Senator Conroy responds maybe

Today I received an email below in response to my email on the Aussie Internet Censorship plan. Besides not even addressing the issues I raised the following two points need to be stated about the email

1)  No ability to send an email response or any clickable links to any further information:

"Please note this mail box is not monitored and any replies sent to this address will not be received."

There were some links on the attached pdf but instead of making them clickable one has to carefully cut and paste the links.


2) The second problem was the attached legal warning - so technically I can't post or email the pdf to anyone

The information transmitted is for the use of the intended recipient only and may contain confidential and/or legally privileged material. Any review, re-transmission, disclosure, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited and may result in severe penalties.

If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the Security Advisor of the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, 38 Sydney Ave, Forrest ACT 2603, telephone (02) 6271-1376 and delete all copies of this transmission together with any attachments.

You have to wonder who didn't actually think that a general circular email is intended for the recipient only is an idiot. And the comment not to rely on the information in the document sums up Conroy's stupid scheme.

I have read the confidential attachment and what he proposes is extremely dangerous and he is been stupid to think it will actually stop anything - any child will be able to bypass the filter as well anyone else.

Check out the getup campaign for more details

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=892

Freedom of Information - Good News

In a week of some really bad news including the NSW government passing legislation which allows police to have secret search warrants the news that Senator Faulkner is promoting a major overhaul to the Freedom of Information Act is great news.

I think Senator Conroy needs to read this section of this opinion piece

These reforms will change the law and demonstrate the Government's commitment to culture change, a shift from the culture of secrecy we saw under the last government to one of openness and transparency. We do not see these reforms as a concluded process. Emerging technologies continue to change the way governments use, and citizens access, information. New patterns of democratic engagement require new ways to inform debate and decision making. Legislation, regulation and policy must keep up, or they will strangle access rather than enable it.

So in a week where news on internet filtering kept getting worse, NSW government allows secret police searches and gang chaos in Sydney airport followed by lots of fingerpointing then this has to rate as some great news.

Senator Conroy plan to ban the internet!

One of the best blogs I have seen which highlights the fundamental flaw in Senator Conroy's crazy filtering plan.

Read it, get angry then do something about it.

Senator Conroy monitoring you

Sydney Morning Herald has news that Senator Conroy will increase monitoring of websites including blogs. 

Particular mention is made of Whirlpool who are making a strong case against the censorship.

One thing you can do is join Getup and get involved - and contact your local MP. Make it clear this is something which will cost them votes if they support it.

End the secrecy - ACMA

The list of banned sites makes interesting reading and the ACMA Press release in response to the release of the banned sites you get an idea of the nonsense that is occuring in this government agency.

The rules the ACMA operate under are based on a 1992 ACT.  It is clear this ACT needs to be brought up to date to reflect the reality of the Internet.

ACMA’s current list of approximately 1100 URLs relating to prohibited content and potential prohibited content hosted outside Australia includes material in the following categories:

• depictions of child sexual abuse;
  
• depictions of bestiality;
  
• material containing excessive violence or sexual violence;
  
• material containing detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use;
  
• real depictions of actual sexual activity;
  
• depictions of simulated sexual activity which are not subject to a restricted access system.
  

So this would mean that sites such as xtube.com are banned as are ALL Adult sites as they show real depictions of actual sexual activity.

Sites such as ACON would have to be banned as they include detailed instruction on safe drug use.

Maybe the best solution to this nonsense is to send a list of sites which breach any of these or just make up the breach as ACMA has to investigate. 

Maybe the government could drop this idiotic plan and ACMA could actually do something about the Premium TXT scams.

Leaked list and leaked report - is Conroy insane?

A list of "banned" websites in Australia was leaked today.  Check out The Blarg of Fosenz for a good blog on the story.

Both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have good stories on this.

Apparently the list of banned sites includes:

• A Queensland Dentist
• A Tuckshop
• Some gay porn sites 

The other bit of news is the report  as published by the Age newspaper - prepared by Professor Landfeldt, one of Australia's leading telecommunications experts, says some of the fundamental flaws of the scheme raised in his report include:

•  All filtering systems will be easily circumvented using readily available software.
  
• Censors maintaining the blacklist will never be able to keep up with the amount of new content published on the web every second.
  
• Filters using real-time analysis of sites to determine whether content is inappropriate are not effective, capture wanted content, are easy to bypass and slow network speeds exponentially as accuracy increases.
  
• Entire user-generated content sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia could be blocked over a single video or article.
  
• Filters would be costly and difficult to implement for ISPs and put many smaller ISPs out of business.
  
• While the communciations authority's blacklist would be withheld from internet users, all 700 ISPs would have access to it, so it could easily be leaked.
  
• The filters would not censor content on peer-to-peer file sharing networks such as LimeWire, chat rooms, email and instant messaging;
  
• ISPs and the Government could be legally liable for the scheme's failures, particularly as content providers have no right to appeal against being blocked unnecessarily.
  

Meanwhile Senator Conroy has come out and said no no no this isn't the list and you naughty people how dare you publish this list.

I have to wonder what Senator Conroy is doing. I would also wonder what is going on in the Labor party when they are implementing some of the worse censorship without any mandate to do so. There is more serious matters to worry about e.g. the economy, greenhouse emmissions, etc rather than pretending to implement a scheme which won't do anything to protect anyone - but will do plenty to annoy and stop the internet dead in Australia.

If you are worried about this make sure you contact your local MP.  Check out the Getup Website for ideas.

If New Zealand can stop the draconian Section 92A then surely Australians can do the same thing and stop the censorship crazy Labor Party.

Conroy's Clean Feed - Why won't he talk about it?

The move to filter the internet in Australia is slowly moving forward. What is clear is that Senator Conroy and the Labor Government do not want to talk about this censorship.

If you are interested in the implications of this then check out the ABC National Radio Background Briefing.

As you will see from the site already filtering in Parliament is blocking such standard sites as the Gay news media site Evolution Online.

You might recall how this type of filtering also stopped me accessing gaytravel.net.nz while using the Virgin Lounge internet access.

Finally how do you avoid the filter simply use a programme such as TOR

Take the time to listen to the Background Briefing - the comments from Stephen Conroy are amazing and show how arrogant this Senator is.  He refuses to talk about the proposal and goe on the attack of stating those opposing this as been for child pornography. 

Not allowed - We control what you can view

Yesterday while in the Virgin Lounge in Brisbane waiting for my flight to Sydney I connected to Virgin's wireless network and connected to various sites.

However when I tried to connect to one of our company sites gaytravel.net.nz I found I was not able to as the site was classified as Adult Content.

I was not even able to continue but presented with a username and password option which of course I wasn't able to access.

As a test I thought I would check out other sites and started moving to gay personals sites which I thought might be picked up but they were okay.

I even tried a couple of lesser known gay porn sites and they were fine.

Of course I actually managed to access our site via another means - in this case the site was aliased to another web address on our server so I could access it - but the alternative of using a proxy server would have worked just as well. 

I have emailed Virgin 24 hours ago but are waiting a reply.

It is interesting this censorship, lack of ability to complain and general removal of legitimate sites from the internet without our knowledge.

As a side note both Virgin Blue and Pacific Blue are both listed on gaytravel.net.nz with direct weblinks to their website. 

This is not the only airline filtering the internet access for lounge members - Air New Zealand's Koru club is filtering the internet as well.

What was even more interesting looking at the filtering software it seemed to be based in the USA. 

My real question is what else is filtered and why is filtering needed at all when the terms and conditions clearly don't put any liability on Virgin Blue.

I will update when I get a response from Virgin but would be interested if anyone has any experiences like this with other airlines.

This filtering is much like the Australian government filtering it is a total waste of money and effort and ultimately causes more frustration with falsely blocked sites, slower services and some big unanswered questions about what is been blocked.

Internet for better or worse.

FH Out has an interest blog today:

How the internet changed gay society: for better or worse?

It links to interesting news report on the UK Channel 4 More4News.




It raises some interesting points but seems to assume that social networking sites started with Gaydar in 1999. Of course there were gay social networking sites before this on the internet with IRC and before that Gay bulletin boards. Then there were the phone chat lines during the 80s and 90s as well. Let's not forget the beats, cottages, beaches, saunas and other places to pick up guys which have existed for ever.

Whatever one has to say I would say the internet has been a huge step forward for gay and lesbian visibility and for helping people to discover their sexuality - whatever that may be - and also other people who are similar interests so you don't feel alone no matter who or where you are.

China Filtering for Australia

Australia is looking at introducing mandatory filtering of the internet in a similar method to China and Singapore.

For those wanting an unfiltered internet they will have to request their ISP to provide them an unfiltered stream.

Now this may seem ok but what isn't clear is what will actually be filtered - i.e. who decides what is on the black list - and how one objects to something been on the black list.

The only major issue is why the internet needs to be filtered for adults. Adults can easily avoid anything on the internet they do wish to see by simply not clicking on it. Issues such as the trade of child pornography can already be managed by existing controls and laws. Unless one actually goes searching for illegal adult material it is unlikely you will actually stumble on - even if you do a simple click takes you back to legal material.

The filtering system as proposed is easy to avoid as a number of news articles have demonstrated. In fact it is likely that the filter will only stop adults not their tech savy children.

What it also does is give parents a false sense of security as ultimately children are smart enough to work around the filter and the system won't be perfect. One only has to look at email spam filters to see that.

Some important questions have to be answered around the whole filtering process which include:

• Who manages the blacklist
  
• Can anyone view the blacklist to remove a site from the blacklist
• How will sites get off the blacklist
  
• Who will have access to those people who request to be removed from the filtering system.

So if you are in Australia send off emails to your MP now and make some noise.

And if it does get introduced get the filtering removed by your ISP.