Slashdot Mirror
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.
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....
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!
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.)
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.
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.
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.
AFAIK Australia has had one politician assasinated and that was over some petty personal dispute. Our politicans are not affraid to walk the streets or go for a morning jog on their own and that's exactly how most Aussies want to keep it. When a democratically elected politcian needs a small army to go out in public and do their job then as far as I'm concerned that country has serious problems.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"[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.