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Conroy Still Hell-Bent On Internet Filter
lukehopewell1 writes "In an interview for the ABC's PM program yesterday, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that there would be no conscience vote on the Australian government's proposed mandatory internet filter. 'Conscience votes go to matters to do with life and death in the [Australian] Labor Party,' Conroy said. The minister said that the filter debate was not about censorship, rather it centred around refused classification material — an issue up for review in parliament. 'I'm not sure that the censorship claim stacks up. This is about classification systems. At the moment in Australia, there is no conscience vote on refused classification for movies, TV, DVDs or book stores,' the minister said. Conroy then called on the newly installed Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull to justify his position on the filter to families concerned about child pornography. 'According to the latest information I have here from the [Australian Communications and Media Authority], there are 430 child pornography sites on the [World Wide Web] ... that are accessible to anyone...[Malcolm Turnbull] has to explain to Australian families that he is prepared to do nothing about blocking access to those sites,' Conroy added." I hope some Australian and UK readers can help the rest of us understand the significance of conscience votes, though Wikipedia helps.
Fielding will be gone in six months so maybe the policy will change then.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I swear child porn is the big boogyman to control the internet just as 911 was the big fear monger event to justify totally immoral wars against countries that had nothing to do with the event....
Normally in Australia, party discipline and solidarity is such that any member going against the party line on a vote is taboo and noteworthy - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_floor#Voting_against_party_lines . If the party allows a conscience vote, then they don't lay down a policy on how they expect members to vote - so they can vote whichever way they want.
Internet still hell bent on filtering Conroy.
I just can't be bothered.
It has always been the case where Senator Conroy has desired this filter, he has long been a pawn of the Australian Christian Lobby. Before the recent elections the party he belongs to, Labor (a middle left party), could have passed it on their numbers alone, however the recent election puts Labor into a minority government position. Even with the Labor parties internal rules saying that all members must vote to the party line they are simply outnumbered, everyone else in government is on record as being against the plan. Now there is nothing to say that Labor can't strike a deal with the opposition party and the independents who make up the majority of the government, say tie it being passed to not putting a price on carbon, but I think the chances of that are slim. A minority government is a very tenuous hold on power. As far as a conscience vote, all other parties are free to vote how they like, members of the Labor party are the only ones tied to the official party line, however for things like Gay Adoption (recently passed) and Abortion (passed quite a few years ago) those rules are relaxed.
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
Child Porn is the new "terrorist" if you dont attack them you support them.
considering the ISPS are VOLUNTARILY blocking these sites, there is no reason for the filter.
Filter is just an excuse for a hidden agenda for slow and gradual control of information, if its there people will abuse it, ask any psychologist.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
Senator Conroy is a religious fanatic, according to any modern definition of the term. This is POLITICS BY FAITH, and if that's what I want well there are OTHER countries for that.
This policy is ABSOLUTE INSANITY, and if I wanted a country run by a religious NUTBAG then there are also other countries for that.
His policy of deliberate insanity *almost* lost his party THE ENTIRE ELECTION, and now we have a government balanced on a knife-edge (ie more than likely, crippled beyond your worst nightmares).
This kind of rampant lunacy only succeeds in countries where only the criminals (and fed gov police enforcement) have guns.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
'According to the latest information I have here from the [Australian Communications and Media Authority], there are 430 child pornography sites on the [World Wide Web] ... that are accessible to anyone...[Malcolm Turnbull] has to explain to Australian families that he is prepared to do nothing about blocking access to those sites,' Conroy added.
Maybe Conroy could explain to Australian families why hanging a blanket in front of the sites is better than shutting the sites down and prosecute the operators? Especially since it is so easy to peer behind the blanket by using a proxy, or alternate DNS resolver, etc, etc.
Are all those sites operating from countries where child pornography is legal? Which countries and sits are we talking about?
)9TSS
He's hell bent on hiding sites that contain child abuse material...
That doesn't prevent a child getting abused.
That doesn't help the child already abused to create the content.
Who the fk knows what these sites are anyway?
Sick bastards are going to work around his filter quicker than he can think.
How about, policing, work within the international community to have these sites removed and keep up the pressure.
If he put half the budget and pressure on law enforcement as he is putting on stringing a tarp over the crime scene he'd actually have a hope of getting somewhere!
FIX IT! DO NOT HIDE IT!
Well since the blacklist contents is blacklisted itself, there's no way of knowing. When the list was leaked last year, there were about 1300 sites and not a single one of them contained any child pornography. Most of it was plain old adult content, with dentists, dog boarding kennels, caterers, poker websites, and anti-abortion sites making up the balance.
We know that most of the worst stuff on the net is much further underground, with P2P and private trading via email.
What limited child porn there is on the web specifically falls under only a handful of categories.
* Hacked websites. Supposedly this is why some of the sites appeared in error in the leaked list - they were "hacked by the Russian mob". An Aussie dentist website with a known hosting company had some child pornography buried under several "backslashes" (as Conroy put it) after being hacked. Instead of contacting the owner/host and getting their co-operation in removing the content and prosecuting those responsible, the whole site was just blacklisted without notifying anyone. The guy running it only found out when the list was leaked. A "just ban it" filter will only encourage laziness such as this when we should be policing it.
* Trolling attempts. There was a rather unfortunate case a few months ago of a certain imageboard trolling the facebook memorial of a murdered eight-year-old girl by flooding it with gore, bestiality and child porn. Not a lot really needs to be said about the perpetrators here, I think most will reach the same conclusion. It was jumped on by the censorphiles in Australia, but even in the best case, classification of websites takes months (I know, I've tested the submission process). Legislation is probably years in the future, and certain to fail with the current parliament. Sites like Facebook would actually be exempted because "high traffic" websites would break the filter and embarrass the government. Rather than the filtering approach, Facebook removed the images themselves in a matter of hours (and the police would have if they didn't), and the guy who did it was eventually prosecuted. Good riddance.
* Honeypots/sting operations. I think Conroy's even said he'll exempt sites from the filter if the filter would interfere with a police investigation. People dumb enough to access/post child porn on the open web deserve to be caught. With the proxying of the filters making online forensics more difficult, and policing resources being diverted to an idiotic waste, this is yet another example the filter will only make worse.
And that's without even mentioning the fact that the filter is being sold as a child-safe filter. The government has already dumped its "voluntary filters for parents" program, and has left almost all hardcore material accessible under the filter because blocking it all is obviously impossible.
Every time I think about this plan, it makes me furious. It's the main issue I voted against the government on last month, and I wouldn't be surprised if enough people joined me to have cost them their majority. But the independents hand the reins back to the ALP and it's full-steam ahead with the filter despite no-one outside of the ALP supporting it, the ALP being in minority in both houses of parliament, significant elements within the party opposing it, and ALP members only likely to vote for it because they will be expelled from the party if they don't. (That's basically what a conscience vote is for those who aren't familiar - a "we won't kick you out of the party if you don't vote for this" vote. By refusing one, anyone who doesn't toe the line is out of the party. The ALP is extremely strict on this.)
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/fight-to-filter-out-evil-leaves-bad-guys-to-do-their-worst-20100514-v4cq.html
They cut funding to the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team, a unit of the Australian Federal Police.
The filter is pure faith based pay back.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Neither the Greens or all of the Independents support the filter. He does not have the numbers.
430 out of >1,000,000,000,000
"'I'm not sure that the censorship claim stacks up. This is about classification systems."
The Australian Classification system is a system of government-run censorship. Media which is refused classification is not allowed to be sold in the country.
The debate is fundamentally about censorship.
It is legal to possess and view unclassified and refused-classification material in most of Australia, provided that it is not material which is actually illegal (child porn, for example). What Conroy wants to do is circumvent the ability for adults to decide what they can view. To make it illegal to view online things which are legal to possess in reality. It is censorship. To argue otherwise is completely dishonest.
I'm not sure the "I was helping to slashdot it" defense will work out in court, bud.
THL phish sticks
Most of it was plain old adult content, with dentists, dog boarding kennels, caterers, poker websites, and anti-abortion sites making up the balance.
I got some accidental inside information from a religious political lobbyist some years ago when this furor began... he was happy to get anything done to filter the net. But the religious lobbyists don't have that much clout .. he pretty much provided his perspective on legislation that happened to fall into his area of knowledge or got laws tweaked here and there to fill loopholes, that sort of thing.
The real reason that the lower house members listened to this suggestion was because the casino operators sided with the religious lobbyists to try to stop off-shore internet gambling, which is of course losing them loads of cash and losing the government loads of tax revenue.
If this filter were to be implemented (which appears to be next to impossible at this point) the first additions to the list would be every identifiable offshore gambling website. The 'child porn' is just to raise public outrage / support and imo the rest of the sites just added to the list as white noise to hide it's purpose. I'm guessing here that the secure gambling connections to offshore sites would be a damn site more difficult (impossible?) to pass through a proxy and that the average on-line gambler may not even bother to try ... just hop in the car, and go to the casino.
I think this came up before and I believe that in those countries the blocked site returns a page saying that it has been blocked, just like bluecoat in my workplace. You can use information on that page to find out why the page has been blocked.
The proposed Australian system seems to be set up to pretend that the blocked page doesn't exist. This makes it hard to distinguish between bitrot and censorship, so nobody really knows what is censored.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Also - think of the cost! I believe it was around $42 million set aside to implement such a filter - a hair over $100k per site. Are you really telling me that there is value in this? Are you really telling me that you could not put $100k under a police investigation per site in order to shut some of them down? I'm aware there was already funding for the AFP included in the initial proposals; but if you are going to do something, why not do it right? Give $42 million to those that can actually prosecute the offenders in some % of cases.
For Finland:
"No impact on speed": true, there's no effect (it's usually just a simple DNS blocklist at ISP, or sometimes a http proxy).
"80-95% of citizens are censored": False, as far as I know. Some large ISPs did start enthusiasticly but it seems most have now gone back to not censoring, or offer both censored and uncensored access. The three large ISPs I am in contact with (Elisa, Sonera and Welho) all offer uncensored DNS.
"Accuracy is 100%": True if you define accuracy as "how many sites on the block list get blocked when using a blocking DNS server". No-one knows how many false positives the list contains or what percentage of all child porn sites are on the list -- there's no possibility of knowing this for sure as the only time citizens get to see the list is when it happens to leak (check wikileaks for the most recent ones). There have been some fairly high profile false posititives though: www.w3.org was blocked for a time -- and the police had no other explanation than "human error".
Give me a copy of netbsd over a gun any day. The gun will just get you killed.
Tell it to Peter Lalor. It's deplorable how many Australians are so ignorant of our history. While armed conflict is something sane people prefer to avoid, it ought not be avoided at any cost. From time to time in our history ("our" being people with common law justice systems) we have found it necessary to resist the government with force. We tend to keep the (newly constrained) government rather than overthrow them, which is what gives us the continuity of common law. Our legal rights such as Habeas Corpus and our Constitutional monarchy with Westminster parliament was won by force of arms. Hopefully we've come far enough to never need to resort to that again, but it seems foolish to bet your life on it.
David Hicks was held for 5 years without trial with the approval of our government. Conroy wants to censor the internet. The ABCC has overturned the right to not incriminate yourself so you can be punished for silence. The "anti-biker" legislation is destroying the right to freely associate and also to know the evidence used against you and the right to face your accuser. With these legal changes in place it seems to me that some future government may very well use them to implement tyranny, regardless of any good intentions current politicians may have. Some time in the future it may very well require armed force to address this problem although the vast majority wouldn't say we are at that point now.
430 child pornography sites. You got to be kidding me. That like what, 0.000000000000001% of the websites worldwide? And for a hand full of sites they have to filter 100% of the traffic and spend millions of Australian $ for it?
How about a total filter on the catholic church, after all there are 10% of Catholic Priests Were Pedophiles. How about spend more money to protect real children in Australia? There was 5,591 sexual abuse and 11,789 physical abuse in 2008. There were 339,454 notifications but only 162,259 investigations, that's only 48% coverage. How about dropping this stupid filter and spend more money on protecting real children, living in Australia right now?
But what will happened is that Australia is going to spend millions to block 430 child pornography sites but then they have to cut spending on education and on child protection services.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
If you censor the entire net, then you DO shutdown the pedo sites. If you lock up everyone who isn't a right wing american KKK card carrier, then you do lock up the traitors. If you ban all Muslims and Muslim symphatizers from the US, you ban the Muslim terrorists as well (you still keep the abortion clinic bombers and seperatists and other home grown nutters).
THAT is the problem. The holocaust and WW2 did solve the German unemployment problem.
The REAL question is NOT to ask wether a measure will solve the problem but at what cost it comes.
Simply put. More kids are killed in traffic then by pedo's. Solution, ban cars. Why doesn't this get proposed? Because nobody wants to surrender their SUV with cattle bar for those hellish suburban roads.
We CAN hunt down pedo websites. BUT what is the price? Is the loss of freedom of speech and freedom of information worth saving a few kids? Yes? Then hand in your cars keys today... AH, thought so. You want to save a handful of kids from predators but not thousands from car accidents.
Same with 9/11 and the war against terror. We CAN stop the terrorists, but is it worth the total collapse of privacy and ruining internation trade and exchange of ideas?
Is the war on drugs worth Mexico being the latest country to slide into civil war? Locking up people who are just addicted enough to risk life in jail for smoking a joint for the 3rd time?
With extreme measures, we can solve all the worlds problems. But is it worth it?
So "That's why it's so important to not believe every person who can describe the problem, but rather look at their proposed solutions and see if they actually help, or will take you somewhere you don't want to go."
It is that last bit that is the important thing. Not wether it will help. That is easy enough. But do we want to life in that kind of world.
And that is hard. It requires people who value freedom of speech to defend smut peddlers like Larry Flynt. Not because they are pro-porn but because you either stand for freedom of speech for all or for none. Because if you allow stuff to be banned because it upsets people, you end up banning everything because everything upsets someone.
But that is VERY hard to sell. It is like argueing about the evils of various religious institutions in a religious country. Once a mere questioning of religious practices could get you in serious trouble. Thank god the Catholic and other churces have lost a lot of power and you can't simply be put to death for questioning the pope.
Right now you can just be cast out for daring to question the wrongness of child porn crusaders. Question this minister and you are automatically pro-pedo. A brave man/woman who dares to risk that. And so he gets away with it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Speaking as a US citizen, I'm sure glad our founding fathers weren't such bleeding whiners.
Would forbidding the press to report on murders stop people being murdered?
'Cause that's equivalent to what Conroy is suggesting: hide the problem not solve the problem.
It seems to me that if he is so concerned about the problem of sexual abuse of children he should support going after those that do the abuse, not hiding it.
This angle could be used to pry open his argument.
This man is nothing but a fool. Why can't he see that no one _wants_ the filter and that it is simply useless. He has said himself that the "tech savvy" can easily get around what they are proposing. What does "tech savvy" mean to him? - it's all relative.
Does he honestly think that an undesirable is going to be deterred by a filter that can be worked around? The same man goes around and threatens to filter google because it's videos are RC - it' nothing short of surreal.
Every possible form of protest has been exercised and they still persist. What else can we do? What ever happened to the idea that laws should reflect the values of the community? The vast majority of AU is apposed to this. Who exactly are they trying to please with this filter? The 'religious nut' demographic can not be that big.
If this goes ahead we're going to have is an extra government layer to get through to use the internet and we all know how good the government is with technology. We can expect delays and failures that no one will take responsibility for.
If people want a filter they should buy one, the government can even subsidise it if they want - it'll be more effective anyway (not to mention cheaper). I don't want my tax dollars being spent on censorship policies like this.
It's ironic that the same government that can be so forward thinking with things like the NBN (regardless of how wasteful you think it is) can be so incompetently backward with it's filtering plan.
I'm sensing that this is increasingly a matter of ego for him and that is very dangerous.
If the Aboriginals had just implemented stricter immigration control.
It's the bloody immigrants i tell you, stealing all our jobs an bushmeat.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Then we shall fight in the shade of a thousand suns.
I wonder why there is such a disconnect between the ALP and its constituents? I wonder if they understand that their position on this issue may have cost them their majority (among other things like the refusal to follow-up on environmental promises)? Conroy should have been sacked with Rudd (or re-assigned as the case may be since he's now Minister of Foreign Affairs). How do you get it through their thick heads that they are losing votes? We have the same problem in 'America. All of these Attorneys General think that they are gaining votes for shutting down Craigslist's Adult Section but really they are losing votes. I certainly won't vote to re-elect my Attorney General based on this one issue. Her opponent could be a stuffed doll and I still wouldn't vote for her.
"[Malcolm Turnbull] has to explain to Australian families that he is prepared to do nothing about blocking access to those sites"
Is that so eh. Perhaps instead Malcolm Turnbull could explain to Steven Conroy what the Internet is, how it works, and why we all wish Conroy would just fuck off.
I hate printers.
In an armed conflict with out own Government the very best we could hope for is a disaster like Afghanistan.
For you to say such a thing is a fine example of my statement: "It's deplorable how many Australians are so ignorant of our history.
Did you not recognise the name Peter Lalor? Could it be that you don't know what the Eureka Stockade was? A small group of poorly armed men took on the government and lost quickly and decisively and were acquitted at trial by jury nullification. Shortly after, Peter Lalor was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council. What we could expect from armed conflict with the government depends on the amount of popular support for our cause. Right now, if you tried it you'd be reported in the media as a terrorist and remembered as such. Given enough popular support the government wouldn't take you on, except it may take a minor conflict for the level of support to be clear to them.
I believe an armed conflict is the worst possible outcome.
A lot of people think perpetual servitude is worse than armed conflict. In fact a great deal of our cultural identity is related to that ideal. I respect your right to express your opinion but your view is not representative of the Australian population in general.
In most Westminster democratic systems - of which the UK parliament is the original, and convention in Australia follows closely, members of parliament are elected on the basis of a political party. The party system is much stronger in those countries that in the US, in many ways:
1) The party organization chooses who will stand for a particular seat as that party's representative in a process known as "preselection". This can be a combination of votes by paid up party members in local branches, with "head office" votes as well. By the way, in those countries, to be a member of a political party, you pay a membership fee and join a branch - and there may be an acceptance process. In the US, you simply say that you are a member of the democratic or republican party - and in some states, mark that preference when you enroll to vote.
2) Because there is no popular election for head of state / executive members, formation of government is done of the basis of which party can command a majority of votes on the floor of parliament. This is generally a no-brainer, but as we have seen in the last few weeks following the Australian federal election, can take a lot of negotiation. The party forming government determines who the Prime minister and other cabinet ministers are, and they can change their mind on who fills these positions at any time. The general population don't elect the Prime Minister directly.
3) Votes in both chambers are along party lines. If an individual member votes against the their party's policy, that is a big deal - known as "crossing the floor". The argument is that since you were elected as a member of the party, based on the party's platform, you support the party's vote.
4) There are some limited number of issues that are seen as having very personal implications - for example, abortion, matters affection religious beliefs, things like that. So the parties allow a "conscience vote" - where there is no binding party position, and each person may cast their vote according to their own beliefs.
Depends on the jurisdiction. In the United States, for example, there are people sitting in jail for child porn, directly related crimes, or derivative prosecutions for making or possessing pictures or videos where one or all the following conditions are true:
***The actors are kids but are never naked and no sex acts take place.
***The actors are verified adults portraying underage characters.
***The actors are nonexistent, animated characters.
Never ascribe to religion that which can be explained by avarice and ambition (love of money and love of power). Religion is a convenient tool but if it did not exist, leaders would use something else instead (like race, color, or creed).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I am outraged that Stephen Conroy knows about these child pornography websites, and apparently has not reported it to police. It is the police that can organise to shut these websites down, since they are illegal in every country that I know of.
I can only assume that Stephen Conroy wants these websites kept available, to push his agenda of a compulsory internet filter. If I were of a conspiratorial persuasion, I may even secretly believe that Stephen Conroy had a hand in creating some of these websites. Now wouldn't that be a sensational news article.
"Seriously, try it against nukes and UAVs. See how far you get."
Nukes aren't on the table.
UAVs? Go tell the Taliban they have lost and it's time to go home. :)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I imagine (hope) there are a LOT of US soldiers who would disobey a direct order to deploy a nuclear weapon against a civilian target in the United States, judging it to not be a lawful order.