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!