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Telstra Fears LulzSec Attacks, Hesitates On Internet Filter

Posted by timothy on from the well-wouldn't-you dept.

After the earlier report that some of Australia's largest telcos (and ISPs) were to start censoring internet traffic based on a blacklist, rdnetto writes with the news that "Telstra is now hesitating to deploy the internet filter it had previously promised to implement, fearing reprisals from online vigilantes." The linked article specifically names LulzSec as the source of such reprisals.

15 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Article is false. by bbqsrc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Never trust News Corp. Here's some real journalism: http://delimiter.com.au/2011/06/25/telstra-proposes-to-filter-interpol-blacklist/

    Not that the real answer is any better than what the Australian said, but the truth is what matters.

    --
    Disagree != mod troll.
    1. Re:Article is false. by countertrolling · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dig it:

      In addition, the age of children depicted through content on the sites must be younger than 13 years of age, or perceived to be less than 13.

      Nice little catchall there

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
  2. FUD by Ja'Achan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Step 1: Create a scary and unspecific enemy
    Step 2: Give it some publicity
    Step 3: Demand funding and protection based on speculation ('Maybe someone might attack us! Think of the children!')
    Step 4: Profit! And power, too.

    Looks like it still works.

  3. Oh Evil Telstra... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    You're making it really hard not to like the current phase of cyber-terrorism when said terrorism forces you to try to make the right decision.

    1. Re:Oh Evil Telstra... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would argue that any decision made based in immediate fear is not really the right decision; even if the decision has a positive outcome, it was made it for the wrong reasons and is therefore not representative of any particular notion of "right." No lesson was learned, and any future decisions are unaffected. This is only effective if fear can be maintained indefinitely, which is nearly impossible. It's indistinguishable, in the long run, to a step backward.

  4. Congratulations Lulzsec by bky1701 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You have already done more to protect the rights of common people than most governments in the world have in years.

    This really makes you wonder how a shadowy group of people on the internet have more influence than elected officials and regulatory boards. Of course, I guess that's because they have completely different goals... we are possibly seeing the dawn of a new world here.

    --
    Great Intellect...
    1. Re:Congratulations Lulzsec by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Y'know, in terms of 'collateral damage per unit freedom', Lulzsec is still doing pretty well...

    2. Re:Congratulations Lulzsec by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have already done more to protect the rights of common people than most governments in the world have in years.

      The average Western government each allows tens of millions of people to enjoy basic freedoms under the rule of law with a reasonably impartial justice system. By the standards of perfection, everywhere is awful; by contrast with justice in many places 40 (Spain, if you're gay?), 50 (Southern US, if you're black?) or 200 (Britain or France, if you're poor and steal a loaf of bread?) years ago, governments are in some areas doing really well. And if we spend a moment imagining ourselves as a chattel-wife in Saudi Arabia for a moment or held at gunpoint for everything around us in Somalia, suddenly that horrible rights-denying US doesn't seem so bad.

      It's clear that things have been getting worse over the past 30 years in the West. It's clear that we could demand and do a lot better. It's also clear that lulzsec's civil disobedience is having some sort of effect, although it's not quite clear how it'll play out (maybe it'll just be used as an excuse to impose more stringent anti-terror[tm] laws on the Internet?). But, when compared with history and the world in general, protecting the rights of common people is something your government almost certainly does more of every day than lulzsec. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water, even if the baby is sick.

    3. Re:Congratulations Lulzsec by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't encourage these people. They might be attacking some organizations that we all hate. But at the same time, they attack legitimate organizations just for the kick.

      I can't tell, are you talking about LulzSec or the government?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. Re:Nice? by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And censorship never ends well either.

    Too much "protection" and you have a totalitarian regime.

    If you want to take out crime - do it at the source or check the cause for the crime first. Strangling the internet is like shooting the messenger.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  6. Re:Nice? by airfoobar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure, but that doesn't look like an overly hyperbolic statement. In a sense, it's the very definition of totalitarianism.

  7. Re:Conflicted by countertrolling · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Conformity is the objective in most places.. Critical thinking is an anathema.. The fact is that government is a creation of those with the most capital, so naturally they will set the agenda to suit their needs

    --
    For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
  8. Re:Nice? by djdavetrouble · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If you want to take out crime - do it at the source or check the cause for the crime first./i?

    Shouldn't be too difficult to rearrange the worlds wealth equally, distribute the workload evenly to the populace, remove humans innate competitiveness, get rid of all people that are insane / have no self control, control the crazy teenagers and rewrite the rules of most societies. Lets get to work on that....

    --
    music lover since 1969
  9. Re:Conflicted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When they hit Sony, over and over and over again... I thought, "Good, serves em right. Sony should stop being assholes."

    When they knocked over public facing websites at cia.gov and senate.gov I thought, "Well, those sites should've been secured, and it's not like they got at anything important. Whatevs."

    When they started taking phone call requests and DDoS'ing random game companies I thought, "Well that's stupid, but at least it's just ddos... it's only temporary and nothing should be broken."

    When they started posting regular peoples credentials online in the clear, so that every talentless tween in the world could just look it over and start fucking with peoples stuff, I thought, "Ok, this is bullshit. That's not vigilantism, lulzy, impressive or temporary. Us regular working poor have enough real-world problems, we don't need to be thinking about the fallout from that, too."

    So now I hear about these maybe-beneficial things, and it's hard to feel any better about it all.

    And I have to imagine others feel the same way.

  10. Re:Nice? by xero314 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Shouldn't be too difficult to rearrange the worlds wealth equally, distribute the workload evenly to the populace, remove humans innate competitiveness, get rid of all people that are insane / have no self control, control the crazy teenagers and rewrite the rules of most societies. Lets get to work on that....

    The people in the advanced countries now face a choice: we can express justified horror, or we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes. If we refuse to do the latter, we will be contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead. - Noam Chomsky

    The issues you raise are solvable, and each one has been addressed at some point in some culture (except competitiveness but that would be foolish to remove), we just need to be willing to look at the cause.