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:WMD did exist and it has been proven

[Enderandrew]

I would suggest that statistics don't lie, except that isn't true.

However, I just heard Petraeus quote those numbers last week. For one, I think you underestimate how safe a good chunk of Iraq is these days. Angelina Jolie went over a few months back, toured the country, and as a vocal opponent of the war she said she was amazed the positive progress. She said millions of refugees have reentered cities, returned to their homes and resumed their lives. She spoke of the safety in cities, and how it must be preserved.

Conversely, Detroit often bounces back and forth as the murder capitol of the country.

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/2008/10/murder-rate-in-baghdad.html

A quick Google search shows someone's (crude) estimates coming up with similar results. For one, he estimates the population around 6 million in Baghdad, while many others claim 7 million, so he estimated on the high side for murder ratios. Still, it was lower than Detroit.

Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven

[gavron]

No, just because you say so doesn't make it so.

There was no such evidence.

That's because there were no WMDs.

That's why you have no evidence to show, no links to connect to, nothing to provide any shred of evidence.

You can insist your fascist masters are not lying, but you can't find a shred of proof to back that up.

He who asserts must prove.

You've painted yourself with the color of lies and deceipt.

E

"You have completely lost your grip on reality"

[DesScorp]

Recent statistics show Baghdad today is safer than Detroit.

You have completely lost your grip on reality.

And yet you didn't dispute his point... that there were more murders in Detroit than there were in Baghdad for the same time period.

Look, I love the "lies, damned lies, and statistics" quote from Twain too, but facts are facts... you had a better chance of being mowed down in Detroit than you did in Baghdad. I've got a college buddy that's a law enforcement officer in Detroit, and he jokes about the Iraq/Detroit comparison all the time.