Aussie Gov't To Introduce Bill That Would Require ISP-Level Censorship

bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that the Australian Government has announced its intention to introduce legislation that will make ISP-level filtering mandatory for all refused classification material hosted overseas. The Government intends to amend the Broadcasting Services Act in August 2010 to enforce the filter, and expects the filter to be operational within a further twelve months. 'The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100 percent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed' Senator Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said." This despite, as reader Sharky2009 writes, the trial run showing that "a technically competent user could circumvent filtering technology based on ACMA’s blacklist."

Comments

what the fuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to vote this guy out of office or something?

Would this block web stores?

[tepples]

If the lone holdout Attorney General gets his way, Australia will ignore comments from the public and continue to refuse classification to video games that have been rated mature in other regions. Does this mean Australia will start blocking Amazon, eBay, and other foreign sellers of mature-rated video games?

Re:Would this block web stores?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since Australia, as we all know, is entirely populated by criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, I can clearly not choose the unfiltered internet in front of me.

Re:Would this block web stores?

[vegiVamp]

And soon after, the border guard will also jump on the "deep inspection" hype bandwagon, marking a sharp increase in the sales figures of Crisco brand vegetable shortening.

Wake up Australia

[jack2000]

I can't believe you're still swallowing this bullshit by the buckets. It's time you did something. Get those people out of parliament, elect new officials!

Re:Wake up Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

We voted out the last government, who at one point tried to introduce Internet filtering (they currently don't support filtering), and now this government wants to do it (who went to the election proposing voluntary filtering). We're fucked either way eventually when one of these bunches of cocks decides it's a good idea and has the numbers to push it through.

Re:Wake up Australia

[Techman83]

Believe me, Australians are not asleep. Senator Conroy has chosen to barge ahead regardless of any public outcry. Fortunately the Labour Government do not hold enough power in the Senate to push this through with out the support of the opposition and the Independents/Minority Parties, which they just aren't going to get. Independent Senator Nick Minchin and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam have both been very vocal in opposition to Censorship in Australia. The Librals (the other major party) seem to be fighting the Labour party at every turn, so I suspect their support will be limited. I think if it doesn't pass, the worst outcome will be that Labour will use this as a slander campaign to paint the opposition as supporting "Child Abuse".

Re:Wake up Australia

[zsau]

There hasn't been the opportunity to since they made it obvious they would stick to their idiotic promises and drop their useful ones (i.e. since they got into power). You realise we can't just get new elections every news cycle. (Although the Prime Minister can call elections for the House of Representatives almost as often as he likes, it's terribly inconvenient and if they do go early (or, as early as you're suggesting they should've gone), people are inclined to vote them out just for dragging them out to the polls one more time than is necessary.)

In any case, even if we could, the other lot aren't any better... Most people would rank this (known) temporary inconvenience as a lot less bad than the (unknown) evils a government ran by Tony Abbott, Leader of the Liberal Party, would bring.

In the last case, we have a Senate and the Australian people are generally not idiotic enough to give the Government unmitigated power there. I expect the Liberal party will oppose it on the basis that they're the opposition, the Greens will oppose it on the basis that it's neither left nor liberal, and the independents will probably vote quite randomly on the basis of stellar alignment and what their advisors tell them people think.

So ... don't say stupid things like that. The least you could do before commenting on our political system is inform yourself of the absolute basics of how it works. And in this particular case, almost every political system in the (developed) world works comparably.

(If you really *were* telling us to use pitchforks, then either you're completely unrealistic, or completely crazy. In any case, whoever said "those who would give up an essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" was obviously crazy and/or making use of hyperbole and/or hadn't thought about his own position, and if you're an American you've probably been brainwashed into both believing that and not acting on it. Our society is so great, and so free, precisely because we complain and wait until its time to vote instead of getting out the guns and pitchforks and executing anyone in Parliament)

Re:Wake up Australia

[Jeeeb]

Who says we are?

The Labor party (Current government) was meant to be liberal and reformist. The alternative is the Liberal party who despite there name are mostly socially conservative Christians. They just finished voting out Malcom Turnbull their former leader who was clearly too liberal and replacing him with Tony Abbot a Christian conservative who suffice to say holds a number of opinions that don't exactly resonate with the more liberally minded.

Anyway despite that I say fuck the Labor party. I'll vote for the Liberals next election. Maybe for 3 years it wouldn't be the perfect government. But it's better than voting for the status-quo of simply being ass-raped by greedy bastards.

As for young people the best way to make a real difference on this is to talk to your parents and grandparents (If they're still alive). Your vote alone isn't worth as much as the votes of both your parents and yours combined.

Re:Wake up Australia

[BakaHoushi]

That would be Benjamin Franklin who said that, I believe, and I don't see anywhere where he is suggesting the wholesale slaughter of those who oppose liberty.

Re:Wake up Australia

[BlortHorc]

Yes, sadly so, we need to introduce a new law. Must be at least this technically literate to hold a ministerial position governing technology. Sadly, that would exclude essentially all currently elected politicians, as well as the vast bulk of the potential electoral fodder.

This is essentially the end result of having a technological society where technological education is not mandatory. They require you to learn English, so you can speak to people, but the don't require you understand technology, so that you can understand the society you live in.

As a consequence, at best, the pollies are neophytes, and at worst luddites.

Re:Wake up Australia

[PeterBrett]

The Labor party (Current government) was meant to be liberal and reformist. The alternative is the Liberal party who despite there name are mostly socially conservative Christians.

I refuse to believe that there is a whole continent-sized country with two and only two political parties. If you can confidently vote for neither the Labour nor Liberal parties, why not try one of the following options:

• Vote for a third party;
• Run as a third party candidate if no third party candidates are available in your district;
• Spoil your ballot paper.

Don't vote for the "not quite the worst" party: use your vote responsibly.

Re:Wake up Australia

[BrokenHalo]

We're fucked either way eventually when one of these bunches of cocks decides it's a good idea and has the numbers to push it through.

Well, fortunately our illustrious government hasn't had such an easy ride lately at getting the numbers to do anything, and there's plenty of opposition to this filter, so there is still hope that sanity will prevail.

Re:Wake up Australia

[gknoy]

Whoever said "those who would give up an essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" was obviously crazy and/or making use of hyperbole and/or hadn't thought about his own position.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the more influential thinkers in the American Revolution, was the one who said that. He was eccentric, but I don't think he was crazy. He certainly was aware of his situation.

At the time, people living in America had relative safety (individually). The British crown generally tried to protect them, and wasn't out to kill them. However, there were certain injustices that the Crown perpetrated on them -- things like taxing them without letting them have representatives in Parliament, and the British military effectively forcing civilians to quarter (Feed+board) them for indefinite amounts of time. Franklin, and the other revolutionaries who drafted our Declaration of Independence, were very aware that they were making a choice to either revolt (and risk capital punishment should they fail or be caught) or continue sacrificing the Liberties which they felt were absolutely essential.

Many of these liberties and related concerns are addressed directly in the first 10 amendments to our Constitution: the rights of freedom of religion, speech, a free press, and the right not to have troops quartered in your house are four examples. These are principles which Franklin and the others were absolutely prepared to die for.

Franklin and his friends knew a lot more about the matter than many of us do. Right now, we live in relative prosperity and comfort, so the risk and "temporary safety" are amplified in our minds. We're not likely to die to disease, cold, or raiding natives, for example. Our populace has basically been seduced by the bread and circuses (so to speak), and has willingly traded away freedoms which some of us consider essential (freedom to copy a DVD you own, freedom to communicate securely, etc) in order to have a more blissful and convenient existence. The security theater we see in American (and other) airports is another example of this: we've pretty much irrevocably squandered our right to not be treated like a herd of potential criminals, in exchange for "safety". This is absolutely the same sort of things over which Franklin and others were willing to shed blood over: tyrrany, however petty.

Re:Wake up Australia

[caitsith01]

I refuse to believe that there is a whole continent-sized country with two and only two political parties.

Well, believe it or not, that's how it works in Australia, both practically and politically.

We have a compulsory, preferential voting system here. This means that in most cases, you actually have to vote for one of the two major parties.

The way this works is as follows: say there are three candidates, Labor, Liberal and Green. Every voter must put them in order, 1, 2, 3. Then all of the 1s are tallied up. The candidate with the least 1s gets eliminated (say, the Greens candidate). Then all of the votes for that candidate are re-allocated according to which of the remaining two candidates got voted 2. In this way, in a typical Australian electorate, 100% of the votes will ultimately be divided between the two major parties.

So let's say I really, really don't want to vote for one of Labor or the Liberal party. Well, that's a shame for me, because at the end of the day I have to rank one of them last and one of them second last, and because of preferential voting the one I put second last will get my full vote after all of the other parties have been eliminated.

On top of this, voting is compulsory. Even if a decent sized chunk of highly motivated people go out and vote for the Greens, the fact that all of the sheep will also be herded out of their pen to vote whether they like it or not means that the major parties inevitably get a very large default vote. Stick a non-political person in a voting booth and tell them they have to vote and chances are they go with what they know, which is either the government or the main opposition party. Compare with the USA where something like 40-50% of people don't vote, IIRC.

Add to this that most Australian cities have one or sometimes two newspapers, and that we get serious political coverage on only one TV channel which many intellectually lazy Aussies wouldn't watch because it's the boring government channel. All of our newspapers are actually owned by either Murdoch (in which case they are sympathetic to the Liberal Party) or Fairfax (in which case they are sympathetic to the Labor Party on the whole).

Politically, Labor and Liberal hate each other but not as much as they hate the minor parties. So they spend a lot of time either discrediting or outmaneuvering any small party they see as a threat. For example, they both demonize the Greens as a bunch of environmental crazies who all want to take heaps of drugs and have orgies in the forest. A few years ago there was a far right party with a bit of clout ("One Nation") which the government promptly dealt with by subsuming most of its policy positions on key issues. That party is all but dead now.

Re:Wake up Australia

[Lunzo]

So how do the Greens or the independents get elected then? It must be doable, otherwise they wouldn't be there.

In the house of representatives they don't get elected, as a general rule. The only minor party which consistently get lower house seats are the Nationals but they only run in rural electorates and campaign on rural issues. They also have a permanent coalition with the Liberal party and there usually aren't any Liberals running in the same electorates as Nationals candidates.

The minor parties and independents only get a handful of Senate seats. Each state elects six senators at each election. Again preferences are counted, but because the whole state is counted in the one pool it's easier for them to get over the line.

Secondly, you don't have to number all the boxes. you have a choice of indicating just the one candidate or numbering your preferences.

At federal elections you do need to number all the boxes for the House of Reps. Some states let you just vote 1 for your candidate. For the Senate you can number all boxes (yuck) or just put a 1 in your chosen party/independent's box. If you do that, you're still preferentially voting, you're just choosing to use the preference order that party has nominated.

Conroy is a Traitor.

[ozmanjusri]

The new leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, is an outspoken catholic. His party has opposed the ISP-based filter in the past, so it's just possible this nasty piece of trash legislation is an attempt to politically embarrass him.

If he opposes the bill, the government can accuse him of hypocrisy. If he supports it, he faces rebellion in his own party.

But if it is brinkmanship, Conroy is playing with fire. There could be a very serious electoral backlash from this.

Re:Conroy is a Traitor.

[ozmanjusri]

How would it make Abbott a hypocrite if he opposes internet filtering?

This is politics. There will be posturing.

If Abbott opposes the filter, various family groups will be trotted out to express horror that he endorses pedophiles having access to filth on the (uncensored) internet.

100% Accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but done with 100% accuracy? I think that is an internet filtering first. I'd love to know what filtering technology they are using because it is far better than anything I've used to date.

LEAVE AUSTRALIA ALONE!

[sakdoctor]

How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of Australia after all it has been through!
Leave Australia alone! Right now! I mean it!

Re:national character?

[zblack_eagle]

Us Australians don't want this except for the lunatic fringes that exist (as they exist in every other country). However, like everywhere else politicians here like to pull the tough-on-crime/think-of-the-children card when it comes to appeasing the large number of voters that favour 'shoot first and ask questions later' responses to perceived problems

Re:Leave australia Alone

[LordAndrewSama]

I think people would be right to mod you down.

Firstly, Australia & America have been friends since WW2 when the shock of the british defeat by japan in the asian theatre(most importantly, the loss of singapore) lead to australia moving further from britain to america for defensive pacts, which would lead to trade, etc etc.

Secondly, that has _WHAT_ to do with internet censorship?

Of course...

[TheSpoom]

Everyone (or at least, most people) here at Slashdot knows that on a network as large as the internet, no blacklist method will achieve 100% accuracy.

This, of course, means that Senator Conroy is either completely ignoring the technical results, or the technical results are being flubbed to match Senator Conroy's agenda.

Are others in your parliament actually going to vote for this bill, or is he more of a rogue senator who isn't actually supported?

Re:Of course...

[BlortHorc]

Guy is a fucking turkey. iinet only took part in the trial to prove how idiotic it was, anyone who has a ssh tunnel to somewhere in the rest of the world can immediately bypass this foolish plan, and that has been pointed out to him. Repeatedly. Should I mention the turkey thing again? Not even to mention stenography, gpg encrypted emails, etc, etc, etc. This guy is without a doubt the biggest dumbfuck in the current Labour government.

Why don't we vote the other guys back in, I hear you ask? Why, because in Labour this kind of turkey is somewhat rare, whereas the Liberals/Nationals has a good half dozen or so wack jobs even loonier than him. Why are so many extremists attracted to politics in Aus? Because capable people stand to make way more in the private sector, and those very few capable people with a strong sense of ethics tend to join a party with an ethical basis, such as the Greens, who have yet to make enough traction to make useful changes to the fucked up political culture in this country.

And for what it is worth, the legislation is still just a twinkle in Conroy's eye, it hasn't even been tabled in the house of reps yet, let alone pass a hostile senate.

Re:What happened Australia?

[hierofalcon]

Things changed here? Sorry. I missed it. Perhaps you could enlighten us on what you think really is significantly different now.

Remember - it's the Government, not Australians

[ajv]

This is an EPIC FAIL.

Australia has led technology trends and adoption for so long, and the Government is prepared to kill it and our children's future for a single lousy vote of a Senator who has the support of exactly no one.

The Government is terribly misguided on this one. Conroy might be pushing this as a wedge policy, he might be doing it for Fielding's support, but this issue alone will lose the ALP the next election, as well as many for years to come.

All of Gen i, Y and X will remember this and vote accordingly for years to come. The ALP will be in the wilderness for many elections, and struggle to form a strong government in their own right without doing the independent / Greens coalition tango that is working soooo well for them right now.

Seriously, I could see the Greens take this to the election and coupled with effective climate change policies and no internet censoring, they could become the balance of power for years.

Conroy is Public Enemy #1. He has committed electoral suicide for himself and his Government. I really do think they have no idea exactly how unpopular this policy will be.

In short - how to fight this thing:

* Ring your politicians tomorrow. All of them. Make the phones run hot.
* Write them letters.
* Ask to see them. Talk to them about this issue, and only this issue.
* Write letters to the news sites
* Blog and Twitter and Facebook away.
* Attend rallies. Publish photos and write ups about same.
* Join the EFA.
* Sign up to Get Up if you feel inclined
* Use #nocleanfeed religiously.
* Do not do work for Conroy's department. Resign or transfer if you work there.
* Support ISPs that are against this idea. Leave ISPs that support it or who have no position.

If it becomes law, mass civil disobedience is required. I will be blogging about how to get around the filtering.

clearly a humbug reason for filtering

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why did the Government cease providing free PC filters when ISP filtering will not be available until 2011?
The PC filter program experienced low take-up and very low ongoing use. It was therefore closed to new users six months earlier than originally planned.
Only around 12.5 per cent of the approximately two million households with dependent children and an internet connection are estimated to have tried one of these filters, and less than one per cent of these households continue to use their filters."

1% of the population still uses this filtering ...
12% has tried it out ...
this means:
  88 % of all people didn't even want to try it out,
out of the remaining 12%, 90% of those who've tried it out dumped it afterwards ...
conclusion: 99% of your population do not want filtering, the other 1% can still filter their own PC by installing the software on their own PC.

Re:What happened Australia?

[Xest]

Hardly any of the chicks in Neighbours are hot nowadays for starters!

Even Steph now has a few rough edges, and Susan is getting too old to be milf material.

How could you let your finest export slide like this?

Time for heads to [politically] roll...

[Smegly]

Send a clear message in next Aussie elections... Pirate Party Australia.

Re:national character?

[BrokenHalo]

I have to admit, this is not what I expect to see from Australians.

Not many Australians happen to like it, but the Minister has the bit between his teeth and does not have our concerns at heart. And this is with the collusion of a Prime Minister who seems determined to adopt a Tony Blair-like position as conservative cuckoo in the nest of the Labor Party.