners makes for some interesting viewing in itself but before we have a look at the actual program here’s some points from 4 Corner’s extended interview with Stephen Conroy.

The extended interview starts off with Conroy denying that in the last election he promised ‘to introduce a mandatory clean feed filter for computers used by children‘.


Note that Conroy completely dodges the question and instead focuses on the narrowing of the scope of material to be blocked.

Meanwhile here’s what Conroy promised before the last election.


There’s no doubt that protecting children was the idea that Labor and Stephen Conroy chose to sell their mandatory internet filter to the Australian public with. According to Conroy in the 4 Corners report this election promise was never a primary factor in the internet filter policy.

Here’s Conroy again challenging the then Liberal Senator Helen Coonan.


Yes you heart that right. Conroy actually challenges Coonan to commit to Labor’s ‘mandatory system of ISP filtering that will guarantee that parents will not be receiving this sort of child pornography and these sort of images coming into people’s homes’.

Stephen Conroy guaranteed the filter would work as an election promise.

Back in March however Conroy admitted the internet filter was useless and has publicly acknowledged getting around the filter will be easy and not punishable by law.

In an official statement released yesterday, Conroy said he had attended a demonstration of the filter last year, and was also shown how users could get around the filter by using VPN technology.

“ISPs will not be required to block circumvention attempts by their customers or end users,” he said yesterday, also admitting those attempts could be relatively easy to undertake.


So pre election it was guaranteed that the filter would work and now post election Conroy’s conceded the filter won’t work, that it’s easy to bypass and that it’ll be completely legal to do so.

So why exactly are we pressing ahead with the internet filter again?

It’s on the back of this broken guarantee that Conroy then goes on to guarantee that the scope of the filter content will not be expanded by a future Labor government.


Australian’s are standing up now and saying ‘just a minute‘ but that doesn’t seem to be having any effect. Given Conroy’s past guarantee back flips do we have any reason to trust him this time?

A lack of technological understanding has been at the centre of a lot of talk, advice and public bungles when it comes to the internet filter. Here’s Conroy giving us another example of how little he understands filtering technology.


The problem with Conroy’s explanation here is that how is an internet filter going to know what to filter unless everything you do on the internet is fed through it?

The filter will have a blacklist and each time you view a website the site’s URL will have to be put through the filter and checked against this blacklist.

There’s simply no way around this.

Conroy also tries to justify criticism from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo by pointing out what some of these companies do in other countries.


Seriously, does anyone give two shits what is censored in other countries. The freedom of the Australian internet is at stake here, in a global context what is and isn’t blocked overseas is irrelevant.

Currently it seems the Australian public’s protests against Labor’s internet filter are falling on deaf ears. I don’t recall ever witnessing any government policy that has been so one sided, clouded in secrecy and seemingly pushed forward without so much as a consult of the general population.

Conroy sums up the current situation pretty well. Replace ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ with ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ respectively in this next clip and you get an eerily prophetic snapshot of the future of online Australia with Conroy’s internet filter.


What really worries me is why is nobody in the Labor government holding Conroy to task over appearing on national television and deliberately misleading the Australian public?

Where is the accountability?!

The entire 4 Corners report ‘Access Denied’ is definitely worth the watch and raises some interesting issues. Sadly though it doesn’t break any new ground and seems to go relatively easy on Conroy.

Due to these sorts of reports typically disappearing from the internet after a few weeks I’ve included a Youtube hosted copy below.


Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:


Part 5:

Fresh from the abyss Conroy has been on a whirlwind positive PR campaign for the government’s proposed internet filter. Complete with a mountain of mistruths and distorted information, Conroy’s latest claim sees him plunge to entirely new depths.

According to Conroy, filtering the internet isn’t censorship.

In a speech to the Sydney Institute last Monday, Conroy stated that

The internet is an incredible piece of technology and in our lifetime it’s unlikely we’ll see anything like it again, but for all its technical brilliance, the internet is a distribution and communications platform.

Having no regulation to combat illegal activity actually weakens all that is good about the internet.

Those who claim the government’s approach is akin to the sort of political censorship practiced by authoritarian regimes are simply misleading the Australian public.


Censorship, as defined by Wikipedia, is

the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.


I’m pretty sure the internet constitutes communicative material and that the Australian government qualifies as a government. Regardless of how much Conroy harps on about his precious refused classification, censorship is censorship so let’s stop pretending filtering the internet isn’t.

As for Conroy’s other claims, many would assert that the very fact the internet is largely unregulated is all that is good about the internet. Sure, the law is the law but shouldn’t the onus be on me to break it or not.

If I do break the law, then by all means hunt me down and prosecute me. However attempting to remove the option to do so shows a great level of mistrust and lack of confidence in its own people on behalf of the government.

The government is supposed to serve us. Nobody said anything about dictating policy.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification website states that

The Classification Board is required to apply the law and classification guidelines in order to make its decisions. This occasionally results in material being refused a classification, which means that it cannot legally be shown, sold or hired in Australia.


The term shown refers to public viewing. It is not illegal to own or view refused classification material, assuming the material is not illegal in itself.

Now of course child pornography et al. are illegal to own but we already have systems and law enforcement in place to combat this. I mean seriously when was the last time you heard of child porn on the internet being produced from within Australia?

Filtering the internet is going to have a negligible effect on child porn activity in Australia seeing as it’s all done via peer to peer and private networks, both of which will be unaffected by the internet filter.

While Conroy continues to bumble around Australia proving to the world that he’s either the world’s greatest believer in a nanny nation or clueless (or both), the UK recently passed an internet censorship law of it’s own.

Much stronger then Conroy’s internet filter, the UK’s ‘Digital Economy Bill’ provides some revealing insight into the direction internet regulation in Australia is heading under Stephen Conroy and the Rudd government.

The main worries over the Digital Economy Bill is the enabling of the British government to block

a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright.


and

allow the Home Secretary to place “a technical obligation on internet service providers” to block whichever sites it wishes.

A “technical measure” is a measure that — (a) limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber; (b) prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use; (c) suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or (d) limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way.


In other words the British government now have the power to block whatever they want.

Given Stephen Conroy and the Rudd government’s headstrong rhetoric and refusal to engage public debate (not carefully planned television segments) on the proposed internet filter, just how long do you think it’d be before Australia was staring down the barrel of its own Digital Economy Bill?

The British government has already seized control of the internet and the Australian government won’t be all that far behind. Time to wake the hell up Australia, the internet as you know it is hanging in the balance.

Despite widespread public condemnation and sensible arguments put forth against him, like some sort of deaf Goliath of a steam train Stephen Conroy continues to rumble forward with his plans.

In his latest address to public concern Conroy wrote a piece on ‘The Punch’ responding to filter criticism penned by Getup campaigner Eliza Cussen.

Unfortunately, like all things Stephen Conroy, his response although written to “outline the facts” is full of contradictions and outright lies. Worse still it’s a further departure from the original intent to protect Australia’s children from… well who knows.

In his rebuttal Senator Conroy asserts a number of points. Here they are along with the relevant criticism nobody at The Punch seems to have had the balls to raise.

$49m for law enforcement by providing 91 additional AFP officers to the Child Protection Unit


Well this sounds good… although whether it’s a case of the AFP doing their job or otherwise I do note there’s a distinct lack of online child abuse reported on in Australia. Usually this sort of stuff (child grooming and what not) seems to happen in shady European and Asian countries.

A grants program to encourage ISPs to offer additional filtering services to households on an optional basis. This filtering could enable customers to block access to particular websites and chat rooms, if the customer chooses to do so.


So why are we bothering with a mandatory filter again? This idea is brilliant and should be the only filter option on the table. It covers opt-in and will allow much broader filtering of content not suitable for children on the internet.

Of course if lazy parents actually did their job and supervised their kids there’d be no need for filtering in the first place.

Funding for a range of education programs for children, parents and teachers through the ACMA Outreach program


This seems like a complete waste of time. Parents are more clued in then adults about the internet these days and if people are posing as kids online it’s not like they’ll be able to tell the difference.

As for educating parents… if they haven’t worked out by now that the internet can be dangerous if their kids are left on it unsupervised, then it’s probably too late.

Funding for the cybersmart website and online counselling service.


Cybersmart is a government website that asks children questions like ‘how cybersmart R U?’ and uses terms like ‘e-secure’ and ‘cybernetrix’.

Seriously no kid is going to visit this website unless they are forced to via school or something. Kids aren’t idiots or strangers to technology… they’re well beyond asking if they’re cybersmart or not.

The very existence of the website Cybersmart is an embarassment to Australian children and the government.

And what’s online counselling?

‘OMG I JUST SAW GOATSE, HELP ME I’M SUICIDAL!’ – We already have children’s helpline et al, what the hell do we need online counselling for?

Establishing the Government’s 300 strong Youth Advisory Group and Consultative Working Group on cyber-safety.


Jesus christ enough with the commitees and advisory groups already. I
have no idea what either of these groups do but by name alone they already sound like a massive waste of time and money.

ISP Level filtering which would block RC material on URL based websites through a public complaints mechanism.


Oh great, public complaint system. Seriously Conroy have you met the population of Australia? We’re a country full of freaking wowsers, hip no holds barred teach savvy youth, self righteous ‘BAN EVERYTHING YESTERDAY!’ family groups, vegetarian softcocks and bogan all-you-can-eat meatasauruses.

How the hell are all these groups going to come to any sort of rational agreement when it comes to agreeing what should and shouldn’t be on the internet?

The Rudd Government does not support Refused Classification content being available on the internet. This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.


Seriously when was the last time you saw a website on child abuse?! Every man and his dog knows this sort of stuff goes on solely on private p2p networks and direct transfers.

What do you honestly think that when we hear about these child abuse sting operations that the police have just been sitting in their offices searching for websites?!

Ditto for all the other categories mentioned. As for instructional text, if I can call up a mate overseas and get him to mail, email or fax the information I require to me – then censoring it on the internet achieves a big fat nothing.

Under Australia’s existing classification regulations this material is not available in newsagencies, it is not on library shelves, you cannot watch it on a DVD or at the cinema and it is not shown on television. Refused Classification material is not available on Australian hosted websites.


So lets just ban anything that’s not an Australian website then shall we? Sounds brilliant.

Unless the URL’s requested are on the RC Content list, the web traffic will not pass through a ‘filter’.


Of course it bloody will, that’s a filter works! You pass any and all data through it and it checks if it’s on the ban list or not. If the data doesn’t pass through the filter then how the hell is it supposed to check if it’s on the ban list?!

The Refused Classification Content list cannot be made public because if it was, it would simply be a catalogue to direct people to specific URLs that are Refused Classification.


If the filter is doing it’s job and blocking these websites, just how are people going to be directed to such sites?

I can guarantee you now that this government blacklist will leak just as easily as the ACMA list did. There’s a lot of pissed off nerds that work for ISP’s and if you’re distributing the list to every ISP in Australia all it will take is for one employee to crack it and leak the list.

Good luck keeping that genie in a bottle.

The Government has held a public consultation on improved transparency measures to ensure the public have confidence in the list and the submissions will feed into the legislative framework.


Simply put, by keeping the contents of a list secret you are creating a massive aura of non-transparency around the list. This act in itself far outweighs any token gestures towards hollow transparency the government might engage in.

You want the general public to have trust in a filter list they have no idea what’s on?

Last time the ACMA blacklist leaked it was found to contain Youtube, PartyPoker, Wikileaks, an anonymous redirect service, Rapidshare, Abbywinters, Wikipedia, several other .AU adult sites, www.ballroomdancing.com.au and practically all major online poker sites.

Yeah, having complete faith and trust in a government maintained blacklist sounds like a good idea…

High traffic sites like YouTube and Facebook are not included in the policy.


Ironically I imagine social networking sites like Facebook are where most child grooming goes on. It takes all of 2 seconds to create a bogus profile and then hunt down some jailbait.

Good thing the filter won’t be tackling the potentially largest threat to children’s safety online.

Specific debate points or not it doesn’t take an idiot to realise that Conroy himself has no confidence in the proposed internet filter. It’ll be easily circumventable and as far as protecting children goes, well it’s not like you run into the nasties of the internet with actively going and looking for it. This becomes less of a matter of protecting and more of a matter of babysitting. This should be a parents responsibility, not the rest of Australia’s.

If Senator Conroy is serious about protecting children perhaps he could have a look into the recently announced ‘Little Miss Bayside Pageant’. Set to be held in Melbourne in June the pageant provides a pedophile paradise with contestants up to the age of 13 competing ‘in a formal gown, casual outfit and sport or swimwear.’

Forget policing the internet for website in far off distant places, here we are bringing potential child abuse right to our doorstep, legally! Where the hell are the Conroy’s, wowsers and family groups when you actually need them?!

Oh that’s right, they’re too busy campaigning to protect children from imaginary nasties on the internet…

To be honest I haven’t really been paying much attention to what’s gone ever since the trial finished late last year. Last I heard they weren’t going to release the trial reports or Conroy’s office were just sitting on them for some stupid reason.

I’m not exactly sure filter wise currently where we’re at. I think most of the Australia has long since accepted the futility of an internet filter and is just secretly hoping that nothing happens before the next federal election.

In the meantime it seems Conroy is determined to waltz about the country doing television and radio interviews assumedly because he believes people still think the filter is a good idea.

In his latest ABC radio interview Conroy pretty much directly summed up the major problem with an Australian internet filter and conceded that there is no solution in sight.

The two biggest problems facing internet censorship in Australia is firstly the issue of free speech and secondly trust in the Australian government. Politicians don’t exactly rank up there on most of our ‘people we can trust’ lists so charging them with filtering the internet seems naturally uncomfortable.

Yet that’s exactly what the Rudd Labor government want you to accept. Fortunately they’ve at least got enough foresight to realise that this is a problem. In Conroy’s latest ABC interview he acknowledged this problem;

Senator Conroy today conceded greater transparency was needed in terms of what was deemed RC material.

“We have a discussion paper that we’ve issued calling for increased transparency measures,” he said.

The measures were needed to make sure governments could not slip things onto the list, he said.


This at a very basic level at least assures Australians that the government is aware that nobody trusts them to run a closed internet filter.

Despite calling for more transparency however Conroy also ‘ruled out making the (banned website) list public’.

If we look at the possible solutions of increasing transparency from the government end in terms of monitoring what websites are added to an internet filter censorship list, then it’s hard to imagine a more effective solution then banned website list transparency.

When asked why he was categorically ruling out this option Conroy stated that ‘the problem when you produce a list of URLs is you are actually giving the address of where to go and look‘.

And herein lies the problem. If the proposed internet filter was working as intended then the public wouldn’t be able to access websites on the publicly available ban list.

Conroy reasoning that you don’t publish a list of banned URLs is an admission that the internet filter simply won’t work. I mean if people are easily accessing URLs which are on a government blacklist then clearly the filter isn’t doing its job.

Either the filter will block websites Australian’s aren’t meant to be accessing, in which case it really doesn’t matter if the banned URL list is made public or not, or the filter won’t work.

Which one is it Conroy?

Deep within this dank and uninviting place, lives Michael Atkinson “Ello!” – overworked servant of the Thing Upstairs.

“Atkinson! Feed me!”

…But that’s nothing compared to the horrors that lurk beneath the Trap Door… for there is always something down there, in the dark, waiting to come out!

I don’t know what’s worse, Stephen Conroy and his bloody internet filter or Michael Atkinson and his election censorship laws.

Despite nobody asking for such laws to be put in place, early this year the South Australian government passed a law effectively prohibiting anyone from anonymously commenting on elections in South Australia.

The new law, which came into force on January 6, requires anyone making an online comment about next month’s state election to publish their real name and postcode.


Although already passed, the law doesn’t come into effect until writs are released for the election on March 20th. The writs themselves can be written up and released anytime up to 25 days before March 20th.

Currently when leaving a comment an online you leave your details in a form and can choose whatever alias you want.

Once people start commenting about the South Australian election nothing much is going to change. If I want to put in Humphrey B. Bear with a postcode of 90210 who’s going to stop me?

At worst the comment I left won’t get published.

At best I’ll leave a realish looking name with a bogus postcode and still enjoy the benefit of publishing anonymously.

Either way the law is already ineffective. It does get worse though…

The law requires media organisations to keep a person’s real name and full address on file for six months, and they face fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.


Can someone tell me why the Electoral Commissioner needs to know what I am saying about various political candidates or political parties?

What are they doing, monitoring news websites and waiting to pull people in for questioning everytime something they disagree with is published?

And how technologically cumbersome is it going to be for publishers to keep people’s names and full address on file for 6 months?

The data cannot be verified so integrity is already compromised from the beginning. Talk about your exercises in futility.

Like every attempt to control the internet in Australia I can’t help but roll my eyes and wonder which dinosaur of a politician approved this law.

Stand up and take a bow South Australian attorney general Michael Atkinson.

Fifty one year old Michael Atkinson not only approved the massive blow
to public privacy but also lashed out defending his decision.

Attorney-General Michael Atkinson denied that the new law was an attack on free speech.

“The AdelaideNow website is not just a sewer of criminal defamation, it is a sewer of identity theft and fraud,” Mr Atkinson said.


It seems that one old fart’s grudge against people being able to publish without any form of identification verification in place is at the roots of this new law.

The good news is that after the law was passed we’ll all still be able to publish anonymously, we’ll just have to use realistic sounding names.

Short of everyone installing some sort of monitoring software how the hell is a commenting system going to know you’re not really Lady Von Touchmybottom?

Way to go Atkinson. Mission: Ineffective?

Additionally I wonder if the irony of complaining  that people can publish as anyone is defamatory and labelling a newspaper publication as a sewer of criminal defamation, identity theft and fraud’ is lost on him.

Additionally there’s talk that the censorship law will extend over Facebook, Twitter and talk back radio… because y’know, nobody publishes under nonsense internet pseudonyms on Facebook or Twitter.

As for talkback radio, yeah good luck with that one. When was the last time you gave your full name and address to some random over the phone?

Perhaps we could all get identity barcodes and just make life easier for the government.

Talk about population explosions, increasing welfare, screwing over anyone who wasn’t a working class family and the gradual curtailing of civil liberties are amongst some of the reasons I packd up and left Australia.

The combination of politicians not understanding how the internet works (along with it’s limitations such as identity verification on name and addresses alone), and the introduction of laws like this only serve to cement in my mind that I made the right decision.

Unless someone can come up with a better answer, the only people I see benefiting from laws like this are the ones in power. The general public certainly don’t have anything to gain.

Rest assured though this is a once off deal. In response to criticism Atkinson sought to reassure everyone by stating there “there was no intention to broaden the law to take it beyond the period of elections”.

The similarity between Atkinson’s comment censorship and Stephen Conroy’s ‘we’re only testing the viability of an internet filter’ routine seem to sum up Labor’s stance on internet censorship;

‘As soon as we find something that works we’re going to make sure nobody says anything online we disagree with’.

In supporting this law when it was proposed I believe the Liberals aren’t too far behind either.

Despite not having free speech per say I’ve always believed that in Australia we at least had political free speech. If so, what does it matter what name I use to publish my opinions on an election?