Australian Government Censorship 'Worse Than Iran'

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to Censor the Internet is producing problems for ISPs, with filters causing speeds to drop by up to 86% and falsely blocking 10% of safe sites. The Government Minister in charge of the censorship plan, Conservative Stephen Conroy, has been accused of bullying ISP employees critical of his plan: 'If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.'" Read on for more, including an interesting approach to demonstrating the inevitable collision of automated censorship with common sense. The same reader continues: "Conroy's plan involves censoring at the ISP level to product 'Child-safe' Internet feeds. Initially he said that adults would be able to opt out. He since reversed that position, saying instead they can only go onto an 'Adult-safe' feed censoring 'illegal material', which another senator warned could include 'euthanasia material, politically related material, material about anorexia.' Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia said 'I'm not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure [note: forum membership required] than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.'"

Another anonymous reader suggests this answer to the proposed clone of China's great firewall: "Some of the tested systems use md5 hashes to find illegal content. As proof of concept, how long will it take Slashdot users to create an image with the md5 hash of 5ff742a58529efa02ba00ec8fa2e89bf? This md5 was picked because it is the hash of the current picture of the Prime Minister on his party's web site. A couple of points: The created image should be a jpg. It must be safe for work. It needs the correct MD5. It shouldn't break modern browsers. Its copyright should be free." Any takers?

Comments

Re:Free speech

[deniable]

You are correct. Australia doesn't have free speech, and never pretended otherwise.

Re:My first Federal Election

[cailith1970]

Write to Conway directly. If he cops enough backlash from enough people, and from a wide enough cross section of the community, then he's going to have to reconsider his position.

The ABC has an article up about it now, and a lot of people have vented on it http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/24/2399876.htm . Contact details for Conway's office is there. It's also suggested that you write to your Federal Member. The more people the better.

Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Ministerial office
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
Tel: 03 9650 1188
Fax: 03 9650 3251
minister@dbcde.gov.au
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/contact

Re:The real story is more interesting

[Falconhell]

I happen to know Mark Newton, the guy they want to gag.

Good luck with that!

The only way to shut him up would be to hit him with a brick. Good on him!

Re:A friendly warning from an American

[tpgp]

I also really hate the notion that Americans are war-mongers.

Perhaps not the American people, but the American government (with the consent of the people) certainly seem to be war mongers.

Look how much money they US spends on war compared to the rest of the world (more than the next 45 highest spending countries in the world combined!)

Have a look at the number of countries with a US army base (willing hosts or otherwise).

These is not really the actions of a peaceful country.

Re:Communist rises again

[kaos07]

You're quite incorrect.

The Australian Labor Party was founded in 1891 as a centre-left, social democratic party representing the trade union movement. The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920, never found electoral success and disbanded in 1991.

Re:Come on already

[TapeCutter]

Yes exactly, except he will be able to point to the slashdot summary as proof it was the conservatives.

From the summary: "The Government Minister in charge of the censorship plan, Conservative Stephen Conroy"

For the edification of non-Aussies, Stephen Conroy is a federal minister in a left-wing government, the conservatives (known as the Liberal party) are currently in opposition - clear as mud?

Re:Come on already

[TapeCutter]

"The summary used a worthless label".

It worthless because it's incorrect.

To be sure Americans would call him a "moderate" in his own party and Liberal vs Labor doesn't give the voter a lot of choice but the Labor party is definitely to the left of the Liberal party. They were born from the union movement, strongly support social welfare and are no more or less religious than the Liberals.

This traditional view has changed over the last couple of decades mainly because Labor governments have campained on a platform of fiscal conservatisim and social liberalisim. The last real left wing government was in the 70's.

Personally I grossly generalise Australian politics as: White collar = Liberal, Blue Collar = Labor, Farmers = National, Bush Bunnies = Greens.

Hmm

[Brian Ribbon]

You contradict yourself....

"Viewers of adult porn don't usually go out and become rapists do they?", then "your implication that blocking child porn would increase child abuse doesn't seem credible, in fact it is more likely to reduce it. The current situation probably tends to lead pedophiles to believe that their mindset is relatively normal which is far more dangerous to children."

In reality, most paedophiles don't molest children for the same reasons that most men don't rape women. Even those who think that sex with children is inherently harmless avoid sexual contact because of the effects of a socio-legal response for both themselves and children. From Freel (2003):

"[..] an expressed sexual interest in children does not infer actual perpretation. Indeed, the empirical evidence suggests that a much smaller number of men actually abuse children. There are significantly more men who express a sexual interest in children than there are actual perpetrators. This suggests the presence of inhibitors that stop men acting on their sexual interest."

I suspect that blocking internet access to child pornography would increase rates of child sexual abuse, but not necessarily in the way many would imagine. Digital storage and distribution means that any scannable or digital material can survive forever and be distributed on a much wider scale than would be possible without the internet. This means that there will be less interest in new material being produced, which is obviously a good thing if the material in question is child pornography.

There will clearly be some paedophiles who would abuse children regardless, but they are in a tiny minority of what is a large but hidden demographic of paedophiles.

"The current situation probably tends to lead pedophiles to believe that their mindset is relatively normal which is far more dangerous to children."

What "current situation" are you referring to? I am a paedophile, I know that paedophilia is normal, but I don't molest children. Believing that a fantasy is normal doesn't mean that one considers acting on the fantasy to be acceptable. Freel's research also shows that:

"If someone is fully inhibited from sexually abusing children, no amount of emotional congruence, sexual arousal, or blockage will lead them to abuse children."

From Hall, et al (1995):

Consistent with previous data (Barbaree & Marshall, 1989; Briere & Runtz, 1989; Fedora et al., 1992; Freund & Watson, 1991), 20 % of the current subjects self-reported pedophilic interest and 26.25 % exhibited penile arousal to pedophilic stimuli that equaled or exceeded arousal to adult stimuli.

[..]

Eighty subjects completed the study. [..] Twenty-six subjects [approximately 33%] exhibited sexual arousal to the child slides that equaled or exceeded their arousal to the adult slides.

[..]

a sizable minority of men in normal populations who have not molested children may exhibit pedophilic fantasies and arousal. In recent studies, 12 to 32% of community college samples of men reported sexual attraction to children (B &R, 1989, H,G & C. 1990) or exhibited penile response to pedophilic stimuli (B&M, 1989, F et al, 1992, F&L, 1989, F & W, 1989). Thus, arousal to pedophilic stimuli does not necessarily correspond with pedophilic behavior (Hall, 1990; Schouten & Simon, 1992), although there are arguments to the contrary (Quinsey & Laws, 1990).

"citation needed"

If you're referring to the argument that most child porn viewers don't molest children, see a collection of quotes here