http://www.wikileaks.com/
I guess I've been taking linking for granted.
Could any HNers residing in Australia please add their thoughts to this? I could only imagine what would happen if the US did something similar...
I guess I've been taking linking for granted.
Could any HNers residing in Australia please add their thoughts to this? I could only imagine what would happen if the US did something similar...
The relief we have so far is that we're reasonably confident they won't really be able to enforce a lot of things, including links. I'm personally confident that they will eventually find an excuse to 'park' the project, but the closer it gets the louder we need to be about censorship.
Our PM speaks fluent Mandarin. A very useful skill for global diplomacy, but a skill that when combined with censorship draws comparisons he probably doesn't like.
I'm sure their reasons are somewhat valid, if only that they are pandering to a small, scared part of the community. However, putting in place this sort of apparatus to do that - with seemingly no checks and measures - seems negligent in the extreme.
The government doesn't inspect every letter, every package, every phone conversation. That's just ludicrous. Instead they just police it.
For some reason, they think this will work with the Internet. It's an embarrassment as all it demonstrates is that the government is completely out of touch with technology.
I've written to my local rep several times. It usually a form reply. They say don't want to stop "legal" activity. This scares the hell out of me. Does that include technically illegal acts such as those against corporate interests? property? political dissent?
Frankly. It's not a tool I want in the hands of a government that seems to be prepared to barter almost anything in order to get legislation though. We've had the parliament held to ransom by crazy independents before (totally marginal, unrepresentative nutjobs on the whole). I hate to think what they will demand once they have this to play with.
I only wish this initiative would quietly die like everyone is mentioning - it still seems to kick on and on though.
The real argument to make is that this is wrong because censorship is wrong, and because this is the thin end of the wedge of tyranny. It always starts with child porn or terrorism, because everyone hates terrorists and pedophiles. Once the government gets the capability, they just start taking more and more. Even this article talks about blocking anti-abortion websites. Abortion is one of the most important social issues today, and they're saying that we can't argue against the government position on the internet? How will we ever make progress as a society if we can't talk about anything different than what we are doing today?
I don't want my government wasting money on something I don't think will work. I believe the resources are better put elsewhere. That's important to me - might not be the case for you.
and because this is the thin end of the wedge of tyranny.
Think I made that point.
To effectively make censorship work on the internet it would require the government be able to access all you possible means of receiving data - Email, proxies, bittorent, SSH, everything. It is just too easy to re-route censored data over different channels otherwise. Even then it is possible to hide data within other data (Steganography).
So without big brother constantly staring over your shoulder it won't work. Any government serious about making censorship work would be (possibly unknowingly) drawn down this path.
As such it remains largely outside of the public consciousness, and something between a bad joke and a nightmare for civil libertarians on the 'net. The possibility of there being a crime of hyperlinking in this country is closer to the "bad joke" side of that spectrum, but the more of these bad jokes we're subjected to the less humorous they become.
... Oh and also, there's supposed to be a freedom of political communication implied in our Constitution. Not sure what happened to that.
From the political side - this is likely (hopefully) a bit of a dead duck. Kevin Rudd (and the Labour Party) have the majority in the lower house (the House of Reps) - but don't have that in the upper house (Senate). To get through the Senate - Labour needs either the support of the Liberal Party (who are our 'right-wing' major party) - OR the support of The Greens (5 senators), Steve Fielding (from the 'Family First' party) and the one Independant (Nick Xenophon). The Greens and the Liberals have some out against this policy, as has Nick Xenophon. So unless something dramatic changes - then this wont pass the Senate.
We've also got the ridiculous lack of classification of R rated games. So games like GTA IV can't get released here (without being modified).
All that being said - I've been giving some thought to this.. If I import a package, bring home a suitcase, etc - it may get inspected (either based on a suspicion or on random screening). Can I get some wisdom from the HN crowd - how is random screening / occasional screening of Packets logically or legally different to this? Obviously there are technical problems - but I can't see a logical difference.
Another thought on our Internet access - it's slow and we all have download caps (usually with shaping after that - occasionally with extra charges) Parrt of this is our major telco (Telstra) dragging their feet - but large parts are the fact that theres only so many cables linking us to the rest of the world...
So what's so good about Australia? Good weather, great beaches, banks that aren't bankrupt, friendly people... :D
Bad analogy: a) internet packages are not suitcases but words spoken across the border, b) you think only sites hosted outside Australia will be censored? Ha ha.
as for a) -- It's a long way to shout to PNG.. :) And I'm still not 100% comfortable with describing TCP Packets as "words'.
We don't have a bill of rights, which is the big difference - naturally, goes deeper than that, though.
[Edit] Yes, it is embarrassing all the same!
The saddest thing is that there's not much we can do about it at the moment.
When Peter Garrett sang Bad On Fire there where lots of voices who called to censor him, I guess the wheel turned...
Actually, banned isn't quite the right word. Down under we don't have an (R18+) Rating for video games. This means anything deemed not suitable for the lower (MA) rating is not given a Classification.
...And it's illegal to sell a game without a Classification Rating.
It's a fine distinction, and not one that can be made about the internet filtering debacle.