Breaking down Conroy on the ABC’s Q&A
Stereotypical geeks and the shock of just how feminine Andrew Bolt’s voice is aside, the show was riddled with the usual Conroy contradictions and blatant lies we’ve come to expect.
In a similar vein to my ‘Why Conroy can’t be trusted‘ piece a few days ago, I decided to break down Conroys appearance last night and show just how blatantly he is misleading and lying to the Australian Public.
For those of you who missed the show last night, the gist of it went like this:
The parliament of Australia is made up of elected representatives of the people of Australia and if the parliament decides it wants to go an extra step, that’s what the parliament does. People have the chance to toss us out if they don’t like what we do or they don’t like what somebody else does.
Two days ago Conroy is all about warning that the government may go an extra steps with filtering content, yet here he is on national television guaranteeing political content will never be filtered. That’s right never, as in eternity. Nice choice of words there Stephen, everybody knows politics is forever.
He didn’t just contradict what he said a few days ago though, on the show itself the issue of the recent adding to the blacklist of a website carrying the legal work of Bill Henson came up.
Conroy was forced to admit that ACMA had made a mistake;
Apparently though the Henson addition wasn’t a classification mistake though. Conroy explains;
What on Earth is that supposed to even mean? I had a look at the ACMA website and after a site has been reported and found blacklist worthy the process is as follows:
If content is not hosted in, or provided from Australia and is prohibited, or likely to be prohibited, ACMA will notify the content to suppliers of approved filters in accordance with the Internet Industry Associations code of practice.
Between a person complaining, some random pleb at ACMA investigating and deeming a site restricted and then adding it to the blacklist, just where exactly is the chance for the technology that ACMA apparently do to go wrong? Sounds to me like a crock of backpedalling-to-cover-my-department shit to me.
Duncan Riley raises the obvious followup question;
So the list, which is secret so there’s no way of telling what’s on it (until it gets leaked that is), contains “technical errors.” The list currently has 1100 sites on it, but under the new scheme could expand to include millions. How many “technical errors” are acceptable?
Amazingly this wasn’t brought up during the show, how none of the panellers or audience didn’t raise it upon hearing the phrase “ACMA technology” escapes me.
According to Conroy however we’ve all apparently got confidence in the classification process and there’s nothing to worry about.
The biggest flaw in the filter Conroy gave away during the show was still yet to come and yes, it involves the crazy Russian mob again.
Amongst other claims was the gem that Queensland Police had “cracked peer to peer”:
Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.
Secondly I had a look into what exactly this new software was that the Queensland police had just started using and it turns out it’s the not-so-new Microsoft’s “Operation Fair Play” which has been used in the US for a few years now.
Through the existing Fairplay system, investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved.
Then they download files–frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like “children kiddy underage illegal.mpg” and much more obscene–to their own machines. The Fairplay software allows the investigator to obtain the IP address of the file’s sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.
Oh come on, filename keywords?! Does anyone seriously think the hardcore child pornographers of the world are sitting around on Limewire, Emule or BitTorrent sharing ‘little girl gets naked party time.avi’?!
If anything this software is just going to wind up catching idiots who download uncertified fakes, as it’s not uncommon for a fake file to have a million different dubious names across file sharing networks.
Now what you’ve really got to ask yourself is why, in the face of such damning contradictions, lies and misinformation is Conroy still pushing ahead with the filter. It just makes little to no sense and every time he comes out and publicly speaks about his plans he just seems to dig himself into a deeper hole about it.
The full show can be obtained here but be warned, as StephenConroyisacunt suggests, “make sure there aren’t any solid objects around” as it’s quite frustrating to watch in its entirety.
Conroy next appears on SBS’s Insight alongside EFA frontman Colin Jacobs. Hopefully there will be slightly more indepth discussion this time around. Expect another write up after it airs on Tuesday 31st March, 7:30pm AEST.
March 28th, 2009 at
[...] Mark Newton, Stormcentre, and OzSoapBox have write-ups about the [...]
March 30th, 2009 at 4:25 am Les(Quote)
Would I be wrong in assuming Conroy had a few glasses of red before the show or is it a speech impediment that causes him to occasionally slur his words?
Surely the government cant be that naive… Conroy talks about the internet filter like it’s as simple as just “turning it on” and giving it a service every few months. I mean, come on.
How many government employees will be needed to oil this machine? 1000? 10,000? Not forgetting the drain on the economy from government salaries, super, bonuses, etc. We can look forward to even more expensive internet if the ongoing filter maintenance costs are forwarded to all ISP’s. (a kind of web import tax, genius!)
The only true way to filter content is block absolutely everything and have a few million offshore third world IT specialists on standby to pull apart every single file, analyse its content with a series of deciphering programs and then approve it for transmission. Once it is approved (which could take a while), you will only have access for a few minutes because it’s common knowledge that Russian mobsters don’t fuck about when hijacking shit.
We all have goals in life, but unfortunately we’re usually too busy with bullshit to adhere to them. It appears the ACMA is no exception…
ACMA Goals
- Efficient spectrum use
– Competitive markets
– Increasing self-regulation
– Maximising public benefit
– Meeting needs of consumers / industry
Taken from: http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib100093/ignss_slides.pdf
March 30th, 2009 at 4:12 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Gday Les,
I have read the speculation that the Labor government is just letting Conroy run around and dig his own political grave before they reverse support on the filter. Rudd seems very happy to let Conroy be the face of the filter so if they do drop it there’s minimum collateral damage that way.
As for funding, i’m not sure if once it becomes mandatory the government will pay for it or the ISP’s will. Conroy came out and said the reason some ISP’s were excluded is because they expected the government to upgrade their infrastructure to accomodate the new filtering ‘technology’ rather then pay for it themselves.
Either way you’re right though, if this thing is to be remotely effective the ongoing costs are going to be enourmous, they simply won’t get away with hiring a few plebs to check incoming complaints before deciding to add urls to a txt file never to be reviewed again.