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


Christians upset at Conroy's net policy 'backtrack'
Asher Moses
May 27, 2009 - 3:16PM

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 adult and pornography material on a mandatory basis, in addition to illegal content. Australians would then have to opt in to receive legal 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."

The debate around internet filtering is now distinctly polarised, with technical experts and online users' lobby groups arguing that trying to censor the internet on a mandatory basis is authoritarian, hinders free speech and is doomed to fail, and religious conservatives arguing the policy does not go far enough.

Although the new Government plan to block just RC content will not prevent adults from surfing for porn, it is still fraught with difficulty 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 Conroy described, "the Russian mob".

They were on the blacklist even though they changed hosting providers and cleaned up their sites several years ago.

It is a criminal offence to publish the ACMA blacklist. Details about legal material contained on the list and sites that were added to it in error were revealed only after the list was leaked and published on the online whistleblower site Wikileaks.

To prevent such errors occurring in future and improve transparency, Conroy told a Senate Estimates hearing yesterday that the Government was considering having the secret blacklist reviewed by a panel of eminent Australians or a parliamentary committee.

"It's clear the Government's confused filtering policy will please nobody," said Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia.

"By overreaching and making policy on the run they now have an expensive plan that ... has alienated internet users, the internet industry and even filtering advocates like the Christian lobby."

Eight small internet service providers and Optus are conducting live trials of internet filters and are expected to release their results in July.

Wallace acknowledged that parents were ultimately responsible for protecting their children online but he argued that most parents can't keep up with their kids when it comes to technology, so a mandatory filter was the only solution.

"It's not the children of responsible parents only that you're concerned about here, it's the children of parents who are either bewildered by the thing or are not responsible and don't protect their children from this unsolicited pornography," he said.

Asked to respond to Wallace's claims that the Government was breaking its election promise, a spokesman for Conroy said: "The Government understands the position taken by the Australian Christian Lobby and has made it clear that the pilot trial will inform the development of our filtering policy, including the potential for ISPs to offer optional ISP content filtering products to provide families a further level of filtering for content such as X and R rated material."

The Age
 
This is another example of: "People are too stupid, so we must protect them." Government doesn't always know whats best. Thank god this shit would never fly in america. If I resided in a country where the internet was censored, Id be right in the front row as we revolt!
 
I personally don't think it's going to happen.
What do you mean 'thank god this shit would never fly in America' Unknown?
It's not going to happen; we are really similar to you guys.
If this comes into force I don't even want to know what'd happen. But it won't.
 
^^ don't be too confident... it's going to happen, and your silly if you think otherwise.
 
There has been some stiff resistance and the government doesn't exactly have a majority in the senate. I wouldn't bet on it either happening or not happening.

Unknown, there has been a lot of protesting in Australia over this - it has outraged many. Unfortunately the argument has run a little like this: if you have a problem with the internet filter, then you obviously support the activities of child molesters. *grrr*
 
My money is on the filter being tied to the new NBN.

Having said that, weather or not and of what form we get the NBN is still anyones guess.
 
Tronica said:
There has been some stiff resistance and the government doesn't exactly have a majority in the senate. I wouldn't bet on it either happening or not happening.

Unknown, there has been a lot of protesting in Australia over this - it has outraged many. Unfortunately the argument has run a little like this: if you have a problem with the internet filter, then you obviously support the activities of child molesters. *grrr*
Click to expand...

yeah such a silly argument. Trust me, I know, fuckers... lets just hope it doesn't come into play.
 
johnboy said:
Regarding the clean feed issue. (this is getting pretty off topic, maybe it should be split off?)

I won't touch the technical side of things. Other people here are doing a good job of it. I'll just run through some of the political elements.

What has been said in the media about the proposals for using the filters to cover all "illegal" material is wrong. Even the statements made by politicians themselves, especially Minister Conroy, have had little or no connection to reality.

Under current laws the only material that can be added to filters is child pornography. To broaden this to cover other material would require complete redrafting of the laws. It would be very very difficult for the Government to pass such a law.

So why did he say it? Mainly because he is an idiot. And, sadly for him, at the time this all blew up his major adviser on this issue was on holidays. The poor Minister was having to answer tough questions without a cheat sheet. This is what I have heard from very reliable sources.

This doesn't mean we can ease up the pressure on the Government to drop this ridiculous idea. It is flawed in so many ways and they need to be shown that it just isn't acceptable to even consider such a dangerous precedent. But rest assured that you aren't going to wake up one day and find Bluelight "gone".
Click to expand...


http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australia...censorship_list_is_related_to_underage_images
 
I find it goes like this...

Bills get annouced, public interest grows, public intrest peaks, governement withdraws to save face, public interest dwindels, then the bill gains more interest in politics, and its passed as the public knowledge/fear drops...

it's the same with election promises. if anyone knows physics, public interest is a black body curve, and politions take full advantage of this.

BUT I FUCKING HOPE THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN, but it might be back on the books with the NBP.
 
^ my parents live less than 1hr away from a capital city and to this day still can not get ADSL - yet we are to beleive that the government & ISPs have the resources to implement this level of monitoring??? not in my life time...
 
*bump*

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/te...o-end-net-censorship-farce-20090902-f7n3.html

Conroy urged to 'end net censorship farce'
ASHER MOSES
September 2, 2009

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's censorship policy won him the Internet Villain of the Year trophy, awarded by the British internet industry.

The Federal Government's internet censorship trials have been repeatedly delayed over the past nine months, leading to claims from the Opposition that the Government is deliberately withholding the results to avoid embarrassment.

The Opposition's communications spokesman, Nick Minchin, today called on the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, to "end this farce and produce his long overdue trial results for independent assessment".

Live trials of the filtering policy, which is intended to block "prohibited content" for all Australians as determined by a secret Government blacklist, were initially slated to begin in December last year and take about six weeks.

They were then pushed back until July, then September and, today, the Government is still unable to put a date on when it will release the results to the public.

Privately, the ISP industry, communications experts and several politicians believe that Senator Conroy might use the results of the trial as an excuse to quietly axe the plan, which was an election promise that has become deeply unpopular.

"It is looking increasingly like the minister knows his mandatory internet censorship plan is simply unworkable, but is too embarrassed to admit it," Senator Minchin said.

But even if the results are released, telecommunications experts, including University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, hold reservations about how useful they will be.

Only eight small ISPs and Optus, on a limited basis, signed up to participate in the trials and questions are being raised as to whether this will accurately reflect the real-world conditions if filtering is implemented on a mandatory basis.

Furthermore, the Government has said that it has no criteria to determine whether the trials of the scheme are a success. It has also refused to release specific details of how the trials are being set up and conducted.

"Getting the results out would be really good for the public debate ... finally, maybe, the [Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy] and Senator Conroy will start to then pick up the questions from various parts of society and actually start the debate properly," Landfeldt said.

"The big issue with the blacklist is the way the blacklist is going to be managed really, and the transparency of the process. Right now there is no transparency."

In December last year, this website revealed that the Government was trying to bury a high-level report, co-authored by Landfeldt last February, which concluded that the Government's filtering policy was fundamentally flawed.

The Government released the report the day its existence was made public but decided to press on with the live trials anyway.

"It's definitely not going to be workable to get a very significant reduction in access to [the unwanted] content that is available out there. It's fundamentally just not viable," Landfeldt said at the time.

Soon after, a secret blacklist held by the communications regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, was leaked on to the internet, revealing some of the content that may be blocked for all Australians under Senator Conroy's scheme.

It included sexual abuse imagery and child pornography websites but also sites that are perfectly legal to view in Australia, such as 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 prohibited, such as one containing PG-rated photographs by Bill Henson.

Yet Senator Conroy has so far refused to enter the debate about the freedom of speech issues associated with his internet censorship plan. Today, he continued to paint people who oppose his policy as child abuse supporters.

"Nick Minchin and the Liberal Party should explain why they don't support using the latest technology to restrict access to child abuse content and other Refused Classification material," Senator Conroy said this morning.

Although Telstra did not agree to be part of the Government's internet filtering trial on live customers, a spokesman for Senator Conroy said Telstra had offered results of "an internal ISP filtering trial" for consideration.

The online activist group GetUp has been running a grassroots campaign against the filtering policy and so far has raised $96,000 from members to run advertisements online and on TV.

"It's in small dollar donations that average less than $38, which I think shows just how many Australians care about this issue," said GetUp chief executive Simon Sheikh.

Sheikh said 5000 of his members had faxed a letter speaking out against the policy to their local Labor MPs or senators, while 357 members had so far requested a meeting with their local MPs to talk about the issue.
Click to expand...

So send a free fax to your local MP via getup.org.au:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=728
 
Hi all, its been a while since someone posted in this thread, but I think it is absolutely necessary.

Australian users of this site now face the reality that they will lose access to it if the proposed Internet Filter becomes live. The government (whether we like it or not) is still progressing the filter plan.

In a short while the web filter report will be released to the public and a month later a consultation process will start. This is your ONE AND ONLY chance to have your opinion heard on the filter plan. I doubt it will make a difference but doing something is better than doing nothing. And if there are more positive voices supporting the filter plan then the political wil of the minority parties may just re-align to rubber stamp the sorry affair.

Under current classification legislation Bluelight.ru is a site that contains 'Information likely to be of use to a drug user.' this will automatically earn it a block under the filter plan. Given the loose definitions there are huge numbers of sites that can be classified in such a way (pillreports.com anyone? Wikipedia even?) but time will tell.

I will keep you all posted on when the report is released. The ACS (Australian Computer Society) has released a report suggesting that a multi-pronged strategy be employed to ensure that as much illegal (essentially whatever the government wants) material to be blocked as possible. This includes filtering of peer-to-peer technologies and the prospect of the much more seriously intrusive SSL proxying. Expect that if the filter arrives it's strategic use will be increased. The use of SSL/encrypted peer-to-peer technologies can not come soon enough, but bear in mind the fact that encrypted streams can not be filtered may attract attention.

In the interim ensure that you are familiar with technologies that help you get around the filter because i fear there will be an attempt to criminalise their use for accessing blocked sites. It has already been suggested that it should be an offence to inform people of products/technologies that can by-pass the filter.

In the novel 1984, George Orwell merely got the date wrong....
 
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Thanks for the update Akenaten - you certainly have me concerned. Please let us know when any new developments happen.

In my research, I've found a lot of positive (as well as the occasional negative) consequences of how drugs are used in an information-saturated and globally-networked context in Australia. I believe it would cause more harm to drug users overall if Bluelight (and other drug information sites) were blocked.
 
Hack the planet!

If it does come into play, I can bascally see not only a slower Internet, but a NON-Internet. Aussies like to be heard, they don't like to take shit. And there is enough resources overseas for a big team of Aussie hackers to run bcast relays and flood bots from giant machines from all over Asia, Europe and America to basically make the net non existant. No matter what people think a firewall will not block a flood (which make your connection dead still, only the ISP above you can block a certain IP to IP, or random port to port, which can be woked around.)

Hackers will rule the Internet and make it 10000% worse and unusable until the filters are lifted, and not even Rudd will be able to search for his next limo service and nearest strip club when he goes on a holiday at a net cafe.

All they can do to retaliate hackers and flooders is cut the gateways to major backbones of the world which would mean the same thing, no Internet.

Did they ever think of that? Anarchy is still alive.
 
^ nice script for a hollywood flick but rest assured that a few pissed off IRC nerds & old school DoS attacks won't be bringing down the net. (redundance, resillience, load balancing...all wonderful attributes of the net)

Anyone with some investment cash should be looking into setting up off-shore bi-directional satellite broadband covergage across Asia Pacific. This way all traffic avoids any filtering under australian law by local ISPs. Europe have a great bi-directional network with d/l speeds of up to 3.6Mbps...no reason why we cant have one here.
 
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