Australian Web Filter Blacklist
The blacklist, we are told is designed to catalogue sites containing child pornography or other criminal content. It is now revealed however, that the list of 2,395 pages also includes online gambling sites, YouTube links, regular porn and fetish sites, and websites of a tour operator, Queensland boarding kennel and a Queensland dentist.
Wikileaks pages themselves have been added to the Australian blacklist, in particular the published list of sites banned by the Danish government.
There is no bigger issue than net censorship“These pages have been put on the blacklist (Australian), presumably as part of a worldwide compact, formal or otherwise, between national web censorship authorities.”
“While Wikileaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater. Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of up to $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist — a list the government hopes to expand into a giant national censorship machine.This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks. We were not notified by ACMA.
“In December last year we released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand. Of the sites censored in 2008, 1,203 sites were classified as “lese majeste” — criticizing the Royal family. Like Australia, the Thai censorship system was originally pushed to be a mechanism to prevent the child pornography.”
The pilot for the Australian mandatory internet filter currently running involves 6 major ISPs. They are:
Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.
Of course all of this extremely expensive, service retarding filtering, in the name of child protection, can be completely bypassed simply by browsing behind a proxy such as hidemyass or anonymouse.
see also techradar.com
Update
“The leak and publication of prohibited URLs is grossly irresponsible. It undermines efforts to improve cyber-safety and create a safe online environment for children,” Senator Conroy said.“ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution.”
Since the blacklist story broke, Wikileaks has mysteriously disappeared from the World Wide Web. This is not the first time and I wouldn’t credit Australian authorities with the credentials to make this happen. Friends in the US confirm the disappearance is not an Australian phenomenon. If Wikileaks is unavailable at your time of choosing and you would like a peak at the blacklist which is allegedly not real, click here.
killercoke.org
