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Internet Filtering: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

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stockGURU

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No opt-out of filtered Internet
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.

By Darren Pauli, Computerworld Australia
October 13, 2008

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.

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

Department spokesman Tim Marshall said the filters will be mandatory for all Australians.
Click to expand...

Continued here: http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/08/10/13/No-opt-out-of-filtered-Internet.html?source=gs

Once again, Australians are treated like children by our elected representatives.

We will have no control over what internet sites are filtered out for us by the government.

Once surrendered, freedoms are very hard to regain. :(

Is anyone actually in favour of this kind of nanny state censorship I wonder?
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

I think it's atrocious... we're in the stone age as it is with the internet here (overseas friends that visit can't believe this thing we call "being capped")

But although most of us on here may be opposed (by virtue of using an internet forum to say so!)... I feel the vast majority of Australians are still extremely ignorant to what the 'interwebs' is and how to safely navigate through it.

Most of my family are still on dialup (or simply don't have a connection :banghead: ) and look confused if I start talking about net specific stuff... so, with a general population still this ignorant about the internet, you're probably going to get a lot of supporters to the government saying "We'll guide you through this dark, scary abyss"....

They should an option here for people to opt out... that's terrible.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

stockGURU said:
Continued here: http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/08/10/13/No-opt-out-of-filtered-Internet.html?source=gs

Once again, Australians are treated like children by our elected representatives.

We will have no control over what internet sites are filtered out for us by the government.

Once surrendered, freedoms are very hard to regain. :(

Is anyone actually in favour of this kind of nanny state censorship I wonder?
Click to expand...

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.

Another 125 mil wasted - should be an individuals choice as to how and what you view, set your own levels in your browser!
We get a voting choice, will that be taken away aswell in the future?
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

I`m all for it.I can still view information that I am looking for so nothing has changed.

What is totalitarian about the decision?
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Wysiwyg said:
I`m all for it.I can still view information that I am looking for so nothing has changed.

What is totalitarian about the decision?
Click to expand...

What is wrong with an unfiltered internet? Why not leave it the way it is now?

As adults why shouldn't we be able to determine what we view on the internet? What business is it of the government's to decide what is appropriate and what isn't?

They are spending $125 million dollars to censor our access to information. Does anyone really think this is a wise use of taxpayers funds? This censored information could simply be unpopular speech (ala David Irving), information on euthanasia, anything that the government concludes is inappropriate for us to be viewing.

I'll take an unfiltered internet and decide for myself what is appropriate for me to be viewing. I don't need the government deciding for me. We condemn China for censoring the internet and then turn around and do it ourselves. Ridiculous!
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Right, so Labor and Liberal have both completely screwed the economy and sold us out to the bankers. And now we're seeing censorhip as well.

Oh how we need a viable alternative at the global level. They're far from perfect but now that Labor / Liberal and their international equivalents have wrecked the economy, there aren't too many arguments left against the Greens. Never thought I'd say that given history... :eek:
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

stockGURU said:
What is wrong with an unfiltered internet? Why not leave it the way it is now?

As adults why shouldn't we be able to determine what we view on the internet? What business is it of the government's to decide what is appropriate and what isn't?

They are spending $125 million dollars to censor our access to information. Does anyone really think this is a wise use of taxpayers funds? This censored information could simply be unpopular speech (ala David Irving), information on euthanasia, anything that the government concludes is inappropriate for us to be viewing.

I'll take an unfiltered internet and decide for myself what is appropriate for me to be viewing. I don't need the government deciding for me. We condemn China for censoring the internet and then turn around and do it ourselves. Ridiculous!
Click to expand...

I understand your rights completely BUT the move is to clean up the internet.

"Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked -- end of story."
Click to expand...

Obviously hunting down and prosecuting criminals is labor intensive and costly.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Sadly, we'll see more of these crazy laws, as people become more complacent and ignorant.

The government is so brazen, they doesn't even need to use the "terrorism" ruse any more.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Wysiwyg said:
I`m all for it.I can still view information that I am looking for so nothing has changed.

What is totalitarian about the decision?
Click to expand...
The government will have direct control over all practical sources of information for most Australians. TV and Radio don't provide serious news apart from the government-owned stations. Newspapers generally get most of their news from the internet.

So government ends up censoring practically all information available to Australians, having the ability to hide literally anything it doesn't want you and me knowing about. Total control.

Before the internet we had a far more independent media which wasn't afraid to ask the hard questions. That's gone now and that's what makes this such a problem. :2twocents
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Wysiwyg said:
I understand your rights completely BUT the move is to clean up the internet.
Click to expand...
I can live with it if it's limited to police investigations leading to the blocking of child pr0n sites etc.

But there's no need to "clean up" anything else - if I don't want to look at it then I don't. If the kids are using the computer unattended at a young age then that's just rotten parenting.

But you'll never stop kids looking at pr0n and working out how to make bombs anyway. I was in grade 3 when someone brought pr0n magazines to school and it didn't do us any lasting harm. That sort of thing has always gone on and always will in one form or another.

It's like smoking - still massively attractive to teenagers simply because it's illegal and "wrong" for them to do it. Once they turn 18 and it's legal, that's when the quitting attempts start. Same as binge drinking is so "adult" and an absolute "must" when you're under 18.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Yay. Fascism here we come. There's lots of stuff on the internet that is destructive or unhelpful but why, in an alleged democracy, should the arbitrary values of some self-appointed guardians of thought be determinative of what people can and can't access? Information control. This can't end well. :mad:
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Letsee...
  • Cost goes up (user has to pay for this somehow)
  • Latency goes up (gotta inspect traffic to see if it's naughty or nice)
  • Risk of false positives goes up (www.coleSEXpress.com.au is a good example)
  • The internet is more than WWW

There are a heap of ways of avoiding this 'mandatory filtering' including:
  • Encryption
  • Tunneling
  • Anonymous proxies
  • Changing protocols
  • Peer-to-Peer
and combinations of the above. Where there's a will, there's is a way.

It's just like the war on drugs, or the war on terror, or reds under the bed; might have sounded plausible at the time but history shows just how naieve we really were at the time.

m.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

Smurf1976 said:
So government ends up censoring practically all information available to Australians, having the ability to hide literally anything it doesn't want you and me knowing about. Total control.
Click to expand...

That is highly unlikely.Four years of fixed term employment is all they have.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

It's alarming in that by having this ability, you also have the ability to form and shape public opinion in a controlled way and eliminate alternative viewpoints or thoughts whereas previously this was a distinguishing absent feature of the internet and the freedom of information and expression it allowed. I'm not saying that the government will be using this information for reasons other than what it was first intended.

What would concern me, is if software is now placed on all Australian internet users computers unbeknowest to them. I didn't hear that this was the case. Presumably it is actual content scanned, not just known bad domains, URLs and IPs, so that'd take up bandwidth at every ISP, sounds like the equipment is housed and stored at each ISP reading between the lines on that article. I'd be curious from a technical perspective on how it all worked.
------------

These internet caps frustrate me too, because you know the equipment is there and its probably under utilised, so its like "how much money can we screw you for" rather than, "here's your high speed internet that you've paid good money for". I suppose if the cost was too low at some point it'd become overutilised.

They said they are still ironing out the policy and techniques.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism - Internet filtering

What a bloody joke, its quite frightening actually to see the Government go down this path. We should immediately stop harassing China as we don't have a leg to stand on. Maybe Rudd has been taking tips off the Chinese..:eek:

It reminds me when I was living in Dubai and they have a filter system as well, I couldn't even access LJHOOKER.COM because of the word hooker.
 
Re: Australia heads further towards totalitarianism

chops_a_must said:
Will I still be able to watch my pr0n?
Click to expand...

I don't believe so :(... (Assuming they do what they claim.)

From what I can tell given the complete lack of information about this, they are planning on banning all illegal/prohibited content.

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_90102

Acma reckons that all pr0n is prohibited online...

I tried to search for actual laws relating to pr0n online but nearly every reference has something to do about child pr0n.

Look at the above link, it says

"actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, "

I would have thought child pr0n and bestiality would be covered under sexual activity :confused:
 
I personally would probably never want to access any of the stuff that is apparently going to be banned, but I object vehemently to this.

It's up to parents to place on their home computers some filter to eliminate what they don't want their children to see. Though I'd hope that rather than doing that they'd have a discussion with said kids about what is appropriate and why.

If the rationale for this infringement of our rights is to prevent paedophiles accessing online sexual activity, I doubt it will work. They will simply find other ways to secure their prey.
 

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