said by Longboard :

Small article in the SMH today ( Friday) haven't checked anything else.
Keeps the spotlight on.
Obviously most opposition will come from web activists, hopefully editors of the big dailies will focus some attention in the print media.
Particularly after this episode.

said by fatness :

And all it takes is one election for that to happen.

said by Longboard :

The whirlpool thread relating to the net filter is now 35 'parts' long, each part can be 50 pages of the forum !!
Don't think this has been posted b4: current pages:
»forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re···=1167474
Whirlpool summary:
»whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=cleanfeed

IiNet yesterday pulled out of the federal Government's internet filtering trials, blaming drawn-out negotiations with the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, constant changes in policy, and last week's leak of a secret internet blacklist.

Chief executive Michael Malone said iiNet only agreed to participate in the trial to demonstrate that the filter was flawed and a waste of taxpayers' money, but last week's blacklist leak was the final straw. "To use Conroy's own words, the internet filter is now a dead parrot and there's no point investing any time or money in this," Mr Malone said.

"We were going to be there to demonstrate in the wild that this thing has serious problems and that has been self-evidently proven by the department's actions and last week's leak."

AUSTRALIA'S largest internet service provider has said it will not participate in trials of the Federal Government's controversial national internet filter.

Telstra's BigPond said yesterday it would not be part of the pilot, which will run for six weeks from this month, citing "customer management issues".

It wouldn't say what the issues were but Telstra is believed to be worried about the effect on its reputation of any inconvenience to customers.

The Government has asked ISPs to test the filter, which will block more than 10,000 sites and has been criticised by the Greens, Federal Opposition, the internet industry, consumers and online rights groups.

said by Longboard :

Did anyone see the references to Conroy's office threatening to 'list' Whirlpool as an undesirable as there seems to be a lot of critical comment there re the net Filter.
»www.theage.com.au/national/labor···51z.html

THE Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with documents singling out a website critical of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy for special mention.

Soon after Senator Conroy praised Singapore's Government for reducing monitoring of blogs, tender documents issued by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy reveal it is looking for a "comprehensive digital monitoring service for print and electronic media".

The department later attached a clarification confirming the term "electronic media" included "blogs such as Whirlpool".

Whirlpool, the only blog site mentioned, has criticised Senator Conroy's plans to filter internet content and his handling of the Government's $15 billion national broadband network. It is a community-run internet forum devoted to discussing broadband internet access.

Senator Conroy this month told a conference in Germany that it was a "really positive sign" that the Singaporean Government had given up monitoring blogs.

But the documents suggest the Australian Government is just about to start. Senator Conroy's spokesman said it was "only natural" that the tender include services for monitoring relevant blogs.

"Whirlpool is a long-established online platform for news and information covering a wide range of topics across the telecommunications sector," the spokesman said. "It and other websites provide valuable insight into the industries in which we work."

Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin claimed it was "extreme" and an unacceptable use of taxpayers' money to expand media monitoring to blogs.

"The minister has been caught out telling an important international audience one thing, while at the same time putting the wheels in motion back home to use taxpayers' money to do the complete opposite," Senator Minchin said.

A spokesman for the department said it had used Whirlpool as an example of a blog site that might be monitored because a prospective bidder for the contract had asked for a clarification.

New 'ACMA blacklist' leak claims banned websites list was recently edited

A NEW blacklist of websites has appeared online just days after the Government was left red-faced by a similar leak.

Despite previous official denials, the anonymous post claims the list of websites definitely comes from the Government watchdog.

It also claims the list has been updated since it was first published on whistleblowing website Wikileaks.

"All three lists come from the same Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) approved filtering software company source and described internally as the 'ACMA' list," the post said.

"Between the 11th (of March) and yesterday, the company did an enormous cleanup of the list. No doubt as a result of the list appearing on Wikileaks."

Wikileaks was brought down by excessive traffic when the first lists were leaked last week.

The list was allegedly edited after reports that it included innocent content such as Wikipedia pages and a dentist's website.

"It is probable that the company only added, but never previously deleted, sites from the updates sent by ACMA," the post said.

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Wikileaks made a second list available on the 20th of March. The second list is a cleaned up version of the first list that now contains some 1170 entries.

Since the government threatened to prosecute any Australian involved in leaking the list, Wikileaks responded by threatening the Australian government with legal action since the action is firmly protected by Swedish law and Wikileaks operates within that jurisdiction. Interesting, is there an international diplomatic conflict about to happen as well over this? Perhaps I (as a Swede and Aussie) will have to chose sides, and which army to join after all .

It is extremely stupid to distribute a list in cleartext in the first place. I have no idea who at ACMA decided to hand out clear text ASCII files with all the banned sites but it was not a struck of genius to do so. Why did ACMA not simply hash the sites and distributed a file with hashed values? Any filter implementation can still hash each destination URL and compare with the list without the destination address ever being exposed. It is true that there would still be people within the ACMA who would have acces to the original clear text list but the risk of spreading of the list would be much lower.

Wikileaks apparently also published a simple way of extracting the list from a down loadable software package from the netalert scheme era. Apparently, it is possible to extract a file with the conspicuous name "Websites_ACMA.txt". Well designed security software!! I wonder if the developers had dumbed down 3-year Australian university degrees......

CleenFeed: ACMA Blacklist and Wikileaks

ACMA’s secret list of banned web pages has reportedly been leaked to Wikileaks.org although it appears the method to derive this list is not as sinister as the mainstream media has made out. The original leaked list appeared to be 2 years old, full of dead urls and with a couple of new URLs tacked on for good measure. The second list published on the 20th of March has been explained in a bit more detail by Wikileaks. This Crikey quote explains the Blacklist comes from a group of:

Family Friendly Filters and one of those provided free to (a few) Australian families by the Howard government’s now defunct NetAlert scheme. Provided you’re reasonably tech-savvy, you can extract a list of URLs with the rather unambiguous name “Websites_ACMA.txt”. Depending on which version of the software you download, you get the August 2008 list as published, or something similar containing more recent material.