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Bluelight and the Aussie Internet Filter – Will it affect us?

marley said:
OK, lets for a moment assume that Senator Conroy is a truly noble individual, with no personal agendas, on a selfless quest to eliminate child pornography. Wouldn't $45 million be better spent on actually tracking down pedophiles, and locating and freeing abused children?

Essentially it is costing $45,000,000 to pull the wool over our eyes! Just because questionable individuals cannot access this material, are we so naive as to believe pedophiles will stop molesting children because their 'fans' cannot enjoy the moment with them?

DO NOT go to Google, search for 'ACMA Secret Blacklist Aug 2008' and click on any of the top pages. We, the public, do not have the right to see the blacklist.
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The Internet Filter has $125.8Million allocated to it.
 
NEWS: SMH 17/02/09 - Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove "prohibited" pages and even links to prohibited pages.

Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government's censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.

"The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship," Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

The site has also published Thailand's internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions.

Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.

Electronic Frontiers Australia said the leak of the Danish blacklist and ACMA's subsequent attempts to block people from viewing it showed how easy it would be for ACMA's own blacklist - which is secret - to be leaked onto the web once it is handed to ISPs for filtering.

"We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government's own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future," EFA said.

"The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment."

Last week, Reporters Without Borders, in its regular report on enemies of internet freedom, placed Australia on its "watch list" of countries imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could open the way for abuses of power and control of information.

The main issue raised was the Government's proposed internet censorship regime.

"This report demolished the Communications Minister's contention that Australia is just following other comparable democracies," Greens communications spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam said.

"We are not. The Government is embarking on a deeply unpopular and troubling experiment to fine-tune its ability to censor the internet.

"I agree with Reporters Without Borders. If you consider this kind of net censorship in the context of Australia's anti-terror laws, it paints a disturbing picture indeed."

EFA said the Government's "spin is starting to wear thin" and it could no longer be denied that the ACMA blacklist targets a huge range of material that is legal and even uncontroversial.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has repeatedly claimed his proposed mandatory filters would target only "illegal" content - predominantly child pornography.

"As time goes on, pressure will only mount on the Government to expand the list, while money and effort are poured into an enormous black box that will neither help kids nor stem the flow of illegal material," EFA said.

"If the minister truly believes that children are seeking out, or being bombarded with, child pornography, then there's a dearth of both common sense and proper research in the ministerial suites."

Already, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has said he hopes the sex industry will go broke as a result of the censorship scheme.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon previous expressed his desire to have online gambling sites added to the blacklist but has since withdrawn his support for the scheme, saying it was dangerous and could be "counter-productive".

The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked.

The Opposition has obtained legal advice that "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required", but others have said it may be possible to implement the scheme without legislation.

Speaking at a telecommunications conference last week, Senator Conroy urged Australians to have faith in MPs to pass the right legislation.

Despite previously saying his scheme would be expanded to block "refused classification" content that includes sites depicting drug use, sex, crime, cruelty and violence, he said opponents of his plan were spreading "conspiracy theories".

The Government's internet censorship trials are due to begin shortly but critics have said they may not provide much useful data on the real-world implications because none of the major ISPs were chosen to take part.
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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/17/1237054787635.html?page=fullpage
 
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I forsee an internet rebellion, similar to other ""terroist"" internet groups around the world, for example some members of 4chan that just hack into things for fun, to begin in australia to take down the filter from the inside..... lets hope it doesn't get to that.

Obe-won kenobi, you're our only hope! (random quote, seemed appropiate)
 
I wonder if they will ban proxy servers? wouldn't that bypass the whole filter thing anyways rendering it useless or am I missing something?
 
On the wikileaks site:

Police raid home of Wikileaks.de domain owner over censorship lists
From Wikileaks

March 24, 2009

Shortly after 9pm on Monday the 24th of March 2009, seven police officers in Dresden and four in Jena searched the homes of Theodor Reppe, who holds the domain registration for "wikileaks.de", the German name for wikileaks.org. According to police documentation, the reason for the search was "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence". Police claim the raid was initiated due to Mr. Reppe's position as the Wikileaks.de domain owner.

Police did not want to give any further information to Mr. Reppe and no contact was made with Wikileaks before or after the search. It is therefore not totally clear why the search was made, however Wikileaks, in its role as a defender of press freedoms, has published censorship lists for Australia, Thailand, Denmark and other countries. Included on the lists are references to sites containing pornography and no other material has been released by Wikileaks relating to the subject.
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That August 2008 Blacklist is shit.
I don't care so much about blocking the porn (There is a LOT of porn on there not needing to be blocked, any of the more popular ones containing the word TEEN), but 4CHAN? 7CHAN? 12CHAN?

Internet is over. Youtube will be the source of humor. We will be reduced to laughing at Boxxy and 8 year old kids borrowing their parents digital camera.
I might as well top myself right now.
 
I don't think the plan will come to fruition, however, the fact that its gone this far is a little worrying.

Should we start discussing ways to bypass the filter....before it becomes to late? Any tech heads out there?

Obviously accessing blocked sites through caching means, ie google cache or archive.org, will allow people to view blocked static content...but what about accessing dynamic stuff like forums?
 
how to hack it all depends on the filtering/blocking techniques used! any which way, if it is implemented you can be assured that these will be dynamic.......which is the exact challenge any hacker lives for!
 
So if this censorship does go through, will my TOR proxy work?

Whats the best way to bypass this shit.
 
filtering/blocking will be done at the isp level, so a little harder than just side stepping net nanny! numerous techniques would be used and as mentioned these would be dynamic in nature

best bet would be to hook into a foreign satellite with a bi-directional feed that skips right by any control
 
Its good to see bluelighters are aware of the proposed filter and the ramifications it could have for this and other similiar sites. Law enforcement officals in australia have already taken significant interest in Bluelight and it would be one of the first sites to be added when the filter is expanded from illegal content to unwanted content.

It is important that people who care about having a free and uncensored internet do everything they can to stop this internet filter being implemented, as once it is in place no government will even consider taking it down.

Please write to your local senators and representatives expressing your disapproval of the proposed filter and promote awareness by discussing it with your friends, co workers and family. If you want to write a letter but are unsure of what to write have a look at letters that people have posted in the bluelight forum and copy and paste bits into your own letter to send off.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1082048

This is an example template you can use:

Dear ...,

I am writing to you in regards to the Labor party proposal to implement mandatory internet filtering at the ISP level. While protecting children online is very important I do not think that the proposal is the way to go about it and I would like to outline both the technical and social objections I have with this policy. In your reply to this letter, I would appreciate a direct and detailed response to each of these issues.

Firstly, this policy is something that is being pushed with very little actual public demand for it. Every poll that I have seen that has been done by media or other groups has shown very little of the population in support of this proposal and the government is yet to demonstrate any real need for it. The Howard government introduced free filtering software for families, yet the take-up rate for this has been very small. It is clear that this is something the Australian public simply does not want.

The second issue with this concept is that the list that will be used for the filter is a private black list which the government maintains; the potential for “scope creep” is very real. This means that the government may decide to add more and more categories of content to the initial list and there has been no indication of what will be filtered except for the broad description of “illegal material”. People will not be free to decide what they can and cannot view. The government must stop taking responsibility for people and allow them to make their own decisions. If parents do not wish for their children to access unsuitable material then they must take responsibility for this and supervise them online, it is not the role of the government to be a parent to the nation’s children.

Thirdly, this is not technically feasible. The nature of the internet is that it is an ever expanding network with many thousands of sites appearing and many thousands more moving to new locations on a daily basis. There are also a vast amount of communication methods on the internet that this filter cannot control. The people that this is meant to protect, that is the children of this nation are the exact people who are most adept at ways to circumvent this filter.

Performance degradation would also be considerably greater than what was witnessed in the recent trial by the ACMA . When these filters are applied to large scale networks such as those of our ISPs, they will fail to cope with the massive amount of data that will be forced through them and network performance will suffer, this will have its greatest impact on businesses that will suffer from lost productivity and increased costs.

Australian ISPs will be forced to increase their prices to cover the very high cost that these filters will incur and will be forced to pass those costs onto Australian consumers and businesses, thus making internet access in this country even worse value than it already is.

If this were to happen I am sure there would be many frustrated internet users in the Australian voting public and I do not think this is acceptable. This is a massive waste of taxpayers’ money on a system that simply will not work, I implore you to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. This one size fits all approach to internet content restriction is not the answer.

Sincerely yours,
...
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Law enforcement officals in australia have already taken significant interest in Bluelight and it would be one of the first sites to be added when the filter is expanded from illegal content to unwanted content.
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Not saying BL wouldn't be added to the banned list, but considering just how much information LE gets from from BL, I'd think it's a resource they'd very much want to keep.
 
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