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Hackers Attack AU Websites To Protest Censorship
An anonymous reader writes "A band of cyber-attackers has taken down the Australian Parliament House website and hacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's website in coordinated protests against government plans to filter the Internet. The group responsible, called Anonymous, is known for coordinated Internet attacks against Scientology and other groups in the past. It recently turned its attention against the AU government after it said in December that it would block access to sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse."
I'm sure parliament is trembling in their shoes about now. They cannot hope to stand against anonymous. Who can possibly save them? Maybe... batman...
In my opinion, the result of democracy should be that everyone can do as they please as long as their actions do not hurt "little ones".
That's why the west's implementation of democracy leaves a lot to be desired. Why? Because governments only practice "democracy" when the practice suits their [selfish] ends.
I know there is a way round all this nonsense so let's inform our colleagues down there about ways of circumventing this rubbish.
They'll just swat ineffectually at anonymous, like a man being swarmed by bees. /b/tards will laugh.
They might even arrest one or 2 people.
And the
"The group responsible, called Anonymous, is known for coordinated Internet attacks against Scientology and other groups in the past."
Right. Because anyone calling themselves anonymous are the "same group". Specifically because "Anonymous" means "of unknown name". Heck, we have a bunch of Anonymous Cowards here on slashdot too! Let's track down their IP's and throw them in jail like the terrorists they are! After all, they've been seen on TV to blow up yellow vans, so they must be evil, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Depends in what context, especially when it comes down to who defines the context (are photos of naked children in the bath CP?), bestiality was legal in the netherlands until recently.. I won't even get into the cartoons or fictional stories questions.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Oh it's easy to pick out a few things and say "these, these are ok to put on the blacklist"
The problem being of course that once there *is* a blacklist, esspecially one which nobody is allowed to see or even talk about then pretty soon other things start getting added to the backlist and after a while you might as well just move to china.
Lets look at it from the fundamentalist crazy point of view....
"Abortion = murder and well murder is worse than rape and murdering children is worse than raping them"... them so pro abortion sites quickly end up on the list.
and so on and so on.
Given the real world examples of exactly this kind of situation is anyone here going to try to argue that this isn't a *real* slipppery slope?
We are anonymous, we are legion! we do not forg...
Crap! I forgot to log out.
Yes, unfortunatly the news sites write what they're told and trying to get the point across that they're protesting the existance of the blacklist rather than whats supposed to be on it is a little too much of a fine distinction for most journalism graduates to understand.
I can't think of anything more likely to validate the government's actions in the eyes of its socially conservative constituents.
Rule #1, #5, #9, #34, #72, and #93!
There's porn of not logging out?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
You're right though. And to call Anonymous hackers is hilarious. .js and executing it (something which thousands of users dit themselves expecting something else). /b/tards
We're talking about boards that had its own users infect eachother by saving pictures, renaming them to
Fox once called them "Hackers on steroids", the general public there is a total computer retard and knows how to fire up LOIC and get some sites down but that's it.
It's the numbers that make Anonymous effective, not the brains.
In b4 angry
As long as the list is publicy managed, this shouldn't be a problem. Obviously, no way it can happen in the real world.
It exists. There is, or will be shortly.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
As long as the list is publicy managed, this shouldn't be a problem.
Yeah, then if anything gets on the list that shouldn’t be censored, people will find out... oh wait, no they won’t. That would require visiting the site and seeing whether or not it had illegal stuff on it, and I can’t do that if the site is censored.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Which they never do because (this is the argument) if you let everyone see what's on the list then it's just a guide to pedophiles for where they can get child porn.
So tell me.
With a publicly managed system in a country where downloading *list of bad things* or attempting to access any site on the blacklist is a serious crime how exactly does any particular member of the public check the contents of any site on the list without risking jail time?
(bonus points: work this out without also demonstrating how useless the blacklist really is for it's intended purpose.)
Sweat dripped down John's brow. He'd never done it like this before. It had always been anonymous and random. He'd pick out someone from the chat room and have his way with them. But this time it was different. He didn't realize it at first. There had been the usual flirting and the textual foreplay. And then she had called him by his name. He had forgotten to log out.
John sat staring at his screen for a full minute. There were the words she had written, as alluring as the naked body he could see in his minds eye. She wanted him. Not just his usual cyberself but him personally. He wasn't sure if this was something he wanted to do. But it felt good. Taking a deep breath he began to type. "I put on my rob and wizard hat"...
I don't agree about censoring drug-related sites, but about the other contents...
The submitter of this article is a cock for including that summary, as is the editor who greenlit it.
Anonymous is not protesting this because the AU government is proposing censorship of "rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse." They are doing it because they are proposing censoring "small breasted women" (because, you know, small breasted women MIGHT be under 18), among other things.
They are lashing out at the “ambiguity” of the often-used term “unwanted content”, the Australian Government is trying to crack down on pornography featuring female ejaculation and women with small breasts... yes, those things that are a threat to modern society. I mean, if females start ejaculating, we are all doomed!
So the entire article is a load of shit. I expect better from Slashdot editors than greenlighting a load of sensationalist horseshit about a technical issue.
Your analysis of Anonymous is correct; they're effective the same way Kobolds can be effective: if there are enough of them, they'll succeed. Anonymous is an infinite number of monkeys banging away on an infinite number of typewriters; collectively they'll write the complete works of Shakespeare.
That's a red herring. If people do not have a reasonable assurance of privacy, they don't live in a free society.
So it isn't about protecting the ideals, it is about balancing the inevitable compromises of those ideals. Certainly there will be a vigorous discussion about where that balance lies, but it is very much a discussion of the compromises that must be accepted, not a discussion about the evil of compromise itself.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I agree, ridiculous ... and not just the article, even the summary is patronizing. Editors, it may not be what it once was, but this is still /.
Calling Anonymous "a group"? WTF? This is almost as bad as that FOX news report.
YES, editors, I just compared the quality of your journalism to FOX.
I'd tell a UDP joke, but you may not get it. I'd tell a TCP joke, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it.
because, you know, small breasted women MIGHT be under 18
It wasn't even that, it was that small breasted women LOOKED like they were under 18. The logic is along the lines of banning cartoons displaying children (even the Simpsons) participating in sex acts. Because they look like they are underage, then it is Kiddy Porn because they are targeting people who want to see young people naked.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
The whole issue is a red herring. Looking at a picture isn’t a violation of someone’s privacy because taking the picture was the violation of their privacy. Lost privacy can’t be regained, and privacy you no longer have can’t be violated.
The whole issue is a red herring thrown up to avoid the fact that what happened happened and there’s fuck-all we can do about it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
child abuse violates the freedom of the child.
absolutley.
But censorship in no way un-violates the freedom of that child.
it gains nothing.
it achieves nothing.
it help nobody.
The pictures are out there and they don't stop being out there.
The point is to remind the powers that be that they rule only because they are *allowed* to rule. The message sent by Anonymous is a simple message:
Remember your place while you still have one.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
"Anonymous" is doing this for fun. Nothing more, there's no ulterior motive. They got bored. They don't really care.
1: Asuuming you have contact info for the site owners and that they have time,care or can afford to give up anonymity to appeal.
This is a big deal for political speach, with a focus on the kind where people feel the need to remain anonymous to avoid becoming part of amnesty internationals statistics.
2: Assuming that people who type in an address and see a
"The site you are trying to access has been blacklisted for containing child pornography, your IP has been logged, remain where you are until officers collect you"
message will be willing to publicly state that they ever saw that message ever.
3: Lets say the appeal turns out to be a kangaroo court setup.
How exactly will the owners or people who liked to read about Tiananmen Square go about publicising that they've been wronged?
Publishing the address of a site on the blacklist is illegal.
4: Who's double checking?
when some random user emails to complain that some forum they use got blacklisted who exactly is responsible for double checking it?
the same people who added it in the first place?
their friends?
5: that's a big hopefully.
Doesn't that make them terrorists under the patriot act?
Just a guess - you're American right?
Officially Australian is NOT and American state
Just saying.
It not about agreeing, censorship is bad no matter what.
Using ISP's to check traffic is kind of like stopping people on the road and checking their identification papers, to ensure they're citizens or have the legal right to be on the roads. It may be effective compliance technique, but it's egregiously inappropriate behaviour on the part of any government. People do not like to be searched, however innocent they be.
So stay out of my briefcase. There's nothing illegal in there. I have nothing to hide, but those papers are mine and mind your own business!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
No-one is trying to ban depictions of a crime taking place, and the aim is not to "prevent crime".
Youre trying to re-write the entire history of the logic and motive behind anti-CP legislation. I’m not falling for it.
The principle here is that a human should by default own the copy right on his likeness. The same would apply if your mother was just walking around naked in her house and you published pictures with a telephoto lens.
That’s bullshit. The principle here has nothing to do with that, and that principle is flawed anyway: we only have this supposed “copy right” on our likeness when we expect to be in private. In public, people can take as many pictures as they want, without any permission whatsoever. Displaying a copyrighted painting in public doesn’t give people the right to photograph it, so this whole argument is rubbish.
The principle here is that we think people who look at pictures of naked children are creepy and we want them to be put in jail. So we made laws to accomplish this, and we said it’s “for the children”. Then we use the laws to prosecute kids who shared photos they took with their camera phones, ruining their lives with the very laws that we said were for their protection.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.