Australian BlackList released to the world

davidr — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:27:00 GMT

Well, no surprises there. The Australian list of blocked sites is supposedly now in the wild - and all reports I've seen thus far indicate it's correct, at least for the most part.

ACMA has come down pretty hard on sites linking to blocked material and since the list is sure to contain at least one site that really IS on the list, I can't in good conscience link to the leaked list.

But I'm thinking that if you searched Google for it, you'd find it on a community edited site (a wiki) containing government and corporate leaks. Possibly even run by a non-profit org.

As before, my key concerns are that there's no way to request that you be removed from the list, and that the list contains sites that are, at least at this moment in time, NOT illegal, X rated or R rated. Many of the sites apparently link to dead pages or items, and thus return 404's. Others seem to be miscategorized - a dentist, a tourist operator.

References: OCAU, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, WhirlPool.

The Great Firewall of Australia

davidr — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:43:00 GMT

Note: Blunt opinion follows. These are not necessarily the views of my employers, past, present or future.

In recent times Australia has been ~~blessed~~ cursed with a series of clueless, idiotic communications ministers each seemingly more ill-informed than the last.

The most recent addition to this list of incompetents is one Hon Stephen Conroy, our Minister for Communications, Broadband and the Digital Economy. One would think that the view on Ministerial function espoused by Yes, Minister would be over the top and exaggerated, yet it appears that this particular Minister is truly hell bent on destroying Communications, Broadband and the Digital Economy in Australia.

His most recent attack of anti-Broadband sentiment brings us the Great Firewall of Australia. Ostensibly a list of "bad sites" that is available for Australians to use to protect themselves and their children from viewing illegal content (think of the children!) it turns out to be a pair of black lists (think of the children!). The first (think of the children!) is a listing of sites not suitable for, you guessed it, children (think of the children!), while the second is apparently "Illegal stuff" (oh PLEASE won't you think of the children!). I say apparently because there is currently no discussion about:

What is on the list - will web-based mail services be blocked because you might receive adult spam?;
How to get things on the list;
How to get things off the list;
How granular the list is - will http://www.example.com/, a web hosting site, be entirely blocked because http://www.example.com/sites/usera/site1/subsiteA/ contains instructions on making explosives?;
How long until the lists are exploited for political gain (I estimate about 1.2 seconds before the sites of any anti-clean-feed campaigners are blocked as "illegal")

The press release summarises the report but there is of course no detail about what will actually be tested in the ISP trials.

If you're an Australian citizen, and you want to register a dissenting opinion on this, I'd suggest following the lead of the people at No Clean Feed. Here's the letter I wrote, if you're looking for some inspiration.

If you're for the mandatory clean feed (think of the children!) there's little hope for you.

Search results matching tag 'Internet Filtering'

Australian BlackList released to the world

The Great Firewall of Australia