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Australia Plans to Censor the Internet
MAXOMENOS writes "The Australian government is planning to block websites used to organize violent protests, as part of a larger effort to prevent crime from being planned on the 'net." Yeah this is gonna work really really. It's working
out great in China after all.
This is a bad thing how? Are you all so blind that you think violence is "freedom of speech"?!
Um...in case you haven't notice, freedom os speech is in the United States Constitution, not the world constitution.
"We choose to take the good with the bad."???
No. That's not how it works in a democracy, or most republics for that matter.
When free speech and freedom of expression interfere with others' rights, they are rightly subject to dissolution.
When organizations try to protest a group (whether it is a genetic engineering conference, world bank meeting) or individuals (abortion clinic patients) from engaging in their rights by preventing their freedoms, it does not serve the public interests or help anyone's personal liberties.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Caution must always be applied in the use of censorship. However, every state should be allowed the ability to prevent what it considers crime. If a website is complicit in some sort of criminal activity, then it should be shut down, by the same laws that apply to all other media.
What we should be worried about is who decides what material is considered criminal. I wouldn't consider these sort of decisions a loss of rights, as the reason behind them is to protect people and property from violence.
--T. Metcalf
We never know the worth of water until the well is dry.
As somebody who organizes said "violent protests," I'd like to suggest that the Australian government ban access to websites like WashingtonPost.com and other media websites that routinely contain editorial content that advocates international violence (war) and terrorism (government violence that is illegal and violates human rights).
How about Australia? Are you hypocrites or just interested in censoring controversial opinions?
This is fine if a website openly advocates violence. What about websites that advocate non-violent protests that are likely to lead to violence, or imply support for violence rather than explictyly supporting it. What about non-violent but illegal protest (Gandhi broke a LOT of laws and went to prison for it).
I suspect that a lot of non-violent protest will be suppressed too, especially if they belong to groups that are a real nuisance to the authorities ("anti-globalization" and anticapitalist sites for example).
As the parent post says this is going to lead to a lot of presumtions being made.
It takes a coordinated effort by every provider out there, but it IS possible.
Though all that has to be done is filter your content at your ISP level.. what you cant see is *effectively* censored.
Lets hope we never see it come to that. Though i belive thats just a misplaced dream now. The future is at hand.. being built brick by brick.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
>> ...so mentally weak as to be affected by it.
...just like the whole 'ban guns' thing, people are the problem, not the guns.
What's that supposed to mean? You believe you can segregate people based on your opinion about their intellectual capacity?
>>
No, they're not. Guns are the problem. If you don't have a gun, you can't shoot me with it. This lame argument has been used for years by the jackals in the NRA, and it is just as false now as when those murderers invented it.
>> Governments shouldn't be allowed to censor free speech.
The Internet is a public place; if you plot criminal acts in public, the government has a responsbility to stop you.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Just like the last couple of times the government raised a stink, and threatened to block stuff, it will just be smoke in the wind. Look at their plans to stop Australians gaming online, and also the laws on hosting material 'not acceptable for children to view' in South Australia. They both had some sort of motions passed, and then got washed away into irrelevancy due to the complete inability of the govt to enforce the laws they formed on the matter. Either that, or the laws they formed were so watered down as to be pointless.
The Australian government can't and won't bring itself to the stage of actively proxying all international and national traffic and parsing it for hints of illegal plans for violent protests. Instead, they will pass some sort of motion that forbids Australians from hosting such a site on an Australian server, whilst completely ignoring the possibility of internation hosting etc. They will be seen to be doing something by the people who don't know better, and the people who do know better will just get on with life as if none of this ever happened.
Sure, this is a bad thing in so far as the precedence it sets, or rather in the precedence it re-enforces, but it will make no difference to anyone in the end.
Ray
I'm thinking about smugly stating that "it will never work"
What difference does that really make? Some people will find out what they want, but the problem with taking away rights DOES have an impact wether or not it truly works. If some people can get around the blockage, there are still lots of people who do not have the knowledge to do so.
The same goes for taking away fair-use rights with copy-protected CDs and the like. The fact that they with lots of effort can be circumvented is besides the point.
"I may despise what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
Ultimately, it has been complete peaceful -- which is not odd, since absolutely no one had suggested any violence whatsoever. The only question was whether the CPD was going to instigate violence, but then with all the publicity they set up there were cameras everywhere. Not that most media won't bend over backwards to avoid showing police violence. But they were actually interupting programming to cover the protest, and the number of police were roughly equal to the number of protesters.
Anyway, it was hard for me to understand why the police and city government would do such a thing. The protest was looking to be pretty minor and not well organized -- the CPD practically saved it. Of course, they did it through fear-mongering (but there's no such thing as bad publicity, yada yada -- some will argue with that, of course).
But I've noticed, especially reading comments here and elsewhere, that a large portion of people have fallen under the sway of these reports. They believe that the protesters are violent thugs, even though by far most violence is caused by police. They believe these protesters are like locusts, who come into their cities and disrupt and destroy before moving on.
I suspect that the government is trying to sway people into thinking that empassioned political speach is inherently violent and should be made illegal. If this law does okay in Australia, I would not be surprised if it came up in the US -- probably under the guise of being anti-terrorist.
Shoddily and over-specifically summarizing centuries of legal tradition, America has the extremely circumspect definition that only speech which "directly incites" other parties to "violence" is not "protected speech" under the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
So in theory, in America, a website might be considered illegal if it were instructing protesters to take violent actions. But even in this, U.S. courts have at various times (though certainly not always) proved extremely conservative about what an "instruction" is - as a general rule, "let's teach the bastards a lesson" doens't qualify; not even "bring your baseball bats" would. The former could be considered rhetorical or non-specific, and the latter doesn't tell anyone what to do with the bats (could be self-defense, for instance). Only speech which names names, places, or specific acts in a totally clear and unambiguous way, such as "John, attack any police who come into your sector with rocks" has tended to qualify the speaker as a party to a conspiracy to commit a criminal act.
Despite this unprecedently liberal view of free speech, America has not degenerated into anarchy, much to the chagrin of a number of European political philosophers.
In the case of the websites being shut down, there are no examples of what qualifies, only a vague reference to anti-WTO organizations. Though anti-WTO protests have a repuation for violence, the organizations behind them are uniformly peaceful in nature and advocate nothing other than non-violent demonstration and, only at the most absolute extreme, vandalism or traffic violations. The most polite thing we can say is that it's often "unclear" whether or not the police or the protesters are the source of the violence in a given incident. Being more impolite, it seems that law enforcement is sent out in anti-protest activities with instructions that virtually guarantee violence ("There's a gang of young drugged-out commie agitators out there frightening citizens and stopping traffic. Here's all the clubs, pepper spray, and tear gass you need. We stand behind whatever actions you need to take 100%.") Telling it like it is, quite often the peaceful protestors get the shit gassed and jackbooted out of them without provocation, and when they post bail and go home, they see on the news that they were "violent" and thus, deserved it. Congratulations freshman, you've just passed Authoritarian Propaganda 101.
But I digress. It appears that by U.S. standards the interdictions being considered in Australia would be in gross violation of the 1st Amendment. Obviously territorial sovereignty means this should give an Australian politician little pause. But there is also relevant international law and widely-recognized (or so we all claim at Christmas) international declarations of human rights, which muddy the waters somewhat. Unfortunately, this doesn't give politicians much pause either - in the 1st world or the 3rd.
Ultimately, the American interpretation of the right of free speech is so strict because of constant and blatant experience with the abuse of police power to intimidate and silence political dissent - a totally undemocratic and illegal practice in almost every 1st world country... but politicians and police tend not to have themselves arrested and tried for it.
The bottom line is that (at least up until now - I don't want to speculate about the future) we've pretty much backed off silencing political speech in the U.S., no matter how inflamatory. The infamous example is the Nuremberg Files website, a hideous screed containing a list of abortion practitioners, where names are crossed off when one is murdered. Again - no specific instructions to murder any of them, so, despite a rough ride through the courts (this one is about as close as you can shave it), it is still running.
Americans do it this way because history has unambiguously taught them that what little reduction in "dangerous" activity you might get from trying to silence "dangerous" speech (and believe me, you don't get much) is far outweighed by the immense damage these things do to a functioning democracy.
Incidentally - when democracy breaks down, that's when you really get violence.
I think you're a poster child for propaganda. The moral of this story, as old as government itself, is that those in power will call any protest action "violent" or "illegal" in order to simultaneously suppress it and discredit it. Often, police agent provocateurs are even sent into a demonstration with instructions to commit violence themselves and urge others to as well, as "insurance" against particularly well organized protest groups. And that's happened in America. A loss of rights? Shutting the anti-WTO websites down because they "incite violence" is a classic case.
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<sarcasm> Don't worry, now with the republican majority, democartic minority, i'm sure a two thirds vote will be achieved to rewrite the bill of rights to remove that offensive rule.</sarcasm>
You forget that he is operating under the socialist definition of "right", wherein a right is not something which protects you from government, but rather is an entitlement which government "gives" you. Hence, free speech isn't a "right" when you say something the socialists don't like, but a third worlder fresh off the boat has a "right" to free education, free health care, racial quota preferences, etc.
Australias last federal election was held just after september 11, so of course we got the most conservative, racist, backward government on offer at the time.
About a hundred Australians just got killed in a terrorist bombing in Bali. The population is scared and riled up and so the government can do whatever it wants under the guise of protecting people. This law is nothing, they can arrest kids now without having to notify a guardian for something like 48 hours. People can just disappear in Australia... no trial, no lawyers, nothing. The only thing stopping this being used for policial purposes is the trust of the federal police and intellegiance agencies. The army and intellegience agencies of Australia have already been discovered to be working in concert with the government to cover up policy issues.
Internet censorship is rife because some very very conservative politicians from backwaters end up with political clout due to nearly balanced numbers in the upper house. They block large, economic actions (for example, many-billion dollar sales of public assests) until they get conservative laws passed.
Fact is, 90% of voters and 99% of politicans don't know and don't care how the internet works, this law is simply part of a law and order campaign to get votes. Next week they'll implement 3 strikes or something.
How did this get modded Interesting, rather than Flamebait? If one reads the article, one finds that Australia has decided to pull the plug on websites that are used to organize violent protests. Such websites are illegal in the United States as well, however the legal tests for shutting down such sites are stricter in the US. The First Amendment does not protect speech that advocates specific criminal acts. That's why you're not allowed to put Wanted: Dead or Alive posters of abortion doctors on your web site. Similarly, posting notices to the effect of, "The WTO is meeting in Seattle next week, bring your Molotov cocktails" would also be illegal.
Only very specific threats are typically considered unprotected speech, however. You can publish bomb recipes in the States, or make general calls for revenge, that might be unacceptable in other jurisdictions. Australia has chosen to accept a slightly broader definition of what constitutes inciting violent or criminal activity. Slight difference in degree, not a difference in kind. Many other countries (Canada, for one) have similar policies. (And, IIRC, Canada is usually reviled on Slashdot for being a Socialist/Commie/pinko nation, rather than a Fascist one.)
They are the country the most wiretaps per citizen.
They are the country with the most reported wiretaps per person. I'm sure that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are just models of honesty and transparency about that sort of thing, since they're such good USAPATRIOTs. Ahem.
China is Australias morst important trading partner. Now wonder some strange ideas come back from China.
Canada is the United States' biggest trading partner. I'd love to know what strange ideas Americans are getting by that route.
~Idarubicin
You say "the web site in particular was very clear about advocating violence"; I didn't see that website cited anywhere. Do you have a URL?
Our concern is angry but peaceful political speech being intentionally mislabeled as an "incitement to violence" in order to silence it. I suspect this is the case literally, but regardless, the reasoning stands:
We are talking about people in the act of doing violence against an army of police. We don't need to split hairs over "dangerous" speech. You're already holding a big umbrella to protect yourself from the storm; don't try to arrest the wind for blowing it in your direction. Why? a) Stifling political speech is about as hard as arresting the wind - you still get the protest, b) The censorship powers are uniformly abused, c) the end result is the same, except with censorship your "democracy" loses its legitimacy.
Just as we say it is better to let a hundred criminals go free than one innocent be punished, we say it is a better society that looks bravely into the face of dangerous speech than one that cowers, like the Chinese, behind a firewall, against the perils of democratic ideals. This is not some idealistic caprice - these are hard-won and time-tested ideas.
If this is actually a case where there is a group openly and specifically organizing violent criminal acts against the police on the web, it's the exception that proves the rule. If that were the case, however, I'd expect (and hope, actually) to see real arrests and real trials, not administrative decisions and arbitrary censorship.
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