Australia to Implement Mandatory Internet Censorship
| More news stories on Australia/New Zealand |
|---|
Herald Sun (Melbourne), Oct. 29, 2008
AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.
The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.
The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.
The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the Global Network Initiative, bringing together leading companies, human rights organisations, academics and investors, committed the technology firms to “protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users”.
Mr Conroy said trials were yet to be carried out, but “we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material.”
The net nanny proposal was originally going to allow Australians who wanted uncensored access to the web the option of contacting their internet service provider to be excluded from the service.
Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate “there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it”
Groups including the System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it would unfairly restrict Australians’ access to the web, slow internet speeds and raise the price of internet access.
EFA board member Colin Jacobs said it would have little effect on illegal internet content, including child pornography, as it would not cover file-sharing networks.
“If the Government would actually come out and say we’re only targeting child pornography it would be a different debate,” he said.
The technology companies’ move, which follows criticism that the companies were assisting censorship of the internet in nations such as China, requires them to narrowly interpret government requests for information or censorship and to fight to minimise cooperation.
The initiative provides a systematic approach to “work together in resisting efforts by governments that seek to enlist companies in acts of censorship and surveillance that violate international standards”, the participants said.
In a statement, Yahoo co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.
“These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted,” he said.
“Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people’s lives, and the principles we unveil today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world.”
Yahoo was thrust into the forefront of the online rights issue after the Californian company helped Chinese police identify cyber dissidents whose supposed crime was expressing their views online.
China exercises strict control over the internet, blocking sites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and those with information on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
A number of US companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Yahoo, have been hauled before the US Congress in recent years and accused of complicity in building the “Great Firewall of China”.
The Australian Christian Lobby, however, has welcomed the proposals.
Managing director Jim Wallace said the measures were needed.
“The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must be placed above the industry’s desire for unfettered access,” Mr Wallace said.
(Posted on October 30, 2008)
Comments
The government has declared it will not let Internet users opt out of the proposed national Internet filter.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the “Global Network Initiative”…Mr Conroy said trials were yet to be carried out, but “we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material.”
The net nanny proposal was originally going to allow Australians who wanted uncensored access … the option of contacting their Internet service provider to be excluded.
The Australian Christian Lobby, however, has welcomed the proposals.
…………………………………
It’s coming!
I’ve said it before, that once a policy has been adopted by one Western nation, next thing you know they’re all doing it.
Yes, kiddie porn was the excuse they would use to get a foot in the door, and then everything else would follow.
But to use China as a model!!! And for Australia to be the first one! That DOES shock me.
Now what do you say, all you people who were planning to abandon ship and run away to Australia?
Posted by ghw at 6:12 PM on October 30
“The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must be placed above the industry’s desire for unfettered access,” Mr Wallace said.
As Mancow Muller stated on his talkshow: “It’s for the children.”
Notice that ALL the attacks on Internet ALWAYS start this way, and mirror the news media’s constant attack on gun ownership: “We MUST protect the children!”
Posted by at 6:14 PM on October 30
IMHO: If the US passed a similar law, sites (like AmRen) promoting non-PC viewpoints would be among the first to go.
Banning porn would just be an excuse to pass such a law and a mere afterthought.
Posted by Janelle at 6:19 PM on October 30
That’s what happens when you take communism and marry it to capitalism. You actually end up with something more dangerous than straight communism. Obviously Australia should not emulate that.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 6:38 PM on October 30
Hackers are going to have a field day with this. It’s one thing when people who communicate with pictograms try this. It’s another when an Anglophone government does.
Australia’s our canary in the coal mine.
Posted by Svigor at 7:37 PM on October 30
This is a smokescreen designed to keep the truth from the people. The U.N. let the cat out of the bag last year when it said that the internet was too valuable a tool to go unregulated( read:censorship ). Our newspapers and television stations no longer report the news. In many cases, they create it. They report either half-truths or outright lies, and then they wonder why their circulations and revenues are falling. Look for Obama and the Dems to reinstitute the (un)Fairness Doctrine first. This will drive talk radio off the air. Then, using various excuses, they will take control of the internet. You will be dependent of the mass media (liars ) and the government for your news. They can tell you anything they want and there will be no way you can find out the real facts. Use a few contrived shootings and whip up an uninformed populace and the government will then take away your firearms. To paraphrase an old song,” Whatcha gonna do when they come for you.” I have to go now, I hear Big Brother banging on my front door.
Posted by gee vee at 8:33 PM on October 30
Oh well, nice knowing you all.
Bye.
Posted by Gen X in Oz at 9:00 PM on October 30
I guess this is what happens when you live in the only country in the developed world with no Bill of Rights in it’s Constitution.
http://www.nswccl.org.au/issues/bill_of_rights/australia.php
Posted by Gen X in Oz at 9:10 PM on October 30
So…Has Amren made preparations for this assault on our freedom of association? How will we all continue to communicate?
Posted by Johnny V. at 10:09 PM on October 30
Speaking of the Bill of Rights, Illinois has a “non-binding referendum” on whether to hold a Constitutional Convention on the Illinois ballot. The powers-that-be do NOT want this because we will be able to remove the “Subject to police powers” provision that has reduced the State Constitution’s “Right to Keep and Bear Arms” provision to irrelevence; the anti-gun judges of the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Morton Grove’s handgun ban was legal. So ipso facto, the most useless provision in the State Constitution IS the alleged RKBA provision.
Posted by at 10:20 PM on October 30
Even John Ashcroft couldn’t clean up the internet. If anything, it got worse on his watch.
Posted by at 10:27 PM on October 30
You make this sound like a negative thing. But it seems to me their government is taken real, positive, pro-active steps to prevent the same garbage that indoctrinates and perverts whites in the US, from effecting their country, as well.
Perhaps the biggest plus is blocking all that pornography. The degradation of the moral fiber in the US is probably the single greatest contributer to the corruption and downfall of our way of life. A few short years ago, such things would have been shocking….and a one way ticket straight to a prison cell. Today, anything goes….and our way of life goes with it.
It’s good to see the aussies simply saying no to that.
Posted by at 10:41 PM on October 30
Absolutely disgusting. It seems to me that the widespread belief that interference in the affairs of others is permissible on moral grounds is a path which hell might take into existence; because, there is nothing in life that cannot be considered to have a moral aspect, and such being true, the range of effect allowed by interference on moral grounds is not a bit less, not a bit more restricted, than that allowed by interference on admittedly malevolent ones.
A quotation came to mind. I suppose I’ve already paraphrased it:
“The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.”
— H. L. Mencken
Also, I am very suspicious when child porn, sex offenders, and paedophiles are cited as justification for any sort of measure, because the subjects seem to me, because people treat them with I think absolutely no thought and plentiful hysterics and delusion, the perfect ones to leverage in order to create oppressive laws.
Another quotation comes to mind that is pertainent to that:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H. L. Mencken
Posted by Sunder at 11:30 PM on October 30
Does this surprise anyone? Don’t worry, it’s coming to the US, and AmRen and others of it’s ilk will be off limits to everyone. Remember: Only large, wealthy multi-media conglomerates have a right to free speech.
Posted by SG at 9:47 AM on October 31
I’m starting to believe the doomsayers… what on earth are we going to do when this happens here? Are the Australian citizens going to protest this?
Posted by Maggie at 11:37 AM on October 31
When the internet does get censored in Australia, it will be censored to the likes of the muslims.
Posted by Skip at 12:28 PM on October 31
IN reality no one really cares about Internet censorship.
… and pornography will not be removed, only politically incorrect sites.
The sheeple will never even look up from their lawsuits, ball games and lottery tickets.
Posted by at 3:45 PM on October 31
“You make this sound like a negative thing…..
It’s good to see the aussies simply saying no to that.”
Posted at 10:41 PM
— — — — — —
While the above poster addressed solely her concern over the “degradation of moral fiber” (I offer no argument there), she failed to sort out the other issues or to make any connection at all to freedom of speech in regard to intellectual and political expression. In applauding this development, she is apparently willing to sacrifice everything else for that one thing.
It was good to see her post answered so beautifully by the next poster, Sunder at 11;30PM.
Posted by browser at 5:15 PM on October 31
First The Aussies outlawed firearms now they want to impose censorship. The path of a dictatorship, it’s an age old formula.
Posted by Herman Nelson at 6:17 PM on October 31
Posted by at 10:41 PM on October 30
“Perhaps the biggest plus is blocking all that pornography.”
You didn’t really read the article. Go back and read it again, especially this part:
“EFA board member Colin Jacobs said it would have little effect on illegal internet content, including child pornography, as it would not cover file-sharing networks.”
This fact has to be known by the proponents of this “virtual wall.” That is why accusastions of this being one huge smokescreen are probably valid. They KNOW it’s not going to do what they claim it will; that’s not the point. They are going to implement it to curb all that “hate speech” (i.e. anything right of center).
Posted by at 6:37 PM on October 31
To 10:41 PM on October 30:
You’re a fool if you think that this censorship will stop with child pornography, or even pornography in general. They always use the problem of child pornography (which everybody is against) as the camel’s nose under the tent. “Hate speech” will be next, I guarantee it. They’ll start with the web sites nobody likes to defend (the ones advocating racial violence), then move on to the holocaust revisionists (safe targets they, neither the ACLU nor Amnesty International offered a peep of protest at the deportation and imprisonment of Zundel or Rudolf), then go after the more hard core white nationalist sites, then go after American Renaissance, and finally they’ll take down any anti-immigration web site. The result will be an internet that permits the full spectrum of political opinion from Marxism to middle of the road liberal (pretty much what’s legal in Canada today).
Posted by WR the elder at 1:46 AM on November 1
“And for Australia to be the first one! That DOES shock me.”
————————————
Australia is far from being the first western country to implement internet censorship. For years now, Germany has been censoring the internet on a large scale. Search engines may not yield results that may be considered “offensive”, so people will not know that these opinions exist. To keep the people that know from accessing such content, the internet service providers simply block those websites.
Of course, there are ways around it, which are basically the same ways that the Chinese use. That’s where to government kicks in to prosecute the owners of such websites under the thought crime legislations.
Posted by Der Nonkonformist at 10:25 AM on November 1
Will Austalians who circumvent this net nanny law be treated by their government like China treats Falun Gong?
Posted by Tiffany Epiphany at 11:06 AM on November 1
Essentially the first and second ammendments of these United States are continually attacked by global marxists under the guise of making this nation safe, from the misuse of guns and the misuse of speech. The question is…Why did the framers of the constitution include these as the first rights of the citizenry? Was it because they were not accustomed to the danger of guns or the inherent difficulty’s of free speech? To cut to the chase, This country was built on the sacrifice of safety, which they already had under England and risked in war,…for greater freedom of individuality and autonomy as a nation. That is they sacrificed safety for freedom. As we become effeminate by the easier life afforded by yesturyears sacrifices we are more and more willing to sacrifice freedom for safety. SIMPLY PUT people who cannot defend themselves with words or weapons ARE NOT FREE, ARE NOT SELF GOVERNING PEOPLE! WE can also see how the erosion of states rights so gallently defended by the south but lost in the conflict is now in turn evolving into the erosion of nation rights…..We that love REASON JUSTICE and especially FREEDOM need to crunch our brains on which direction leeds to these best…as very unfortunately, soon, again may come a time when words alone will not be enough for their defense…
Posted by Petrarch at 11:31 PM on November 1
Well the AFP (Australian Federal Police) have not kicked in my door yet, here behind the gum-tree curtain.
I was wondering how realistically they could do this.
I had CA antivirus software on my PC for about 1 week because whenever I came to Amren I would irritatingly get a blanket screen warning me I was going to enter a ‘hate site’.
And that had been the only warning of that nature I have recieved up until now in that regard in terms of visiting here. So I guess it would easy to block entire sites easily enough.
But on general censorship, I don’t know how it works in China, but have you noticed how many racist comments (in all directions)there are on sites like you-tube for instances.
Just do a search for Obama or gangsta-rap etc.
Or sending newsgroup type emails, would there a keyword type search engine filter?
Wouldn’t that just change the language ie. a terrorist would just become a terrier etc.
And when John Howard our recently disposed PM (George W clone) initiated a $84 million national net nanny filter last year, typical to these times a 16 year old hacked through the heavily encrypted 6 month Indian engineered software in 30 minutes.
Much to the Countries and the then opposition parties amusement.
———————————————————————————————-
From the original article
“Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy”.
———————————————————————————————-
…….”safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy”.
But thinking about this I suppose if Amren ended up in the same bucket as child porn, Islamic extrememits and hardcore neo-nazi sites who really would defend it.
I am wondering what happened to the saying
“I may not agree with what you have to say sir, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”.
The question where do they draw the line and who decides?
Posted by Gen X in Oz at 12:41 AM on November 2
The result will be an internet that permits the full spectrum of political opinion from Marxism to middle of the road liberal (pretty much what’s legal in Canada today).
Posted by WR the elder at 1:46 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Exactly. Or you could say: anything from Marxist to Moslem …. also pretty much what exists in Canada today.
Posted by at 2:42 AM on November 2
First The Aussies outlawed firearms now they want to impose censorship. The path of a dictatorship, it’s an age old formula
Australia will, I thinki, in the future have a muslim prime minister or whatever they call it now. They will ultimately call the position the Emir of Ozz. Say G-bye mate.
Posted by Skip at 1:48 PM on November 3