Australian government accused of sneaking in web filter | Hacker News Reader

Australian government accused of sneaking in web filter

brisbanetimes.com.au

68 pointsobtino6 comments

Given the Australian government has now excised the entire freaking country from the migration zone for asylum seekers, perhaps they should just excise all of the internet. Would be a darn sight quicker, cheaper and easier than having to filter it one IP address at a time.

The headline is a bit silly. People tried to help the cops stop a thief, but stuffed up and inconvenienced bystanders. Those people happened to work for ISPs. So what?

The real problem is the second order one: Australian cops are so bad at prosecuting fraud that they resort to blocking websites instead of arresting the people running them. A few websites going down is the least of the consequences.

No, it wasn't the cops. No, it wasn't a thief. Legally, it wasn't anything: there was no judge, no finding of fault, just a clumsy ban without due process for secret reasons.

Banning anything (in this case, websites) without due process, accountability and transparency is completely immoral. The fact that the Australian government keeps trying to do it is abhorrent.

The bystanders didn't know they were inconvenienced, and when they figured it out they couldn't figure out why, nor find any route to seek redress to fix the problem.

What this means is that the authorities can impose any block they wish without any accountability whatsoever. This is why this is a big deal. This is like the no-fly list but for the Internet.

The little known law they quote is actually very well known if you are an ISP / carrier. But the law is not a legal mandatory filter requirement - just a requirement that you "reasonably provide assistance when asked" It just happened that most of the ISP's when asked in this case decided to comply, but importantly not all complied.

Well, what exactly legal obligations does that requirement impose on the ISP? If they're allowed to refuse any request, then the law wouldn't be needed in the first place - government agencies can certainly send whatever non-enforceable requests they like without needing a specific law to let them do so.

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