The Labor plan to interrupt Australian internet access, which I have previously excoriated, has been, as I feared, extended. Electronic Frontiers Australia reports that the government has a second, secret, list that even opting out doesn't free you of. So the technical overhead is still there and there's no control or oversight on what gets put on that black list. Who gave the government this power?
As I said last time I mentioned this:
And of course once it's in place, no government will be able to resist blocking other unpleasant sites, like those that, say, give the Arab perspective on the "war on terror", or which "offend" a religious group, or which say something the government declares to be hate speech, and so on. As the right to free speech is only implicit in Australian and common law, it's very vulnerable to restrictions by over-zealous governments acting with best intentions, the road to somewhere is paved by.
I hate being right.
Hat tip commenter Chris Wills
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This doesn't sound much different from what is going on up in Canada. Free speech is taking a real beating.
Does anyone doubt that it will be very difficult preventing any government trying to control what information is available to their populations through the Internet? And from the point of view of a government what could be better than adopting something like the IDeologues "Wedge Strategy"?
Any measure to limit child pornography will be regarded as unexceptionable by the vast majority so it's the perfect "thin edge" of any "wedge" intended to open the way to much more Draconian control. From there it is but a short step to taking action against pornography which exploits and abuses women. And since pornography exploits unhealthy attitudes towards women it makes sense to block anything which can be argued to condone or promote those atitudes. And who are better judges of what are objectionable views about them than women themselves? So if enough women find something offensive then that should be sufficient cause for limiting or even banning it. And if simply giving offence to a sufficient number of people is grounds for a ban, what then?
An obvious counter to such an argument is to point out that it is an example of the "slippery slope" fallacy, that one thing does not necessarily lead to another - which is true. That is to be welcomed, though, because whoever makes it is effectively conceding that a compelling case for censorship in one instance does not automatically justify all the others.
In my view, it is cases like this which tend to undermine the British principle of parliamentary supremacy and point towards the American example of a constitutional Bill of Rights as a means - albeit imperfect - of checking any unbridled exercise of of government power.
The UK apparently wants to spend 12 billion to spy on everyone's internet habits:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882600.ece
I've also read somewhere recently that the average British citizen is now recorded on camera about 300 times a day. I used to dream of living in Britain, but not anymore.
http://www.torproject.org/
one of many.
Paul, at best that stops the government seeing where you go (and such services will be what those this stupid measure is designed to prevent accessing certain sites will use). It doesn't make the sites available if the government decides, under the rose, that this is unacceptable. And I never voted for such a measure or power to be in the government's hands. And if I had, I would have insisted that there be judicial oversight (and I hope others would have voted the same way). Most of all I would have insisted that bureaucrats not be given free reign even if they are in the law enforcement arm of the bureaucracy.
So America has laws under which teenagers can be deemed sex offenders if they send a nudepic of themself to a mate on their phone:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/10/teen_girl_arrested_for_sendi…
,and Australia has a Labor party that is even worse than the Liberals in trying to censor free speech over the Internet,under the mantle of "child safety".There goes the opting-out,in comes the secret plan,what is this,China??
The point is not that these measures can be circumvented,it is that my government would try to implement them in the first place.
You haven't been reading along if the "second list" is news to you.
The /last/ time the gummint played 'save the children' the result was a three-tined pitchfork:
1. Take down notices for 'illegal' content hosted in australia
2. A blacklist of 'illegal' content hosted overseas
3. A /voluntary/ scheme for ISPs to provide filtering TOOLS for parents. Such tools must AT least block the list in part 2. (Typically, this was a subsidised copy of netnanny or other windows desktop filter suite).
The "ABA Banned List" (ABA is now renamed ACMA) is a list of URLs which originate from citizen complaints. Complaints are vetted by ACMA in much the same way as complaints about TV shows or movies. If a site is found to be illegal, action is taken in the form of a takedown notice, or a block list addition. I believe there is no proactive collection of URLs for the list, only reaction to complaints.
The block list is provided to filter vendors, who must build it into their filter software, in order to qualify as ACMA approved (desktop) filter software.
The current content of the list is largely kiddy porn. There are also some gambling, mainstream-porn and gross-out sites.
The list as it stands is not very large, and its content is very hit and miss, as it only contains the EXACT PAGE URL that the complaint addressed (even when the entire domain is similarly objectionable).
This ABA blacklist has existed for nearly a decade, AFAIK its contents are not secret.
The only new wrinkle is to make blocking of this list mandatory at the ISP level, which even most filter vendors think is crazy. This ISP-level filter scheme was always spoken of as having a complete opt-out facility until last week---and as an initiative for optional "family friendly" internet feeds, was IMO not necessarily a bad thing.
Mandatory filtering of EVERYTHING with absolutely no opt-out _is_ a bad thing. (not to mention impossible).
Aside from the performance issues of mandatory filtering, the obvious concern is that once the ACMA list really becomes a mandatory "great firewall", every nutter and his dog will submit their least favourite sites for inclusion on the list.
While I hope we can agree that all child porn in all forms should be banned, although I heartily dislike adult porn, I would do nothing to limit its distribution, except that it be very difficult for children to see it. I don't know how that could be done practically and would leave the problem for others more savvy about such things to figure out. That being said, if there is no good way to do it, then one hopes that good parents will just have to do their best to keep their kids away.
I see stuff I don't like all the time; however, I'm an adult and can survive the awful experience.
Cell phones and the intertubes really do give stupid teenagers the ability to be even dopier, don't they?