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

A friendly warning from an American

[MWoody]

If you guys have large oil reserves, HIDE THEM QUICKLY. Say they all dried up. Being white will only keep US Republicans from attacking for so long, and "worse than Iran" is not something you want associated with your country right now.

Re:A friendly warning from an American

[ScrewMaster]

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 [armscontrolcenter.org] (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 [current.com] (willing hosts or otherwise). These is not really the actions of a peaceful country.

Peaceful? Hm. That depends upon your point of view. Ours is that after the second World War, the rest of you couldn't be trusted to keep the lid on, to stay all nice and peaceful.

And we were absolutely right about that: you can't. The past half century of continuous warfare has made that patently clear. There have been no major global conflicts since the end of the Second, and whether you like it or not, the U.S. was largely responsible for that fact.

Ask yourself these questions: how many World Wars has the United States started? How much territory have we conquered with our armed forces? How many subject peoples live in misery under our iron grip? How many nations have we annexed? What's that? None? But, how can that be? You have so many tanks and guns and bombs and planes and stuff! Why aren't you using them to aggrandize yourselves? What? You're just not interested in Empire? Wow. That's so ... odd.

Europe has such a history of war and bloodshed that Europeans often just can't figure us out. The answer is ... we just don't care about you. Really, we don't, any more than you care about us. Just give us your oil and your adulation and we'll leave you alone.

Good news for you though. Given the way Bush has squandered our resources on this fruitless War in Iraq, it's unlikely we'll be able to maintain the global military presence you're complaining about for much longer. When we begin to pull back for real, when the ever-present threat of a U.S. military reprisal fades away ... well. The rest of you are going to find yourselves embroiled in yet another World War, or perhaps something even worse. Not today, not tomorrow, but sooner or later it's going to happen. As Professor Falkenberg said, in Falkenberg's Legion, "We deduce the existence of peace because there are intervals between wars." As a civilization, we're overdue for another big one. It is inevitable, like the tide, and even a superpower can't hold that back. Not for long.

Just don't try to drag us into it. The United States won't be there to help next time, because we can't even make clock radios anymore: no more World Wars for us. Maybe China will come to your aid, always assuming that it's not Chinese soldiery occupying your cities at the time. Personally, I'm tired of paying for everyone else's defense: it's expensive and I could use the tax money for something else. Maybe a big screen TV, or a nice propane grill for my deck. In any event, America has been accused of playing "the world's police force", and criticized roundly for any activity in that regard. The problem is, my friend ... the world needs a police force. It does, because it can't be trusted to play nice with itself. We stepped up to the plate and took the job, and nothing we did was ever good enough, but we're about ready to quit and are looking for a successor. Any takers? I hear that Putin has put in an application.

Just be careful what you wish for. In spite of many groundless claims to the contrary, we've never been an Imperial nation (not like the British, not like the Russians) and really have not used the most powerful military in history in ways that many other nations would have. More to the point, there are a lot of would-be dictators out there who are waiting for a time when the U.S. can no longer be depended upon to put them down. That time is coming, and soon. Rather than complaining about the United States, whose course is nearly run, I'd begin looking to your own defense, if I were you.

You're going to need it.

Re:Free speech

[Merusdraconis]

If it comes down to fighting government bureaucrats over stupid censorship decisions, or having Fox News able to broadcast all the thinly-veiled hate speech it wants and hide behind free speech when people call them on it, I'll take the bureaucrats, thanks.

Re:Free speech

[gknoy]

"Fine the people that make it"

If governments kne who was MAKING the child porn, they'd go and arrest them. Fining is small potatoes by comparison.

Re:posting link to unrelated penny arcade comic

[William Robinson]

You have posted anonymously and looking for Karma?

Sounds like masturbating on Eiffel Tower and hoping somehow it reaches Audrey Tautou!!!!