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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
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);
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.
Up until the 1950s, there was a blacklist of books in Australia.
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.
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.