Slashdot Mirror
Censoring Australian Censors' Blacklist
steveroehrs writes: "'Your access to the Web is being censored by the Government -- but it refuses to reveal exactly what it is we are not allowed to see.' Despite the attempts of Electronic Frontiers Australia in obtaining a copy of the Australian Internet black-list, the Australian government is still refusing to release the list to the public. This is in stark contrast to the situation for film classification, where the list is freely available. Article here "
...is that those who make them secret often won't even divulge what it is they've made secret. This is a major problem in a democratic society. In the US we are still dealing with decades of Cold-War-era documents that are difficult to get at. The Freedom of Information Act provides some help, but if you don't know a secret exists, how can you file a request to have it released to you? Also, the gov. is increasingly putting people on trial with secret evidence, that even the defendant and/or their attorney cannot see. This is the sort of thing this country was founded in reaction against.
I sympathize with our Aussie friends on this. At least the USA doesn't have this sort of regime on the Internet (yet).
Speaking of government secrets: ever wonder what the true story is about Bush and the "pretzel?"
Apart from the fact that Australians obviously aren't Free to decide what they would like to view on the Great Network, what measures can a government take?
I mean, if somebody in Australia wanted to, that person could use a proxy somewhere else in the world, where the "forbidden" content is available. Or does the Australian "government" have some really creepy way of filtering stuff out? (Can't think of how that could be possible, without secretly installing rogue software on everybody's computers which would filter content per machine)
Something like that could be attributed to evidence of filtering being a moot point. That the person who would like to view "forbidden" content could do so regardless of the "safeguards" put in by the Australian "government".
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
Im a Aussie [Sydney based] who has had the chance to live and work in many difference places around Europe and the US. [Seems to be an Australian cultural thing to get drunk in strange places]
/. like this alot of people who dont understand the country get on their high horses and yell "Australia = facists", "If they had guns they could defend their rights", etc etc.
Our government does some stupid things. Attempting to censor the net is one. When Australia gets mentioned on
When it comes down to it, our government is no more stupid than the next guys. We're still free down here [wish there was more free beer!], and I honestly believe Australia is one of the best places to live in the world.
The man who passed the rule will no longer hold the balance of power in 2 years in the Senate elections, and we can move forward and change policy. This is what a democracy allows us to do.
As a matter of interest for some of you US based people -- Australia has no freedom of speech legislation. This is a myth. The only freedom of speech that is mentioned in the constitution and our laws is that of Political free speech.
Does that make us a a facist state? No. Would we react well to this changing? No.
If ISPs can't access a government-compiled list of what-is-banned, then to absolutely comply with the law they have to manually (ie. with a human) proxy every request from their customers, determine whether those requests will return <jellobiafra>HARMFUL MATTER</jellobiafra>, or expose themselves to possible prosecution.
It's a bit like keeping a secret list of banned foods, then busting a grocer for ordering in a special type of mushroom for a customer.
Much noise was made at the time against the leglisation because it's stoopid. I remember reading about six months ago (sorry, no link) that, despite all the fuss, only half a dozen complaints against ISPs had actually been received by the Aust. Broadcasting Authority. No prosecutions ever eventuated.
Although it's a Very Bad Thing, since nobody's (so far) gotten in trouble because of this legislation, the real danger of ignoring this might be that you teach politicians they can be ignorant and stupid all the time and get away with it.
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
I disagree, something can be censorship even if it's technically accessible, and I think you'd agree if you thought about it for just a moment.
What if everytime before someone watched a program which criticizes the government, they have to first go to the store, purchase a special Dissent Card from the convenience store, come back from the store, step through a series of 99 arcane menus on the television to activate the Dissent Mode, stick the Dissent Card in their television, and then wait for a 2 day cooling off period before being able to view said content. The material is still accessible, but this is clearly censorship.
It becomes censorship at the point where it is made even slightly more difficult to access based solely on its content. Now even though it's not as extreme a case as the one I described above, that's still exactly what happened here at Slashdot.
I consider myself a pretty avid Slashdot reader, I mean, I post, and that in itself puts in like the top 10% of most avid Slashdot readers right there. And I had absolutely no idea what was going on and that posts had been censored through moderation bitchslap until it was brought up on Kuro5hin! How the hell is someone supposed to know to browse at -1 to see the censored posts when they don't even know they're there? You can't seriously expect me to browse at -1 all the time and wade through the ascii goatse and page extending posts just on the off chance that the Slashdot editors are 'not-censoring' posts do you?
If it is done in such a way that there is no reasonable chance of people ever finding out that material existed, then that sure as hell sounds like censorship to me.
And how, pray tell, would the government publishing the list of websites be different than them publishing the list of films that have been censored? They've been black-listing films for years, and I don't see any pipe-bomb toting militants demanding that Elementary School Spanking 16 be released or else they'll blow up the parliament building.
Frankly, I find my confidence to be even more 'slightly lacking' from their refusal to reveal what they're hiding than I would if they just showed me the list.
Number one, if you're working in illegal working conditions, you are taking a chance -- you agreed to work there. Secondly, if our employer's weren't FORCED by the government to pay for unemployment (and in some cases workman's comp), you could take out your own policy, picking what you felt you needed, rather than getting forced into your company's plan.
Money doesn't "talk" in capitalism -- very little of the U.S. is capitalized anyway, due to government's regulations, interventions, embargos, tariffs, and subsidies. End all that, and let the consumer decide. Heck, end limited corporate liability statutes, and you know product quality as well as consumer respect will go up...
There is Internet censorship in Australia. I know of a couple of people who run club web sites (computer related) who have received take down orders from the ABA mainly because of content uploaded by others. These orders are arbitary, and possibly capricious. There is no "due process".
Given this and the lack of transperency by federal and state governments we may not be a fascist country but we are certainly an authortarian one.
Further there are the proposed SA and NSW state laws that make uploading certain content a criminal offense. In the case of SA the body that decides what constitutes illegal content are the police (i.e. a not very bright arm of executive government). If you live in SA I suggest you hurry down to your local police station and make a donation to the next police ball.
WRT the DMCA you should read the federal Copyright Ammendment Bill - Digital Agenda Act of 2000. This bill contains within it the key elements of the DMCA.
As an aside, we do hold foriegners without due process. I'll not try and defend the US in this matter (who, IMO, are in breach of at least the spirit, if not the lettter, of their own constitution) but I will point out that any people held are not being so as a result of the Patriotic Act.
Finally I am not American. I am Australian. I would like to be able to say that Australia is one of the most free nations on earth. The question is would I be telling the truth?
Why they're keeping the black-list secret seems pretty obvious to me. As soon as that list becomes known, well-meaning non-Australians will immediately start to mirror those sites, and those mirrors will be visible to Australians until the government is able to find the mirror and update their blacklist.
While censorship in and of itself is reprehensible, at least they're not going about it in a half-assed manner.
Stories like this should alarm people who believe in government by the consent of the governed.
Granted, Australia seems much more conservative than the US when it comes to freedom of information (and other things too). However, those of us in the States shouldn't let stories like this slide off our back.
In the US it is much more difficult for the government to censor free speech, but just as in this article, our own government has grown very interested in not telling its citizens what it is up to.
In particular, the Executive Branch of the United States has been less than forthcoming on numerous occassions regarding its own activities: President Cheney won't tell us who he & others talked to while they were drafting their energy policy, they won't identify people picked up in the post-911 dragnet (nor will they tell us the standard list of questions arab looking people were asked as part of that), various federal records have been destroyed and removed from availability [as noted in earlier Slashdot story], and in general the government has exuded a contempt of those outside the administration trying to figure out what it's up to. Of course this is on top of the government's long standing infatuation with secrets -- the most recent pattern is just an escalation of the existing mindset towards secrets.
Really people, this story has a moral for those outside of Australia: it's an example of the idiocy that can take hold when people don't demand oversight of their own government!
What's being censored? Well, unless you can look at the list, you simply have to trust that the bureaucrats are doing just what they're supposed to, and that they need to be doing it. This is inherently undemocratic.
Secrets give government the opportunity to mismanage without falling under the prying eyes of the people -- you and me -- whose job it is to see to the proper maintenance of government, and whom might be upset at the revelation of any such mismanagement.
This sort of thing shouldn't be tolerated in any democratic country.