Government goes to war with Google over net censorship

Government goes to war with Google over net censorship

www.smh.com.au

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

(visit the link for the full news article)

G'day

Here's my latest update on this appalling plan by the appalling Rudd government.

As I said in my last thread about this, I'm disgusted to see Australia become the "Nanny State".

But you know what?

They might just get this through.......

They will continue to use the argument that "if you are against the Rudd censorship plan, you are a supporter of child pornography".

And you know what?

Enough people will be stupid enough that it will work & Rudd.....the master of media manipulation & political spin..... will win

Government goes to war with Google over net censorship

Asher Moses
March 30, 2010 - 1:15PM

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/dc510a536c1f.jpg[/atsimg]
Under pressure ... Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. Photo: Glen McCurtayne

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

In an interview on ABC Radio last night, Senator Conroy also said he was unaware of complaints the Obama administration said it had raised with the government over the policy.

The government intends to introduce legislation within weeks forcing all ISPs to block a blacklist of "refused classification" websites for all Australians.

Senator Conroy has said the blacklist will largely include deplorable content such as child pornography, bestiality material and instructions on crime, but a large and growing group of academics, technology companies and lobby groups say the scope of the filters is too broad and will not make a meaningful impact on internet safety for children.

Google, which has recently been involved in a censorship spat with China, has been one of the filtering policy's harshest critics. It has identified a range of politically sensitive and innocuous material, such as sexual health discussions and discussions on euthanasia, which could be blocked by the filters.

Last week, it said it had held discussions with users and parents around Australia and "the strong view from parents was that the government's proposal goes too far and would take away their freedom of choice around what information they and their children can access".

Google also said implementing mandatory filtering across Australia's millions of internet users could "negatively impact user access speeds", while filtering material from high-volume sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter "appears not to be technologically possible as it would have such a serious impact on internet access".

"We have a number of other concerns, including that filtering may give a false sense of security to parents, it could damage Australia's international reputation and it can be easily circumvented," Google wrote.

On ABC Radio last night, the majority of callers were opposed to the filters and right before the end of the segment, Senator Conroy attacked Google over its privacy credentials.

"Recently the founders of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because notwithstanding their alleged 'do no evil' policy, they recently created something called Buzz, and there was a reaction, and people said well look aren't you publishing private information?," Senator Conroy said.

"[Google CEO Eric] Schmidt said the following: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place'. This is the founder of Google. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, 'we love cash', so when people say, shouldn't we just leave it up to the Googles of this world to determine what the filtering policy should be...."

Google said today it was surprised to hear Senator Conroy trying to "make this an issue about Google".

"This is a debate about freedom of access to information for all Australians, an issue of national importance. Let's focus on that," Google said.

Google's Buzz product added social networking features to Gmail but it caused a privacy uproar in February, with users complaining their contacts were being made public without their knowledge and that they had little control over who could follow their updates. Google quickly tweaked the service to allay these concerns.

Google said the Schmidt quote referred to by Senator Conroy had been taken out of context. Furthermore, Senator Conroy incorrectly labeled Schmidt one of the founders of the company, when in fact he joined the company as its CEO in 2001.

Opposition communications spokesman Tony Smith said it was Senator Conroy's "default position" to attack anyone that questions his policies.

"Google should be able to express their opinion without being attacked by the Minister and having their motives questioned," he said.


Senator Conroy also said he was not aware of the US State Department contacting his office or that of the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, over the internet filters. This contradicts a statement made by a US State Department spokesman yesterday.

"Our main message of course is that we remain committed to advancing the free flow of information which we view as vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally," a U.S. State Department spokesman Michael Tran told The Associated Press.

Tran declined to say when or at what level the U.S. State Department raised its concerns with Australia and declined to detail those concerns.

"We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I can say that in the context of that ongoing relationship, we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials," he added.

Senator Conroy argues the he is only attempting to apply the same restrictions placed on the distribution of books, magazines, DVDs and other content to the internet.

But critics say this approach fails to consider that the internet is a vastly different, dynamic medium. They say Senator Conroy's proposal is a heavy-handed measure that is easily bypassed by criminals and could restrict access to legal information.

Senator Conroy has conceded that greater transparency is needed in terms of how content ends up on the blacklist, but last night he again refused to make the blacklist itself public, saying it would provide people instant access to the banned material.

Whether the internet filtering policy is implemented depends largely on whether the Opposition supports or blocks the legislation. It has said it is waiting to see the government's legislation before stating a final position on the matter.

"The Federal Coalition supports sensible and workable measures to protect children from inappropriate online content," said Smith.

"However we are yet to be convinced that Labor’s mandatory filtering plans will actually be effective or achieve the best results.”

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not



www.smh.com.au (visit the link for the full news article)

this is totally againts human rights;
these politicians seems like the want to cut off their own penises

"RC"??
ANY online content is by default RC

This is not the will of the populous.

F**kers.

It would be interesting to see a rise in secure VPN hosts that provide remote browsing capabilities. These would be pretty much immune from filtering because the traffic within the VPN could not be monitored (which is the point of a VPN). Some could argue that proxy servers can do the same thing, too.

Who knows, maybe this will be the burr under the saddle that spurs a new technological revolution in secured communications.

Originally posted by rogerstigers
It would be interesting to see a rise in secure VPN hosts that provide remote browsing capabilities. These would be pretty much immune from filtering because the traffic within the VPN could not be monitored (which is the point of a VPN). Some could argue that proxy servers can do the same thing, too.
Who knows, maybe this will be the burr under the saddle that spurs a new technological revolution in secured communications.

G'day rogerstigers

It appears we will have to look into implementing these work-arounds as a matter of course.

However, that doesn't appear to address the broad performance decrease that is predicted to occur if Rudd has is way & his appalling is implemented.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

Well, in order for the operation to be successfull, you would need to setup a VPN host in a country that is not being censored.

As for the performance decreases, the main source of that would be the filtering algorhythm. Using a VPN, you would be bypassing the filter because a VPN is by its very nature a secured encrypted tunnel to a remote network. You do take a small performance hit with VPNs, but it is worth it to avoid government filtering.

reply to post by rogerstigers


G'day rogerstigers

We could have an ATS VPN For Aussies!

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

That would be an interesting side business for SkepticOverlord to get into. Trouble is finding a datacenter that is willing to keep Aussie secret service out.

Originally posted by rogerstigers
That would be an interesting side business for SkepticOverlord to get into. Trouble is finding a datacenter that is willing to keep Aussie secret service out.

G'day rogerstigers

Coincidentally, one of my best mate builds data centres!

We could get him to spec up one with a bit more concrete & a few secret underground levels.

Hey.....we could call it "Area 52"!

Cheers mate
Maybe...maybe not