Travellers to Australia to be searched for porn | Hacker News Reader

Travellers to Australia to be searched for porn

smh.com.au

22 pointskareemm17 comments

As an Australian I am totally pissed at this.

First we are getting an internet filter despite a crooked trial run which "prooved" it was possible and the majority of the people being against it (especially when told what it is).

Secondly no R18+ rating for games because too many people wanted it apparently. When 98% of people who respond to the open comment thing say they want it then it must be flawed. It seems to be a game of "Head I Win. Tails You Lose" on that one.

Finally there is this. Not only is porn not illegal in this country but this is being brought in with the age old "Think of the children!".

So so angry right now. You Americans dont know how lucky you are to have a bill of rights which our politicians are still arguing over if we deserve or not. Obviously they dont want it so they can get stupid laws like this in.

Are they that desperate for porn?

Maybe they should give the people in Australian customs an internet connection, that way they can spend their time in more useful ways when dealing with travelers.

> Are they that desperate for porn?

Only big-breasted porn.

For those who don't get it, women with A-cup breasts are banned in Australian pornography.

It's pure discrimination.

I hate to interrupt your fun, but technically I think women who appear to be underage are banned.

That's the rule as it stands. As it's interpreted, small breasts = appears underage for the most part.

The issue has been widely reported in the press as either a small breast ban or Australian demanding large breasts as indicated upstream.

From http://www.inquisitr.com/59633/australian-government-censor-...

"Fiona Patten from the Australian Sex Party (ASP) said she attended a ACB training session late last year where they showed examples of publications that had been Refused Classification due to the size of the woman’s breasts."

As to whether I'm having fun or not, the Australian Labor government has been behaving weirdly when it comes to censorship and personal freedom (net censorship, etc). I guess I'm lucky that I live overseas at the moment, but I do find the moral pandering (www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com) to be over the top.

Few nights ago a drunken Irishman came to the pool table at the pub. I was by then tired of shooting by myself, so I asked him if he wanted to play. He said he was "on a date with Japanese girls" ..

A puzzled moment passed ..

He then took a fat magazine of Japanese porn out of a bag and started flipping through it, inviting me to join the "conversation".

Never has shooting 9-ball alone looked so exciting ..

If I go to Australia before this decision gets reversed, I'm going to be sure to pack a lot of porn.

Also make sure I have some time to kill getting into the country. Really, that's the best solution: everyone needs to carry enough porn coming into the country that the customs officials get so bogged down filtering porn (by hand!) that they have no choice to give up. This is a prime opportunity for civil disobedience.

Patten said if the question was designed to stop child pornography being smuggled into the country then the question should have been asked about "child pornography", without encompassing regular porn.

Yeah, change the question to "Are you carrying any child porn?". That'll stop its import for sure. We should extend this idea further; perhaps we could tick a "Are you planning on robbing this bank?" box before entering a bank. Heck, why not do away with the who judge/jury thing? Next time someone is charged with a crime, just give them a card that says "I committed this crime [Yes] [No]"

I didn't know there was a Australian Sex Party. Can we vote for them :-)

This porn thing is really getting out of hand in Australia, first they tried to block web pages, now this. I've never been there, but my naive picture gained from the movies (admittedly not a reliable source, but nevertheless a data point) is that they seem to be quite a normal bunch and not a prudish, bible-thumping, porn-hating crowd. So, which part of the Australian society backs this anti-pron movement, I wonder.

The Sex Party is actually pretty sensible and, under our voting system, worth a vote. Unlike the US system (as an example - not sure where you're from) we can vote for minor parties and then preference our preferred major (Liberal or Labor) party.

Australia is not overly religious, generally speaking, but both major party leaders are reasonably prudish, Abbott (Liberal, in opposition) very openly so. Many other politicians don't really show any outwardly obvious signs of being religious.

The lobbyists and so on must be more powerful than we realise because this "censor the internet" and "search for porn" pressure is coming from no one I know and comments online seem to mostly favour the "This is ridiculous" line of thinking.

Very sad to see what is a decent country take these backward turns for the worse.

So if I say no and I do have porn, that's me lying to customs, right? What if I don't know I have it? What if my kids downloaded something onto my laptop, or there's some pictures still in my browser cache?

Despite what Australian politicians seem to think, they won't be able to build an anti-porn wall to keep new porn out and then filter the porn they already have. They can't build a porn-free zone, no matter how hard they try.

Thoughtcrimes are a heinous offence.

Wow this is horrible, I already have on my international travel check-list "put all data into a hidden true crypt volume"! But that was mostly to avoid other countries, not my nice supposedly liberal homeland!

That's pretty lame.

Fortunately who needs to carry porn these days?

This is beginning to look suspicious. Does anyone know what on earth is going on with these concerted, ridiculous assaults on freedom in Australia? It almost looks like the work of some ridiculous lobby with an agenda.

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