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Australia Waters Down, Delays Internet Filter Policy
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Australia's government is running a bit scared of a population enraged by its controversial mandatory filtering project. The Government today announced a suite of measures designed to provide controls around the filter project, including independent oversight and a review of content which would be included. In addition, some Australian ISPs will voluntarily censor any child pornography URLs. But the whole project is still going ahead — it's just been delayed and slightly modified."
I plan to put all Labour senators last, and to put the Greens ahead of labour in the lower house.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
With an election looming, the government can't afford to alienate anybody as their chances of re-election are marginal at best. Every vote will count.
Massive props to the major ISP's in Australia for standing up and showing the Government with action, what is the best course of action for Australia and it's citizens.
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It's really disappointing listening to the arguments from the Labor government as to why Australia needs an internet filter. Tugging on the heart strings of the parents promising to "help protect their children" with a defunct solution.
I congratulate every Australian working hard to petition and protest about their rights and what is good for Australia. The people have spoken.
and slowly bringing it to a boil.
Seems like that has been happening all over the world the last few years. Phase things in gradually so people don't notice, but always under false pretence. But what does in it matter to the government? There will never be another revolution of any kind because now they have the technology to stop any kind of uprising (isn't the constitution against the government keeping a standing army?)
The changes announced today seem to be little more than a delaying tactic to remove the issue of mandatory Internet censorship from the agenda ahead of the election that is expected to be announced any day now. This issue has turned quite toxic for the government; the people who are for it are only weakly so, but the people who are against it are furious and are already organising campaigns against the government on various social media.
I don't think the government can be trusted not to bring it back in a essentially unmodified form after the next election. Vote accordingly.
But customer of both Optus and Telstra will be unable to opt-out.
This wouldn't have happened if their censorship plan wasn't met with such strong opposition from Australian people, ISPs and organizations like EFF. Thumbs up for those who stand for their rights!
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
You want to place restrictions on the internet, but you know people wont like it. Now - just place those restrictions is not going to work, because people would protest and you would have to remove everything.
What to do?
Well - Give a very harsh restricted policy and everybody jumps up and down and jells...
Now - water down a bit, and people are going to be happy and like you again. They have forgotten they did not want anything in the first place and are happy it turned out lighter than feared.
Result? You have your restrictions in place - with the strength you had originally planned without too much protest....
Mission succeeded indeed...
For a long time now I've said that this will be kicked around parliament with no real action being taken. Every time KRudd bought it in the last year up he faced a rebellion from the back bench from those MP's who relied on a narrow margin to keep their seats. Gillard has not gone one way or the other remaining ambiguous on the subject (she's a lawyer after all). I don't think Labor needs the fundie vote and Abott is more likely to get the fundies on side with Gillard being "non-religious" but Labor is not willing to alienate any voters at this point in time.
This bill will get kicked around some more and dismissed or watered down so much that it's never truly implemented. With any luck, Conroy will lose his seat in the senate (dearest Victorians, this is your problem, we westies have our hands full supporting the nations economy right now) and a Labor/Green coalition will remain in power. I have no doubt the ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) will pressure Tony Abott to implement some kind of filter if he wins and I don't think Abott has the stones to deny the ACLs request.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Well, at least it's good to hear the concept of "separation of power", as developed by ancient Greeks as a model of democratic governance, is still in full swing downunder! No matter what everyone thinks about filtering and the so called freedom of speech (I personally think we have such an increasing amount of shit in our brains, filtering out child porn isn't going to revolutionize anything, though my take is that it's a good thing). Anyone whining about potential issues with your rights - take a few deep breaths - Australia isn't turning into North Korea overnight - there are more important issues to whine about. Millions of people are being incarcerated, hundreds of thousands are jobless, and more kids than you know are left without parents, which leads me to the conclusion - it's always better to deal with the root of the (perceived) problem.
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Realise!
Going by the Shotgun testing of the Filter trials by Tennex, the scope adjustments mid-project allowing the trials to complete with a 100% success rate, the lack of consulting from the Ministers Office to Telstra, Optus, iiNet and other major networking players, I'm worried we will see a similar thing with the RC review.
Who will review it? What will be done to ensure that the review will be transparent and all voices can participate and it won't be a front for the Australian Christian Lobby or Family First to get whatever they find morally objectionable banned for all of Australia.
When reviews of censorship happen they very rarely get relaxed or reduced and its more likely we will see RC grow.
Why don't people in China and Australia just get Cheap Linux Servers in the US and just tunnel into them when they want to hit some blocked content? I use mine whenever I travel and/or use public wifi. Then I know anything I do on the web is encrypted until it his my server in NJ.
Child pornography URLs? Really?
There have been fuck-ups, most notably the Virgin Killer affair which (a) revealed that Wikipedia doesn't play nicely with ISP-level proxying and (b) there are edge-cases in the law on child porn. The argument that the record cover in question isn't child porn is weak, but the whole affair was mis-handled.
Is the system perfect? No. Because it was never intended to be. A proxy or an https tunnel or any number of other things will subvert it. The effect is more straight-forward: it removes the ``oh, I stumbled over it accidentally'' defence, and prevents pressure to impose filtering for anything other than illegality. In the grand British spirit of compromise (which tends not to sit well with the American desire for 100% legal clarity) it does a reasonable job reasonably, and if it lost public confidence it would rapidly have to adapt.
The Australian problem is that (a) it's being imposed by legislative fiat, rather than emerging from industry debate (the UK system arose from a couple of the major ISPs) (b) Australia has some states that are culturally conservative that the central government isn't prepared to overrule (a problem we don't have in the UK) and (c) there's a skein of support for strong censorship that neither the UK nor the US suffers from.
I know it has been said before many, many times but if you want to protect children from stuff they shouldn't see on the internet then it is the parents' duty to monitor what they see and do on it. Simple as that. State butt out of families. Keep it free and nasty and abolish Windows!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
All they have to do is arrest the volunteers for being paedophiles!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
For those like me who aren't so sure we want to vote Green there is at least one other viable alternative:
The Australian Sex Party are contesting senate seats for the first time this coming election http://www.sexparty.org.au/
One of their policies is to oppose compulsory internet censorship.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Hadis kayserisporThe UK has an effective system which enjoys largely popular support. An independent organisation, with clear governance, provides a list of URLs that contain illegal content. Those URLs are blocked on a voluntary basis by consumer ISPs. The performance hit is a red herring: the technology used is two-stage, so only the IP numbers that are hosting the material are proxied (it's done by injecting local /32 routes to a transparent proxy, mostly). Although there's an iron fist in the velvet glove of voluntary filtering, in that government has threatened to legislate, in reality every ISP is on board. Business connections may or may not be so filtered.
There have been fuck-ups, most notably the Virgin Killer affair which (a) revealed that Wikipedia doesn't play nicely with ISP-level proxying and (b) there are edge-cases in the law on child porn. The argument that the record cover in question isn't child porn is weak, but the whole affair was mis-handled.
diyaliz
aliramazandinc
siki
I never really took australia for a backwoods censorship type country before... I mean wasn't the country founded by inmates?
failed to implement ETS scheme after wasting 100's of millions on a "climate change" department.
after announcing 149 new child care centers to be built, only a dozen have opened.
announced the creation of "gp super clinics". not one has opened.
failed to reform the health system after much promising.
wasted millions on the halls for schools program.
the so called education revolution amounted to nothing more then an expensive website.
they said they'd take on japan over whaling, they haven't.
failed to act on illegal boat people.
ran the country broke bank rolling cash hand out's during the GFC.
wiped 10's of billions off australian retirement funds through their botched handling of the so called super profits tax.
it's really really hard to think of ANYTHING redeeming about this government, and you have to remember gillard was in on ALL of it. it's a shame, but it seems all abbot has to do is keep his mouth shut and he'll be PM in a few months.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
But the UK populace was so downtrodden they had bigger fish to fry than to protest this. Random stop and search without suspicion springs to mind as an example.
They did protest many times, but the act of protesting could put you on a watch list.
of VPN/Proxy services :)
I'm thinking about starting my own ISP. Please reply with a list of all of the URLs that contain information you don't want me to be able to see.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
The Evil Nanny : a short story by a /. reader
It was June 16th 2015 in Australia land of the free, Frank was in charge of Airport intelligence his job was to monitor the Airports Wireless Gateway and report suspicious activity to a higher source ... John also worked there, it was his first day on the job and frank was Johns mentor. Over here frank beckoned to John waving his hand "see this" he said thrusting his finger to the monitor these are the people we are after ! but how can you tell anything from that John remarked ... look carefully Frank said that bastard is using a proxy which means his traffic is probably encrypted and we cant track his URL history watch this frank said, now were going to fingerprint his computer and get his details from ground security using face recognition then report him! you know he is probably a paedophile or a terrorist or a criminal of some description why else would he be using a proxy ... John remarked what will happen now ? well frank said his financial details will be checked and he will be red flagged from ever getting a government job, and for the rest of his days we will be watching him ! a cold feelling came over John as his mind danced back to his days at Uni and a class he took about the Argentine government in the late 60,s and the 1970,s they did the same thing but took it one step further and those on the lists dissapeared forever hey frank John exclaimed "what happens if your a government worker and your caught using a proxy net connection ? well its like this frank exclaimed your career is finished you wont go up the ladder and they will always be looking for ways to make your position redundant because they assume at the very least your a whistle blower .. Johns mind bounced back to his Linux box he had set up last night he had set it up as a vpn using ssh via a friends comp in the states but I am no criminal he thought and who watches the fucking watchers he thought, his father had told him a story more a fact than a story about South Australia in the late 60,s early 70,s and a politician called Donald Dunston a very progressive highly intelligent man who once in office discovered ASIO along with the south Australian police has created a huge paper database on anyone with progressive or radical views his father had told also that although he was not involved in politics he was followed as a teenager and had been followed and photographed on many occasions, Don Dunstan called in the media and on camera destroyed all the files and sacked those involved but that was Australia then and this is Australia now john pondered