Australian Govt Censors Notes From Secret Anti-Piracy Talks

An anonymous reader writes "It looks as if the Australian Government really doesn't want the public to know what's going on in its closed-door talks with ISPs and the content industry. The Attorney-General's Department has applied the black marker to almost all of the information contained in documents about the meetings released under Freedom of Information laws. The reason? It wouldn't be in the 'public interest' to release the information. Strange how the public seems to have a high degree of interest in finding out what's being talked about."

Comments

Internet Villain of the Year

[niftydude]

Maybe Stephen Conroy can win internet villain of the year a second time.

It's All About The Anal Rape

[Greyfox]

Most people know that corporations in general and the copyright industry in particular are out to anally rape them. What the government doesn't want you to know is just how much they support the copyright industry in their quest to anally rape the citizens the world. Politicians have to be elected, and people tend not to want to vote for politicians who help others anally rape them. However politicians also want money, and anal rape is a lucrative business. So politicians both try to help their corporate friends anally rape regular citizens and at the same time try to hide the fact that they're doing so. This really should come as no surprise to the citizens of the world.

You'd think people would get tired after being anally raped for so long (Really, you can only rape someone for so long before it's just sex...) and found a "No Anal Rape" party. I think most people would agree that not being anally raped by corporations and politicians is a cause worthy of getting behind.

That'd because it's probably discussing

[Anonymous Coward]

The Australian government has "a special room" in almost every single ISP with a machine capable of taking a full duplication of traffic for almost any customer. This applies to phone networks as well.

I know someone who installs this equipment, he will not even TALK ABOUT it online, he literally won't type it in an email, IM or messaging system of any kind. Offline it's difficult to get info regarding it out of him.

Those boxes, to my knowledge do not require a warrant, the government can just remotely log in and start recording. Obviously they can't use the data in court without some kind of warrant but the equipement is there.

Posting this anonymously I will assume is enough - I don't have much more information than that unfortunately. If anyone else does, please feel free to reply.

Sickening,

[mjwx]

Conroy is not the biggest - he is one of many. Only 30% of the population support Labor (an organisation that can't even spell its own name correctly). A large percentage of the population dispise and detest them. However, short of civil inssurection, how the hell do you get rid of them? The people can't call an election and they have taken away our guns.

This person doesn't live in Oz.

We can call an election, it's just that no-one wants to. We dont need guns to do that, I suspect the GP is not Australian and doesn't realise Aussies can sort out their problems without violence. To get an election called, all we need to do is prove to the Governor-General that the current government is unfit, then she dissolves parliament. The thing is, no-one wants to, elections are a pain in the arse, a waste of a good Saturday and the Liberals are even worse then Labor.

The Labor party is actually preferred over the Coalition in the two party preferred poll, add the popularity of the Greens and they will retain control next election (ALP with the help of the Greens). If anything, I expect more votes to go to Green and independent candidates. The Coalition will never get in because Abbott's just a patsy for the Liberal power brokers and their economic policies are insane ($70 Billion dollar black hole the shadow treasurer cant account for).

Re:Sickening,

[MisterMidi]

Be careful with your suggestions, someone might actually do it ;-)

A visit to Wikipedia (with recent numbers from the CIA World Factbook) learns that Argentina, Panama, Turkey, Estonia, Paraguay, Peru, Lithuania, Uruguay, Ecuador, Kosovo, Suriname, Colombia, Israel, Sweden, Costa Rica, Guinea, Latvia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Poland, Luxembourg, Honduras, South Africa, Austria, Slovakia, Macedonia, Brazil, Guatemala, Venezuela, Finland, Germany, Albania, Malta, Iceland, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Switzerland, The Bahamas, Belgium, El Salvador and New Zealand all have bigger economic growth than Australia.

Depending on how you define the western world, they might not all be part of it, and I may have forgotten a couple. But the point is, Australia is not by a long shot "pretty much the only growing economy in the western world."

But what could it hold against public interest?

[SuperKendall]

I can understand how you can redact portions of documents where release of information might lead to physical harm, like planned locations of troops or identities of informants.

But how on earth can there be ANYTHING not releasable in a talk on copyright? There is nothing that could be talked about that would cause physical harm to others.

This absolutely stinks and I hope the courts can be brought into release the information attempted to be hidden from the public.

So what has been hidden? My best guess is that the document shows a terrifying contempt for the common citizen in regards to rights they have, and they are really worried about how that would come across in the press.

Re:Sickening

[Capsaicin]

However, short of civil inssurection, how the hell do you get rid of them? The people can't call an election and they have taken away our guns.

You wait until the next federal election when we all get to vote. That's how we like do it round here.

I thought the conservatives really overreached when they banned almost all guns (even though 85% of my fellow Australians supported Howard on this issue). When I read posts like yours, however, I wonder whether my loss at having my piddly 22 taken away isn't, after all, outweighed by my gain from having any firearm kept out of the hands of folks like yourself.