Aust Conroy, Government delays internet filter until after election

Steven Conroy and the Australian government are delaying the internet filter until after the election in hopes that people will stiil vote for them then after they are back in start the filter then. They don’t want bad publicity during an election year.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said this afternoon the initiative was “consultation, Conroy-style” — the department had gotten industry engagement “half-right”. “But then of course, they just open themselves up to the kind of criticism they’re going to cop now … by trying to hold those consultations in secret,” he said.

“They’re finally confronting the logical inconsistencies in what they’re trying to do,” said Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, adding Labor faced a difficult decision — if it became an offence to circumvent the filter, it was likely the legislation would actually trap legitimate as well as criminal activity, whereas if it wasn’t an offence, the Government would face institutionalised circumvention.

He said if the Government didn’t make circumvention an offence, the generation of web browsers might have a “click here to circumvent” button built in.

Also today, Ludlam called for the Government to re-examine the filtering policy as a whole after Conroy’s office confirmed to the Australian that the filter legislation would not be introduced in the May or June sittings of parliament, meaning it would be likely to be shelved until after the next Federal election.

“I am delighted to hear that the Prime Minister has put Senator Stephen Conroy’s unworkable plan on the backburner, but they need to go a step further and just hit delete,” Ludlam said in an earlier statement today.

“Merely putting it off because it’s massively unpopular is a cynical pre-election clearing of the decks. The Government needs to clearly indicate that it’s going to scrap the idea completely and work on a new policy in collaboration with all stakeholders.”

“Opposition against the internet filter is widespread because it will do precisely nothing to curb the distribution of illegal material online, while establishing the architecture for greater government censorship in the future.

Australian gov to sign treaty to appease music and video companies.

There goes our privacy folks.

The Australian Federal Government has introduced policy to endorse an international treaty intended to facilitate the identification, extradition plus conviction of cybercriminals round the world.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Stephen Smith yesterday declared Australia would comply to the Council of Europe Conference on Cybercrime.

The Convention, which was established in 2004 by pressure from the US music and movie industries, demands actions that permit authorities to pressure internet service suppliers to hand over up information about customers, and capture and report traffic.

Parties to the Conference additionally conform to facilitate expatriation of criminals sentenced to a minimum of  12 months imprisonment and gathering of information in one other country.

It encompasses unlawful interception plus system interference, forgery, fraud, and "offences related to the infringement of copyright and additional linked rights," (that's the music / movie industry part!) in accordance with an announcement from the Minister.

While Australia took "a powerful view" of cybercrime behaviour, a number of legislative amendments are nonetheless essential ahead of it was able to sign the treaty.

The representative didn't divulge a timeframe for the introduction of amendments as well as signing of the treaty.

"For Australia to sign the treaty Australia be obliged to make legislative changes to our domestic law to fulfill the requirements of the convention," he said.

"This has been taking place on an ongoing foundation in consultation with relevant stakeholders, for example, the Commonwealth has updated cybercrime offences within the Prison Code Act 1995 (Cth)."

Presently, more than forty nations are get together to the treaty, including the U.S. (thats where the big music and movie industries are), Canada, Japan and South Africa.

This is despite preliminary opposition from privacy and civil rights advocacy teams together with the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), of which Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) was a founding member.

EFA opposed a draft treaty that was launched to the general public in 2000. In July 2001, EFA spokesperson Greg Taylor said the treaty was "fundamentally imbalanced" and failed to deal with privacy rights while focussing almost utterly on law enforcement demands.

"It contains very detailed and sweeping powers of computer search and seizure and government surveillance of voice, email and information communications, but no correspondingly detailed standards to guard privacy and limit authorities use of such powers," it wrote.

"That is although privacy is the most important concern of Web customers worldwide."

Senator Conroy would love this. Let Steven Smith cop the flack for as soon as, while authorities indicators away more of our privacy and our rights.  Where will be the protections of our citizens from unwarranted intrusions into our normal law-abiding activities and from unfair treatment by police and our legal system?

It might appear the web is being used to show Australia into a nanny-led, police state by the back door. Already the Kevin rudd Government and the Howard/Abbott unChristian onerous-right Libs don't give a stuff about what occurs to our citizens on the hand of overseas countries.

Another fantastic failure by Stephen Conroy. How is signing this going to be in any way shape or form in Australia's interest? When was the last time we needed somebody extradited here to face trial for a cybercrime? Never? And what about all those petty criminals around the world now facing 10 year stints in US jails after being passed across to the US for absolute trivial things. What about the huge growing patent industry based in the states which is targeting every open source project under the sun? This Kevin rudd government doesn't know what its doing, has a terrible sense of direction and is made up of ministers that should go and do a beginners course in the fields that they look after. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice next election.Carry on the elections so we can present to these bastard politicians what we think of their behind-closed-door activities!

Stephen Conroy thinks the internet isn't "special"

Internet consultants were shocked today with communications minister Stephen Conroy's thought that the web just isn't "special" and has to be censored like movies, books and papers.

In an interview Senator Conroy ignored the flood of criticism aimed at at his policy as misleading info spread via "an organised group within the on-line world".

Asked what share of all of the nasty material on the web his filters would block, Senator Conroy dodged the query, responding that his filters had been "a hundred per cent accurate - no underblocking, no overblocking and no impact on speeds". In other words he didn't answer the question.

But Mark Newton, from ISP internode, stated: "Censorship is not going to capture a single pedophile, won't trigger one single image to dis-appear from the web, is not going to safeguard a single child."

Senator Conroy additionally brushed apart issues from leading teachers and technology corporations that the plan to block a blacklist of "refused classification" (RC) websites for all Australians was an try to shoe-horn an offline classification model into a vastly different online world.

"Why is the web special?," he asked, saying the web was "just a communication and distribution platform".

"This argument that the internet is some mystical creation that no laws should apply to, that may be a recipe for anarchy and the wild west. I consider in a civil society and in a civil society folks behave the same method in the bodily world as they behave within the virtual world."

Newton stated this was a "gross oversimplification", pointing out that Australia Submit and Telstra's phone community had been also distribution platforms however weren't censored.

"Why should the internet, a distribution platform for all manner of intangibles, be censored as if it was a film theatre? It is unnecessary, the mannequin doesn't fit," he said.

The Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam was additionally fast to ridicule Senator Conroy, saying books and movies were distinctly totally different as a result of they're "discreet, bodily packages of content", whereas the internet is dynamic and has "a trillion internet pages already listed and an unknown amount extra added day-after-day".

"To characterise sustained opposition by individuals and teams as various as EFA, Google, SAGE, Yahoo, Save the Children, Reporters without Borders, Justice Kirby, Choice Magazine, leading online lecturers and business associations and the United States Department of State as 'an organised group in the online world' is a remarkably naive misreading of how unpopular this proposal is," Senator Ludlam said.

College of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt mentioned the difference between submitting a e-book for classification and having an organisation classifying and blocking websites with out anyone's knowledge was that, in the guide case, "it's well-known that the e-book was censored and there is usually a debate concerning the correctness of the choice".

Landfeldt stated it was true that the filter system would block all websites it was told to block but the trillions of pages on the web means the federal government will not make the web a protected place for youngsters and can only be capable to cease entry to "a small minority" of net pages.

Senator Conroy has neglected to handle widespread concerns that the "refused classification" score additionally applies to sexual health discussions, euthanasia material such as the Peaceable Capsule Handbook, historic war footage and instructions in minor crimes comparable to graffiti.

Senator Conroy admitted that his filters wouldn't do anything to stop the unfold of child pornography on peer-to-peer file sharing networks, and that they are going to "slow down the internet" if applied to high-quantity websites reminiscent of YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia.

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' foyer group Digital Frontiers Australia, mentioned this remark ignored proof that the overwhelming majority of kid pornography was traded in others ways comparable to by peer-to-peer. It also ignored the truth that anyone who needed to bypass the filters may achieve this fairly easily.

Senator Conroy has been on the assault against Google after the search big issued a withering critique of his policy. Senator Ludlam stated Senator Conroy's assaults on Google have been "a deliberate misdirection of the controversy", whereas Jacobs said they "smack of a personal vendetta".

Senator Conroy additionally rejected issues that the government was creating a brand new necessary censorship mechanism that would be vulnerable to abuse by future governments.

"For forty four million dollars, we're shopping for ourselves an initiative which will have no measurable affect in any respect," Senator Ludlam said. "In change, we establish the structure for future governments to abuse the free and undefined 'RC' class so as to add a creeping range of fabric to the list. Once this architecture is established, the concept that its scope will not be expanded by future governments is a gamble we don't believe we should take."