Website Blocking in Australia

An Australian security agency has used federal powers to block Australian access to websites, in the latest development surrounding revived fears of internet censorship.

Bureaucrats at the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and the Attorney-General's Department separately confirmed at Senate estimates hearings that a total of three departments had requested that ISPs block specific websites from access within Australia.

The requests, known as section 313 notices, come under 15-year-old legal powers that require telecommunications carriers to cooperate with law enforcement in stopping unlawful use of their services. However, until recently the powers were not believed to have been widely used for the purpose of blocking websites.

DBCDE deputy secretary Abdul Rizvi said on Thursday that a total of three federal agencies were found to have used the powers to block website access, after a meeting was held on May 22 between 12 federal agencies to determine the scope of the issue.

The bureaucrats conceded they were unsure exactly how much agencies were using the notices, and whether state government departments were also requesting website blocks.

The axing of Stephen Conroy's other pet project, the controversial mandatory internet blocking scheme, will save the government more than $4 million.

According to Budget 2013 papers, the government will achieve savings of $4.5m over three years by not proceeding with mandatory filtering legislation, a move announced in November.

The plan would have forced ISPs to filter web pages that contain refused classification-rated content based on a government blacklist.

Instead, major internet service providers will be required to block child abuse websites on Interpol's worst of child abuse list, and anything else banned by government bodies such as the financial regulator.

Senator Conroy mooted the ea in the lead up to the 2007 election but it has been fraught with delays ever since. The methods employed by the government were deemed impractical and seen as an attempt to censor the internet.

Australia's opposition Coalition has announced plans for an Online Safety Working Group designed to assist parents and teachers in protecting young people from the risks associated with the internet and social media.

The Coalition will consult with technology, education and cyber safety representatives, to develop its online safety policy in the areas of education, regulation and enforcement.

Federal opposition leader, Tony Abbott, said in a statement that approximately 2.2 million Australian children actively engage via the internet and are vulnerable to its risks:

In a relatively short period of time, the internet has transformed our way of life. However, there are also risks, and children are particularly vulnerable. These risks include children being exposed to illegal or inappropriate content and the increasing use of social media as a forum for online bullying.

Abbott added that the Coalition do not seek to repeat Labor's ham-fisted attempt to put a filter on the internet or to hinder the dynamic nature of the online environment. Abbott was referring to the Federal Government's proposed mandatory Internet Service Provider (ISP) filter which attracted criticism from the IT industry during 2011: This is about protecting cyber privacy. It's not about trying to enforce cyber censorship.

Stephen Conroy, the Australian minister of Communications Blocking has remained stalwart in his support for Labor's hated mandatory internet blocking scheme in a debate on ABC TV.

He was asked whether Labor's support for the blocking was pointless, given that it may not have the numbers to get through Parliament.

Conroy answered that a review of the Refused Classification category of content still had to be undertaken before legislation was introduced to Parliament. He added:

The legislation will ultimately reflect the outcome of that review... for people to say it definitely won't be passed, the legislation hasn't been drafted, and that review hasn't taken place yet

You don't, simply because you've got a lot of criticism, say 'well I'm going to run away from that policy.

Other panelists were more wary. Independent Rob Oakeshott said he was in favour of personal responsibility in terms of internet use, but he would wait to see the legislation.

Shadow Innovation Minister Sophie Mirabella told the audience that the Coalition wouldn't support the policy because it wouldn't work, particularly as it was unable to block peer-to-peer traffic.

Australian Sex Party president Fiona Patton warned filter critics not to take the Coalition's opposition to the scheme for granted. (Shadow Treasurer) Joe Hockey may have said he won't support the filter as it stands, but certainly Tony Abbott out at Rooty Hill, of course, said that he would do whatever he could to stop people looking at filth, she said.

Optus, Australia's second largest telco, has confirmed recent rumors that the voluntary filtering technology it is rolling out in the upcoming weeks can be easily circumvented by users.

In response to a question whether a work-around to the Uptus filer was possible by simply using a different DNS server than the default setting on the user's PC, a company spokesperson said: That's correct. It's a feature of the Interpol list.

The ease of circumvention led a critic of the plan, Electronic Frontiers Association spokesperson Stephen Collins, to wonder why the filter was being unveiled in the first place. With such a trivial circumvention, Optus' implementation of this block list is worse than ineffective, it's also misleading on a grand scale, he said, adding, Nobody will be protected from criminals by this, and worse, for those customers who believe they are protected, their kids or anyone else using their internet connection will bypass this with less than 30 seconds effort. Optus should be ashamed of themselves; first for implementing this list and trying to have their customers believe it would work and second for doing such a half-baked job.

Australian internet users will have their web access partially censored next month after the country's two largest internet providers agreed to voluntarily block more than 500 websites from view.

Telstra and Optus confirmed they would block access to a list of child abuse websites provided by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and more compiled by unnamed international organisations from mid-year.

But internet experts have warned that the scheme is merely a feel-good policy that will not stop criminals from accessing obscene material online and could block websites unfairly.

The voluntary scheme was originally proposed by the Federal Government last year as part of a wider, $9.8 million scheme to encourage internet service providers to block all Refused Classification material from users. The Government dropped its funding for the scheme last month due to limited interest from the industry, but a spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said a basic voluntary filter was still on track to be introduced by Telstra, Optus and two small ISPs.

The ACMA will compile and manage a list of URLs of child abuse content that will include the appropriate subsection of the ACMA blacklist as well as child abuse URLs that are provided by reputable international organisations (to be blocked), the spokesman said.

Electronic Frontiers Association board member Colin Jacobs also expressed concern at the scheme, saying the Government and internet providers needed to be more upfront about websites being blocked and offer an appeals process for website owners who felt URLs had been blocked unfairly.

Update: Telstra hacked off by censorship

26th June 2011. From  wsj.com

At least one Australian ISP is wavering on plans to begin blocking illegal websites next month because of fear of reprisals from internet vigilantes.

It came to light yesterday that despite a climbdown by the Australian government, four of the country's internet providers, including the two largest, were planning to launch a voluntary internet filtering scheme in July. The plan has been criticized as lacking transparency, accountability and any sort of visible appeals process, but never mind all that, it's full steam ahead!

Now, Telstra, one of the two big players involved, is apparently having second thoughts about the whole thing. A rep said last night that while the company remains committed to working with the government to cut access to child pornography, it hasn't actually made a decision to fire up the filter.

What's the hangup? Word on the street is that Telstra is worried about putting itself in the crosshairs of Anonymous and other internet vigilantes.   Patrick Gray of the Risky Business security podcast said Telstra was right to be worried. If they think there's a laugh in something and it ties in with their politics, they might have a go, sure.

Update: Strict Interpol List, Not Australia's bloated block list

30th June 2011. From sexparty.org.au

Australia's internet industry body has sought to distance its fledgling child pornography filtering scheme from the Federal Government's mandatory filtering policy, stating its own more limited approach was more akin to ISPs cooperating with law enforcement authorities and would not constitute a form of censorship.

The scheme is expected to see most of Australia's major ISPs voluntarily block a list of sites containing child pornography compiled by international policing agency Interpol, with the assistance of the Australian Federal Police. The legal instrument for the scheme to go ahead is section 313 of Australia's Telecommunications Act, which allows law enforcement to make reasonable requests for assistance from ISPs.

The framework has already been agreed to by Telstra and Optus, and most of the rest of Australia's major ISPs are expected to fall in line and implement the Interpol blacklist over the next year.

In an interview this afternoon, Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos denied the Interpol filter would see a form of censorship reach Australia's internet sector. This is not censorship; this is law enforcement cooperation around material which is illegal to possess, he said. We've been at pains to try and distance this initiative from the Government's mandatory filtering scheme.

Coroneos highlighted a number of key differences between the IIA's policy and Labor's filter policy. For starters, he said, no new technology would need to be implemented in ISPs' networks to block the Interpol list, although both policies would see a block page displayed when a user tried to access a banned site. Instead, ISPs' network routing tables would block access to the sites directly, with a list of the banned sites to be provided by Interpol through the AFP to the ISPs.

Secondly, the Interpol list will contain a much more limited set of sites to be blocked than the Federal Government's scheme would affect. The Interpol list only contains several hundred sites, representing the agency's worst of list of sites containing media depicting children younger than 13 years in sexually exploitative situations. And the images must be of real people --- sites which contain computer generated or other created images are not included.

The Federal Government's list is believed to contain several thousand sites in a range of categories of material that have been refused classification, not just child pornography, for example, but pro-rape sites, bestiality, sites which promote crime and so on.

The Australian film censors have been turning their hand to internet censorship.

The misleadingly named Classification Board handled more than three times as many referrals to rate online content in the past year.

The board rated 78 URLs out of 258 online content items referred for a ruling as refused classification (banned) .

This is a large increase over 2008-09, when 14 online content items were banned, out of a total 77 referrals.

In the last financial year, a further 10 online items were rated X18+, and 48 were rated R18+; the bulk of the remainder were rated MA15+ or PG.

Four computer games out of 1055 referred for a decision were banned because they are considered adults only,  the highest Australian games rating is MA15+, suitable for children aged 15+

The banned games were Aliens vs Predator, Left4Dead2, Crimecraft and Risen, the board's annual report reveals. This is down from five games banned during 2008-09.

Moraliser

Based on article from  techeye.net

Despite nearly losing an election over the matter, Aussie Prime Minister Julia Gillard still thinks it is a jolly good idea to censor the Internet, Chinese style.

The matter has gone quiet down under after the Government said it did not want to press the case for an Internet filter.

Now Gilliard is bringing the plan back claiming it was necessary because it was driven by a moral question .

Speaking during a press club meeting, Gillard said that it is unlawful for an adult to go to a cinema and watch certain sorts of content [or play an adults only computer game considered perfectly ok in the rest of the civilised world].

It's unlawful and we believe it to be wrong. If we accept that then it seems to me that the moral question is not changed by the medium that the images come through, she said.

Gillard has admitted that the problem of how to set up the internet filter is more complicated, but the underpinning moral question is, I think, exactly the same .

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been rejigging her government.

As expected, Senator Conroy retains the Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy portfolio in the Gillard Government's new Ministry, and has been given an additional role as Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Digital Productivity.

Ploughing On

Based on article from  smh.com.au

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, is ploughing ahead with his internet filter policy despite there being virtually no chance any enabling legislation will pass either house of Parliament.

Independent MP Rob Oakeshott, the Opposition and the Greens have all come out against the policy, leaving it effectively dead in the water. The Greens communications spokesman, Scott Ludlam, has called on the government to end the facade and drop the internet censorship scheme once and for all, as it was wasting time and taxpayers' money.

University of Sydney Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt said, given the catastrophic election result after only one term in government, it was remarkable the government was pushing the very issues that undermined their credibility, rather than focusing their energy on important societal issues . One may wonder exactly what underlies this relentless pursuit of a mirage, given that there is just about zero support outside the cabinet . Surely it is no longer a matter of believing that the policy would benefit the general public.

Senator Ludlam said in a phone interview that he wanted the review of RC guidelines to still go ahead but the government should drop the internet filtering policy altogether.

It [the RC review] was quite transparently a political stalling tactic but that didn't make it a bad idea, he said: [The filter] is just a complete waste of chamber time. It's a waste of public servants' time who for the next 10 months are going to be progressing a mandatory filter proposal that has no chance of passing either house of parliament now.

Labor's bollox internet filter plan faces near-death despite the ascension of Julia Gillard as Australia's 28th prime minister.

Ms Gillard won the backing of independent MPs turned powerbrokers Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott despite Bob Katter supporting the Coalition and Tony Abbott.

The Coalition vowed to dismantle the plan regardless of last month's election outcome. And with the Greens set to hold the balance of power in the Senate from next July, it is almost certain Labor's filtering aspirations are as good as dead.

Australian ISPs Telstra and Optus will impose a filter on child abuse websites for all internet subscribers from halfway through 2011.

The filter will apply to the 450 child abuse websites identified by the Classification Board in a list maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The filter will not apply to all refused classification (RC) material, as originally intended under the Labor party's filter proposal.

Under the plans users won't get a say as to whether the filter will be applied to them, nor will there be an opt-in or opt-out exclusion to it.

Like Labor's proposal, however, the filter will only block offending material travelling over standard web protocols such as HTTP. Other traffic from FTP sites, email as well as peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent will not be stopped.

Joe Hockey, shadow treasurer, has told Australian radio that the Liberal Party will oppose the Australian government's planned compulsory net filter.

Hockey said his party would not support the policy. We believe the internet filter will not work and we believe its a flawed policy. It is not going to capture a whole lot of images and chatter that we all find offensive... that are going through email.

He told ABC's Hack show that he was in favour of technologies which give parents more control and promised a more detailed announcement soon.

Hockey added: I know it's a contentious issue but the filter does not work, it does not work. The ISP-based filter system does not work. Therefore it creates an assumption of trust which cannot be met by the technology.

Colin Jacobs of Electronic Freedom Australia welcomed the move. He said: We applaud Mr Hockey's announcement that the Liberal Party will vote against Labor's filter. The Opposition are very welcome among the ranks of those many organisations and individuals that see the filter as a policy failure.

And the Nutter Parties

Based on article from  itnews.com.au

Political parties have responded to a survey by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) that canvassed policy positions on ACMA content classification and ISP-level filtering.

The Christian Democratic Party fully [supported] the filtering of RC [refused classification] material at the ISP level to protect children.

Self-regulation is not working, the Christian Democratic Party stated. A new scheme is required. Serious breaches should result in loss of license for the broadcaster.

Socially conservative Family First stated that it was one of the first groups to begin the campaign for tighter regulation of RC material.

While it did not directly reject Labor's mandatory filtering proposal, the party appeared to support a voluntary regime, stating: Family First ... welcomes industry moves to voluntarily block certain RC content.

However, it also recognises that it [filtering] is not a complete solution. New technologies, including peer-to-peer networks which cannot be filtered, remain an ongoing challenge.

Ultimately, parents must be responsible for monitoring their children's internet use and be provided with the tools and information required to do so.

The man who is trying to protect Australia from all the evils of the world and block the Internet to online gambling websites and dentist offices, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, was recently voted the Dumbest Politician in a magazine survey.

Zoo Weekly magazine conducted the online survey of 1200 voters to dub Senator Conroy the dumbest politician, followed by Family First senator Steve Fielding, and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

Stephen Conroy has relentlessly been working to filter various websites in Australia, though his efforts to date have been all for naught.

At the launch of National Cyber Security Awareness Week in Melbourne last June, Senator Conroy puzzled listeners by declaring: There's a staggering number of Australians being in having their computers infected at the moment, up to 20,000, uh, can regularly be getting infected by these spams, or scams, that come through, the portal (sic).

Surely a reject if politics had a QA department

Australia's government will select an expert to manually check up to 10,000 blacklisted online web pages.

The proposal will come to fruition over the next year if Labor wins the August 21 election. Labor will take to the polls its controversial policy of mandatory ISP-level filtering of refused classification (RC) content.

An annual review of the RC content list would be conducted by an independent expert who would be appointed in consultation with industry, the government said.

A spokeswoman for Senator Conroy confirmed the expert would be a person and not an organisation. When asked if that person would enter into a browser each URL on the entire RC list to ensure its legitimacy, she said: Yes, the independent expert would be a person (such as a retired judge) and they would examine the list to ensure it includes only RC content.

Meanwhile the Coalition refused to say if it would scrap Labor's controversial mandatory ISP filter plan. It kept mum on whether a Tony Abbott-led government would resurrect NetAlert or introduce an opt-in filtering version instead. The Coalition will announce some practical and effective measures to enhance online safety and security in coming weeks, opposition communications spokesman Tony Smith said.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia's largest ISPs are to voluntarily block child abuse content, with the prospect that others might follow

But one ISP, Internode, says it has significant concerns with administration of the blacklist of child porn URLs used for the voluntary filter, and will not apply it.

Internode's regulatory and corporate affairs manager, John Lindsay, said that the child porn list contains a fraction of what would need to be blocked for it to be effective and has already been shown to contain URLs of legal content.

The list of child porn websites is maintained by the government's Australian Communications and Media Authority. But it also contains links to online poker sites, YouTube links, regular porn sites, and websites of fringe religions.

Internode is the country's sixth-largest internet service provider, with about 190,000 customers, but its refusal to voluntarily censor what the government is dubbing child porn is a bit of a blow to the government. If it could get filtering in voluntarily it would not have to make a politically unpopular decision to back the censorship scheme. It would also classify all the sites it did not like as child porn and get away with it.

Australia's Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has announced that implementation of his policy would be delayed until a review of RC classification guidelines can be conducted by state and territory censorship ministers.

This is not expected to begin until at least the middle of next year.

Some sections of the community have expressed concern about whether the range of material included in the RC category ... correctly reflects current community standards, Senator Conroy said.

As the Government's mandatory ISP filtering policy is underpinned by the strength of our classification system, the legal obligation to commence mandatory ISP filtering will not be imposed until the review is completed.

In the meantime, major ISPs including Optus, Telstra and iPrimus have pledged to voluntarily block child abuse websites. This narrower, voluntary approach has long been advocated by internet experts and brings Australia into line with other countries such as Britain.

But the Government does not seem to be backing out of the deeply unpopular mandatory filtering policy altogether, as it has today announced a suite of transparency and accountability measures to address concerns about the scheme.

• an annual review of content on the blacklist by an independent expert .
• clear avenues of appeal for people whose sites are blocked.
• content will be added to the blacklist by the Classification Board, instead of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
• affected parties will have the ability to have decisions reviewed by the Classification Review Board.
• people will know when they surf to a blocked page as a notification will appear.

The public needs to have confidence that the URLs on the list, and the process by which they get there, is independent, rigorous, free from interference or influence and enables content and site owners access to appropriate review mechanisms, Senator Conroy said.

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has apologised for any offence caused by its latest campaign asking people to "tell mum" about the Federal Government's proposed mandatory internet filter.

The It's Time to Tell Mum campaign launched by EFA last week encouraged people to talk to their mothers about the proposed filter and what the implications of it might be.

According to the website, over 40,000 people have told mum through the website's various Facebook, Skype, SMS and email sharing methods.

Over the weekend, a number of nutters raised concerns that the website and its Twitter counterpart were promoting sexist stereotypes of mothers. Feminist blogger and mother Mary Gardiner told ZDNet Australia that she essentially agreed with the EFA's reasons for opposing the internet filter, but said that the message was lost by the Mum campaign promoting stereotypes that mothers are only interested in technology for the sake of their children and parenting is and should always be women's business . She said the social media portion of the campaign also resorted to stereotyping.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had his passport briefly confiscated when he returned to his native Australia last week, according to The Age.

Arriving at Melbourne, immigration staff told Assange his passport was looking worn and would be cancelled. Thirty minutes after his passport was returned to him, a police officer then searched his bags and questioned him about his computer hacking offences he committed in 1991 when he was a teenager.

Despite the search, Assange was then told his passport is still classified as normal on the immigration database and could therefore travel freely.

Speaking on Australia's Dateline show, Assange said he is wary of travelling in Australia, where he was born, because of information that has been published on Wikileaks.

Assange had been told that the publication of a proposed blacklist of banned sites has been referred to the Australian Federal Police, who were investigating how it was leaked and then published on Wikileaks, though AFP told the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday that the case had been dropped.

Australian internet censorship minister Stephen Conroy has confirmed his department was hosting a private online forum to discuss controversial issues about the filter with internet service providers (ISPs), including the possibility of making it an offence to promote methods of circumventing the filter.

He has repeatedly stated, however, that the act itself of circumventing the filter would not be made an offence.

The Pirate Party Australia has likened the idea being discussed to oppressive censorship regimes in Iran and China.

If circumvention will not be illegal, then how can it be illegal to simply tell people how to circumvent the government-controlled infrastructure in order to secure access to information that the Australian Government may deem inappropriate, said the Pirate Party in a statement.

Natural Born Censor

The Australian  government is considering another round of public consultation on its repressive internet filter plans, this time to supposedly fine tune the transparency and accountability measures.

The legislation was already unlikely to get introduced to the parliament before the June sitting, and even a short public consultation would almost certainly push its introduction back further.

Which means this legislation probably won't get looked at until the after the Federal election.

This is a difficult issue for both sides of politics, and as much as Government might be gaming the drafting of the legislation to keep it out of the way of an election campaign, the Opposition is likely to just as pleased not to have to come to grips with a firm position.

The mandatory internet filter policy is not, as some might suggest, electoral poison. It is about as polarising an issue as you will find anywhere in contemporary Australia. The internet filter generates enormous heat – genuine anger and angst – among those who are strongly opposed to it. But equally, its goals find a quieter form of support among many in mainstream Australia.

Of course anything can happen in an election year. And in an immediate post-election environment. But if Kevin Rudd remains PM, you can be sure the filter will remain on the agenda.

Euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke has warned that Queensland seniors will resort to desperate measures should the Rudd Government restrict access to reliable voluntary euthanasia information through its proposed internet censorship.

Dr Nitschke welcomed 120 seniors to a recent suicide workshop in Toowong that featured a hacking masterclass showing seniors how to get around the proposed filter.

It was the biggest turnout we've had so far to a workshop, said Dr Nitschke, who has spent six months touring workshops across Australia, Europe and US.

The Government's Clean Feed internet policy will bar seniors from accessing Dr Nitschke's Exit International website where they can download his Peaceful Pill Handbook . The document details ways of obtaining Nembutal, a lethal drug illegally imported from Mexico and South-East Asia by Australian euthanasia supporters.

Devised by a leading Australian computer hacker, the masterclass showed seniors how to get through the Government's filtering technology using their home computers.

Dr Nitschke said: If the Federal Government thinks it's a good idea to keep people deprived of good information then they have to explain why one of the commonest methods used by the elderly (to take their own lives) is by hanging themselves. That's an extremely grim death. Those who deprive these people of good information and force them down that horrible path I think have some explaining to do.

Attempts to ban the infamous Rapelay video game have inevitably generated a little interest in it on torrent sites.

Australian nutters have picked up on this small interest game as useful propaganda for calling for internet censorship.

Karen Willis, executive officer of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre, said that the existence of material such as the RapeLay video game, which lets players simulate stalking and raping young girls, made internet filters, such as those proposed by the government, necessary.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy also believes that filters are necessary to block content such as RapeLay for all Australians, but a poll on this website yesterday found 96% of the 45,000 respondents did not support Senator Conroy's policy.

Sexual assault victims' rights advocate Nina Funnell is against online censorship. ..BUT... said: These games are quite vile and for victims out there it's quite distressing to come across these games or even just be aware that they exist and there's a culture of rape tolerance and acceptance. Willis said she absolutely believes the forthcoming internet filtering regime is necessary and should block sites that offer access to the game.

While I don't think that playing games causes people to go out and do things, what it can do for those who may already have that preclusion is further break down social barriers to them taking that action, she said.

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said on the surface a game like RapeLay might seem like a good argument for internet censorship but in reality trying to filter it would not work. Games like this will only ever represent a tiny minority, and the proper response is largely parental, to make sure kids aren't getting their hands on them.

The Obama administration has questioned the Rudd government's plan to introduce an internet filter, saying it runs contrary to the US's foreign policy of encouraging an open internet to spread economic growth and global security.

Officials from the State Department have raised the issue with Australian counterparts as the US mounts a diplomatic assault on internet censorship by governments worldwide.

The news is a blow to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who is defending the plan for internet companies to mandatorily block swathes of websites.

That the US government joins a widening coalition of agencies with concerns about the plan is sure to turn up the political heat on Senator Conroy.

Responding to questions about the filter, commentary website The Punch reports today that US State Department spokesman Noel Clay has raised concerns on the filter plan: The US and Australia are close partners on issues related to cyber matters generally, including national security and economic issues . We do not discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but can say that in the context of that ongoing relationship, we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials.

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey has launched an attack on the Australian government's internet filtering scheme, in one of the first cases of a senior Opposition figure coming out publicly against the policy.

What we have in the government's Internet filtering proposals is a scheme that is likely to be unworkable in practice. But more perniciously it is a scheme that will create the infrastructure for government censorship on a broader scale, said Hockey in a wide-ranging speech on freedom to the Grattan Institute.

Hockey said that of course people wanted to stop unlawful material being viewed on the internet, and that there were appropriate protections that are in place for that. But I have personal responsibility as a parent, he added. If I want to stop my children from viewing other material that I feel is inappropriate then that is my responsibility to do something about it – not that of the government.

Protecting liberty is about protecting freedoms against both known and future threats. Some may argue that we can surely trust a democratically-elected government in Australia to never try to introduce more wide-spread censorship. I am not so sure!

Ultimately Hockey used the speech to strongly push the cause of individual liberty in Australian society. Quoting Benjamin Franklin, he said: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Australian Greens MP, Lee Rhiannon, said at the National Day of Action against the government's internet filter that all five Greens senators will vote against the internet filtering Bill.

We absolutely need to defeat this incredibly irresponsible piece of legislation that is now before the federal parliament, she said to attendees in Parramatta Park in Sydney. My colleagues in the federal parliament — we have five Greens senators — will vote against it. What we need to ensure is that some sanity starts to prevail and that we win the numbers.

The filter curtailed freedom of speech, she said. There were also better ways to protect children against pornography, such as education, which she said had been pointed out by a 2008 report written by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

That's a report to the government. They've been told that. We know they've been told [that] by a lot of their MPs who actually understand how the internet works. They've been told about this by official government bodies, but they're pushing on with their censorship.

So I do urge all of you when you leave here today to take away a commitment to sign the petitions, to write your letters, to write your emails, ring up the politicians, she said.

Fewer than 100 people at any one time actually showed up at Saturday morning's protest in Parramatta Park in Sydney's west. There are a number of MPs who do not support this legislation and are saying to their leaders, to Mr Abbot and Mr Rudd: 'This is madness. It will not work. It will make us look like a fool internationally, let alone amongst Australians once they catch on.'

Debate had begun, she said. Now, the community needed to give it legs by voicing disapproval.

Hundreds of websites have joined an Australia Day internet blackout to protest against the Government's web censorship agenda, but even the internet industry body believes it will do little to lessen the Government's resolve.

The Greens, Democrats and ISP iiNet are among the organisations that pledged to fade their websites to black today and provide visitors with information about the Government's censorship plans. The blackout is expected to last until Friday.

The blackout was the brainchild of web activist Jeff Waugh and is being supported by online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA).

Some of the websites taking part in the blackout are listed on internetblackout.com.au. The list includes a diverse selection of mostly smaller websites, ranging from personal web pages to media sites such as newmatilda.com and overclockers.com.au.

But Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, said it would take 200,000 people protesting in the streets in every major capital city for the Government to pay attention. Coroneos last week met senior bureaucrats from the Department of Broadband, who stressed to him that the Government was pushing ahead with plans to implement its internet filter legislation in the autumn session of Parliament.

I think the Government's fairly intent on their course of action to legislate filtering - I think that's almost beyond doubt, he said.

In one of its most cynical moves yet, the Australian Government will delay the implementation of Internet censorship until after the next Australian Election.

In a letter to an opponent of internet censorship, Minister for Censorship, Stephen Conroy, wrote that the Government would introduce legislative amendments into Parliament to require all ISPs, starting twelve months from the passage of the legislation, to filter RC material hosted on overseas servers.

The Australian Parliament next sits on February 2, 2010. Even if the legislation were presented to the House of Representatives on February 2 (and there is no indication at this stage that it will be,) the legislation must pass the Senate (which isn't assured) and eventually return for a third reading in the House of Representatives before it passes. Given the contentious nature of the legislation, it would be fair to presume that there will be proposed amendments and/or strong opposition in the Senate for the bill. Even if it passes the Senate quickly, by the time it is passed and gains royal assent, at the very earliest the bill would be law in late February 2010, for implementation in late February 2011.

The next Australian election must be held no later than the April 16, 2011. Under the unlikely scenario that the bill passes in February 2010, internet censorship would come into law in Australia in February 2011, which even if the election hadn't been formally called, would none the less fall a week or two before the formal campaign (and the unofficial campaign would be in full swing.)

There's no way in hell that Rudd will risk implementing internet censorship in the middle of an election campaign, because it risks distracting from the Government message. It could easily become a wedge point against the Government, particularly when voters start asking why their internet connections have magically become slower all of a sudden.

More likely is that Senator Conroy is looking for the legislation to pass before Winter recess, with implementation a couple of months clear of the election.

It's the height of cynicism that the Australian Government, seeking to implement draconian internet censorship in Australia, would be so afraid of what the reaction might be they'd delay it until after the next election. Weasels of the first degree.

Independent developer Conor O'Kane has decided to use his powers of coding to help fight the government's current regime of video game censorship and planned internet filtering.

Dubned Ban This Game , it's a free download for both Windows and Macs, and lets you play out your fantasies of controlling a draconian censorship regime by banning games and websites.

The Australian Government has confirmed that it would proceed with broad scale internet censorship in Australia following a trial into ISP based internet filtering.

Stephen Conroy spun the decision by selectively quoting parts of the trial report. Conroy claimed among other things that banned material can be done with 100% accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed and that the filter would apply to all RC (Refused Classification) content.

It's an interesting line, because the reports findings don't actually say that the filtering of RC content is either 100% accurate nor would it necessarily have a negligible affect on internet speeds.

The study asked the nine ISP's to trial several forms of internet filtering. The first test was based on the flawed ACMA blacklist of approximately 2,000 sites, which as we know from earlier in the year blocks dentists, poker sites, and other legal sites along with illegal sites. The second was based on a broader child safe filter which attempted to filter more sites (although the exact figure was not disclosed.)

The tests found that 100% accuracy was obtained with the ACMA blacklist only, a list of 2,000 odd sites that would only be a small sample of sites blocked under the scheme. The tests found that when the list was expanded to the bigger child safe list, that accuracy dropped to between 78.8% and 84.6%.

On those results, the study claimed Enex considers it unlikely that any filter vendor would achieve 100 percent blocking of the URLs inappropriate for children without significant over-blocking of the innocuous URLs.

The report also details the circumvention of blocked sites. It notes in its summary that A technically competent user could, if they wished, circumvent the filtering technology.

The report seems to accept that proxies aren't that hard to use to some degree, and this is where it gets into scary territory: the report suggests that proxies should be banned: Filtering of additional categories of content enabled ISPs to implement measures which made some common circumvention techniques difficult. For example, a third party website which hides the origin of the requested content (proxy site) can be included in a wider list of URLs to be blocked.

Conroy claims that adult computer games will not be initially included in the filter as the Australian Government has started a public consultation process into whether there should be an R18+ classification category for computer games.

It's a sad day for freedom of speech in Australia when the Government delivers a slanted report that when you actually read it doesn't back everything it is claiming. It's not dissimilar to Iran: you don't get the result you want so you ignore the results you don't want, you stuff the boxes in other places, and you deliver a result that was always predetermined to begin with.

Conroy claims again that the filter is all about kiddie porn (which is already illegal to view and host anyway) but at the same time will ban euthanasia and abortion sites, along with adult computer games as well. The dark clouds of totalitarianism are descending on Australia; remember, history shows that Governments who start on the road to censorship usually expand the regime with time. The can is open now, and who knows when the madness might end.

The Australian Prime Minister's website has been hacked in protest over proposed reforms of internet censorship.

The website, www.pm.gov.au, was brought down  along with that of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, but both were back online about an hour later.

A post on the Inquisitr blog shows a flyer, allegedly from the group Anonymous, claiming they organised the hack in response to a Federal Government proposal to introduce mandatory internet filtering.

Anonymous are a loose collection of internet users known for posting anonymously to message boards and who have previously organised global rallies protesting against Scientology.

The Anonymous flyer complains that the proposal to introduce internet filtering would block legal content, and take censorship to levels like that seen in China.
Related Coverage The flyer called for Senator Conroy to resign and also posted a link which is claimed to be a list of websites on the banned content list.

The Rudd Government plan to introduce mandatory ISP-level filtering was dead in the water and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy should end the farce now, the Opposition's leader in the Senate Nick Minchin said.

Senator Minchin, who risks a backlash from elements within the Coalition, says Senator Conroy already knows the mandatory filtering plan is heading for the rocks and was delaying its demise to avoid ultimate embarrassment.

Senator Minchin complained that Government had not even said what metrics it planned to use to determine whether a filtering trial could be considered successful or not.

Almost two years after coming to office with a plan to censor the internet, Senator Conroy has not even managed to release results for long overdue filtering trials, let alone come close to actually implementing this highly controversial policy, Senator Minchin said.

Huge doubts also continue to surround the type of content Labor wants to filter and how it will compile a black-list which would form the basis of its filtering regime.

The Coalition has said from the beginning it was prepared to assess any credible trial results, but almost two years after coming to office Senator Conroy has failed to produce them, let alone put forward any formal proposal for consideration, Senator Minchin said.

On 20 June 2009, a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was shot and killed during the Iranian election protests. Her death was captured on video, and spread virally on the Internet, becoming a rallying cry for the Iranian protests.

Given the notorious attempts by the Iranian government to censor the protests, both online and in the media, I thought it would be fitting to test Senator Stephen Conroy's assertions that the Government's proposed mandatory Internet filter was unlike the censorship that occurs in Iran and under other undemocratic regimes.

I submitted the following to ACMA:

I am an Australian resident. I believe the content at the following links is prohibited content or potential prohibited content hosted outside Australia within the meaning of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.

• Boing Boing post with embedded YouTube video showing the death of Neda Agha-Soltan and associated commentary.
• YouTube video showing the death of Neda Agha-Soltan.
• YouTube video showing another angle of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan.]

Each contains graphic video, apparently real, of a young girl shot in the chest and bleeding to death over the course of a couple of minutes.

The first link has no restrictions for viewing the video (but contains a textual warning). The second two links require registration and a declaration of date of birth (and also contain textual warnings).

The videos document the recent violence in Iran.

Today, 64 days later, I received a notice from ACMA confirming that the content was prohibited content.

As part of the ACMA's investigation of the complaint, it applied to the Classification Board for classification of the content concerned. As a result of the Classification Board's decision (R18+), and as the content is not subject to a restricted access system, it is prohibited content under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.

ACMA has an obligation to blacklist (ie, add to the list of websites containing prohibited content, which is distributed to makers of IIA Family Friendly Filters) any site hosting prohibited content overseas. ACMA has no discretion not to blacklist content that meets the statutory definition of prohibited content.

Although the position was ambiguous initially (and is arguably still uncertain), Senator Stephen Conroy has now stated that the Government wants to constrain mandatory Internet filtering to content that is refused classification. (Though, refused classification content is much broader than his statements suggest.)

Because this content was classified R 18+ and not refused classification, this content would not be subject to mandatory filtering under a regime that mandated filtering only of content that has been refused classification.

However, none of this applies to sites hosted in Australia. ACMA can still issue a take-down, or link-deletion notice, to any site hosting, or linking to, R 18+ content that is not subject to a restricted access system (or other prohibited content). And you can be fined $11,000 per day if you don't comply with the notice by 6:00 pm the next business day.

An internet activist group calling itself Anonymous is taking on Kevin Rudd over his censorship policies.

They've released a video threatening their full-fledged wrath if the government doesn't abolish its internet filtering plans.

The group is also demanding the resignation of communications minister Stephen Conroy.

They claim he has has no level of understanding of the topic he is dealing with.

Anonymous led a high profile campaign against the Church of Scientology, and has tried to subvert censorship in Iran. The group is composed of members of different internet discussion forums and subcultures.

GetUp! has officially launched Censordyne, an ad and website campaign combo to help stop the Government from introducing Internet censorship in Australia. The group hopes to show the ad on Qantas flights in August when politicians are on flights to Canberra as Parliament resumes.

Children's welfare groups Save the Children and the National Children's & Youth Law Centre joined GetUp! in the campaign, issuing a joint statement:

We argue that the tens of millions of dollars that such a scheme will cost should instead be diverted to appropriate child protection authorities and police to prevent the abuse of children, and towards effective community-based education strategies that give children and parents the skills to protect themselves.

Further, PC-level filtering software should be promoted to and provided to parents that wish to protect their children from inappropriate internet content.

The Australian Library and Information Association, Civil Liberties Australia, Liberty Victoria, National Association for the Visual Arts, NSW Council for Civil Liberties, QLD Council for Civil Liberties and Dr Alex Byrne FALIA, University Librarian, UTS, also signed the statement.

Senator Conroy's office responded, claiming GetUp's campaign misrepresents the Government's position: For its last campaign on the issue, GetUp! falsely claimed that any form of filtering would slow internet speeds by 87%, the statement said: Now it resorts to spurious claims about the future expansion of the list of content that may be filtered. The Government regards freedom of speech as very important and the Government's cyber-safety policy is in no way designed to curtail this.

Update: Sensitive Airlines and Sensitive Teeth

14th July 2009. Based on article from smh.com.au

Qantas has put the kybosh on online activist group GetUp's latest anti-censorship campaign, refusing to run the Censordyne ad on its flights.

Simon Sheikh, chief executive of GetUp, said the group had planned to run the parody ad on all Qantas domestic flights into Canberra next month to ensure it was seen by politicians and their staff members around the first sitting week of Parliament.

But Qantas refused to run the ad, which lampoons the Government's forthcoming internet filtering scheme, saying it had a long-standing policy not to run political advertising.

Meanwhile, GlaxoSmithKline, which owns the Sensodyne brand, on which the parody campaign is based, said it was considering legal action against GetUp. It said it was not consulted over the campaign and did not endorse GetUp's use of the word "Censordyne".

Hardly a brand improving association: Censordyne promises unproven, ineffective relief from internet nasties

A group of mainly smaller internet providers are now finishing their trials of the Government's internet filtering scheme and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has said he expects to release results within weeks. Senator Conroy has said the results will determine whether the Government proceeds with the controversial election policy.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) chief has said the Australian government will embarrass itself if it pushes ahead with plans to install a national Internet content filter.

The group is a non-profit corporation that oversees management of domain names and IP addresses, Internet Protocol address space allocation and generic Top Level Domains.

ICANN board chair Peter Dengate Thrush said national Internet content filters are ineffective at law enforcement. The plan was introduced by federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

The government has set itself up for embarrassment, Thrush said: I have no problems with the principle behind it [but] censoring material outside the country is difficult and the tools to do it cost a lot.

Internet Villain

The Australian Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.

Separately, the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has been nominated by the British ISP industry for its annual internet villain award, competing alongside the European Parliament and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Australia is the only developed country without an R18+ classification for games, meaning any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard - such as those with excessive violence or sexual content - are simply banned from sale by the Classification Board, unless they are modified to remove the offending content.

So far, this has only applied to local bricks-and-mortar stores selling physical copies of games, but a spokesman for Senator Conroy confirmed that under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.

This means that even Australians who are aged above 15 and want to obtain the adult-level games online will be unable to do so. It will undoubtedly raise the ire of gamers, the average age of which is 30 in Australia, according to research commissioned by the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia.

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the Government clearly went far beyond any mandate it had from the public to help parents deal with cyber-safety. He said Australians would soon learn this the hard way when they find web pages mysteriously blocked: This is confirmation that the scope of the mandatory censorship scheme will keep on creeping . Far from being the ultimate weapon against child abuse, it now will officially censor content deemed too controversial for a 15-year-old. In a free country like ours, do we really need the government to step in and save us from racy web games?

Senator Conroy's spokesman said the filter would cover computer games such as web-based flash games and downloadable games, if a complaint is received and the content is determined by ACMA to be Refused Classification. All games that exceed MA15+ are deemed to be RC.

The filtering could also block the importation of physical copies of computer games sold over the internet which have been classified RC , the spokesman said.

Update: Second Life Banned

27th June 2009. See article from inquisitr.com

Commentators are pointing out that enormously popular online game Second Life has an adults only section so will be blocked according to the Australian government policy confirmed above.

Ok Ok, You can  watch porn if you want to

After being as indecisive as a teenage girl choosing what to wear on prom night, Senator Conroy has settled on what classification category will be banned by under the mandatory filter (the one you can't opt out of). According to IT News, Conroy's office stated that mandatory ISP-level filtering will only apply to RC [banned: Refused Classification] content drawn from complaints made to the ACMA.

In particular this means that adult consensual hardcore porn [rated X18+] will be available to Australian adults who opt out of the family filter.

The Australian Christian Lobby has accused the Federal Government of breaking its election promise to censor the internet after the policy was softened in the face of relentless criticism.

The lobby's managing director, Jim Wallace, wants the Government to introduce legislation forcing internet providers to block hardcore porn (X18+) on a mandatory basis, in addition to illegal content. Australians would then have to opt in to receive legal softcore (R18+) adult material.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has long said his policy would introduce compulsory ISP-level filters of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's blacklist of prohibited websites.

But he has since backtracked, saying the mandatory filters would only block content that has been refused classification (RC) - a subset of the ACMA blacklist - amid widespread concerns that ACMA's list contains a slew of R18+ and X18+ sites, such as regular gay and straight pornography and other legal content.

"That doesn't meet the election promise as far as we're concerned at all," Wallace said in a phone interview: The promise was clearly about providing a safer internet environment for children and to do that you need to mandatorily block in the first instance pornography and R18+, and then provide an opt-in system for those adults who want to access it.

IThe Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory internet filtering plan.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code.

Senator Conroy’s statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content.

Responding to questions from shadow communications minister Nick Minchin on how the government may go about imposing the internet filtering scheme, Senator Conroy said that legislation may not be required and ISPs may adopt an industry consensus to block restricted content on a voluntary basis.

Mandatory ISP filtering would conceivably involve legislation … voluntary is available currently to ISPs, Senator Conroy said: One option is potentially legislation. One other option is that it could be (on a) voluntary basis that they (ISPs) could voluntarily agree to introduce it.”

In response Senator Minchin said he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system.

Senator Conroy responded with: well they could agree to all introduce it.

Australia's internet censor, ACMA, has issued Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA)’s webhost a Link Deletion Notice because of an article EFA published on their own website containing a link to an anti-abortion webpage declared prohibited content by the media regulator in January this year.

EFA writes:

To be clear, EFA published only a link to a page that is hosted overseas and is on ACMA’s prohibited list. Viewing the potentially R-rated page itself is not in any way illegal, and no system is yet in place to enforce the blocking of such web pages. One may well wonder why a link to a legally viewable page should draw the threat of legal sanction while the content itself remains visible. Because the link was on a web page hosted in Australia, the hosting provider - not EFA ourselves, who have more control over the content - falls under Australian legal jurisdiction and could be so served. What this accomplishes is uncertain.

EFA has complied with the notice and have removed the link to AbortionTV in this post. They add:

This is a textbook case that demonstrates that there is no sharp dividing line between “political” speech and other content. At the edges of public policy are issues which will inflame passions and lead to images, video and words that are offensive to many people. Trying to stamp these out, especially on the Internet, not only diminishes our democracy but is pointless and paternalistic to boot.

Update: Appeal Turned Down

21st May 2010. See  article from  techdirt.com

EFA helped its ISP, Sublime, challenge the deletion notice on two counts: (1) that it was a violation of the supposed freedom of political communication, especially since it was a discussion about the political effects of censorship policy, and (2) that officials should have sent the notice to EFA directly, rather than its ISP (in fact, EFA had asked for a notice to be sent directly to it, rather than Sublime, so that it could take on the case directly... and officials refused).

Unfortunately, the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) rejected both challenges, twisting itself into a bit of pretzel logic to explain why this wasn't a violation of freedom for political communication. Basically, the tribunal claimed that EFA could have hidden the link behind a special restricted access system that would block that content for those under 18 (in theory, of course, but not in practice). And, since you have to be 18 to vote, the tribunal reasoned, if such a age verification wall had been in place, the content would not have been blocked from those of voting age... and thus there was no violation of political communication. Yes, that's quite twisted logic, but if you're defending internet censorship, sooner or later your logic is going to get twisted into knots...

Contemptible

Stephen Conroy's watch as Communications Minister seems to be going from bad to worse after publicly making comments that could land him legal hot water. The comments at a public telecoms conference about a high profile court case involving ISP iiNet have been deemed by a number of sources as inappropriate, defamatory and potentially prejudicial to the case.

iiNet, Australia's third largest ISP, is doing battle in the Federal Court of NSW with a consortium of movie studios and a TV network that have accused it of allowing its network to be used to illegally download copyright entertainment.

The public slanging between the Communications Minister and iiNet is hard to find a precedent for in the ICT industry. The CEO of iiNet, Michael Malone, has told iTWire and a number of other media sources quite openly that he believes Senator Conroy is the worst Communications Minister ever and described him as incompetent.

Senator Conroy stunned the bemused audience at a telecoms conference this week by making sarcastic and denigrating remarks about the iiNet defence strategy for its court case.

He described iiNet's claim that it didn't know what material its customers were downloading as stunning and he likened iiNet's defence strategy to a Yes Minister episode.

Both remarks made by a Federal Government Minister about an ongoing court case have raised the ire of not only iiNet but members of the legal community as well as the opposition. It has been suggested that iiNet could have a case for pursuing Senator Conroy for defamation but even worse for the Minister there is a possibility his remarks could be deemed as contempt of court.

Sorry for the crap censorship so far!

Australia's internet censorship Minister, Stephen Conroy, has begun distancing himself from his controversial internet censorship policy in what one internet industry engineer has dubbed the great walkback of 2009.

Last night he said the mandatory filters would be restricted to content that has been "refused classification" (RC).

When the ACMA blacklist was leaked last month, it caused great controversy, partly because it included a slew of R18+ and X18+ sites, including regular gay and straight pornography and other legal content.

But on SBS' Insight program last night, Conroy said it's mandatory refused classification, and then parents - if the trial says that it is possible to go down this path ... have the option to block other material.

This about-turn has done little to assuage the concerns of online rights groups, the Federal Opposition and the internet industry, as the RC category includes not just child pornography but anti-abortion sites, fetish sites and sites containing pro-euthanasia material such as The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Dr Philip Nitschke.

Sites added to the blacklist in error were also classified as RC, such as one containing PG-rated photographs by Bill Henson. And the websites of several Australian businesses - such as those of a Queensland dentist - were classified RC and blacklisted after they were hacked by, as Senator Conroy described, the Russian mob. They were on the blacklist even though they changed hosting providers and cleaned up their sites several years ago.

Senator Conroy conceded many of the decisions regarding what sites appeared on the blacklist were made by faceless bureaucrats . He said he was working to build in further safeguards , but would not abolish the policy because some sites were found to be put on the blacklist in error.

Others sites confirmed by ACMA as being included on the blacklist include a YouTube clip showing an excerpt from a horror movie and an astrology website.

ACMA said the horror movie clip was added because it is classified as R18+ but not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children.

At the time of investigation, access to the YouTube content required only a declaration of an age of 18 years or older which was not verified by evidence of proof of age, ACMA spokesman Donald Robertson said.

On the astrology website, ACMA said it was blacklisted because, at the time it was being investigated, it had been defaced with an image which depicted an adult female posed naked and implicitly defecating on herself. This image has since been removed and ACMA said it was in the process of removing the astrology site from the blacklist.

ACMA conceded innocent sites could be blacklisted if they are defaced with content not usually associated with the site. Robertson acknowledged this material was often only visible for a short period before being removed by the site owner.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has admitted that Bill Henson images were added to the communications regulator's list of prohibited websites in error, while blaming the addition of a dentist's site to the blacklist on hacking by the Russian mob.

The admission by Senator Conroy on ABC television's Q&A program last night casts significant doubt on the Government's ability to filter the internet without inadvertently blocking legitimate websites.

Q&A was inundated with 2000 questions from the public about the Government's hugely unpopular policy, and the audience last night ridiculed Senator Conroy by laughing at a number of his responses.

Senator Conroy, under siege after this website's report yesterday afternoon that an innocuous link containing Henson's artistic photographs of young boys had been added to the blacklist, said the classification board looked at this website and actually said it's PG.

A technical error inside ACMA I'm advised included it ... but it was actually cleared by the Classification Board so it shouldn't be on the list, Senator Conroy said: I've asked ACMA in the last few hours to go through their entire list again to see if there are any other examples of this.

But the presence of innocuous sites on the blacklist, such as that of a Queensland dentist, a school canteen consultancy and an animal carer, and euthanasia sites, abortion sites, fetish sites, gambling sites, regular porn sites and a site containing harmless Henson photographs, were only revealed after the list was leaked by the Wikileaks website this month.

The Opposition's communications spokesman, Nick Minchin, said: This error only came to light because content from the secret blacklist had been publicly leaked. Under Senator Conroy's regime how many similar errors will result in the wrongful filtering of legal sites and content?

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said: If the whole net censorship debate has done one good thing, it's shown us just how flawed the existing system is, let alone the Minister's proposed radical expansion of it.

The Minister continued to claim last night that his proposed censorship regime was sound because it targeted only "refused classification" content, however, the RC classification includes sites that are perfectly legal to view, such as regular porn sites and fetish sites.

The website of the Australian Film Classification Board has been hacked.

The front page was defaced to reads

Welcome to the Classification Website

This site contains information about the boards that have the right to CONTROL YOUR FREEDOMZ. The Classification Board has the right to not just classify content (the name is an ELABORATE TRICK), but also the right to DECIDE WHAT IS AND ISNT APPROPRIATE and BAN CONTENT FROM THE PUBLIC. We are part of an ELABORATE DECEPTION from CHINA to CONTROL AND SHEEPIFY the NATION, to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. All opposers must HATE CHILDREN, and therefore must be KILLED WITH A LARGE MELONS during the PROSECUTION PARTIES IN SEPTEMBER. Come join our ALIEN SPACE PARTY.

Not only is the list published by whistleblower website Wikileaks over the weekend definitely the ACMA blacklist of banned internet content, it's also rubbish , according to an industry source.

Senator Stephen Conroy finally admitted that the Wikileaked material seemed to be close to ACMA's current blacklist of banned internet content.

ACMA's blacklist is compiled from complaints received from the public. Manufacturers of internet filters pay $15,000 for the list, which must be included in their products to be eligible to participate in the government's current field tests of ISP-level internet filtering.

Our contact in the internet filtering industry is highly critical of the ACMA blacklist's quality. I've had a look at the list and it's rubbish, they told Crikey this morning: I wouldn't pay $100 for it, let alone $15,000. That list would make my filtering look really bad.

The leaked ACMA blacklist dated 18 March 2009 contains 1168 URLs, of which roughly half relate to child-abuse material. The rest is material Refused Classification (RC) for other reasons, or adult hardcore rayed X18+ or is rated MA15+ or higher without an age-verification mechanism in place. Or potentially so on the secret say-so of an unaccountable ACMA staffer.

Our source says around two-thirds of the URLs in the ACMA blacklist don't go anywhere or are otherwise out of date. By comparison, their own company's list contains around quarter of a million URLs covering child-related activity alone, checked every three months to remove out of date or inactive entries.

WikiLeaks has released a copy of what is alleged to be the current ACMA blacklist. This list is dated March 18 and includes 1170 URLs, including the now high-profile AbortionTV page and the Wikileaks page containing the Danish blacklist.

URLs belonging to Betfair, The Peaceful Pill Handbook, Redtube, AbbyWinters, IShotMyself, TheHun and xTube are present on the list.

Update: For Sure Real

24th March 2009. From crikey.com.au

Evidence is mounting that the list of websites published by Wikileaks is almost certainly ACMA's "secret" blacklist.

The publication of a leaked list of prohibited URLs which are allegedly part of the Australian Media and Communications Authority's secret list of 2,395 banned websites, has been slammed by Communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy as grossly irresponsible.

The list which was leaked this week by global whistle-blower site Wikileaks claims to be derived from ACMA's censorship list. The Australian government plans to use this list as a basis for its mandatory ISP filtering scheme and under the ACMA guidelines linking sites contained to the list can attract fines of up to $11,000 a day.

The list leak, which includes Telstra's Yellow Pages and YouTube as offending sites, is a further blow to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy's plans to block ISP content. Conroy denied the authenticity of the list .

The leak and publication of prohibited URLs is grossly irresponsible. It undermines efforts to improve cyber-safety and create a safe online environment for children. No-one interested in cyber-safety would condone the leaking of these addresses. I am aware of reports that a list of URLs has been placed on a web site. This is not the ACMA blacklist, Conroy said.

He admitted however that there are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist. ACMA is currently investigating the incident and considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Conroy warned in a statement that any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution.

Hands off Wikileak's Sources

Based on article from inquisitr.com

Wikileaks has upped the ante in its skirmish with the Australia Government, warning that any attempts to find the source of the leaked censorship list would cause an international incident, and could see Australian Minister for censorship Stephen Conroy indicted on criminal charges in Sweden.

Wikileaks issued a press release:

The Stockholm based publisher of Wikileaks today issued a warning to the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Steven Conroy, who is responsible for Australian internet censorship.

Senator Conroy issued an official media release yesterday in response to Wikileaks' release of last year's confidential Australian internet censorship blacklist. The Senator said that his department, is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution.

The Senator is perhaps unaware of the legal and diplomatic risks associated with the statement.

Sunshine Press Legal Adviser Jay Lim stated: Under the Swedish Constitution's Press Freedom Act, the right of a confidential press source to anonymity is protected, and criminal penalties apply to anyone acting to breach that right.

Wikileaks source documents are received in Sweden and published from Sweden so as to derive maximum benefit from this legal protection. Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and, if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights.

ACMA admit to blocks on consensual adult hardcore

From australia.to

They explained that they have the remit to irresponsibly add adult hardcore and betting sites etc to the censorship list.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority is aware that a list purporting to be the ‘ACMA blacklist' has been posted on an overseas website. ACMA does not consider that the release and promotion of URLs relating to illegal and highly offensive material is responsible.

The regulatory scheme for online content that has been administered by ACMA since 2000. ACMA's role is to investigate complaints and take such actions as prescribed by the legislation on materials assessed to be prohibited or potentially prohibited content.

The ACMA blacklist has at no stage been 2300 URLs in length and at August 2008 consisted of 1061 URLs. It is therefore completely inaccurate to say that the list of 2300 URLs constitutes an ACMA blacklist.

ACMA considers that any publication of the ACMA blacklist would have a substantial adverse effect on the effective administration of the regulatory scheme which aims to prevent access to harmful and offensive online material. Such publication would undermine the public interest outcomes which the current legislation aims to achieve.

The following categories of online content are the categories that are prohibited:

• Online content that is classified RC or X 18+. This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
• Content which is classified R 18+ and not subject to a restricted access system. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes.
• Content which is classified MA 15+, provided by a mobile premium service or a service that provides audio or video content upon payment of a fee, and not subject to a restricted access system. This includes material containing strong depictions of nudity, implied sexual activity, drug use or violence, very frequent or very strong coarse language, and other material that is strong in impact.

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.

Schedule 7 to the BSA also requires ACMA to investigate complaints about ‘links services' which are hosted in Australia and which lead to prohibited content. If as a result of investigating such a complaint ACMA determines that a link relates to potential prohibited content, ACMA is required to direct the provider of the links service to remove the link, pending classification of the content concerned by the Classification Board.

The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 makes it an offence to provide, or advertise, certain interactive gambling services.

Prohibited internet gambling content is content that can be accessed, or is available for access, by customers of a prohibited internet gambling service.

A prohibited internet gambling service is a gambling service provided in the course of carrying on a business to customers using an internet carriage service, and an individual physically present in Australia is capable of becoming a customer of the service.

If ACMA receives a complaint about prohibited internet gambling content that is hosted in Australia, ACMA will refer the matter to the Australian Federal Police.

If prohibited internet gambling content is hosted outside Australia, ACMA will notify the content to makers of the approved Family Friendly Filters listed in Schedule 1 to the Interactive Gambling Act Industry code.

Google Illegal in Australia

Based on article from inquisitr.com

Recent action by the Australian Government may see Google and many other popular websites banned in Australia under existing censorship laws.

Under the Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Act 2007 sites that link to content that is Refused Classification (RC) are considered themselves to be RC, and if hosted in Australia, site owners can be ordered to remove the link(s), or fined AU$11,000 a day.

If I was linking to XYZ blog, and XYZ blog was linking to ABC blog who had linked to the leaked ACMA list, all the pages in the chain are illegal, because each one links to prohibited content. Any site linking to me then becomes illegal, and so on.

And Google links to them all!

The Australian government secret ACMA internet censorship blacklist from 6 Aug 2008 has been leaked to wikileaks.org

This list contains 2395 webpages or site variations derived from the those secretly banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and used by a government approved censorship software maker in its "ACMA only" censorship mode. The last update to the ACMA list is August 6, 2008.

While Wikileaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater. Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of up to $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist -- a list the government hopes to expand into a giant national censorship machine.

This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks. We were not notified by ACMA.

Most of the sites on the Australian list have no obvious connection to child pornography. Some have changed owners while others were clearly always about other subjects.

One of Australia's largest owned and operated adult websites, AbbyWinters.com, is included on the ACMA blacklist of prohibited websites. Also banned is the TheHun.com, one of the web's longest running and most visited free adult link directories.

AbbyWinters, which is owned by Victorian company GMBill, complies with 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements, meaning all models are over 18 years of age. Most of the material on the site would be rated no higher than X18+, which is legal to purchase and view in Australia.

Gambling sites such as PartyPoker.com are also included in the block list.

Unwanted by 79% of surveyed Australians

The Australian Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has effectively been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required to get the scheme started.

The Opposition's communications spokesman Nick Minchin has this week obtained independent legal advice saying that if the Government is to pursue a mandatory filtering regime legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required.

Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview he withdrew all support, saying the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has consistently ignored advice from a host of technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online.

Despite this, he is pushing ahead with trials of the scheme using six ISPs - Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. But even the trials have been heavily discredited, with experts saying the lack of involvement from the three largest ISPs, Telstra, Optus and iiNet, means the trials will not provide much useful data on the effects of internet filtering in the real-world.

Senator Conroy originally pitched the filters as a way to block child porn but - as ISPs, technical experts and many web users feared - the targets have been broadened significantly since then. ACMA's secret blacklist, which will form the basis of the mandatory censorship regime, contains 1370 sites, only 674 of which relate to depictions of children under 18. A significant portion - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which is legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal.

The newly-formed Australian Sex Party has come out and blasted the idea of Internet filtering, putting itself on the same side as the entire tech industry — from networking vendors to ISPs.

Sex Party leader Fiona Patten believes the government is already backing down on its original promises and is shifting the focus of what type of content will be filtered — a significant concern for all who are seeking more transparency.

In meetings I had with Senator Conroy last year he indicated that they had no intention of banning non-violent erotica or X-rated material, Patten said: But that is not the case — the ACMA Web site lists the types of material that will 'qualify' for the blacklist. This includes material that would be rated X (18+).

According to the Sex Party, there is a clear distinction between X-rated (18+) content, which can be legally traded on DVDs, and child pornography and sexual violence, and the government should not attempt to lump them together in one blacklist.

They also state that the blacklist will only contain 10,000 sites. One wonders how they will choose from the millions of sexually explicit sites out there, Patten said.

So great is the opposition to the idea of content filtering that organised street protests have already popped up around the country, uniting unlikely groups of people for a common cause. The initial Sydney protest attracted a wide range of people , including those from the gay and lesbian community, the Scarlet Alliance (the national sex worker alliance) and organisations like the EFA.A number of political organisations were also involved — including the Greens, the Democrats and the Liberty and Democracy Party.

Another organization that has been invigorated by the Clean Feed project is the national Digital Liberty Coalition. Whether or not the filter goes ahead, the DLC will be looking to use its groundswell of support to push for a specific Bill of Rights in Australia.

DLC executive Jeremiah Hutchinson said having explicit freedoms, as opposed to simply implied ones Australians currently have, is the only way to stop politicians continuously returning to the absurd notion that censorship is wise course of action.

In terms of uniting disparate groups, Hutchinson said nationalists turned up at the Melbourne protest and were happily protesting alongside socialists: The issue of Internet censorship is one that effects every person in the country, so it isn't surprising to see people come together on this issue, despite political or historical differences.

The Australian Government has closed the programme established by the previous Coalition Government which gave all Australian families access to a free PC-based Internet content filter under its NetAlert initiative.

The filters were available through the NetAlert web site. The site now says simply that The free availability of internet content filters from this website under the National Filter Scheme ended on 31 December 2008.

Shadow minister, Nick Minchin claimed that the Rudd Government had quietly closed the programme...under the cover of the festive season on 31 December. However, a spokesman for communications minister, Stephen Conroy, told iTWire that plans to close the scheme had been revealed in the May 2008 budget. He said that free filters were now widely available from ISPs so provision by the Government was unnecessary.

The free filter scheme was announced with great fanfare by the Coalition's communications minister, Helen Coonan, in June 2006 as part of a $116.6 million comprehensive package of measures to crack down on the scourge of Internet pornography.

Ministry of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

As the debate around the proposed Great Firewall of Australia censorship scheme in Australia continues, the Government’s long awaited censorship trial is due to begin shortly.

While some ISP’s are participating only to prove that the filter is flawed, it’s the testing procedure itself where things are completely wrong. The number of sites to be filtered in the trial: 10,000.

While 10,000 may be 10,000 too many, it’s also no where near close to how many sites the filter will have to block to comply with the Government’s guidelines.

We know that among other unwanted things, the following falls into the censorship regime: porn, R rated games, certain types of political speech (for example discussion of methods of euthanasia) and possibly copyrighted content.

We can’t count every category, in part because we simply don’t know exactly how the Government will define what stays and what gets blocked, but we can estimate block rates for porn, because we know R rated softcore and X rated hardcore (R Rated stays only with strict age verification, which 99.99% of sites won’t meet) is out.

According to Netcraft, there are 73.6 million active websites. Estimates of the number of porn sites online vary from 1% through to a massive 35% of all sites online. The most common figure used is 12%. 12% of pages to be blocked by the Great Firewall of Australia would total 9.12 million sites. Even if we take the minimum figure of 1%, 736,000 sites would require blocking.

Do any of these figures sounding anything close to 10,000 sites? I’m told that the more sites listed on a blacklist, the slower the filter becomes because each website requested must be checked against the list. 10,000 sites vs 9.12 million: there is no way the trials can give a representative result of what the implementation of the Great Firewall will do for internet speeds in Australia.

The Government may well say in response that they will not be filtering that many sites, and that may be the case. But if true, how will the firewall be effective if some sites are blacklisted, and others aren’t?

Protestors across Australia rallied against the Federal Government's plan to censor the internet yesterday.

About 300 protestors gathered in Perth to voice their concerns for the Government's planned internet filter aimed at increasing child safety in cyberspace.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam likened the Government's plan to post office workers checking every letter to see if anything was dodgy and getting rid of that mail. He said the internet reflected human culture and the Government's proposed censorship would not fix violence issues facing the nation.

The Federal Government suggested this mistargeted, misdirected and flawed proposal to censor the internet ... it will potentially make things worse.

He questioned who would monitor the blacklist of banned websites and who would be the decision makers determining what Australians were allowed to access.

Ludlam urged protestors to continue voicing their concerns to Government through rallies, emails and online: These kinds of rallies will bring these things down and get us back to issues of violence in the community. I believe this is winnable, what we're doing is working.

Based on article from news.com.au

Hundreds of people attended rallies in Australian capital cities yesterday to voice their opposition to the Rudd Government's planned internet filtering scheme.

The rallies, held in seven cities including Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, were the first in a series of demonstrations organised by anti-censorship group Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC).

In Sydney a crowd of up to 300 mostly young and tech-savvy protestors gathered at Town Hall to hear guest speakers including bloggers and musicians criticise the web filtering scheme.

DLC Sydney rally coordinator Jerry Hutchinson said the low take-up of existing free web filtering software, introduced by the previous government, showed that parents were not interested in the concept: Why? Because people can monitor their own children – they don't need censorship in their home.

DLC plans to hold anti-filter demonstrations in capital cities once a month until March, when it will promote a national protest in Canberra called March in March

Even the ultra-conservative politician known for his attempts to censor television has strongly opposed the Government's plans to introduce mandatory internet censorship, highlighting the policy's lack of support across the political spectrum.

The proposed filters would not have blocked any of the 15,000 child porn videos and half a million child abuse images uncovered by police in a major sting this week as they cannot filter traffic on peer-to-peer networks - only websites.

In a post on his blog, South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi expressed concern that the filters would inadvertently block legitimate content and be expanded to cover other controversial material opposed by the Government of the day, such as regular pornography.

Already we have a filter on the internet for all parliament house computers. It blocks some political sites, alternative lifestyle sites and other sites that, while not to my personal taste, are hardly grounds for censorship, he wrote: Imagine if such censorship was extended to every computer in the country through mandatory ISP filtering. Who would be the ultimate arbiter of what is permissible content?

In his blog post, Bernardi acknowledged that his position on the web censorship issue would surprise many and said a big part of me wants to support it . However, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's plan was so devoid of detail that it was impossible to form a considered opinion.

24 hours since its launch, hundreds of people have used Senator Conroy's new blog as a place to protest against his proposed net filtering scheme.

The Digital Economy Future Directions blog was launched by Senator Conroy yesterday as a place for people to comment on various areas of digital policy.

Conroy noted that an upcoming blog post, How do we maintain the same civil society we enjoy offline in an online world?, would touch on the issue of filtering. We welcome your feedback about the [filtering] issue in response to this post.

But readers didn't wait for that post to go live, instead flooding Minister Tanner's welcome post with over 400 posts in less than 24 hours.

Commenters attacked the filters as technically unfeasible. Many comments spoke passionately about freedom and censorship. Commenters even got political, with threats to campaign against the Rudd Government if the filters are implemented.

There was one lone voice that supported the filters.

Government's plan to censor the internet is in tatters

Based on article from watoday.com.au

The Government's plan to censor the internet is in tatters, with Australia's largest ISP saying it will not take part in live trials of the system and the second largest committing only to a scaled-back trial.

The live trials, scheduled to kick off before Christmas, were supposed to provide a definitive picture of whether the filters could work in the real world, after lab tests released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority in June found available ISP filters frequently let through content that should be blocked, incorrectly blocked harmless content and slowed down network speeds by up to 87 per cent.

But now Telstra and Internode have said they would not take part in the trials. iiNet has said it would take part only to prove to the Government that its plan would not work, while Optus will test a heavily cut-down filtering model.

It has been revealed that one of the most important elements of the live ISP filtering pilot, testing the impact filtering a blacklist of 10,000 URLs has on network performance, will be a closed network test and will not involve actual customers.

Here's an extract from a letter sent by Senator Conroy to an Australian Whirlpool member:

In consultations with ISPs, concerns have been raised that filtering a blacklist beyond 10 000 URLs may raise network performance issues, depending on the configuration of the filter. The pilot will therefore seek to also test network performance against a test list of 10 000 URLs.

This will be a closed network test and will not involve actual customers. The list of 10 000 sites will be developed by the technical organisation assisting the Department on the pilot, which has access to lists of this size. As this test is only being performed to test the impact on network performance against a list of this size, and actual customers are not involved, the make-up of the list is not an issue.

It's certainly worth the cynical note that simulated users also do not publicly complain that their Internet performance is degraded under the system.

Members of Senator Conroy's own political party have called on him to change his policy, Ban This URL has learned. We want an opt-in system, Janai Tabbernor, president of New South Wales Young Labor, told Ban This URL.

The junior political party unanimously passed a motion at last weekend's conference, calling on Senator Conroy to switch to an opt-in system instead of a clean feed, and to redirect the funds to the national broadband network.

Motion 42 read:

The Internet is a free medium for the open communication of ideas and opinions without hindrance, and thus, should not be censored.

NSW Young Labor supports individual discretion and choice with respect to the internet, rather than censoring the world wide web and its content.

The point is that we don't condemn the Minister or the government, said Tabbernor: We generally support what the government and the Minister are trying to achieve, and we agree with his objective: we want the internet to be a safe place.

The original proposal put to the electorate at the 2007 Federal Election was an opt-in system, pointed out Tabbernor.

Support for the Government's plan to censor the Australian internet has hit rock bottom, with even some children's welfare groups now saying that that the mandatory filters are ineffective and a waste of money.

Live trials of the filters, which will block illegal content for all Australian internet users and inappropriate adult content on an opt-in basis, are slated to begin by Christmas, despite harsh opposition from the Greens, Opposition, the internet industry, consumers and online rights groups.

Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children's rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users.

She said the filter scheme was fundamentally flawed because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources.

Furthermore there was no evidence to suggest that children were stumbling across child pornography when browsing the web. Doel-Mackaway believes the millions of dollars earmarked to implement the filters would be far better spent on teaching children how to use the internet safely and on law enforcement.

The constant change of cyberspace means that a filter is going to be able to be circumvented and it's going to throw up false positives - many innocent websites, maybe even our own, will be blacklisted because we reference a lot of our work that we do with children in fighting commercial sexual exploitation, she said.

James McDougall, director of the National Children's and Youth Law Centre, expressed similar views to Save the Children.

He said the mandatory filters simply would not work and children should be able to make decisions for themselves. Concerned parents could easily install PC-based filters on their computers if they desired, or ask their internet providers to switch on voluntary filtering: I take issue with the minister's perspective that children are themselves the danger in a sense that we have to make this decision for them because they are not capable of making it for themselves - I think there's very little evidence to support that and plenty of evidence to show that children are responsible decision makers given the skills and information.

Other childrens' welfare organisations, such as Child Wise and Bravehearts, continue to support the filters, saying the flaws are acceptable as long as they help block some child pornography.

Stephen Conroy:  Unwanted Content?

The federal Government has been urged to come clean over grey areas in its internet filtering plan after Broadband and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy pointed to unwanted content being censored.

During question time yesterday, Senator Conroy was unclear on the exact type of content that would be blocked during the trials.

The pilot will test filtering specifically against the ACMA blacklist of internet prohibited content, which is mostly child pornography, as well as filtering of other unwanted content, he said in response to a question by Greens Senator Scott Ludlum.

There were 1000 pages on the current ACMA blacklist at the beginning of the year and has since increased by 300 URLs. The list is compiled based on complaints from the public.

Senator Ludlum urged Senator Conroy to specify what he meant by unwanted conten: Will the minister provide a definition of unwanted content and where we might find a definition of unwanted?

Will the minister acknowledge the legitimate concerns that have been raised by commentators and members of the public that such a system will degrade internet performance, prove costly and inefficient and do very little to achieve the Government's policy objectives?

Furthermore, the Government's proposal for dynamic filtering is equivalent to the Post Office being required to open every single piece of mail.

Senator Conroy said he couldn't answer all the questions in under a minute. I will happily get you some further information on that very long list of questions, he told Senator Ludlum, who is the Greens Communications spokesperson.

Senator Conroy's lack of clarity during question time adds more confusion to the discussion -- as ACMA blacklist's comprises illegal websites containing child pornography, X-rated and violent material, among others, it is unclear if he was referring to these sites specifically.

While the ACMA blacklist contains around 1300 URLs, the pilot will test filtering for a range of URLs up to around 10,000, Senator Conroy said. This is so that the impact on network performance of a larger blacklist can be examined.

Senator Conroy acknowledged expert technical advice that such a filter was not feasible, and would slow down internet access speeds, but said that was the reason for conducting a pilot

Stephen Conroy:  The worst Comms Minister in 15 years

As opposition grows against the Government's controversial plan to censor the internet, the head of one of Australia's largest ISPs has labelled the Communications Minister the worst we've had in the past 15 years.

Separately, in Senate question time today, Greens senator Scott Ludlam accused the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, of misleading the public by falsely claiming his mandatory censorship plan was similar to that already in place in Sweden, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

Despite significant opposition from internet providers, consumers, engineers, network administrators and online rights activists, the Government is pressing ahead, this week calling for expressions of interests from ISPs keen to participate in live trials of the proposed internet filtering system.

Michael Malone, managing director iiNet, said he would sign up to be involved in the ridiculous trials, which are scheduled to commence by December 24 this year.

Optus and Telstra both said they were reviewing the Government's documentation and would then decide whether to take part.

But Malone's main purpose was to provide the Government with hard numbers demonstrating how stupid it is - specifically that the filtering system would not work, would be patently simple to bypass, would not filter peer-to-peer traffic and would significantly degrade network speeds.

They're not listening to the experts, they're not listening to the industry, they're not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help, he said.

Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we'll be publicising it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we'll be publicising it.

Malone concluded: This is the worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.

A lobby group set up by internet auction house eBay and other online merchants in the US and Europe plans to open a chapter in Australia as the Federal Government is poised to reveal details of its contentious cyber safety plan.

Labor promised before last year's election to censor 'objectionable' content on the internet and set aside $128.5 million in the May budget to deal with cyber censorship and law enforcement.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority and the Government has hired Melbourne company Enex TestLab to design a live pilot test on a real network.

This filtering plan has been widely criticised and now international lobby group Netchoice wants to weigh into the debate. Netchoice is backed by members including eBay, publisher AOL Time Warner, some heavyweight trade associations in the US and software house Oracle. Netchoice said it would recruit Australian online retailers and internet players to its cause. The group's executive director, Steve DelBianco, is currently visiting Sydney.

Last week the System Administrators Guild of Australia criticised plans to introduce a filter system. The guild, while acknowledging efforts to protect children from objectionable content, said the proposals could slow down the internet for everybody. Guild president Donna Ashelford said those who created objectionable material already used encryption methods that would not be stopped by filtering.

I said that!

Before this year's Beijing Olympic Games, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd chastised the Chinese authorities for blocking full access to the internet for the assembled world media: My attitude to our friends in China is very simple. They should have nothing to fear by open digital links with the rest of the world during this important international celebration of sport.

Although Rudd expressed no concern for the average Chinese web user being unable to view tens of thousands of banned websites, his intervention was nevertheless a welcome call for transparency and greater democracy.

But now the Rudd government is working towards implementing an unworkable filtering process in Australia that suggests a misguided understanding of the internet and worrying tendency to censor an inherently anarchic system.

Wowser Stephen Conroy:   I am not a wowser ...BUT... I will ban hardcore porn

Online pornography will be caught in the Rudd Government's compulsory blacklist internet filter, the Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA) has confirmed.

Any website that is subject to a complaint and classified RC or X18+ will be added to the blacklist, an ACMA spokesman said: This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity

Legal X18+ pornography in the territories will not be immune, the ACMA spokesman added.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy: This is not an argument about free speech. As I have already said, [...BUT...] we have laws about the sort of material that is acceptable across all mediums and the internet is no different.

Currently, some material is banned and we are simply seeking to use technology to ensure those bans are working. The National Classification Code determines content against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.

ACMA received 1122 complaints about online content in 2007/08 resulting in 15 take-down orders and 781 recommendations to makers of online filters.

A third of those 796 blocked websites were classified X18+ for actual sexual activity between consenting adults, with the remainder refused classification for depiction of a sexual fetish or fantasy, violence, or a child.

A separate filter, dubbed the Clean Feed, will further block a range of material unsuitable for children. Adults will be able to opt out of the Clean Feed, but not the illegal content filter.

Wowser Stephen Conroy:   I am not a wowser ...BUT... some material online, [such as hardcore porn] is illegal

The government election promise to censor the internet looks to be in trouble as Senate opposition grows.

The Rudd Government promised families far-reaching measures to block prohibited content at the internet server level. However Communication Minister Wowser Stephen Conroy extended the idea to censoring adults.

The idea now faces a concerted backlash against the proposal by the internet industry.

If the Liberals oppose legislation imposing server-level filtering, the Government will need the support of the Greens, Family First senator Steve Fielding and South Australian senator Nick Xenophon.

But the Greens have added their voice to Coalition concerns about the plan, with the Greens' communications spokesman calling the proposal daft.

Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam told The Age yesterday that he was concerned the Government was trying to implement a policy that was technically difficult and very expensive for taxpayers. Senator Ludlam said server-level filtering imposed a kind of censorship that runs counter to what the internet is all about. The Government would be better investing the filtering money in law enforcement and education: I think it's really quite misguided .

The industry says mandatory filtering by internet service providers - as distinct from a net nanny that families can put on their own computers - will slow internet speeds significantly.

Nutter Senator Fielding has signalled he wants a range of material blocked, including hard-core pornography and fetish material. Senator Xenophon has indicated he wants access to offshore gaming sites restricted.

The Government is still a way from producing legislation to effect its policy, but indications are that it will be difficult to achieve consensus in the Senate.

Communications Minister Wowser Stephen Conroy has launched a defence of the policy, hitting back at claims by the internet industry that the Government wants a sweeping ban on controversial content: I will accept some debate around what should and should not be on the internet - I am not a wowser [...BUT...] I am not looking to blanket-ban some of the material that it is being claimed I want to blanket-ban, but some material online, such as child pornography, is illegal. [Hardcore porn is also illegal on the internet in Australian but somehow Conroy doesn't say anything to counter the idea that it should therefore be blocked]

In response to arguments that the proposal would affect basic civil liberties and the principle that households should be able to be their own internet policeman, he said: We are not trying to build the Great Wall of China. We are not trying to be Saudi Arabia, and to say that is to simply misrepresent the Government's position.

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government's pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

Under the government's $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material.

Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether.

A spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the filters will be mandatory for all Australians.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contacted by Computerworld say blanket content filtering will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch.

Online libertarians claim the blacklists could be expanded to censor material such as euthanasia, drugs and protest.

Internode network engineer Mark Newton said many users falsely believe the opt-out proviso will remove content filtering: Users can opt-out of the 'additional material' blacklist (referred to in a department press release, which is a list of things unsuitable for children, but there is no opt-out for 'illegal content'. Newton said advisers to Minister Conroy have told ISPs that Internet content filtering will be mandatory for all users.

The government reported it does not expected to prescribe which filtering technologies ISPs can use, and will only set blacklists of filtered content, supplied by the Australia Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million.

Australian Broadband providers Internode and iiNet have hit out against the Federal government's ISP-level content filtering initiative — a scheme that could cripple Australia's high-speed internet access, according to one exec.

Mandatory filtering, one of Kevin Rudd's election promises, is set to move the emphasis from parents onto ISPs to remove "inappropriate content" from Australians' internet experience with potential software filters currently being trialled by ACMA.

The regulator is expected to file its report on the filter tests with Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy by the end of this month, after the Federal government pledged a one-off AU$125.8 million subsidy for ISPs to install the required equipment as part of this year's budget.

The plan has already attracted its critics. Security experts recently called government filters to block malware — rather than the "inappropriate content" currently targeted — a suggestion backed by ISP Internode. John Lindsay, Internode carrier relations manager said: We support the government's desire to keep kids safe on the internet and certainly from any type of exploitation, but we don't support the government crippling high-speed broadband services which they say are so essential to the development of our economy.

He also said he was intrigued the government seems so confident that users will be happy to have their access slowed down to allow for filtering they don't want. Some of the things the government could mandate are simply not technically feasible, some could be highly disruptive to users, some could be simply ineffective at blocking access to certain content. What you end up with is everybody being dissatisfied with the filter.

Without a public fuss, an Australian federal government agency is quietly blacklisting web pages

Australian IT reports that an Australian federal government agency has built a blacklist of illegal online gambling sites that has caught some industry players off guard.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has produced a blacklist of around 800 hundred web pages, not websites, deemed 'unsuitable for public consumption.'

ACMA sends the list to internet service providers and content filtering companies so they can update their list of banned URLs.

About three months ago service providers received a list from ACMA containing illegal gambling pages they should block: We asked ACMA what was going on and were told that these were illegal gambling websites that had been identified by the federal Government as inappropriate .

ACMA clarified that it is normal practice to distribute a single list that included prohibited online gambling pages. However, the anomaly was due to a high number of complaints about illegal online gambling sites in October 2007 that were resolved months later.

The Rudd Government has branded as a failure the $85 million software filter scheme to protect young Australians from online pornography and will review its future.

Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is assessing the NetAlert program, which will come under scrutiny at the Senate estimates hearings tomorrow.

The filter scheme was a central feature of the Howard Government's $189 million NetAlert program launched last August to address the perceived threat of online sexual predators and unsavoury content to young internet users. A multimillion dollar advertising blitz followed, including a booklet delivered to every household across the nation.

It was expected 2.5 million households would take up the free porn-blocking filters within 12 months but only 144,088 filter products have been downloaded or ordered on CD-ROM since August last year.

The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has estimated about 29,000 of these accessed filter products were still being used - less than 2% of the set target.

The program has clearly failed, despite over $15 million being spent in advertising to support it, Conroy said: Labor has always said that PC filtering is not a stand-alone solution to protecting children from online dangers. The Government has a comprehensive cyber-safety plan that includes the implementation of mandatory ISP-based filtering to deliver a filtered feed to all homes, schools and public internet points.

Conroy said the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) would examine all aspects of ISP-level filtering, with a laboratory trial completed by the end of June 2008, followed by a pilot test in a real world environment.

Opposition communications spokesman Bruce Billson said the Rudd Government was rushing to criticise the NetAlert program to set the scene for a "harebrained, half-baked policy dreamt up in the lead-up to an election": NetAlert is a program which is relatively new, as is the minister in his role, and I'm sure he would like a little more than six months or so before the public decide if he has been a failure or not.