
Australia - Welcome to the Orwell continent - danielh
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1399635276
======
mixmax
I remember an article where a guy got a hold of the Finnish police's list of
child pornography sites that were blocked at the ISP level by law. The guy
decided to go through all the sites to see whether they were indeed child
pornography, and he found that 95% of them were just normal porn sites
operating legally. It turned out that the list bore resemblance to the US
terror watch list insofar that it was primarily false positives, it seriously
hurt legal companies, you got no notification of the fact that you were placed
on it, and that it was almost impossible to get off it.

This begs the question: Who will guard the guards?

~~~
njharman
> Who will guard the guards?

The Free Marke.. Hahahahaha, jk. The People, like always. Unfortunately The
People are typically dosing while on guard duty.

~~~
hugh
Unfortunately even the most zealous of the "free market solves everything"
advocates don't think that the free market can solve the problem of government
regulation.

Which is why free market types spend most of their time complaining about
government regulation, the one problem the free market can't solve on its own.

~~~
thomasmallen
Oh, the free market can solve that too, you just don't want to be around when
it happens.

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reitzensteinm
I just don't understand the thinking of anyone who thinks this is a good idea
- if, of course, they are thinking at all.

Take all of the bad stuff throughout history that was caused by the balance of
power resting in the hands of individuals and compare that the damage caused
throughout history by the balance of power being held by the government, and
the latter is so much more damaging the two don't even come close.

This filter restricts freedom and moves the balance of power towards the
government just that tiny bit more. Of course it's for a good reason - who
wants primary school kids looking at porn? Who could be against blocking
terrorist training manuals from being accessible (remembering that some people
are naive enough to think that such a thing is possible).

But when has any government ever taken away freedoms WITHOUT a good reason? It
just doesn't happen. And the prospect of giving government just that little
bit more control is frightening.

Even if we completely trust Mr Rudd and the current Australian Government,
this is just another governmental power that's open to future governments who
may or may not be corrupt to take advantage of.

Of course, I'm sure everyone on here understands this issue at least as well
as I do, so I'll shut up now and just say that $5 was taken out of my pocket
to fund this, and I am furious.

~~~
michaelneale
I don't think you will find such people online. Certainly not the sort of
people who could touch type, let alone participate in an online community.

------
DanielBMarkham
Now you know the big push to "internationalize" the internet -- every nation
out there is going to have its own list of approved and non-approved (illegal)
sites.

I wonder how long it will take for us to start seeing stories about some of
the completely benign sites that the Australian government doesn't want folks
to see? Or companies get squashed because they fall on the wrong side of the
filter police?

Better still, is it possible for start-ups to purposely bypass the filters?
Perhaps this is good news, eh? New line of business opening up -- accessing
"bad" sites that aren't really bad. (And I don't mean simple proxy services,
more like finding popular commercial sites on the other side of the firewall
and being the man-in-the-middle between the two parties. Heck-- you could
charge on either, or both, sides of that arrangement)

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gstar
Crikey. Maybe the new PM speaks Mandarin a little bit too well!

~~~
13ren
and I bet we have the same Cisco routers that China has, and so it would be
trivial to switch on, in terms of technology.

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jonny_noog
This was dodgy enough when it was opt-out rather than opt-in... Now there
might not even be any real opt-out? Fuck off.

Senator Conroy's contact details are here:

<http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/contact>

I would recommend sending snail mail or email to Conroy's office and/or you
local member.

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netcan
Inability to distinguish between 'this is wrong' & 'this should be illegal.'

And now we have a censored internet.

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jsmcgd
This doesn't feel like progress. Feels dirty. Feels like the dirty thin edge
of a dirty wedge.

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wheels
Please don't editorialize in titles. That's mentioned in the site guidelines.

~~~
danielh
You are right, thanks for pointing that out.

~~~
bootload
_"... Australia - Welcome to the Orwell continent ..."_

Shouldn't that be _Welcome to the "Orwellian" continent_? ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian>

------
rgrieselhuber
I hope this pushes more innovation in large scale mesh networks.

------
mindslight
If they were going to beat this through the legislative process, it would have
happened already. It's only a matter of time until the other "free" nations
implement the same filtering, using whichever bogeyman is conveniently in
vogue.

We need new protocols, designed such that politically unpopular traffic is
indistinguishable from "normal use". We need an overlay network that allows
entry into the cloud at a myriad of points, defeating network analysis and
routing black holes. We need a secure naming system that prevents addresses
from being arbitrarily removed by a third party. And we need to make these
capabilities seamlessly available to common users who may not even be seeking
them out - so that the idea that they're looking at "censored information"
doesn't even cross their minds.

Hackers write code that creates internet reality. Get to it!

~~~
elai
You have to create something of utility that would need something like this in
the first place. Until it has enough utility, it work get popularized and it
wont catch on. Look at the bit-torrent crypto arms-race between government and
clients. Actually, something like an extended bit torrent would be the thing
that would catch on.

~~~
mindslight
Oh, completely. There's already designs and implementations of such things,
but unless they're coupled with a useful service, they're not going to see
adoption.

The internet has been relatively unencumbered so far. Now that the governments
are taking notice and looking to censor it, the demand for useful services
based on privacy is only going to grow.

------
bootload
_"... The government will iron-out policy and implementation of the Internet
content filtering software following an upcoming trial of the technology,
according to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital
Economy ..."_

In September on _"Software Freedom Day"_ which I attended, I happened to catch
the tail-end of a talk by Colin Jacobs ~
<http://www.efa.org.au/about/board/colin-jacobs/> and Dale Clapperton of
_"Electronic Frontier Australia"_ discussing the _"Clean feed"_ testing
mentioned in the article ~
[http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2871574175/in/set-72157607...](http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2871574175/in/set-72157607387630079/)
The description of the filtering tests was along the lines of - "500 odd test
sites, on an internal network (effectively at Ethernet speed)" didn't inspire
confidence in the testing of the proposed approach. Access speed will be a
real issue. I'm not sure this implementation will be workable.

You can read a description of the blocking in the report, _"Mandatory ISP
Internet Blocking Plan"_ here ~ <http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-
isp-blocking/>

------
steelhive
Hmm. My globe has "Oceania" printed just to the right of Australia. Perhaps it
was a misprint and meant to go _on_ Australia. (Hint: Oceania was the country
in "Nineteen Eighty-Four".)

~~~
rkowalick
Technically, the continent of Australia was part of the super-nation Oceania
in 1984.

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dejb
I should point out that after some searching I haven't been able to find any
other sources for this.

Terrible news if it is true though. Many people who voted for Rudd would
switch sides if this was true.

~~~
anamax
> Many people who voted for Rudd would switch sides if this was true.

No "many" wouldn't. They'd argue that it isn't happening, that it isn't that
bad, and then they'd ignore it. Most will skip steps 1 and 2.

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michaelneale
well there goes the neighborhood. Anyone wanna house swap with me?

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gaius
I would support this... If it also came with the proviso that any politician
implicated in sleaze was banned from politics for life.

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newt0311
For the 30 seconds that it will take to break this. This measure is not so
much orwellian as it is idiotic and a waste of time. Its sole purpose is to
put up a PR stunt and that politicians can get away with using $128 million of
taxpayer cash for this is unacceptable.

~~~
michaelneale
yeah but with the potential to be a pain in the ass and increasing latency..

