The ALP's position on this before last year's federal election was that the proposed filtering system was optional; you could opt out of it. However, on 2 November, just weeks before election day, ALP candidate for the seat of Kingsford Smith, Peter Garret, told 2UE journalist Steve Price, "once we get in we'll just change it all". Now that comment was in the context of climate policy, but I guess now we know that it has a somewhat broader application, because the ALP's position has changed post-election to a mandatory filtering system.
Given that there are ISP plans that offer the sort of filtering that the ALP wishes to force on everyone in the country, and that the government already offers client-side filtering packages, free of charge, this post-election flip-flop is nothing sort of treacherous, and if they go ahead with it I suspect that a lot of Australians will be waiting for the ALP at the next poll with metaphorical baseball bats. I, for one, talk to my friends and family about this issue. It's a vote-changer for me, and I take time to make sure that my friends and family understand how this affects them.
Memo any ALP apparatchiks that might have found their way to Slashdot: This is a vote-changing issue. There are many of us who are extremely displeased with the pig-headed way in which the Minister has pursued this matter. The ALP stands to lose many votes over it. There are few votes to be won because nearly all of those you hope to gain over this filtering proposal already go to religious candidates and you have stuff-all chance of changing that. Summary dismissal and form letters that don't even address the issues are no longer good enough. Ignore the users of the internet at your electoral peril.
The purpose of this filtering is not to keep child porn away from pedophiles. It's not to keep hard-core porn away from people who wanna whack off. The purpose is to stop Mum and Dad and the kids from stumbling upon this stuff.
No, filtering software that is freely available and can be installed on individual computers is designed to do that. Mandatory and secret ISP-level filtering solves an altogether different "problem".
It's already illegal to kill people. If someone is going to commit murder, how much attention do you really think they will pay to a law against owning some weapon?
We never voted for internet censorship (that idea wasn't mentioned in the run-up to the election)
That's not entirely true. The ALP had internet filtering on their platform before the election. It was going to be an opt-out thing back then, but you can't get away with saying you didn't know they had this in mind. It's why I put their candidate in 4th place on my ballot paper, in spite of the then-leader of the Liberal Party and most of his cabinet being a bunch of irredeemable fucktards worthy of just about anything being done to remove them. Now if they'd just make it optional preferential voting like we have in NSW, I could cast a formal vote for a federal candidate that doesn't in any way assist either the ALP of the Libs.
By all means write to Senator Conroy directly, but remember that although he is a minister he's only a senator for Victoria. You should also write to every senator in your own state, your representative in the house, and to any political party that is likely to field a candidate in your electorate next time.
I did include "changing the channel" as one of the options. If Faux News (or Matthew White or Tracey Grimshaw) is really that painful, then stop watching it. This would be self-censorship, and would show that we are in actual fact capable of exercising it and don't need the government to exercise it for us.
Here's what I wrote to the Prime Minister's office:
I am writing to express my concerns with the government's proposal to filter the internet for all Australians. My first concern is with Senator Stephen Conroy's public statement, as reported by the ABC, that "if people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree." This association of the natural right to free speech with the abhorrent practise of child molestation is irresponsible. Poisoning the well in this manner gives the community the impression that the Rudd-Labor government regards suspiciously any free-speech arguments against restricting access to information. It also limits the ability of members of the community to debate the merits or otherwise of this proposal in free speech terms. If this is not the government's intent, then it should issue a clarifying statement to that effect: allowing this conflation of free speech with child molestation to stand is unacceptable to a free-thinking people.
Second, I am concerned that the government has taken it upon itself to decide what each of us may or may not read. This is multiply offensive. It implies that we are not intelligent enough to make such decisions for ourselves, nor to implement these decisions. It also implies that none of us possesses good enough moral standards. Moreover, I am concerned about what might be deemed "unacceptable" in the future, in particular by a different government. Even if I can trust the present administrators of the proposed filtering system, I am certain that I cannot trust the next administrators and government simply because I do not know who they will be. How can I know what they will decide is permissible for me to read when I don't even know who they are?
My third concern is that this proposed filtering system is to be implemented on an opt-out basis. This reinforces the impression that the designers of this scheme have assumed a certain lack of intelligence in us: apparently we're too stupid to opt into something for our own good. It also means that deliberate effort must be made merely to retain the right to make one's own decisions. It should be the other way around: it should require a deliberate effort to hand this task over to someone else. However, the most concerning aspect of this is that it makes very simple the compilation of a list of people who choose not to be filtered. Will this list be marketed to people peddling pornography? Will this list be used as some sort of shopping list for law enforcement? Why should anyone who has to opt out of this filtering scheme, on the basis that it slows down their feed or that they are able to make better decisions about what may or may not come into their home, have to fear appearing on lists that could be used for these other purposes? This is unacceptable in a free society. Please note that "give me a list of people who have opted out" is identical to "give me a list of people who have not opted in", so making this system opt-in does not ameliorate this aspect of the problem in any way.
Finally, I have concerns with the technical aspects of this proposed scheme. Any filtering requires computing resources, and these are not free. Either the ISPs will take a performance hit or they will be forced to increase the cost of their services. By the way, I do not believe for one instant that anyone opting out of the filtering service will receive any sort of discount: they will be forced to subsidise filtering for other people. Filtering schemes are known to fail with false negatives that fail to filter content intended to be filtered and false positives that block "innocent" content. Any reliance on black-listing of sites will be frustrated as each provider of undesirable content moves that content from host to host, and great amounts of resources will be wasted on a game of whack-a-mole that can never be won. Encrypted connections to proxy servers outside Australia will go straight through the filtering scheme and are trivial t
There's a big difference. To get the key they need a passphrase. If that exists only in your head then it requires an act of your will to disclose it, and is presumably not the subject of any warrant. If the passphrase exists outside your head then it is the subject of a warrant.
They can get the key file with a warrant. They can get the computer with a warrant. They can read mypassphrases.txt with a warrant. They can read the Post-It note with your passphrase written on it that's attached to your monitor with a warrant. There is no warrant that they can use to open up your head to get the passphrase. Well, I guess they can get you to divulge it under duress, and that's exactly the point here.
The passphrase in your head is not in any way the same as the meth lab of your example.
Fair enough, but if things go to recession and then depression, and if deflation comes into play, that debt will start on the path to being really as bad as it looks.
Fail. Epic.
Original post appealed to ignorance ("how do you know there isn't...?". Reply called it. You objected. Sorry about the foot. Hope it gets better.
To make it clearer: I never said that you were appealing to ignorance. I merely pointed out that the original question appealed to ignorance and you objected to someone calling that out. I lost interest in your post after that. Sorry. Do have a nice diurnal anomaly, however.
+OneMillionInsightful to parent.
Seriously, put their feedback into a spreadsheet called IllGetRightOnThat.XLS, just like companies do. And occasionally you will find a gem in that, a gem you can polish and make your own.
You know, there is a very odd attitude to copyright on Slashdot. We're not talking about patent trolling here, we are talking about a company which owns a trademark which is being infringed by another company.
You know what? Copyright != trademark. Sorry about the rest of your post.
Slashdot Mirror
and
6. ???
7. Profit!!!
The ALP's position on this before last year's federal election was that the proposed filtering system was optional; you could opt out of it. However, on 2 November, just weeks before election day, ALP candidate for the seat of Kingsford Smith, Peter Garret, told 2UE journalist Steve Price, "once we get in we'll just change it all". Now that comment was in the context of climate policy, but I guess now we know that it has a somewhat broader application, because the ALP's position has changed post-election to a mandatory filtering system.
Given that there are ISP plans that offer the sort of filtering that the ALP wishes to force on everyone in the country, and that the government already offers client-side filtering packages, free of charge, this post-election flip-flop is nothing sort of treacherous, and if they go ahead with it I suspect that a lot of Australians will be waiting for the ALP at the next poll with metaphorical baseball bats. I, for one, talk to my friends and family about this issue. It's a vote-changer for me, and I take time to make sure that my friends and family understand how this affects them.
Memo any ALP apparatchiks that might have found their way to Slashdot: This is a vote-changing issue. There are many of us who are extremely displeased with the pig-headed way in which the Minister has pursued this matter. The ALP stands to lose many votes over it. There are few votes to be won because nearly all of those you hope to gain over this filtering proposal already go to religious candidates and you have stuff-all chance of changing that. Summary dismissal and form letters that don't even address the issues are no longer good enough. Ignore the users of the internet at your electoral peril.
Consider the (rhetorical) question suitably modified.
Well, I've written my letters and I will put them in tomorrow's post (it's Sunday). How 'bout everyone else?
No, filtering software that is freely available and can be installed on individual computers is designed to do that. Mandatory and secret ISP-level filtering solves an altogether different "problem".
It's already illegal to kill people. If someone is going to commit murder, how much attention do you really think they will pay to a law against owning some weapon?
That's not entirely true. The ALP had internet filtering on their platform before the election. It was going to be an opt-out thing back then, but you can't get away with saying you didn't know they had this in mind. It's why I put their candidate in 4th place on my ballot paper, in spite of the then-leader of the Liberal Party and most of his cabinet being a bunch of irredeemable fucktards worthy of just about anything being done to remove them. Now if they'd just make it optional preferential voting like we have in NSW, I could cast a formal vote for a federal candidate that doesn't in any way assist either the ALP of the Libs.
The Evil Xenophobes Are Stupid. Fair dinkum. I mean: a) he's not, and b) even if he were, who cares?! For fuck's sake, 23% of Texas, grow the fuck up.
No shit, Sherlock.
By all means write to Senator Conroy directly, but remember that although he is a minister he's only a senator for Victoria. You should also write to every senator in your own state, your representative in the house, and to any political party that is likely to field a candidate in your electorate next time.
I did include "changing the channel" as one of the options. If Faux News (or Matthew White or Tracey Grimshaw) is really that painful, then stop watching it. This would be self-censorship, and would show that we are in actual fact capable of exercising it and don't need the government to exercise it for us.
Because changing the channel or, god forbid, actually thinking about what you read hear and see is far too difficult for you, right?
Unenforced laws are not good laws. They are potentially disastrous laws, lying dormant, awaiting selective enforcement.
Please don't give the Australian government any ideas like that!
There's a big difference. To get the key they need a passphrase. If that exists only in your head then it requires an act of your will to disclose it, and is presumably not the subject of any warrant. If the passphrase exists outside your head then it is the subject of a warrant. They can get the key file with a warrant. They can get the computer with a warrant. They can read mypassphrases.txt with a warrant. They can read the Post-It note with your passphrase written on it that's attached to your monitor with a warrant. There is no warrant that they can use to open up your head to get the passphrase. Well, I guess they can get you to divulge it under duress, and that's exactly the point here. The passphrase in your head is not in any way the same as the meth lab of your example.
Fair enough, but if things go to recession and then depression, and if deflation comes into play, that debt will start on the path to being really as bad as it looks.
But what if you really are a 98 year old woman in Afghanistan, who makes less than $20K/yr as the CEO of her own company, you insensitive clod!
Well, may I be the nth to say "welcome to the eighties"?
/hug
Fail. Epic. Original post appealed to ignorance ("how do you know there isn't...?". Reply called it. You objected. Sorry about the foot. Hope it gets better. To make it clearer: I never said that you were appealing to ignorance. I merely pointed out that the original question appealed to ignorance and you objected to someone calling that out. I lost interest in your post after that. Sorry. Do have a nice diurnal anomaly, however.
+OneMillionInsightful to parent. Seriously, put their feedback into a spreadsheet called IllGetRightOnThat.XLS, just like companies do. And occasionally you will find a gem in that, a gem you can polish and make your own.
You know what? Copyright != trademark. Sorry about the rest of your post.
All you need, then, is FUXQUEUE on a triple-word-score, and you're all set, yeah?