Interpol filter scope creep: Australia ordering unilateral website blocks
delimiter.com.au
delimiter.com.au
It usually takes months or even weeks before the system is used to block something else that has nothing to do with the categories they promised to censor.
The government child porn filter is not in use – it never left the trial stages. This filtering is also unrelated to the voluptuary Interpol list that numerous Australian ISPs implement, since Interpol are not trying to filter these sites.
This is not about scope creep of an existing filter. This is a whole new kind of censorship that has come from nowhere for no good reason.
I've been dreaming of it since at least 1997.
Unfortunately, that portfolio is a parking lot for factional warlords who want the money and prestige, but who also need time off from actual work to keep heavying backbenchers, interfering with preselections and so on and so forth.
Malcolm Turnbull is the current Shadow Minister. And because of the political requirement to Differentiate(tm), his name is currently "mud" in the local technology world. It's a pity. He has actual tech industry pedigree as an investor, is widely regarded as one of the more thoughtful senior politicians of either stripe and his temper tantrums are very entertaining.
I fully expect that once the election is over Turnbull will be trundled off to something like Pacific Affairs and some dunderheaded blockhead who controls some faction in the NSW Liberals will be rotated in to take the spot.
Turnbull is unlikely to get tech, simply because apart from the really plum jobs like treasurer, you don't want someone who knows the industry to hold the portfolio - because they won't make cuts to please the head honcho. At least, that's how it was phrased to me by a defence scientist when Bronwyn Bishop had Defence in her portfolio in the 90s.
Maybe you should be dreaming of a day when there isn't a Minister of Communications all together. Just that title creeps me out.
Those ISPs have been given a directive to block sites on the "worst of the worst" Interpol list, it's DNS blocking, not at the IP level.
Read the article again :)
http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/14/it-wasnt-us-ags-dept-deni...
Notice the quotes around voluntary. Do you really think Telstra and Optus are going to refuse a request to block child porn sites from the Australian Government?
Again it must be made clear that the Interpol filter the police demanded is DNS based, the filtering ASIC demanded to shut down one unlicensed financial advisor is IP based.
I'm frankly disgusted at the underhandedness of Conroy. He has previously pushed completely unfeasible schemes aiming at mandatory filtering. He caved on this due to huge public backlash, so he just re-interprets section 313 of the telco act to give the AFP the power, if not the obligation, to bully Australian ISPs into mandatory filtering anyway.
The main differences now are that he gets to do it quietly, possibly without the public backlash, and secondly, that the cost for the extra infrastructure and personnel required to implement it is now the sole burden of the ISPs, and not the Australian taxpayer.
Unfortunately, with the current state of Australian politics, this mob are still probably the best choice going. The Greens (although I usually vote for them, idealist that I am) really don't have any chance this election, and the Liberals [1], except to say that they'd cut the investment in the National Broadband Network, aren't even providing their usual hodge-podge of regurgitated conservatism; They're happy watching Julia Gillard lose the election on her own merits. The two Liberal party members to keep an eye on here are Tony Abbott [2], and Malcolm Turnbull [3]. They, between them, have the power to either lose or win (in that order) this election for the Liberal party.
So, we in Australia, like many in the USA, are discovering that the more "progressive" party is just as likely to engage in shady behaviour as their "conservative" counterparts, but have more to lose when they're found out. This reminds me of something I read recently [4] where it was stated that trust is bi-directional. The more a government stops trusting the people it's mandated to represent, the more those same people, in turn, stop trusting their elected government.
Wow, sorry, I seem to have gone off on a tangential rant there... Anyway, not happy at all.
[1] for the benefit of non-Australian readers, the capital 'L' should be interpreted as a negator. They are anything but 'liberal'.
[2] Party leader, and historically likely to lose this election with a single misplaced misogynistic comment.
[3] A chameleon, finger on the pulse and willing to flip with the public opinion of his constituents... Technically a good trait in a politician, but most of his constituents are rich conservatives
[4] might have been in Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers, brilliant book.
Taboo-making is a staple of any organised society and we don't really know of anything that could replace it yet. Even assuming complete good faith from authorities, it's clear that they are reluctant to lose a pillar (if not the pillar) of their own existence.
The anarchist in me says yes, the realist in me says vote for Julia at the next election and cross my fingers, the idealist in me says move to New Zealand :-)
"Even assuming complete good faith from authorities, it's clear that they are reluctant to lose a pillar (if not the pillar) of their own existence."
I'd say that the fact the reluctance is so clear is indicative of a complete lack of good faith.
I see what you're saying, and it's a very valid point, but I think "Taboo-making" is way too often over-extended to include taboos on anything the current government doesn't like.
I give it 6 months before thepiratebay.(org|se|gl|is|cx) is blocked in Australia.