norwegian
Premium
join:2005-02-15
Outback
 ·WestNet Broadband
| reply to SUMware
Re: Australia To Implement Mandatory Internet Censorship
Which is why saying $10 mill will cover it is a load of .......!!
At least the previous govt's option to supply filters to the home, and a package of $189 mill was plausible. Nothing in this topic has any back-bone or credit to be a viable option without making the connection an expensive past-time for the elite.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke |
|
ilago
Premium
join:2005-06-28
Australia
·Internode
| reply to SUMware
Hepa filters - I usually only see them in hospital and industrial process ventilation systems 
There is an interesting read here. I don't always agree with them, but there is a chance of a domino effect if a western liberal democracy like Australia can be demonstrated to have a "working" version of this even on a small scale.
This is a threat to freedom of speech and privacy that could expand beyond Australia 
quote:
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 pornography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.
From here - »www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?···id=10779 |
|
SUMware
Premium
join:2002-05-21
| reply to norwegian
said by norwegian  :I really can't see a problem with content filtering Great, because in 2 weeks your government will prevent you from visiting this site anymore. You have no choice and no warning. Your government is censoring this site for your own protection (too many potential hackers here, they believe). Aren't you glad that your government is looking out for your best interests?
said by norwegian :Hey one of my little ones downloaded a phone ring tone and wasn't aware of the $5/day/week for usage, now where is the governments stance there? Another, my last born, before she was 3 months old, a letter arrived allowing her $5000 on a credit card. What is the governemnt stance on that? In a non-authoritarian state the government would say that you, as the parent, are responsible for the well-being of your own child. And the government would pass and enforce laws to protect all citizens from scams and illegal activities.
But since your government is an authoritarian state, it easier and more cost effective for them to remove your children from your home and into state custody. End of your problems. Gosh, those authoritarian government people are so helpful. |
|
SUMware
Premium
join:2002-05-21
1 edit | reply to ilago
said by ilago :there is a chance of a domino effect if a western liberal democracy like Australia can be demonstrated to have a "working" version of this even on a small scale. This is a threat to freedom of speech and privacy that could expand beyond Australia Oh, yeah. 'Democracy' residing authoritarians, repressives, hard-core capitalists, fascists, totalitarians, extremists everywhere are watching this very carefully and spinning their own little plots. |
|
norwegian
Premium
join:2005-02-15
Outback
·WestNet Broadband
| reply to SUMware
said by SUMware :said by norwegian :I really can't see a problem with content filtering Great, because in 2 weeks your government will prevent you from visiting this site anymore. You have no choice and no warning. Your government is censoring this site for your own protection (too many potential hackers here, they believe). Aren't you glad that your government is looking out for your best interests? You did not understand. I am more than happy to apply something at home, if it is by choice, I use a Hosts' file and other methods of blocking some of the more notorious sites. No where did I say forced content-filtering above my doorway was good. I'd buy a firewall/content-filtering package tomorrow if they came down in price but who can justify that in a budget, when the ISP supply a modem for free if you sign-up.
Don't mix words.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke |
|
SUMware
Premium
join:2002-05-21
| said by norwegian :said by SUMware :said by norwegian :I really can't see a problem with content filtering Great, because in 2 weeks your government will prevent you from visiting this site anymore. You have no choice and no warning. Your government is censoring this site for your own protection (too many potential hackers here, they believe). Aren't you glad that your government is looking out for your best interests? You did not understand. I am more than happy to apply something at home, if it is by choice, I use a Hosts' file and other methods of blocking some of the more notorious sites. No where did I say forced content-filtering above my doorway was good. I'd buy a firewall/content-filtering package tomorrow if they came down in price but who can justify that in a budget, when the ISP supply a modem for free if you sign-up. Don't mix words. You're correct. I did not read you correctly. My bad. Sorry.
said by norwegian :I doubt anyone would disagree on using a router/firewall with content filtering for use to filter in the home, if a family deemed it needed. Right. User desired and user chosen filtering is not the issue in Australia. Government selected and mandated filtering is. |
|
norwegian
Premium
join:2005-02-15
Outback
·WestNet Broadband
| said by SUMware :Right. User desired and user chosen filtering is not the issue in Australia. Government selected and mandated filtering is. Yes, I'm afraid. That is the basic crux of the issue.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke |
|
SUMware
Premium
join:2002-05-21 | I would never have believed this possible to be occurring in Australia. It's shocking. |
|
nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
 ·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T Midwest
| I would never have believed this possible to be occurring in Australia. It's shocking. Your mistake.
There is a history of censorship down under. See this Wikipedia article for some of the details. They don't have anything comparable to the USA Bill of Rights.
--
AT&T dsl; Westell 327w modem/router; openSuSE 11.0; firefox 3.0.3 |
|
SUMware
Premium
join:2002-05-21
| said by nwrickert :I would never have believed this possible to be occurring in Australia. It's shocking. Your mistake. There is a history of censorship down under. See this Wikipedia article for some of the details. They don't have anything comparable to the USA Bill of Rights. Very revealing. Thank you. I'd imagined Australia to be a generally 'liberal' country. From your linked article here's another pertaining to this thread, "Internet Censorship in Australia". |
|
Sindows 7
join:2006-09-13
Hope, BC
| reply to SUMware
said by SUMware :I would never have believed this possible to be occurring in Australia. It's shocking. I'm not surprised at all......remember this?
Guess computers will be next.
 |
|
Blackbird
Built for Speed
Premium
join:2005-01-14
Fort Wayne, IN
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to SUMware
Government, in principle, is the one organization in an orderly society possessing the legal "power of the gun" over members of that society. In a totalitarian regime, that power is imposed upon society in areas based solely on government whim; in a free nation, that power is granted by the people to government under selective and defined conditions. If those conditions aren't under ironclad judicial enforcement or upheld by the people at election time, those holding power (elected or appointed) will endlessly expand their powers over the people. There are many reasons for this: power lust, demands of factions within the electorate, arrogance of officeholders, corruption, deeming extra powers necessary to accomplish official tasks (especially during crises), and so on.
Practical freedom in any land most of the time has far more to do with the people's freedom against the powers their own government may exercise against them, than against the potential exercises of power against the people by foreign entities.
The unavoidable reality of human nature is that power asserted by government over its own people always tends to an increase. It remains the continual job of the electorate to hold their officials accountable for each expansion of governmental power. That requires each faction of an electorate constantly to exercise restraint and wisdom in not demanding government expansion of power for that faction's advantage at the expense of others in the electorate. Governmental power, once expanded, will almost never be reduced... it will only be redirected and retargeted in new and unexpected directions as governments and factional pressures change in future days. It is also required of an electorate to always be willing to turn out of office as immediately as possible, any leaders and their appointed who would expand power beyond that permitted by national constitution or the expressed will of the people assembled... and to continually remind elected officials of that. If the people are not willing to do these things on principle and constrain their government's powers, then the people do not deserve the freedoms involved.
Australia, it would seem, does not have an explicit constitutional guarantee of free speech, but its people do exercise that freedom, and its voters have the right to elect leaders who support maintaining a tradition of free speech. The United States has a Bill of Rights guaranteeing free speech, but its voters have the right to elect leaders who all but ignore that concept to the detriment of all. The point is, in both nations we get exactly what we elect, campaign promises notwithstanding. The only remedy to loss of freedom, for both nations, is to make sure the officials we elect actually do support all foundational concepts of freedom for the citizenry and that they would avoid expansion of governmental power over the people. And if those leaders fail in that, the electorate must be relentless in removing them from power at the first opportunity.
--
If God wanted us to work with electrons, He'd make them big enough to see... |
|
Khaine
join:2003-03-03
Australia
| reply to SUMware
said by SUMware :said by nwrickert :I would never have believed this possible to be occurring in Australia. It's shocking. Your mistake. There is a history of censorship down under. See this Wikipedia article for some of the details. They don't have anything comparable to the USA Bill of Rights. Very revealing. Thank you. I'd imagined Australia to be a generally 'liberal' country. From your linked article here's another pertaining to this thread, " Internet Censorship in Australia". We don't need a bill of rights. We have an implied right to freedom of speech, and freedom of association and these have been upheld by the high court |
|
Unknown_Poster
@verizon.net
| said by Khaine :We don't need a bill of rights. We have an implied right to freedom of speech, and freedom of association and these have been upheld by the high court I don't know if you need a Bill of Rights or not-- but you may need something beyond what's already in place, as it seems your current government is implying that they know best which websites you should be allowed to visit.
What's been the High Court's reaction to that, so far? |
|
Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX
·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to SUMware
Let's see if it stands up to Psiphon. My guess is it won't.
I see a lot of Aussies using this if the mandatory filtering is ever implemented.
--
"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
|
|
Khaine
join:2003-03-03
Australia
| reply to Unknown_Poster
said by Unknown_Poster :said by Khaine :We don't need a bill of rights. We have an implied right to freedom of speech, and freedom of association and these have been upheld by the high court I don't know if you need a Bill of Rights or not-- but you may need something beyond what's already in place, as it seems your current government is implying that they know best which websites you should be allowed to visit. What's been the High Court's reaction to that, so far? The high court only rules on legal matters before them, not being a legal expert I don't know what they make of it. I can only hope they would strike it down as unconstitutional based upon our implied rights |
|
Link Logger
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB
 ·Shaw
| reply to ilago
said by ilago :There's a lot of resistance. Quite a lot of coverage in the mainstream media as well as forums and the blogosphere. Newspaper and radio on line polls are showing almost consistently that more than 80% of consumers do not want secret censorship introduced. I wonder how many of the 80% have taken the time to call/write/email their local elected government official and convey their opinion and perhaps how this will be a MAJOR factor next election as its funny how much influence that can have.
I'm not sure how the 'state' can be such a evil thing when the citizens of the state elect it (and if you don't like your choices then run for office and be that choice). Perhaps with percentages of voting public on the decrease, they get the state they didn't bother to vote for and then ultimately perhaps deserve?
Blake
--
Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool |
|
SUMware
Premium
join:2002-05-21
1 edit | reply to SUMware
Possible Workarounds
From ITWire
03 November 2008 - quote:
Bypass Australia's internet filters for free
According to the government's own research, the filtering will degrade network performance by between 20 and 75 per cent - which makes a joke of plans for a faster national network. Civil libertarians also argue that censorship is a slippery slope, a concern heightened by the fact that those supporting the filtering are already talking about expanding it to include other stuff they don't like...
The proposed filtering [will] give a handful of right wing nutjobs the power to control what we can see online. The fact the government wants to keep the list of banned sites a secret, and has tried to censor people speaking out against the filtering plans, should be ringing alarm bells.
Any school kid will tell you that bypassing internet filtering is ridiculously easy. One simple trick is to use a free web proxy...[do a Google search]
Another trick for bypassing filters is to dig an encrypted tunnel to the United States. It sounds complicated, but it's free and ridiculously easy to do and neither the government nor your ISP can see what you're up to.
Two popular free VPN applications are HotSpot Shield (Mac and Windows) and AlwaysVPN (Mac, Windows, Linux). They add an advertising banner to your browser, which is a small price to pay.
If you're prepared to spend $5 per month for a faster connection you could look at Witopia and VPNOut. You don't need to know anything about networking and there's no messy configuration, you run the installers and they just work.
These applications give you dual citizenship as, with the click of a button, your computer looks like its in the United States. Your digital Green Card means you can access US-only content from sites such as Rhapsody, Pandora, YouTube and Hulu. It also means you're bypassing any content filtering performed by your Australian ISP, and there's nothing they can do about it.
Australia's plans for mandatory content filtering will screw up the internet and give right wing nutjobs the power censor what we see, yet it won't actually stop people who want to access banned sites.
If Australia goes through with plans to censor the internet, you can be sure civil libertarians will do everything they can to make bypass software freely available to everyone - as they've done in other totalitarian regimes.
If you're concerned about the Australian government's plans for filtering the internet, it's time to speak up before it's too late. Visit NoCleanFeed.com, run by Electronic Frontiers Australia, for information on how to voice your concerns. Do it quickly, before some holier-than-thou git decides you're not allowed to see that site either.
-
From CRN Australia
3 November 2008 - quote:
Support fades for Australian net censorship
The Australian government’s plans to censor all web content at the borders of the country looks in danger of coming unstuck.
"I think it's really quite misguided," Senator Ludlam of the Greens told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Calling the plan “daft” the green party has indicated it will stop the proposals going ahead by withdrawing support for the measure.
Internet service providers are also up in arms about the proposals, which they say will slow down Australia’s already slow internet speeds to a crawl.
Businesses too are protesting that the move will hamper their efforts to build an effective online marketplace for Australia’s goods.
|
|
Khaine
join:2003-03-03
Australia
| reply to Link Logger
Re: Australia To Implement Mandatory Internet Censorship
said by Link Logger :said by ilago :There's a lot of resistance. Quite a lot of coverage in the mainstream media as well as forums and the blogosphere. Newspaper and radio on line polls are showing almost consistently that more than 80% of consumers do not want secret censorship introduced. I wonder how many of the 80% have taken the time to call/write/email their local elected government official and convey their opinion and perhaps how this will be a MAJOR factor next election as its funny how much influence that can have. I'm not sure how the 'state' can be such a evil thing when the citizens of the state elect it (and if you don't like your choices then run for office and be that choice). Perhaps with percentages of voting public on the decrease, they get the state they didn't bother to vote for and then ultimately perhaps deserve? Blake At the moment, I believe very few of those 80% have wrote to their Member of Parliament. Most probably think that the government would never be stupid enough to implement, and the rest think it will be blocked in the Senate.
I do know that a lot of technical people (mainly from whirlpool) have been writing letters and trying to raise awareness |
|
Its a Secret
Whatever
Premium
join:2008-02-23
U B Funny
·Shaw
| said by Khaine : Most probably think that the government would never be stupid enough to implement. Never, ever underestimate the stupidity of the government.
--
"In the future, that which is not mandatory will be illegal" |
|
