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Wikileaks Pages Added To Australian Internet Blacklist
cpudney writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has added several Wikileaks pages to its controversial blacklist. The blacklisted pages contain Denmark's list of banned websites. Simply linking to addresses in ACMA's blacklist attracts an $11,000 per-day fine as the hosts of the popular Australian broadband forum, Whirlpool, discovered last week when they published a forum post that linked to an anti-abortion web-site recently added to ACMA's blacklist. The blacklist is secret, immune to FOI requests and forms the basis of the Australian government's proposed mandatory ISP-level Internet censorship legislation. Wikileaks' response to notification of the blacklisting states: 'The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.'" So Australians aren't allowed to see what it is that the Danes aren't allowed to see?
Any Australians fined yet for coming here?
Simply linking to addresses in ACMA's blacklist attracts an $11,000 per-day fine (snip) The blacklist is secret, immune to FOI requests and forms the basis of the Australian (snip)
So you receive a letter on your mailbox saying that you were fined in AUD $11,000 , for linking to a site that you didn't know you could link, and if you knew that you couldn't link to it you would be even more penalized because that information is not for your security level?
Has someone on the Aussie's Government been playing Paranoia recently?
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
Eh, what?? A $11k fine for breaking a secret law? How are you supposed to stay clear of it if you can't read the list of things you can't do?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
At least in Denmark, you can drive a little ways and get your Internet uncensored.
For those unlucky souls in Australia who can't access their favorite aberrent websites don't really have any good recourse.
So you can't see what pages are on the list, but if you happen to link to one you pay $11,000 per day...
Welcome to BDA - Banana Dictatorship of Australia!
Why don't we just block Australia from the internet altogether until they learn to use it properly?
The blacklist is secret
These guys just don't "get" it still, do they?
Step 1) Run a simple web spider that checks availability but never actually pulls content, from within Australia.
Step 2) Run the same spider in any non-censoring country.
Step 3) Compare the two lists.
Simple as that. Nothing more than a few hundred megs of shotgun-requests, and you can map the portions of the web that look dark but shouldn't.
...but when did Australia become the poster boy for blatant censorship and policies akin to fascism? I lived there for awhile back in the early 90s and it seemed like such a laid-back, friendly place where pretty much anything goes so long as it doesn't hurt anyone.
The irony of all this is I remember getting a "talking to" by a fellow in a bar who held up McCarthyism as one of America's saddest moments because it directly attacked free speech and free thought of individuals in the name of the "commie boogyman". With news like this coming out of Australia, I'm wondering if I'm going to see him again on TV in some show trial, being accused of thoughtcrime.
Actually, no, I won't, because unlike the McCarthy hearings, the ones in Australia would probably be censored.
The vast majority of the list looks like kiddie porn sites or links to kiddie porn sights. You know, teenagers and younger being exploited.
Frankly, the Danes and the Australians are doing the "liberal" thing in trying to block these sites. If they block everyone, they reason, the sites will go out of business and the exploitation will stop. That's admirable.
But... since I'm an American.... I would rather let the people go to these sites, determine who is getting their jollies off looking at this stuff, and then let's round up all these sick f--- people and kill them.
This is my sig.
The anti-abortion website was purposely reported to ACMA (the gov dept looking after the censorship) to test the waters in reporting websites.
All it took was one email.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
welcome to what it feels like being an american during the bush administration. pariah, object of scorn and derision. you do realize what a joke this makes your country look like right?
1. sites blocked not for pornography, but ideological reasons
2. harsh punitive financial punishments just for linking
3. secret lists you, as a common citizen, don't have the right to see
i now think of australia the way i do iran and china in terms of freedom of expression. you better clean this disgrace up, you blokes can't let this continue, it is an embarassment
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
By far the nastiest and most insidious threat to democracy in Australia is the Catholic far Right. Their home has traditionally been the "right" of the ALP, although some Catholic militants, like Tony Abbott have gone joined the opposition conservative parties.
In years past, they've played mostly a spoiling role in Australia politics. As fascists, they know only how to destroy, not build, so they formed a right-wing fringe political party (the Democratic Labour Party, which in Whitlam's immortal words, was neither democratic, nor liberal, nor a party) kept the ALP out of government for 25 years and the country stagnated for decades under a conservative government. After B. A. Santamaria died and after the fall of Communism, they went back to infiltrating mainstream political parties.
These days, their strongholds are right-wing unions (the SDA , of which I was a member -- if I had known my union dues were being siphoned off by Phalangists and militant anti-abortionists, I would've quit instantly...), and the right wings of the ALP and Liberal parties.
Democracy and rational debate has always been anathema for these fascists. Their malign and destructive influence has been out there for all to see, although there has been very few political forces organised enough to challenge them head on.
If there's a vicious anti-democratic force in Australian politics, chances are, militant right-wing Catholics are behind it.
Hopefully this will not come to be in Australia or not be up held upon legal review. Two things I find are disturbing:
1) You will be held accounting for violating the law, but you can't see the law to know how to avoid violating it.
2) All of western democracies have shown a sharp turn towards the police state in the last decade. Something they all used to stand up against and accuse non-democracies of being evil for the same polocies.
Think Deeply.
I am watching my country turn into a fascist police state before my eyes.
Government Knows What's Best For You. Shutup, do your shitty little job, pay your taxes, and be thankful we haven't shipped you off to gitmo yet. Sit back and enjoy the pre-approved content and advertising.
I honestly don't know what to do anymore. These fuckwits are ruining the planet and there's nobody to stop them.
If you stand up against them, you're a child pornographer or a terrorist. Not that that even matters anyway, since they have billions and billions of dollars with which you can never compete, and an army that makes the idea of uprising or revolt laughable, especially given the fact that most of the population is not armed.
200 years ago, some american dudes got pissed at the way the Brits were doing things. Good for them, they just moved to another country and started over.
What the fuck can we do? That option is off the table. We can move to a different country, but all countries are heading in the same direction pretty much. We are stuck here under an oppressive government with no hope for improvement, no possibility of living somewhere that truly values freedom.
If the bill gets voted down this time, it's only a matter of horse trading or another election cycle until some other knows-whats-best-for-you little bitch comes in and puts it up for another vote. Eventually, it will get through.
I'm looking for options. I want to know what we can do to crush these corrupt fucking assholes before they destroy us all.
It's simple enough to proxy through SSH and have access once again and (short of blocking SSH traffic) the Though Police can do very little.
Iain.
I think you'll find that people with the most problems with freedom of expression are the right-wing (and extremely conservative) Catholics like Stephen Conroy and Nicola Roxon. The people doing the oppressing here are the conservatives and their enablers, not the small-l liberals.
This has nothing to do with fascism. The problem with fascism wasn't censorship. Censorship is bad, fascism included censorship as a matter of course, but it's not what was particularly bad about fascism. Soviet Russia wasn't fascist. It was bad too, just not in the same way.
Today the United States are much closer to fascism than Australia, yet they enjoy incomparable freedom of speech.
Militarization of the economy, dubious appeals to patriotism, booming prison population, the collusion between corporate interests and government, that's fascist-ish.
Censorship, that's what you find in China, which is not nearly as bad as the US in the areas I just listed (but by no means any better overall, don't get me wrong.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe you should read the whole post you linked to...
It's not FUD, sadly...
do we realy need these people around claiming to represent a consensus ? we have the technology,but we gotta do it "before" they have thier way with it .The best bumper sticker seen yet"politicians and diapers should be changed often ,and for the same reasons."
The Finnish police have already censored the Wikileaks page on Finnish internet censorship; see my comment at the appropriate talk page.
The "Catholic far Right"? Damn I'd heard it was the gay alien flying pigs that were behind it all!!!!!!!1111one!!!!eleven!!!111!
That was probably the most paranoid posting I've ever read and I read a lot of Slashdot!
Seriously, did you forget to take your lithium this morning?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Is because it is self indulgence and traditionally our culture is against self indulgence. When people are focused on their bodies, they aren't doing anything productive, and more importantly, are fixated firmly on themselves and not the world around them. That's a good value and to some extent gay activism will always bump into the charge that identifying oneself so strongly with one's sexuality is to accept a narcissistic lifestyle that is sorely at odds with the values that actually worked to make the country prosper.
Violence, on the other hand, can actually be useful. Violence is about a life not centered around self. Indeed, depersonalization is required to a degree to accept violence, and depersonalization is often useful. There is a bad guy, go get them. There is an animal attacking, go get them. The earth is doing something, so we engage in some act to right it. IT cements the idea that we can alter the world around us, whereas, sexuality only seeks to see that we are pleasured within whatever world we are in.
This is my sig.
Has someone on the Aussie's Government been playing Paranoia recently?
What is your security clearance, citizen?
Citizen, plus good you unpraise crimethinker. Plus ungood you post in oldspeak. You go plus speedwise ACMA center for transport to joycamp.
So you're blocked if you link to a banned site.
Are you blocked if you link to a site which links to a banned site?
Are you blocked if you link to a site which links to a site which links to a banned site?
Are you blocked if you link to a site which links to a site which links to a site which links to a banned site?
Are you blocked if you link to a site which links to a site which links to a site which links to a site which links to a banned site?
I wonder how many links from the Commonwealth's site it takes to reach a banned site?
Let me get this straight. So you're not allowed to see which sites are on the blacklist but if you link to one you get fined $11,000 a day? How the hell are you supposed to avoid linking to something that you don't know you're not supposed to link to? All Australians are stupid and I'll justify that statement. Those Australians who work in government are stupid for putting together such a stupid thing. And the rest of the Australians are stupid for allowing such a government to exist at all.
i herd you liek blacklists so we put a blacklist on our blacklist so you couldnt browse things while you couldnt browsing things.