The Fascist Donkey

Small problems in this country often turn into big problems because no one acts when the time is right. Take Sydney transport for example. It’s hard enough to fix these problems even when everyone who wants to raise awareness does just that. What happens when our freedom of speech is taken away and what you are allowed to talk about is dictated by government? What will happen when complaining about this or that minister not doing his job properly gets your blog blocked? Well, fellow Australian citizen, you will find out, the hard way.

What the Australian government is proposing is to pass a law whereby any Internet content may be blocked, without any kind of approval process or consultation with the public, and keeping the list of blocked sites a secret. Yes I have heard Senator Conroy claim that it is only for hardcore this or that, the fact is that any RC content can be blocked, and if you bother to do the research you will see that this means anything that has not been classified. Has your blog been classified by the ACMA? Do you want to lose access to Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, eBay, or even Google? None of them have been classified and after this law passes the government will have the power to block them and virtually any other site.

You are about to hand over the keys to your freedom, and it matters very little who you are giving them to because that person will change every four years. In 20 years instead of being “Christian Value Conroy” it could be a hard-line imperialist Muslim, or a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.

Let’s look at how other countries have fared after the keys have been handed over to their respective governments. How about taking a trip to Iran at election time, hand in your Australian passport and settle down in Cuba, or shoot over to Beijing and try to catch up with your friends on Facebook.

None of this is new, it has happened before, and the Australian public is choosing not to learn from other countries’ mistakes. In those countries you will find that internet censorship has directly lead to a misinformed public to the point that democracy is no longer possible, loss of creativity to the point the country as a whole produces nothing new in terms of science and technology, very poor public services (such as transport), poor education, and not much of a future for the kiddies because 2 out of 5 will contract a fatal illness that could have been prevented with better governance (pollution, education, health-care).

Creating all of these problems in the name of ‘protecting kids’ is just plain sick, and people who do this do not deserve kids, the internet, an education, or any kind of freedom.

Finally, it does not matter if Senator Conroy, Australian Christians, or Australian parents have “good intentions” and truly “believe” they are doing the “right thing”. Ignorance is no excuse, and Hitler believed he was doing the right thing too.

“People get the government that they deserve” -Thomas Jefferson

In China, the internet is heavily censored, it is fair to say that China does not actually have the internet but rather a LAN administered by the government. In the past 15 years, the internet in China has changed from an information rich resource capable of being used in the social and economic development of the country (and needs to be slightly controlled to protect children), into a stagnant Orwellian style pool of hard-line xenophobic nationalists festering in their own juices. Now in 2010 it seems the government wants to push it even further, to protect national security of course.

There is a minority who are challenging these norms by exposing corrupt officials, challenging the nationalistic and xenophobic reactions to every issue, and generally trying to educate Chinese ‘netizens’ that loving the country does not mean loving the communist party. This minority however is under a constant heavy attack by the government. Some examples of this in the past 5 years have been:

ICP was introduced, a programme whereby all local websites must be registered with the government and comply with extremely vague laws that prohibit publication or distribution of information harming national security, causing loss to the nation’s reputation or interests, promoting ethnic discrimination or hatred, or including pornographic content. (I cannot recall when this came into effect).

All websites with user generate content (i.e. content generated by people other than the person/company on the ICP registration certificate) must not publish any user generated content which does not comply with the above laws or are quickly shut down.

2005: Foreign bandwidth was capped to curb the flow of ‘foreign influence’ over Chinese citizens and to curb the flow of ‘national secrets’ out of China.

2008: Massive crackdown on Chinese web hosts, thousands of sites shut down because they did not register for ICP.

2009: Announcement that the government will implement a white list of allowed sites instead of a blacklist of blocked sites. This means they will be blocking anything not ICP registered, which means only websites owned by Chinese companies following ICP rules laws (above) will be accessible in China.

2009: New law stating that all private websites are now illegal, only registered companies may start a website or register a domain, and all current websites owned by people rather than companies will be shut down. This includes Chinese citizens registering foreign domain names and web hosting. Note that registration of a company in China requires at least 10,000 RMB paid up capital (about 10 months wages for the average non-Beijing or Shanghai citizen). Whats more hilarious is that this was decided in a meeting between top officials in Beijing conjuring up ideas on how to promote science and creativity. Let me know how that one works out for you, oh so honorable and intelligent high ranking officials.

2010: China suspends registration of .cn domains

2010: Senior mainland Chinese officials called for more controls on the internet, saying they are crucial to national security. Major General Huang Yongyin writes that “For national security, the internet has already become a new battlefield without gunpowder,” Huang wrote in this month’s issue of Chinese Cadres Tribune. “Lawless elements and hostile forces at home and abroad have increasingly turned to the internet to engage in crime, disruption, infiltration, reactionary propaganda and other sabotage activities.”

2010: National laws passed that make ‘citizen journalism’ (blogging) illegal and punishable by jail sentences. Crackdown expected shortly.

2010: Top cadres push for a single entity to manage the internet, and require real name registration and national login page for any access to the internet anywhere in China including home, mobile phones, etc.

Apart from the above, the number of blocked websites has been on a steady exponential increase, and the available foreign bandwidth has been on the steady decrease (in an attempt to render VPNs and proxies useless).

So, is China becoming more open and free as the government repeatedly claims? We think that it’s possible they may not be telling us everything.

It is my view that it is very worthwhile for Australia to be spending tax money on measures to protect our country’s children from becoming victims of child abuse, sexual assault, and child pornography. What parent doesn’t want to protect their kids?

From a technical standpoint, it is impossible to prevent access to child pornography or curb the spread of child pornography online by using the government’s proposed filter. Simply put, people who want to produce, buy, or sell child pornography online will not be affected at all as they already cover their tracks very well by using secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections which cannot be blocked without completely cutting off Australia’s internet connection to the rest of the world. As the technical explanation for this would take a rather long post, and it has been done by numerous other bloggers already, I will not cover it here, but please do your research if in doubt.

Bearing in mind that the measures proposed by the government will not work at all to protect our kids, why don’t we spend $44 million dollars on something that actually does work to protect our children?

Some people might argue that we need the filter to protect children from viewing things online at home that they should not be viewing (as kids under about 15 won’t have the know-how to get through the filters). Well, let me state this very simply:

1. There are a lot of very disturbing, very hardcore porn sites on the internet, and none of them will be blocked under the proposed scheme,

2. Child porn sites are not accessible directly over the internet – they are hidden behind more security than your internet banking site (do you see links in google to your personal banking site with your account details?). They are not on Google, there are no links from Facebook, and your child is not going to ’stumble upon’ one while playing Happy Farm.

Let’s assume you are a responsible parent. Let’s put all questions about the government’s true motive here aside, do you really want to take money away from departments that can prevent child abuse in this country? Do you want to take money away from the departments that have saved and with more funding can continue to save other children just like Mason pictured above, and spend it on some pointless experiment that will not protect your children from anything?

What about the child pornographers?
FACT: Child pornographers currently do not need the internet to take pictures of your children and also do not use normal http web pages (the only type the proposed filter will block) to spread those pictures.

The people that can and do keep your children safe from sexual predators are the police, child protection agencies and relevant departments. Spending money on the filter is taking money away from these entities that actually have the know-how and resolve to protect your kids.

To put it bluntly: If you support the government’s crackpot idea then don’t complain when the police don’t have the resources to investigate a case regarding your child being used by some child porn ring.

Being mis-informed is not an excuse and does not change the facts.

You should have already heard this, but Google today announced they will not be censoring their search results in China any more, and that they may pull out of the country. I predicted here in 2007 that Google would not succeed in China because the government would stop them one way or another. It sounds like they have had enough of the Central Communist Party’s games, as has Rio Tinto, BHP, and Vale who yesterday sidelined Beijing in their iron ore price talks, again due to Beijing playing silly games with a “because we can” attitude.

Earlier in the day google.cn was not censored in any way, however at around 1pm China time it became censored again. Lets hope they aren’t backing down.

Google covered their China staff’s butts by saying:

“We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today.”

Good move, the last thing Google needs is their staff being locked up in some Chinese gaol (jail) for stealing some kind of secret because they won’t play ball with the communist party.

Google however is not totally immune to criticism here, they have been complicit and very ‘helpful’ to the Chinese government for quite some time and, to put it bluntly, are getting what all companies that aid totalitarian régimes  deserve. Maybe they have just come to the realisation that the Communist Party will never allow them, or any other foreign company, to get a firm foothold in any of China’s “protected markets” one of which is information, and they aren’t going to be racking in the cash as they probably once hoped.

The faster other companies dealing with China learn this lesson the hard way, and pull out, the less money they’ll lose.

Google's Beijing office this morning, January 13th, taken by ???.

Particular members of our Australian government – the people that are supposedly working by and for the people – are about to forcibly drag their dirty feet through our society and way of life to satisfy their own personal fetishes at the expense of our freedom – the very freedom that our forefathers died and were maimed protecting, the freedom that we Australians were lucky enough to have, but that most in the world are denied of – the freedom of unimpeded, unrestricted media consumption, in other words, our right to free speech.

Lessons from China
Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me explain where I’m coming from. I have spent the last 5 years living in China.

China, as most people know, heavily censors everything. The word ‘censorship’ does not do the system justice. They control everything. From the internet, to books, magazines, TV, radio and even the education system that feeds the nation’s youth. Nothing goes in or out without it being government approved, and usually government produced.

Since a month after the Olympics, the internet in China has been little more than a Local Area Network (LAN), and to the avid (or even not so avid) China watcher, this came as no surprise. The Chinese people have become completely immune and apathetic to this. Most do not even realise it is happening at all, and only a negligible minority fully understand the extent of this and its consequences. Anyone who questions it is considered ‘weird’.

If you want to know the effects of this environment on the average person, all you need to do is spend a year in China (which, I should note, is completely different to talking to the Chinese elite who are privileged enough to make it to countries like Australia to study, or even learn English within China).

And now you want to do this here?
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that my country, Australia, could end up like China. A Muslim overthrowing of our society, yes, but maybe I bought into the propaganda too much. An attack from the inside though, an attack on these basic freedoms by those elected by the people, for the people? Now it seems anyone in Australia who thinks this is possible is also ‘weird’, or maybe just a paedophile.

The pretext and reasoning behind China’s Great Firewall
“We need to create a small blacklist of about 1000 sites to protect Chinese citizens from ‘harmful content’ including: offensive child or violent pornography; harmful material such as suicide ‘how to’ guides, information on drugs and explosives; organising unapproved protests or civil unrest which could cause harm.”

That was in 1996. Today, in 2010, there is a white-list. All local websites must be approved by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it is illegal for individuals to register, own, or host a website for any reason. Most foreign hosted sites are blocked and in any case foreign bandwidth is limited (giving the end user a 28.8k dial up experience), which also renders VPN’s and proxies useless. This is likely to get much worse in the coming months now that they are systematically enforcing the white-list policy on all sites world world. That is the only method which can successfully control the internet. The Chinese are effectively cut off from the rest of the world, and that’s just how the government likes it.

Let’s look at Labour’s censorship plan
According to the current laws regarding classification of material in this country, anything that has not been classified and that a “reasonable adult” thinks needs a classification, may not be distributed in this country until such a time that it has been classified and can then be distributed ‘appropriately’. Can you imagine how many websites a “reasonable adult” might deem should be classified, even if only PG according to current laws it still needs to be blocked until it has been classified.

That means that the government will have the power to block any website as long as they can say a “reasonable adult” thinks it should be classified, and it has not yet received a classification. They can take as long as they want to produce a classification. Does your blog contain any words not suitable for someone under the age of 12? How about your Facebook page or twitter feed?

By agreeing to this policy you are agreeing that our leaders will be able block anything YOU write online at their discretion for as long as they want and they do not need to make the decision public.

Would the powers that be really influence the classification board in this way to suit their own agendas? For the answer, simply take a look at how many policies the auDA broke for Stephen Conroy.

The very fact that they are pushing through with this in spite of being told by industry experts that it will not work shows that the Labour party itself and indeed Senator Conroy are not “reasonable adults”, so who would make the decision on what is “reasonable” and what isn’t? Who will be making the decisions about what YOU are allowed to read and write? I don’t know. Do you?

Stephen Conroy’s justification for censorship
According to Stephen Conroy, we need internet censorship to protect people from viewing and spreading illegal content. We need a small blacklist, maybe 1000 sites, to protect the Australian people from “harmful content” including child pornography, how to commit suicide, information on how to use drugs, information on how to create explosives, and anything that a “reasonable adult” thinks should be blocked.

The Chinese couldn’t have said it better themselves.

It’s not going to achieve what they claim it will
If you work in the IT industry, its plain obvious that this will in no way stop you from visiting a site you want to access, the only way they can really achieve this is by blocking all foreign hosted websites so that proxies and VPNs to other countries will not work, which is what the Chinese are doing. If this law goes through, they will have precedent and reason to do just that because the “current methods are not working well enough, lets lock it down even more” which is exactly how it got done in China. Note that if that does happen, say goodbye to the internet all together, if you want a free trial, go to China for a week and try to blog.

The government has been told by industry experts at all levels that this is not going to achieve what they have been claiming they want it to achieve. So why would a “reasonable adult” willingly accept and push forward a plan for something that is clearly doomed to fail, something that experts in the IT field have all said will fail, something that even high school computing studies students know will fail?

Does Stephen Conroy et al really posses less gray matter than the average high school student? Or is there a hidden agenda?

So, Mr. Stephen Conroy, what exactly are you hiding?

To be exact, Stephen Conroy is this donkey.

China's censorship started in the same way for the same reasons.

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS TAKEN FROM HERE. THE LINK APPEARS TO NOW BE DEAD SO I HAVE RE POSTED IT ON THE SAME DATE AS THE ORIGINAL. THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR IS NICHOLAS PERKINS.

The auDA today suspended the registration of the domain stephenconroy.com.au, which was being used by those against the mandatory Internet filter which Senator Stephen Conroy has announced recently. The site has moved to http://www.stephen-conroy.com and they have posted the correspondence between auDA and the domain’s owner.

What is concerning to me is that they were only given 3 hours to respond to a request to provide evidence as to why they should be able to continue to own the domain. 3 hours. Lets look at the applicable auDA policies surrounding eligibility concerns.

The Complaints (Registrant Eligibility) Policy (2004-01) outlines the steps to take should there be any question surrounding a the eligibility to hold a domain name.

Sections 1 to 5 look at the eligibility criteria for holding a domain, and what to do when a registrant’s eligibility information (for example, ABN number, Trademark application, etc) are an issue. I would presume that this is not an issue in this case. We don’t know this, since the auDA wouldn’t say why they cancelled the domain registration. On this assumption, we then look at Section 6.

6. OTHER COMPLAINTS

6.1 This policy deals with complaints about the eligibility of a registrant, ie. whether the registrant’s identification details are current. This policy does not deal with complaints about:

a) the underlying validity of the registrant’s eligibility (eg. whether the registrant is actually carrying on a business under their registered business name);

b) a registrar’s interpretation of the allocation criteria (ie. whether a domain name is an exact match, abbreviation, acronym or close and substantial connection); or

c) a registrant’s use of their domain name (ie. whether the domain name violates or infringes on the rights of another party, such as trade mark rights).

6.2 Complaints under paragraph 6.1a) should be taken up with the relevant government authority, such as the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) or the state/territory registrar of business names.

6.3 Complaints under paragraph 6.1b) are handled under auDA’s Complaints Policy (2007-03). Complaints under paragraph 6.1c) may be handled under the .au Dispute Resolution Policy (auDRP) (2008-01), or alternatively the complainant should seek legal advice.

Well I presume the issue isn’t 6.1 a, since they didn’t pass this onto ASIC or another relevant authority. 6.1 b is looking at whether a registrar should have allowed the name to be registered in the first place. Since they went to the owner for answers, it must be 6.1 c. Remember, we don’t know for sure, since the auDA still haven’t told the owner what the issue is. So if we are right, the complaint is to be handled by the .au Dispute Resolution Policy (auDRP) (2008-01), or by lawyers. No sign of lawyers yet, so lets look at that dispute policy. They must have followed that.

The .au Dispute Resolution Policy (auDRP) (2008-01) covers what is to happen when a dispute occurs. The basics as I understand it is that the complainant (that is the person who wants the domain taken down) must submit details of the complaint and pay a fee of between $2,000 and $4,000. Then there is this important point.

“5.1 The respondent will receive notice of the complaint from the provider chosen by the complainant. The respondent may file a response no later than 20 days after they are notified of the complaint.

So if a complaint is received, the respondent has 20 days to respond. Not 3 hours! Also, the notice should come through the dispute resolution provider, not the auDA itself. I would presume this is to allow the auDA to remain at arm’s length from all resolution processes. Perhaps they should have done this here.

Now lets presume for a moment that all of this was done, which we know it wasn’t. Now if the outcome of the dispute resolution process is that the domain registration is to be cancelled, they must wait 10 days first.

7.2 [...]  If the Panel decides that the domain name should be transferred or cancelled, the registrar is required to wait 10 business days before implementing the decision to allow for legal proceedings to be commenced.

That’s 10 days! Not 3 hours!

Anyone for censorship? I note that the correspondence relating to this issue has come from the CEO of the auDA, Chris Disspain. Why would the CEO of Australia’s domain name administrator get involved in sorting out such an issue? Was political pressure exerted from the Minister of Communications or his ministerial staffers?

This is why we need to fight the mandatory filter. This is why we need to stop Internet censorship before it comes out of hand. With a filter, there would be no need to have a domain removed to try and get rid of political commentary the Government didn’t agree with. The site could be on the ACMA blacklist faster than you can say “Bill of Rights” and no one would be any the wiser.

This is very concerning, Australia. Very concerning.