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Australia's Vast, Scattershot Censorship Blacklist Revealed
mask.of.sanity writes "Australia's secretive Internet filter blacklist held by its communications watchdog has been leaked, revealing the government has understated the amount of banned Web pages by more than 1000.
Multiple legitimate businesses and Web sites have been banned including two bus companies, online poker sites, multiple Wikipedia entries, Google and Yahoo group pages, a dental surgery and a tour operator.
Andrew Twaits, CEO of Betfair, a billion-dollar business blocked by the blacklist, was furious the government has potentially annexed tens of millions of dollars in revenue after the Betfair.com gambling site was blacklisted.
The blacklists were reportedly leaked by a Web filter operator to wikileaks which has published the full list of banned URLs.
Outraged privacy advocates say the government has effectively lied about the amount of URLs included in the blacklists, totaling more than 2300, and the type of content which it would ban.
The leak follows a series of attacks on the watchdog in which irate users successfully lobbied for web sites to be banned, only to be threatened with an $11,000 fine for publishing the link contained in the PR response. It was also revealed the watchdog can ban Web sites at a whim, with no accountability."
The www.techworld.com.au blog link in the summary is broken. It is missing couple of "s" letters.
Here is a working link:
http://www.techworld.com.au/blog/broadbandvoice/2009/03/acmas_blacklist_a_bigots_battleground
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
My favourite from the list: files.kavefish.com/pictures/collections/funny_cat_pictures/_index-list.html
It's just funny cat pictures and nothing suggets there's ever been anything else.
Also, the list (although a month older than one on Wikileaks) can be obtained from Integard filter software. Hex edit the integard.exe and change first occurence of "datetimepicker.js" to websites_ACMA.txt, then login to integard's webUI and request that file. Apparently there's a whitelist of files the webUI server can give to the user. I've confirmed myself that the lolcats URL is indeed in that ACMA file from the filter software...
-- Matti Nikki
If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I just loaded up the wikileaks page and I hope I didn't make a mistake I'm going to regret.
Some of those links at are perfectly normal, the gambling ones, the wikipedia ones, nothing unusual.
Some of those links at are icky. Things that the extreme pro-lifers like to use in their pamphlets while I'm eating lunch icky.
Some of those links are actually very nasty and abhorrent. Worse than goatse.
Don't go randomly clicking.
Don't go randomly clicking!!
Conroy is going to be on the ABC's QandA next Thursday evening at 9.30pm.
That should be good viewing :)
.
It should be noted that this isn't actually the ACMA blacklist. It's actually a list derived from the ACMA blacklist as stated on the wikileaks article in the summary.
Not a hoax. I've confirmed it myself by ripping websites_ACMA.txt out of Integard filtering software. Even if it's not identical to ACMA's own list, it damn well is identical to Integard's version of ACMA's list.
The list is real.
-- Matti Nikki
In the US there is a lot of overlap between the Christian extremists and the Libertarians. The few christian extremists we have in Australia don't subscribe to libertarian views.
Another factor here is the role of minor parties in the upper house of parliament. The Christian senator pushing the filters got in with less than 1000 primary votes. Most likely he got a lot of preferences because of the number of worse sounding groups on the senate ballot paper.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Conroy and ISPs implementing the blacklist confirm that this is a fake:
:-(
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/19/2520929.htm
I read about this earlier today; news media really have to check WikiLeaks out carefully before reporting it.
I think the black-list is absurd, it's baffling that we can actually have censorship here in Australia, and my reps know how I feel at least. But I don't think stunts like this help
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
they blocked lemonparty as well :(
................. The Christian senator pushing the filters got in with less than 1000 primary votes. Most likely he got a lot of preferences because of the number of worse sounding groups on the senate ballot paper.
Please mod last post up - insight.
if you want to know why this happening the above explains it in a nutshell. We have some christian loony in the senate who wants to remove porn from the internet.
Australian's, Start Mirroring that list!
I just putted it up on my website, hosted here in Adelaide: http://www.diskiller.net/ I guess the AFP will be paying me a visit? lulz.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Ok, I took it on the chin for the team, and looked at the page.
It's basically an ad for one of those history/cache/cookie scrubber utilities, and it has some shock pictures about which it says "Look what is in your cache right now!!!" (They're lying, of course, the images are loaded from their server.)
There are three small images: One bestiality, one bukkake, and one 'lolita[1].jpg'. Plus a bunch of blank frames that would probably all be malware if I was running internet explorer.
Re:" I highly recommend against clicking around on that blacklist." :) If your running OS X or Linux, you should be fine.
Yes you never know what had an FBI/Interpol/other state/federal task force IP logger left in place.
If your just hitting the site, they may record you. A visit one day to clone your drive.
Also some might have hacked by vigilante groups.
They might connect to you if you have a static IP
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Up until the 1950s, there was a blacklist of books in Australia.
Many countries are currently working on internet filters, they block on the prodivders DNSes.
They dont really speak of it, an example is Italy. (France to be next in 2010)
Check the italian list :
http://www.aams.it/site.php?op=download&page=20060213093339750
Check number 4, and you will see that betfair is blocked in Italy too btw :-)
No, the Queen of Australia is Australia's monarch.
It just happens that the Queen of Australia is also, but independently, the Queen of the United Kingdom.
That aside, the monarch has no law making powers at all, it's entirely in the hands of parliament.
Advanced users are users too!
We are not independent. We are constitutional monarchy, which means that the Queen is still the Head of State. However, I think that the law that makes a presentation that may encourage dissent illegal only still stands because the people who can change either don't want to to or can't be bothered.
I piss, shit and eat; therefore I am.
It's a wholly inaccurate post. Yes we were a penal colony but yes we did re-write all our laws - or at least those relating to being a penal settlement.
We introduced a modern constitution with full and serious debate on how the US constitution and others were working out, and eventually decided on very few basic human rights, with the belief that a popularly elected parliament would better resolve competing interests in this area.
As much as I dislike Fielding, he got into the senate fair and square. The 1000 votes comment is a lie. He personally got over 2000 votes (i.e. people voting below the line) and his Family first party got 53000 of the primary votes in voting above the line.
He did still get in courtesy of Labor and Liberal (conservative for non-Australian readers) party preferences though, because the Greens got around 243000 primary votes in Victoria and didn't get one of the six senate spots. If you vote above the line your preferences get allocated according to what the party you voted for wants. I bet Labor are wishing they did their usual preference swap with the Greens in the 04 election (Fielding has blocked some of the government's legislation in the past few days).
For the love of God, learn about your own civic structure. Australia is independent. The Queen rules Australia in right of Australia, completely separately from any other realm. The UK parliament has had zero authority over Australia since the statute of Westminster. The only reason that Australia has the same queen as the UK, Canada, etc... is because we all CHOSE to abide by the same succession criteria. Don't go crying to the rest of us if you don't like your laws. You only have your own selves to blame and we won't be your scapegoats.