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On Eve Of Election, Australia's Conservatives Announce Mandated Filtering Policy
Dan B. writes "After Australia's Conservative party (LNP) quietly posted a policy [PDF] to impose mandatory internet filtering just one day prior to the country's election, local premiere internet forum Whirlpool has gone in to overdrive with the fastest 50 page thread ever. At 8:30pm, both sides of politics were busy running media releases, with the Conservatives hastily back-pedalling on the policy, and the Government attacking it, accusing them of hypocrisy after voting down their own proposed filter 3 years prior, stating there was no proof filtering works."
Do politicians repeatedly insist on inserting their feet into their mouths hours before an election?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
We clearly need more of it. The problem is, it doesn't seem to work as well here in the States, especially when we only find out the details after the fact. I would that the US government were as communicative as these Aussies about their bad policies before actually makign them law.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
These morons would rather put the entire country and it's IT infrastructure to the expense and trouble of a Opt out system, instead of just making it a Opt In system for those families or organizations like schools that may need such a filter.
You think the ISP or the smartphone or modem manufacturers are going to absorb the cost of this additional layer of government mandated censorship? No they are going to pass on the cost to the consumer. So for every one household that might actually use this filter, nine would not and yet those nine would still pay for it.
PS: I don't understand the logic. How does censoring my internet protect your children from porn? It just doesn't make any sense.
Smells like a deliberate "mistake" to keep the news outlets busy for the final day before the election. Will prevent scrutiny of their policy costings they only just released today, 48 hours before the election.
The original old pdf thats now been replaced can be found via the above mentioned Whirlpool forum: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2151781#r40092377
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This was alluded to in the summary but in case people just read the headline and make a knee jerk post about it ... they have already back tracked from the plan. In fact they said they never had such a plan and it was a mistaken statement in the first place.
Whichever it was, the correction certainly occurred in record time. Seeing the whole thing go down on Twitter there was barely a few hours between news outlets picking up the story of the filtering plan and Malcolm Turnbull responding and saying the whole thing was incorrect.
Official Liberal Party press release clarifying that they do NOT intend to introduce filtering: http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/09/05/coalitions-policy-enhance-online-safety-children
There's various other reasons that you shouldn't vote for the LNP this election. But thankfully this isn't one of them.
It works great for China and North Korea. Sure, some people get around it, but most people are cut off from things the government doesn't want them to see. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that unlike China and North Korea, Australia was a free country. Well, cross one more off the list...
Now is your chance, Australia. Do the world a favor and show them, at this election, in no uncertain terms what you think of politicians who want to censor.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There's a thread on reddit Australia - some guy claims a Liberal Party Facebook app is harvesting data using hex-encoded javascript. I'm pretty sure it's against their own privacy policy, the Facebook ToS, and possibly illegal.
It's a test for future policy development: if they can get away with spouting crap before the election, they know they can get away with murder afterwards.
Not sure why that's currently rated at +5 Funny -- this is quite insightful. Politicians do indeed do this. Lay out a (sometimes batshit-insane extreme) policy position before an election, and if the electorate rolls over, the politicians know it'll fly just fine. If the electorate raises a holy stink, back off and propose something slightly less batshit-insane that's calibrated to squeak by. This is how bullshit becomes modus operandi. This is also how Microsoft has been working to make its Panopticon (a.k.a. XBox One) palatable to the buying public.
This approach is a proven technique. Funny? More like frighteningly accurate.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
But conservatives want less government and more freedom!
At least that's what the bumper sticker on the the car in the handicapped spot said. And it must be true because there was also a Ron Paul bumper sticker on it as well!
what is the stuff they are trying to hide by creating this circus?
I assume there is something else they don't want us to talk about
More security theater designed to make people feel like government is doing something when it's not.
My son recently started public school. I took him on his first day only to find hundreds of kids milling about the front of the school, in the street, totally un-supervised. I tried to get in and the doors were locked. They didn't unlock until 7:30am the time class started so of course, every kid was late for first period. I went to the office and they told me due to all the school shootings (in the whole country we've had what? 1? In the past 5 years?) They said I'd have to take it up with the school board and blew me off.
Well, I did take it up with the school board. I called and pointed out that they were locking an EMPTY SCHOOL. All the kids were outside, unsupervised with no-where to go should a potential attacker arrive. It was ridiculous. To my amazement they got me in touch with the school districts director of security who conceded my point, agreed with my assessment and made a district wide policy change on the spot. She said that the change had been requested by local politicians over the summer and she hadn't really thought it through. By the time I went to pick up my kid the school was back to being unlocked. At least there are a few in government with half a brain in their head.
How about some accountability? If they say this was part of their mandate they are bloody crazy.
Poor Aussies, I thought this countries conservative party was bad. They're probably going to get up to the same kind of thing next election. Got voted in on a minor scandal involving some low tier politician at the wrong time. Sad.
I never knew that. This is the first time that I have heard of Australia holding elections. *grumbles at news media in United States of America* wish they (news networks/TV/Radio/newspapers) would focus on other parts of the planet besides New York City, China, North Korea and the Middle East. ok, end of rant.
I'm going to read about the Australian federal election, 2013 and the 44th parliament. yeah, i normally don't comment about politics, but i learned something new about Australia.
We already have this to some extent.
There's been a few questionable websites that would not resolve using my ISP's DNS.
Once DNS was changed to one outside of Aus (google for example 8.8.8.8) the address resolved fine.
An election campaign is a giant beast. One fucker releases an out-of-band email given some miscommunication, and you are all firing wild conspiracy theories. (And you call conservatives anti-reason, get a grip.)