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?

Google made headlines earlier this week when they announced they’d had enough of being compromised by the Chinese government unidentifiable Chinese nationals definitely not working for the government.

In response to these attacks Google pledged that they would no longer be censoring internet search results made from Google.cn.

Despite internet filtering being relatively easy to circumvent, having search engine results filtered at the source was a major setback for online freedom of speech.

Less then 24 hours later however came the announcement that Google Australia would be censoring the entry for Aboriginies on Encyclopaedia Dramatica.

It seems that internet censorship isn’t fit for the Chinese but Australian’s are more then willing to bend over for it.

For those of you not in the know Encyclopedia Dramatica is the Wikipedia equivalent for the notorious online community 4chan. 4chan is essentially a massive anonymous imageboard and has been the source of a lot of internet sub culture over the years.

The page in question is Encyclopedia Dramatica’s entry for Aboriginals which, like the rest of the site is loaded with satire.

The decision to drop the entry came after Australian Steve Hodder-Watt launched legal action against Google. He found the Encyclopedia Dramatica entry after entering the search string ‘Aboriginal and Encyclopedia’ into Google.

I’m not a big fan of blunt racism just for the sake of being racist but underneath the deliberate offensiveness there is somewhat of a hollow ring of truth. Well, at least as far as drug abuse goes.

When asked why Hodder-Watt launched the action he replied,

It portrays indigenous Australians in the most unsavoury light possible, and you wouldn’t want a child stumbling across it.


If parents were doing their job properly then kids shouldn’t be able to access sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica to begin with.

Like I said I’m not saying the site isn’t racist but unless racism is explicitly refused classification (currently no such system is in place) who does Hodder-Watt think he is dictating what Australian’s can and can’t see?

I applaud Google for taking steps towards opening the internet up in China despite the likelyhood that unless they back down then the end result will be pulling out of the country.

What I can’t understand is why they’ve gone and decided to restrict our search results. Hypocritical much?

If you’re offended by content online then by all means petition the host of Encyclopedia Dramatica to remove the offensive content. Launching government funded legal action via the Australian Human Right Commission just creates a dangerous legal precedent.

What about my human right to access legally published information, regardless of how offensive it might be?

So you’d parade around sprouting off your new found cleverness, revelling in the fact that you’d found a way to use your brains and stick it to the man.

Of course eventually your parents would snap and still belt the shit out of you but for that brief period of time you’d beaten the biggest authority figures in your life; and you now had the bruises to prove it.

Whilst true, at least for me, this little anecdote highlights that banning words even at a pre-pubescent level is rather futile. Turns out politics isn’t that much different to being a little kid.

The Rudd government quietly brought in new word censorship regulations last week with the idea that “MPs may not use their printing and communications allowance to disparage or denigrate another political party.”

Whilst I think we can all agree that there’s definitely a childish feel to some of the political smear campaigns that are funded by Australian taxpayers, trying to stop this by censoring particular words is going to achieve what exactly?

Here’s the list of words the Rudd team have banned:

Disgraceful
Dreadful
Inept
Mismanagement
Reckless
Recklessly
Incompetence
Incompetent
Irresponsible
Flawed
Unfairly
Disastrous
Neglect
Disregard


Fair enough, there’s definitely nothing positive there. So why should politicians be allowed to use taxpayer funds to slag eachother off then?

Well let’s say if I was to write a letter to the government critical of these new regulations, it’d look something like this:

Dear Mr Rudd,

I read about your recklessly inept banned words list today and must say that your blatant mismanagement in introducing this flawed policy is nothing short of incompetent.

Limiting free speech by means of a flawed banned word list does nothing more then to reinforce the irresponsible incompetence the current Labor government is fast gaining a reputation for.

Like anyone else I think reckless government spending is disgraceful and is a reflection of the neglect of parliamentary policy. However banning words on the otherhand shows a disastrous disregard for free speech in Australia and a horrendous lack for foresight.

With the introduction of these dreadful regulations I can’t help but feel the government is unfairly overstepping it’s bounds when it comes to limiting criticism thrown against it. This is the beginning of a slippery slope of regulation and one I’d rather we didn’t tread in this country.

We should be working towards free speech in Australia, not against it.


With a quick trip to an online thesaurus a ready substitute for each of those words can be found within seconds.

Disgraceful –> Disreputable
Dreadful –> Atrocious
Inept –> Clumsy
Mismanagement –> Blunder
Reckless –> Careless
Recklessly –> Carelessly
Incompetence –> Inability
Incompetent –> Amateur
Irresponsible –> Ill-considered
Flawed –> Crooked
Unfairly –> Dishonestly
Disastrous –> Catastrophic
Neglect –> Disdain
Disregard –> Apathy


A quick substitution and my previously unprintable taxpayer funded letter to Mr Rudd becomes printable.

Dear Mr Rudd,

I read about your carelessly clumsy banned words list today and must say that your blatant blunder in introducing this crooked policy is nothing short of amateur.

Limiting free speech by means of a crooked banned word list does nothing more then to reinforce the ill-considered inability the current Labor government is fast gaining a reputation for.

Like anyone else I think careless government spending is disreputable and is a reflection of the disdain of parliamentary policy. However banning words on the otherhand shows a catastrophic apathy for free speech in Australia and a horrendous lack for foresight.

With the introduction of these atrocious regulations I can’t help but feel the government is dishonestly overstepping it’s bounds when it comes to limiting criticism thrown against it. This is the beginning of a slippery slope of regulation and one I’d rather we didn’t tread in this country.

We should be working towards free speech in Australia, not against it.


Sure it’s a little bit more clumsy to read but word for word the message is still clear. With a bit of a touchup there’s no reason under the new regulations why, as a politician I couldn’t continue to send out taxpayer funded political angst to my electorate.

So what happens now, does the government actively engage in a cat and mouse game and expand the list as politicians flex their thesaurusian muscles? At what point do you draw the line and realise that despite half the dictionary being on your banned word list people are still going to find ways to be critical of you?

Whether literal, verbal or even digital in the form of internet censorship ban lists rarely work due to the relative easy of circumvention. Yet here we are as a nation staring down the barrel of yet another stupidly ineffective censorship policy.

Welcome to the Rudd government; if we can’t control it, we’ll ban it.

China plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain Web sites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the Internet.

The government, which has told global PC makers of the requirement but has yet to announce it to the public, says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from “harmful” content. The primary target is pornography, says the main developer of the software, a company that has ties to China’s security ministry and military.


It seemed protecting the children from porn harmful content was much more effective in selling the filter to the masses then the usual “don’t write anything negative about us or we’ll come to your house and drag you away”.

Whilst slightly different then Conroy’s proposed filter for Australia, in that China already has a mandatory national filter set up, the fact that this additional level of protection was being introduced by the Chinese government begged two questions;

1. If the mandatory state filter was an effective solution, why the need for an additional filter at the pc level?

2. If China, who have 30,000 internet police removing content 24/7, feel the  need for an additional home based filter for effective internet censorship, will mandatory home level filtering be the next phase of Conroy’s filter agenda?

With the announcement today that the enforcement of a mandatory home filter has been delayed, thankfully the ramifications to the answers of the above questions don’t matter, well at least for now.

In a rare reversal, China’s government has given in to domestic and international pressure and backed down from a rule that would have required personal computers sold in the country to have internet-filtering software.

Just hours before the rule was to have taken effect on Wednesday, the government said it would postpone the requirement for the “Green Dam Youth Escort” software.

Chinese government's depiction of an internet filter: Apparently we need to save the children from black spiky potato porn.


“Green Dam Youth Escort“, no seriously who comes up with these names? If I ever go visit a dam and the water is GREEN I’m certainly not going to feel any safer from child pornography let alone feel compelled to drink the water.

And what’s with Youth escort? It sounds like some kind of fancy upper class name for a child prostitute.

“Hi I’d like to book a hotel room for me and my youth escort here.”

What gives China?

In Australia we are currently in what must be the final stages of the ISP filter trial, with the reports due to be published later this month. Unfortunately as far as I know there is still no success criteria (or failure criteria for that matter) so I’m not sure what the report could possibly contain beyond:

Hay guys, we blocked 908,096,091 websites during the trial = LOL SUCCESS!

The latest debarcle in Conroy’s filter project was the announcement last week that websites selling games that were above an MA15+ rating would be blocked by the proposed national filter.

Currently Australia does not have a higher rating beyond MA15+ for games, so despite non classified games not necessarily being illegal to own they are illegal to sell in Australia. Why we have such a system when anybody with half a brain can just jump on the internet and legally purchase from overseas I have no idea, but the government is clearly looking to put a stop to it.

Firstly there is currently nothing illegal about adults buying refused classification games from overseas vendors. These transacations are mostly conducted via credit card and usually have clauses stating minors are not allowed to purchase. Currently the median age of gamers in Australia is 30, so it’s not like kids are out there buying RC games in the thousands.

Not to mention the fact that it’s illegal for minors to do so. If parent’s cannot reign in their kids just how much is the adult population of Australia supposed to put up with? If the government doesn’t want me as an adult legally buying RC games from overseas then make possessing RC material illegal in Australia and face the backlash.

Or alternatively or the next time some deadbeat parents gets onto the news complaining because their kid downloaded a Japanese child hentai game from a bittorrent site educational website while doing their homework, PROSECUTE THE FREAKING PARENTS.

To give you an example of just how arcane our existing rating system is here in Australia, I’ll use the example of Fallout 3 which was featured in a SMH article about the gaming censorship proposal.

The photo (shown to the right) was accompanied with the caption:

Fallout 3 was banned from sale in Australia until it was modified to remove objectionable content.


As if to suggest violence was why it was banned. Infact the game, which was targeted at an adult market, was banned for its “realistic depiction” of drugs as health powerups.

Meanwhile any adult in Australia can walk into a dvd store and hire out thousands of movies showing drug use in a much more realistic manner then running over them to gain some health in a video game ever will.

The news today that China has backed down on it’s controversial mandatory home filter policy proves that there’s room for negotiation at the highest level of internet censorship support. I think it’s important that we keep this in mind as we the public negotiate the shaky future of internet censorship in Australia.

With the reports of the trials due to be published this month and the lackluster enthusiasm the government has shown so far in sharing information with the public, one can place some fatih in the results of the trial putting a hold on any national filter plans.

Clearly we’ve seen the original scope of ‘we’re here to protect the children from porn’ blown out of the water. How much further are the government willing to intrude on Australian adult’s day to day lives and how long will it be before we see a mandatory home filter system in Australia?

Conroy seems to be a great subscriber to China’s internet policy, hopefully that includes their mistakes too.

It’s nothing short of a farce that the trials have gone ahead without a clear and definable success criteria in place. With the trial results due to be published in July and no criteria to measure the results by we’re quickly heading full steam ahead into a massive waste of taxpayer funds.

I’d love to see the trials fail but without success criteria it’s well… you know, impossible.

To rub salt into the wounds of the trials also comes the news that Conroy is backing off from his original ‘clean up the internet’ proposals and is looking to just ban RC content.

What is still confusing however is that RC content is legal to own and view in Australia but it cannot be bought, sold or publicly displayed regardless. There is also the proviso it does not contain illegal content (enter child pornography etc.) but this is within the boundaries of existing law.

As for the rest of the content, the government is hoping “that ISPs will offer additional filtering services – as an optional extra to customers – to block this content.”

Yeah I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that one guys.

Also in the news this week is that the process of putting a single URL on the ACMA blacklist will come at a cost of $90,000. Now i have no idea why the government pays someone $90,000 to copy and paste a URL to a text file before sending it off to ISPS for filtering but goddamn where do I sign up for this gravy train?

According to ACMA, 51 per cent of the blacklist, or 499 URLs, is RC content.

This means that out of the 109.5 million plus websites (these are separate domains, god knows how many individual web pages there are) operating in May 2009, Australian taxpayers are going to pay just under fifty million dollars to censor 0.000045% of websites on the internet.

Yeah, that ought to stop children from finding porn on the internet no worries.

Just to illustrate how comprehensively stupid this whole ordeal has been and how easily it can be circumvented, I’ll leave you with this story on Microsoft’s new search engine ‘Bing’:

In Australia, the US, and Europe, any Bing user can search for “sex” and receive thousands of results. Using a unique new feature, users can access explicit videos without leaving the search results page.


Microsoft search, coming to an ACMA blacklist near you.

Slowly liberties are eroded and the rights of one group begin to trump that of another group. This post isn’t about whether or not I agree with Nazi philosophy or whether I am pro abortion or not; it’s about respecting people’s rights to act within the law.

The government won’t let you sell what you want to sell, teach your kids what you want to teach or post anything online that they find objectionable.

Welcome to the new Australia.

These days it’s pretty safe to assume that unless you belong to a giant media corporation, the previous political freedom of speech Australian’s had is all but dead. Camberwell market operators Balwyn Rotary recently closed down a Word War II memorabilia stall run by Tony Dunlap.

Balwyn Rotary received six complaints over an unknown period of time and twice police were called to close down the stall after Mr. Dunlap rightfully told people where to go when they tried to shut him down.

What did the complaints revolve around?

No it wasn’t the fact he was selling amongst other things Nazi memorabilia, complaints were raised over the close proximity of the Israeli flag and various Nazi paraphernalia for sale.

That’s right, six Jews complained about their flag placement and the next thing you know the stall is shut down and the cops are called. If you’re walking down the street and the worst thing that happens to you is you walk past a shop selling flags next to nazi paraphernalia in a World War 2 theme based store then you’ve had a pretty good day.

oh-oh, the nazi and israel flag are touching-QUICK SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE!


Sure it might be a bit presumptious to assume it was just Jewish people who complained but seriously, who else in Australia is going to care where the hell the Israeli flag is placed? What right is it of random jewish (or any other nationality) people to tell a stallholder how to sell legal items and get him shut down if he doesn’t comply with their demands?

Of course there’s no free speech in Australia so if the cops come and order you to close it down because it’s “objectionable” then you do what they say or risk being arrested.

Continuing on the theme of Nazi’s, the family court recently banned a woman from

taking her six year old to political rallies, viewing Nazi websites when the child is in her care and that she be restrained from inciting racial hatred.


Since when were their pro nazi political rallies held in Australia? No seriously where the hell are these happening I’d love to go to one in public and watch the hilarity.

Seriously though, I’m all for stopping her from inciting racial hatred and readily concede she is probably a major whackjob but really, who’s going to monitor her internet use 24/7? Further to that we have thousands of children involuntarily indoctrinated into religion annually, some of which are just as offensive to some as the Nazi’s were.

So really, is the crime here that she’s indoctrinating her child like so many others do, or the fact that it’s Nazi doctrination in particular. If it’s the latter (and it is), then who asked the government to be the thought police?

Why don’t we let society sort these cretins out? If Australian’s tolerate nazi’s as a society then they will flourish, likewise they’ll feel ridiculed and outcast like the ignorant morons they are if society doesn’t tolerate them. Either way, why the hell do we need the government telling them what they can and can’t believe.

Unless they’re killing jews or breaking the law in some other way then what is it anyone’s business what they choose to believe or teach their own kids?

Of course there’s no free speech in Australia so bullshit cases like this get heard in family courts. The government could be preventing parents from killing their kids but instead they waste their time thought policing Nazi parents. Yeah, I’m sure a court order is going to turn the mother into a jew loving peaceful beatnick.

Finally we return to a topic I blogged about extensively over the last few months, Australian internet censorship. It wasn’t all that long ago that online forum Whirlpool received a takedown order and the threat of $11,000 a day fines because somebody linked to a legal abortion website that was on ACMA’s blacklist.

Almost two months after threatening Whirlpool the idiots at ACMA are at it again.

This time they’ve issued a takedown notice to the EFA, despite the link being used in a political discussion about Labor’s internet censorship policy.

There are many reasons why this should alarm Australian net users. Most significantly, the link was part of a political discussion about the merits of the existing and future Internet censorship policies. The link was offered as a demonstration of the sorts of controversial content that could and would be included in any such proposal. No “offensive” material was included on our site itself.

Nevertheless, we were forced to remove the link on pain of severe penalties.


I’m not so much alarmed as dumbfounded as to why ACMA would beat this drum again. Getting whirlpool to remove the link from a thread discussion (which was also political in nature) and the EFA to censor themselves doesn’t mean that millions of children are saved from seeing a dead foetus. A simple google search with moderation off will provide an ample amount of vomit material to appease even the dirtiest of fetishes.

In fact I’m willing to bet that more people get their fix of disturbing material from search engines then Whirlpool or the EFA combined. For example I’m getting a rather disturbingly constant stream of traffic for child pornography related searches… and I can assure you there’s no kiddie porn to be found here.

So what do takedown notices like this really achieve?

Well for starters they trash the credibility of any government policy when it comes to the internet. We’ve got fines being issued now pre-filter so one can only imagine what a draconian nightmare the internet will be in Australia post-filter.

Of course there’s no free speech in Australia so if you run a .au website and the government orders you to take something legal down, you do so or risk paying $11,000 a day in fines.

From online to offline and nazis to abortion it is clear that Australia desperately needs some kind of free speech model. In all three of the above examples no illegal acts were committed yet each produced government sanctioned binding results that resulted in censorship or the banning of something.

Sure it might sound ok when we’re dealing with Nazi’s and fetus photos but from there it’s only a small step to something less objectionable and then it’s only a matter of time before some minority group (Aborigines I’m looking at you) start harping on about how something offends them and then it’s all of a sudden banned or censored en masse.

Why free speech hasn’t been a political issue thus far in thus country yet I’m unsure. I guess the Australian public are complacent enough with the ideal of free speech peddled to society despite the opposite being the harsh reality we’re only starting to come to grips with.

I can’t remember prior to this year the government ever threatening fines and takedown notices for links to objectionable material, yet here we are with two instances in as many months and the threat of total internet censorship pounding on our virtual doors.

Democracy what?

I presume this is some attempt to get people to buy cable tv in their respective countries so that Comedy Central get more money. I had a look at Foxtel’s website and it seems the cheapest option is still a ridiculous $66 to get the Comedy Channel plus a whole bunch of other crap I’ll never watch.

Comedy Central are dreaming if they think Australian’s are going to pay $66 a month just to watch the Daily Show or Colbert Report (or both!).

So what are your options?

Well, you can either go back to illegally obtaining the episodes via EZTV torrents or similar or simply use a web proxy to make their servers think you have a US ip address. Here’s a quick guide on how to set your web browser to use a proxy in either Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Firstly, browse over to http://nntime.com/proxy-country/United-States-01.htm and pick any one of the proxies on the list and copy the address of the proxy (one of the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxx numbers in the ‘IP Address’ column).

Firefox

1. Click the Tools menu (alt+T) and select ‘options’.

2. Click the ‘Advanced’ tab.

3. Click the ‘Network Tab’

4. Click the settings button next to ‘Configure how Firefox connects to the internet’ or press alt + e.

5. Your browser should be set to ‘No proxy’ unless you’ve previously set one up. Change the option to ‘Manual Proxy Configuration’ and paste the number you copied from NNTime previously into the box. Make sure you put the port (numbers after the semicolon into the ‘Port:’ box. Don’t change any of the other settings.

It should look something like this:


6. Click ok and start browsing.

Internet Explorer

1. Click Tools menu and then select ‘Internet Options’.

2. Click the ‘Connections’ tab and then the button ‘LAN settings’ at the bottom.

3. In the ‘Proxy Server’ area, click the checkbox for ‘Use a proxy server for your LAN’ and paste the number address you copied previously into the box. Make sure the port number (the numbers after the colon) into the ‘Port:’ box.

It should look something like this:


4. Click ok and start browsing.

Notes:

Some of the proxies on the list won’t work or might be extremely slow, if this is the case just try another one on the list.

You’ll notice your web browsing is a bit slower when using the proxy, this is normal due to all your http data being routed through a slow free server. When you’re done watching full episodes of either the Daily Show or Colbert Report I strongly recommend turning off the proxy.

Follow the same steps to turn on the proxy, for Firefox select ‘No proxy’ at the Connection Settings window and for Internet explorer uncheck ‘Use a proxy server for your lan’ at the LAN Settings window.

Note that the proxies should also give you access to the forums of the Daily Show and Colbert Report (which are also geographically restricted).

Whatever you do don’t access https:// sites (netbanking or anything that you use your CC online) as information passed through a free web proxy is easily obtainable. Sure someone has to be actively listening but why take the risk?

Anyway that’s all you need to know to continue to enjoy these two great shows online. If you have any dramas leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll see if I can help.

Whilst the entire contents of the email haven’t been publicly released, most likely due to condifentiality concerns, News.com.au have quoted some snippets from the leaked email.

“I write to you because you cannot have missed the resultant media storm,” said Mr Chapman in the email to department staff.

“Much of the reporting has verged on the breathless.”

“Murphy’s law would have it that the incorrectly included URL involved Henson, and this was all that was needed for people to connect the dots on some conspiracy,” he said.

“ACMA has conducted a full review of additions to the list for this period and found that this is the only URL where a computer system error resulted in the URL being incorrectly added.”

Mr Chapman said the watchdog was looking at ways to prevent further leaks.

A breathless media storm? Just who the bloody hell is Chris Chapman kidding?

Is it any wonder that the media went nuts over the contents of your leaked blacklist?! Had it not have been leaked who knows for how much longer the url invoving Henson might have been blacklisted.

This point is at the very centre of concerns Australians have over your ridiciulous blacklist. If you stuffed up once over a 1000 strong url blacklist, just how many errors are you going to make with a 10,000+ blacklist and just how the hell are we supposed to believe there will be no errors on it with no public scrutiny over ACMA’s actions?

Instead of admitting they stuffed up and human error is very much able to ‘taint’ the effectiveness of the blacklist Chapman comes out blaming ‘technology’ and media histeria. Gee, well that’s all my reservations laid to rest.

It is very re-assuring to know that instead of ditching a failed system that instead ACMA are pouring all their efforts into making sure none of their mistakes are ever leaked to the public again.

Hey Chapman, if you weren’t running around the country sprouting bullshit like this:


the people of Australia wouldn’t have to rely so heavily on the media to find out just what the hell it is you people claim to do in our best interests.

Can you?

Earlier this week Stephen Conroy (geez I’m starting to think I need a dedicated blog for all the articles I’ve written about this guy), publicly had a go at iiNet’s defense claiming that it was sarcastically “stunning” that the company was claiming they had no idea what their users were doing.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, is under fire for potentially prejudicial comments he made about the legal battle between iiNet and the movie studios, saying iiNet’s defence “belongs in a Yes Minister episode”.


iiNet is currently defending itself in court against “34 movie studios and Channel 7, represented by the Australian Federation against Copyright Theft (“AFACT”)“.

Amongst broadband and communications, Conroy just also happens to be the minister for “the digital economy”. One doesn’t need to be an economist to see the huge marketing potential if the government is able sell the line that Australian ISP’s can be shutdown or fined over their customers breaking copyright law.

Conroys attacks on iiNet’s defense come before iiNet has even “filed its defence and evidence on key aspects of the case“, iiNet’s managing director, Michael Malone stated;

It’s unheard of for a crown minister to try to influence the outcome of an active case. Conroy said that he has seen our defence, given under oath. We haven’t even submitted our defence yet, so I am really worried that he says he has seen it.


Surely the comments from Conroy wouldn’t just be sour grapes over iiNet withdrawing it’s application to participate in the government filter trial earlier this week? If not then what else beyond getting onside with corporate lobby groups  could Conroy possibly hope to gain by publicly rubbishing iiNet’s defense before they’ve even presented it in full?

When it comes to the filter, the business relationship between the government and corporate interests isn’t so transparent.

Best mates: Stephen Conroy and Anthony Pillion

A few days ago Conroy appeared on SBS’ Insight program and was dubiously sitting next to Webshield managing director, Anthony Pillion. Webshield has a huge vested interest in supporting the filter and have been one of Conroy’s most vocal supporters.

Webshield is in the business of selling filtered internet to schools, business and the general public. The very admission by them that the government internet filter will not be effective is a self admission that their current product is not effective. Pillion cast doubt over the accuracy of the leaked ACMA blacklists and supported Conroy on his latest appearance on tv on SBS.

Far more damning though is the fact that Pillion was suggesting the government buy filtering software way back in January, 2008. Recently Pillion has shared more of his vested business interests with the government;

I’m still in discussions with the Government over some other test scenarios I’ve proposed. I hope to have them included in later rounds [of the trials].


Webshield clearly already have the infrastructure set up to url filter the internet and are presumably looking to convince the government to give them a license to resell it to other ISPs if the filter goes ahead.

Think about it, if the filter goes ahead it kill Webshield’s current niche buisiness model, so what other reason beyond a vested financial interest in the rollout and ongoing maintenance costs could they have for such public support of mandatory government filtering?

As for the movie studios and channel 7 currently taking on iiNet, surely if Pillion can get into Conroy’s ear over how easy it is to filter the net they stand a pretty good chance of convincing the government that all references to copyright material should be added to the blacklist at a later stage; all in the name of protecting the children of course.

I might sound a bit like I’m crossing over into the realms of tin foil hat territory with that last remark, but had you of told me 3 years ago that Australia would be staring down the barrel of a mandatory government filter, I’d have laughed it off and accused you of the same thing.

Make no mistake there’s some serious money to be made here behind the scenes if the proposed filter goes ahead, the begging question being just how much freedom is the general public willing to sacrifice to line the pockets of a few?