We're hoping the leaking of the list comes as a real blow to the government's "clean feed" censorship plans. The list already includes legal poker sites, and the websites of a tourism operator and a dentist.
All this censorship nonsense really makes me ashamed to be Australian.
After you spend a few more hours being ashamed, get MAD!!!
I would be highly surprised if the "bill of goods" sold to the AU gov is dissimilar to the well proven Great Firewall of China. This means you have major companies (you know who they are) profiting from the mega-routers needed to employ this solution.
Find out which of your politicos is profiting from this..I'm sure some are. Everything points to money!!!
For those American's that think "this would never happen here"...think again. This AU firewall-in-progress is a serious battleground for freedom of speech of all developed nations.
Note that some are hostnames but others are actual URIs, not just domains. So not only are they filtering certain hosts, they are presumably sniffing HTTP packets.
- There was also a myspace profile
- A youtube profile (or vid - can't remember)
- An amusing sendup of fundy Christianity
- The Danish blocked URI list on wikileaks
- that abortion/fetus image
(We know that the last 2 are on the actual ACMA blacklist itself - the others might just be the filtering company...)
"Under existing laws the ACMA blacklist includes URLs relating to child sexual abuse, rape, incest, bestiality, sexual violence and detailed instruction in crime," Senator Conroy said.
No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.
That's a red herring. Leaking the list merely informs people about what is being banned. It does not compromise "cyber safety" since it does not unban the sites on the list.
I came to post the exact same thing. The familiar government cry of 'won't someone think of the children'.
I note with interest the mention of the Federal Police (like FBI for US residents) looking into it. Just what is the AFP going to do if someone obtains the information from a foreign location, and then posts it on a non-Australian website? Send them a threatening letter?
The beauty of the internet is that it continues to evade politicians attempts to regulate, control and tax. You need a totalitarian state to gain complete control, and even that is very porous.
Mr @andrewsayer on Twitter called the ACMA to thank them for publishing the list (ha), and when he did so they inadvertently told him it was indeed the list. Supposedly.
The current popular theory is that the list is the ACMA list plus a number of other sites added by the software provider, given this list was supposedly leaked by someone in the company that makes the filter software being trialled. This would explain the "it isn't the list" denials as well as the "how dare you publish our list" outrage.
wouldn't it be easy to verify? just have an external proxy and start comparing html pages from a normal connection. If there are differences in the html dom, then that site should be flagged.
its my understanding the client was just the beginning. AU is implementing a full-on China-style firewall that sniffs packets on the fly. Welcome to the People's Republic of Australia!!!
Almost wonder if this was deliberately leaked so that everyone looks at the list and goes - "oh okay it's just porn etc." and stops thinking about the real issue.
This AU firewall is most likely going to end up being what China has in place. China's is a solid packet filtering beast that allows the government to control whatever info it wants!!!
For a country like AU that supposedly has similar citizens rights as in the U.S., its a sign of things to come for many developed nations.
This is critical Hacker News. Not rumor and gossip.
I don't mean it's rumor or gossip - I find interesting discussion on reddit. It's the general topic I have an issue with. It's (VERY) newsworthy, but I'm not sure it's in any way hacker-related.
All this censorship nonsense really makes me ashamed to be Australian.