
Interpol filter scope creep: Australia ordering unilateral website blocks - renai_lemay
http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/15/interpol-filter-scope-creep-asic-ordering-unilateral-website-blocks/
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zmmmmm
Makes me want to cry that the ability to unilaterally and secretly censor our
internet is being handed to people _who do not even know the difference
between a URL and an ip address_.

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donaldc
One might argue that the more technologically incompetent the censors are, the
better.

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guard-of-terra
No. They'll just break the whole internet by banning Google ip one day.

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gizmo686
Exactly. How many people do you think would notice if they banned some Google
ip's. If they banned some Google domains, people would notice, but a banned IP
would just mean one fewer Google servers in that region.

~~~
guard-of-terra
You're wrong assessing consequences. This happened in Russia and big chunk of
Blogger and GMail attachment downloads went completely down.

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mtgx
If in 2013 people still believe that once a censorship infrastructure is put
in place governments will _only_ block "child porn" or the "worst of the worst
sites", they are being really naive.

It usually takes months or even weeks before the system is used to block
something else that has nothing to do with the categories they promised to
censor.

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gilgoomesh
The child porn filter isn't what's happening here. The article confusingly
implies they are related but they're not.

The government child porn filter is not in use – it never left the trial
stages. This filtering is also unrelated to the voluptuary Interpol list that
numerous Australian ISPs implement, since Interpol are not trying to filter
these sites.

This is not about scope creep of an existing filter. This is a whole new kind
of censorship that has come from nowhere for no good reason.

~~~
toyg
As I said in another comment: it's like they pushed the filter, got rebuffed,
so they went fishing for loopholes in other laws.

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jacques_chester
I dream of a day when there is a Minister for Communications that doesn't
cause Australia, once again, to be an internet-culture punchline.

I've been dreaming of it since at least 1997.

Unfortunately, that portfolio is a parking lot for factional warlords who want
the money and prestige, but who also need time off from actual work to keep
heavying backbenchers, interfering with preselections and so on and so forth.

Malcolm Turnbull is the current Shadow Minister. And because of the political
requirement to Differentiate(tm), his name is currently "mud" in the local
technology world. It's a pity. He has actual tech industry pedigree as an
investor, is widely regarded as one of the more thoughtful senior politicians
of either stripe and his temper tantrums are very entertaining.

I fully expect that once the election is over Turnbull will be trundled off to
something like Pacific Affairs and some dunderheaded blockhead who controls
some faction in the NSW Liberals will be rotated in to take the spot.

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vacri
Almost every country is an internet-culture punchline. There are a lot of
jokes out there. And Australia's case is somewhat overrated - for a while
there, our censorship was considered as bad as China's for simply
_considering_ an internet filter despite never having actually implemented it.

Turnbull is unlikely to get tech, simply because apart from the really plum
jobs like treasurer, you don't want someone who knows the industry to hold the
portfolio - because they won't make cuts to please the head honcho. At least,
that's how it was phrased to me by a defence scientist when Bronwyn Bishop had
Defence in her portfolio in the 90s.

~~~
toyg
That, and conflict of interests. A big investor writing laws for the sector he
invests on? Not nice.

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jacques_chester
He's long since divested.

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contingencies
We've seen demonstrations with 10s of 1000s of people taking to the streets in
Australia on internet freedom issues since 1999, when filtering/takedowns were
first proposed (and enacted) nominally due to an extreme conservative
Christian politician who held the balance of power at the time. Now 14 years
on, at least we're getting some representation this year with the new
Wikileaks Party and there is some hope for intelligenct policy.

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smegel
FWIW there were never "blocked" sites in Australia (this may be a first). The
only impact of the blacklist was to penalise those who posted links to banned
sites (this was an actual offence), even though the list was secret. In fact,
the whole point of the backdown from Conroy was that the actual blocking never
went into effect.

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josephb
Yes, there are a number of sites blocked by Australian ISPs

Those ISPs have been given a directive to block sites on the "worst of the
worst" Interpol list, it's DNS blocking, not at the IP level.

Read the article again :)

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smegel
Well it has been done voluntarily by some ISPs...others have refused. There is
no way the AFPs tactics would survive a supreme court challenge when/if the
ISPs start kicking up a real stink when they are requested to block more
generic material under this farcical "assisting police" nonsense. Its a clear
abuse of a law aimed more at providing wiretapping/snooping services not
censorship.

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Intermernet
I'm using TPG and I can confirm access to www.globalcapitalwealth.com is still
working so I'd say "believed to be major telco TPG" is quite... um...
believable. www.globalcapitalaustralia.com is going to the GoDaddy holding
page so I'd say they're in the process of packing up shop.

I'm frankly disgusted at the underhandedness of Conroy. He has previously
pushed completely unfeasible schemes aiming at mandatory filtering. He caved
on this due to _huge_ public backlash, so he just re-interprets section 313 of
the telco act to give the AFP the power, if not the obligation, to bully
Australian ISPs into mandatory filtering anyway.

The main differences now are that he gets to do it quietly, possibly without
the public backlash, and secondly, that the cost for the extra infrastructure
and personnel required to implement it is now the sole burden of the ISPs, and
not the Australian taxpayer.

Unfortunately, with the current state of Australian politics, this mob are
_still_ probably the best choice going. The Greens (although I usually vote
for them, idealist that I am) really don't have any chance this election, and
the Liberals [1], except to say that they'd cut the investment in the National
Broadband Network, aren't even providing their usual hodge-podge of
regurgitated conservatism; They're happy watching Julia Gillard lose the
election on her own merits. The two Liberal party members to keep an eye on
here are Tony Abbott [2], and Malcolm Turnbull [3]. They, between them, have
the power to either lose or win (in that order) this election for the Liberal
party.

So, we in Australia, like many in the USA, are discovering that the more
"progressive" party is just as likely to engage in shady behaviour as their
"conservative" counterparts, but have more to lose when they're found out.
This reminds me of something I read recently [4] where it was stated that
trust is bi-directional. The more a government stops trusting the people it's
mandated to represent, the more those same people, in turn, stop trusting
their elected government.

Wow, sorry, I seem to have gone off on a tangential rant there... Anyway, not
happy at all.

[1] for the benefit of non-Australian readers, the capital 'L' should be
interpreted as a negator. They are anything but 'liberal'.

[2] Party leader, and historically likely to lose this election with a single
misplaced misogynistic comment.

[3] A chameleon, finger on the pulse and willing to flip with the public
opinion of his constituents... Technically a good trait in a politician, but
most of his constituents are rich conservatives

[4] might have been in Bruce Schneier's _Liars and Outliers_ , brilliant book.

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toyg
To be fair, what is one supposed to do? Should nation states just pack up shop
because all their information-restricting legislation does not apply to the
intertubes?

Taboo-making is a staple of any organised society and we don't really know of
anything that could replace it yet. Even assuming complete good faith from
authorities, it's clear that they are reluctant to lose a pillar (if not _the_
pillar) of their own existence.

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Intermernet
_"To be fair, what is one supposed to do? Should nation states just pack up
shop because all their information-restricting legislation does not apply to
the intertubes?"_

The anarchist in me says yes, the realist in me says vote for Julia at the
next election and cross my fingers, the idealist in me says move to New
Zealand :-)

 _"Even assuming complete good faith from authorities, it's clear that they
are reluctant to lose a pillar (if not the pillar) of their own existence."_

I'd say that the fact the reluctance is so clear is indicative of a complete
lack of good faith.

I see what you're saying, and it's a very valid point, but I think "Taboo-
making" is _way_ too often over-extended to include taboos on anything the
current government doesn't like.

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panacea
Hard to get too worked up, except for the 'slippery slope' thing, which is a
thing I guess.

~~~
nwh
The filter was originally pitched as just a device to prevent the distribution
of child pornography, and only that. It's now being used to block fraud
websites. Slippery slope indeed.

I give it 6 months before thepiratebay.(org|se|gl|is|cx) is blocked in
Australia.

~~~
toyg
Not even that: this legislation is not "the filter", it's a more generic
wiretapping-oriented law. It's like they pushed the filter, got rebuffed, so
they went fishing for loopholes in other laws.

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ttrreeww
The end of freedom.

