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Rabelais

Internet Censorship Trials

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Well, we're fucked. Trial results were released about 30 minutes ago. The fix is in, legislation to be introduced in 2010.

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/funding_and_programs/cybersafety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot

Australia likely to become the only Western nation with mandatory internet censorship. You know the sad thing? 99% of Australians do not give a flying fuck.

Circumvention techniques can also be blocked. Prepare for an army of wowzers to be trawling the internet for anything they think they can censor - including "detailed instruction in crime". Theoretically, many of our favorite ethno related sites could be blocked.

Key findings

Filtering Refused Classification (RC) content

The pilot demonstrated that ISPs can effectively filter a list of URLs such as the ACMA blacklist with a very high degree of accuracy and a negligible impact on internet speed.

Filtering additional categories of content

The accuracy results of filtering additional categories of content at the ISP-level, for parents wishing to have further content filtered, showed an improvement on previous testing of ISP-level filtering technologies undertaken by the ACMA, suggesting that commercially available filtering products are becoming increasingly effective.

The pilot demonstrated that implementation of filtering additional categories of content can also block some common circumvention techniques.

 

Edited by Dale Cooper

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Yeah, it's pretty bad.

And who is going to save us, Abbott? We are in (at least potentially) deep shit.

Time to get working on your VPN's and other tunneling gadgets. Time to stop relying so heavily on the web.

Depending on what filtering methods are taken up, the possibility of severe snooping by the gov are increased; I wouldn't want to be on an ISP that used a Deep Packet Inspection option.

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better go practice me smoke signals

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cunts...!

That's it one more year to save up some coin and I'm moving back overseas...for good this time, fuck this for a laugh, they can have their stinking 2 dimensional country and cook all the prawns on the barbie they want...never really been happy here anyways, fucking pussy politicians, cotton wool laws and soccer mum mentality.

:wave-finger:

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fucken bullshit! thought all this blew over. what a giant leap in the wrong direction. ill have basically no use for the internet once this comes into play :BANGHEAD2:

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I think the site is down. Too many visitors maybe? This is plain fucked. The level of apathy and indifference amoungst australians is disgusting. I'm very disappointed. I've always liked canada. Maybe even mexico?

I'm concerned for these forums. Even if it is only knowledge we trade, i still cant see sab getting off lightly. I hope i'm wrong.

cheers

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The Federal Government will introduce compulsory internet filtering to block overseas sites which contain criminal content, including child sex abuse and sexual violence.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced the changes today following a controversial trial to filter the internet which was conducted earlier this year.

Senator Conroy says some internet content is simply not suitable in a civilised society.

"It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material," he said.

"The Government believes that parents want assistance to reduce the risk of children being exposed to such material."

He says the Government will not determine what is blacklisted on the internet in Australia, rather an independent body will determine what sites are rated as RC for refused classification.

Legislation will be introduced into Parliament next year which will require all ISPs to block material which has been refused classification in other countries.

This would include sites containing child sex abuse, bestiality, sexual violence or detailed information about how to use drugs or commit crimes.

The filtering trial attracted criticism from some who said it would not work and would slow internet speeds.

But Senator Conroy says the trial has been successful.

"Our pilot, and the experience of ISPs in many western democracies, shows that ISP level-filtering of a defined list of URLs can be delivered with 100 per cent accuracy," he said.

"It also demonstrated that it can be done with negligible impact on internet speed."

Grants will also be offered to ISPs to voluntarily block other content.

After the legislation is passed the filter will take 12 months to implement.

Senator Conroy says the Government will take steps to ensure the filter is transparent and people know why material is being blocked.

This may include measures which allow people to appeal the decision to block a page and notifications to websites that they have been blocked.

The Government has been trialling the filter since late May and was due to report in July on the outcomes of the trial.

It has faced fierce criticism that it will strangle free speech on the internet, is open to potential government abuse and will ban sites that should not be coming under scrutiny.

In March, an alleged list of about 1,000 sites already banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) was leaked online, revealing that harmless sites had also been marked as unacceptable.

Nine ISPs originally agreed to take part but iiNet pulled out of the trial in March, saying the filter would not work and was a dead parrot.

However, Optus joined the trial in April.

In May 2008, the Government said it would spend $125.8 million over four years on several measures to strengthen cyber safety, including the filter.

The Government maintains the filter is not designed to curtail freedom of speech.

###

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^^^^^

I love how Conroy only refers to kiddie porn etc. He does not mention how far reaching 'refused classification' material goes. We're talking sites on euthanasia, graffiti, ethnos...shit the list of material is too big to mention.

I have to say I have been following this for the last couple of hours...it's impressive. Traffic on #nocleanfeed at Twitter is unbelievable, 300 comments in under 2 hours on ABC news site, 100's of replies on Whirlpool...it's crazy. I think the Rudd and Conroy have just seriously shot themselves in the foot.

I hope this translates into more coverage in the media, it's the top news story on most sites. Next few days might be interesting.

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Disappointing news indeed.

Torsten, if the worst happen and they do block this site, can you make a back-up archive where we can view the site information up until block day on file/CD/DVD? I wouldn't have a clue how these things work, is this possible without too much effort?

There's a lot of valuable information here that should be preserved.

The alternative is we make a new site called The Crockery where we all talk in code about our wonderful Plate allies and Earthenware issues across the globe. May take some getting used to but I'm confident that given the diversity of crockery we should be able to have a code for every plant and drug. A ridiculous proposal I know, but so is internet censorship.

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Grants will also be offered to ISPs to voluntarily block other content.

ppppppffffttt don't you love this part...all I see in this statement is ISP's will you use this as a huge cash grab, the more they find to block, the more grant money.

I'm sure shareholders will be happy though, sipping chardonnay on their balconies with other soulless aristocrats, sipping, chuckling and basking in their success.

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Legislation will be introduced into Parliament next year which will require all ISPs to block material which has been refused classification in other countries.

 

How does this work? Is it only if it is refused classification by the host county?

And then this decision deems the site unfit for the Australian Intranet (AI).

Say goodbye to the World Wide Web.

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Big internet black market on its way. But none of this matters! What about remote desktops to distant servers. Amongst the many things I do is trading on UK horse Races. The server that my software interacts with is located in the UK and there is a fair bit of lag to get all the information you need. But i pay for a premium membership which means the program is installed and running logged in on another server just KLMS up the road. When i want to Trade i Log onto a remote desktop from any PC in the world, I am sent only a video stream of the program running on the distant server. When i place a bet , the server running my software can send and process information with the Betting server at a much shorter distance. I'm sure this concept can be made available to Internet users. You just have mass servers running firefox streaming the video feeds of uncensored internet to individual users in Australia. Would be a nice business for an overseas investor. I hope all this makes sence

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How does this work? Is it only if it is refused classification by the host county?

And then this decision deems the site unfit for the Australian Intranet (AI).

Say goodbye to the World Wide Web.

 

Rahli,

I think basically, it works like this (please someone correct me if I am wrong):

What happens is that anyone can make a complaint to the Australian Media and Communications Authority (they have submission forms on their website). If the site is hosted in Australia, then a take-down notice is forwarded and threats of fines, charges etc.

If the site is hosted overseas, then it is added to the blacklist which is used by filter software vendors to add to their products.

But if the filter passes the senate, then this blacklist will be forced on everyone via their ISP.

But here is the kicker: The blacklist contains no more than several thousand websites, just several thousand out of what would be tens-of-millions of websites out there that potentially contain material which is 'refused classification'. A filter based on the blacklist is going to block the proverbial drop in the ocean. You can bet your ass our government knows this, which is why this is so worrying. Expect the filter to move beyond the blacklist in the future and become more pervasive and creeping into other methods of blocking RC content.

The ACMA can not possibly keep up with all the content out there...there would literally have to be thousands of people working around the clock trawling the net looking for RC material for this method to be effective.

It is quite plain to see that this ACMA blacklist is just the first step. Imagine the way Google works with China, it is conceivable the same thing could be happening here within the next 5 years.

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Rahli,

I think basically, it works like this (please someone correct me if I am wrong):

That's pretty much it as I understand it.

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ABC is doing a report tonite @ 10.15pm on lateline...twitter is going ballistic with tweets on this.

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Its gon take me ages to spam and then report every site that isnt listed but ill give it a crack.

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Rahli,

I think basically, it works like this (please someone correct me if I am wrong):

What happens is that anyone can make a complaint to the Australian Media and Communications Authority (they have submission forms on their website). If the site is hosted in Australia, then a take-down notice is forwarded and threats of fines, charges etc.

If the site is hosted overseas, then it is added to the blacklist which is used by filter software vendors to add to their products.

But if the filter passes the senate, then this blacklist will be forced on everyone via their ISP.

But here is the kicker: The blacklist contains no more than several thousand websites, just several thousand out of what would be tens-of-millions of websites out there that potentially contain material which is 'refused classification'. A filter based on the blacklist is going to block the proverbial drop in the ocean. You can bet your ass our government knows this, which is why this is so worrying. Expect the filter to move beyond the blacklist in the future and become more pervasive and creeping into other methods of blocking RC content.

The ACMA can not possibly keep up with all the content out there...there would literally have to be thousands of people working around the clock trawling the net looking for RC material for this method to be effective.

It is quite plain to see that this ACMA blacklist is just the first step. Imagine the way Google works with China, it is conceivable the same thing could be happening here within the next 5 years.

 

:blink:

Thanks

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Totally don't care...

How awesome is well maintained, categorised and properly compiled information...

I HATE...repeat HATE...pRon popups and other totally offensive media...if only they did the same thing with Television broadcasters and ACA! no more stories about meth heads...no more utter drivel about violent murdering psychopaths, and a 'classification" system that will provide an idea about the quality of information...

it's not like we aren't censored by environment, intelligence and or karma anyway...

there are things in this world that belong in the gutter...

if some right left wing bunch of hackers bring down the net for this, then i will be slightly frustrated...

although anarchy is a strangely attractive principle, the mind has its functions, its organisation and its filtering mechanisms...

this site is centered around ethnobotany...a far reaching and varied topic involving largely anthropological information regarding the use of plant and mineral substances by the human race...its not mindless evil.

would you delete the footage of two elephants giving it to each other from the discovery channel? neither would "they"...

chances are, only slybacon will notice the difference. and as he quite correctly stated, the only limit is socio-economic. which although controversial, is a very very old idea. rich people watching s&m hmmm...ok i need to rethink...

love. progress...happiness in the flames of the iron crucible...

haha...people dont even care...and if they do, they dont act.

maybe this will stir some humanity.

blessings.

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if you want to know what content will be blocked then have a look at the office of film and literature classification website for all the items that are classified RC. Anything showing penetrative sex, violence combined with sex [even if faked], anything related to drugs [esp trip reports and instructions], and a whole lot of other stuff is covered there. I am sure the government knows that turning off penetrative sex porn sites will lose them a lot of votes, so I doubt they will go for that anytime soon, but coming down hard on drugs is always popular for politicians, so this will affect us in a big way.

The shop site and the forums are on separate domains and the shop will soon be free of any drug related information, so will not get filtered. If the forums ever get shut down I will make sure to update the links on the shop site acordingly.

I have a friend in china who likes to do research on the other side of the great firewall and he tells me that with a few little tricks he can get EVERYTHING. So it seems that rules are once again only for the masses. As stated so often about this censoring in australia, it will have zero effect on the pedophiles. So I am sure if they can find a way then so can we. Or well just have to invent a new medium - the last one lasted 20 years.

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You can get a high speed VPN to any sane country for 5-10USD a month. I would go New Zealand, in terms of internet technology they have been ahead of us for almost a decade. Their pipe speed to other countries is probably significantly faster than ours.

Australian geeks are some of the most tech savvy and vindictive in the world. The countrywide USB sneakernet has been transferring pirated movies/music/books/software/everything at a bandwidth faster than the the fastest Australian domestic internet speed for almost three years (roughly 5.5 megabytes per second to express post a full 500GB hard drive anywhere in the country for less cost than a 500GB/month download quota on any ISP). Use specific VPN darknets will start popping up everywhere and before long, hooking up to each other to provide a fully functional and undetectable internet-within-internet.

Said it before, will say it again, I remain largely unphased. Wake me up when the government is willing to block encrypted traffic on the HTTPS port to all hosts who aren't on a whitelist of somesort.

I have used all the below tools at one point or another and can assure they all function equally well to circumvent this rediculous measure in short order in an undetectable manner.

Read all your prohibited material using these tools and an ubuntu livecd (or similar solution winxp livecd for example) to ensure no illegal data is written to your hard drive (from whence it can be recovered). You can save useful docs onto a heavily encrypted (using truecrypt or similar) USB stick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network

http://www.darknet.org.uk/2006/03/ssl-vpns-and-openvpn/

http://www.torproject.org/

http://www.haystacknetwork.com/

http://www.i2p2.de/

http://freenetproject.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol

http://www.ssh.com/support/documentation/online/ssh/winhelp/32/Tunneling_Explained.html

http://souptonuts.sourceforge.net/sshtips.htm

http://freenx.berlios.de/

http://thomer.com/howtos/nstx.html

I'd incite you all to some subversion, if they hadn't already made that illegal a few years ago...

 

 

It has to start somewhere It has to start sometime

What better place than here, what better time than now?

All hell can't stop us now

All hell can't stop us now

EDIT:

Just spotted this on WP, suits well, cred to Reebdoog:

First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up.

Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up.

Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up.

Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up.

Then they came for me.

And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Edited by apothecary

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Will it be illegal to use any means to bypass the filter...?

If so what will be the penalties for being caught?

Do we really need that extra stress of surfing illegally ?

Is there ways to shut down forum viewing for guests or non members...? stop any outside search engines from showing forum topics related to drugs or questionable material...or at least any viewing from outside does not show any drug related words/topics/discussions of any sort...heavy policing by mods...for members posting such words in forums that can be viewed by the outside..too much work/hassle..?

Can we make that any new members are strictly invite only from existing members who know them well...?

There has to be way to save this community and how it stands...if we don't work together and fast to stop this forum from being shut down then we may well lose everything we have spent countless hours building upon.

I must say this senator Conroy is one of the most arrogant sons of bitches I've ever had the displeasure to watch in front of a public microphone...and so relatively young as well.

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There has to be way to save this community and how it stands...

 

Be patient bro.

For one I would prefer things to continue as they are exactly until the last possible moment. Closing off membership and similar measures will only provide these fools with their long term goal: crackdown on information.

When the men with book burning torches are on their way to the monestary the monks don't pick up swords to fight, they faithfully inscribe all their knowledge and send it off to a saner land in hope of its return in a better future.

This time around it takes 5 seconds for inscription and probably a few hours to send it anywhere in the world safe from harm where it doesn't even need to remain hidden like the old days.

But either way, just like the monks did we should continue business as usual until the threat presents itself in real form. There is after all, still knowledge to be got!

Don't let this hysterical bullshit get to you. They still need to introduce this legislation, get a pass in the Senate (which I believe will require floor crossing from both Green and Independent senators who are both on the record as opposed to the deal - as is the IIA), followed by a lengthy implementation process and even lengthier process of stopping hackers from destroying their hard work once a week. As someone in the industry I can safely say technical implementation will be a long drawn out nightmare for these idiots if they can pull it off AT ALL. Still at the end of the day assuming all this comes to pass there is no way for them to kill circumvention techniques off without killing off pretty much all legitimate ecommerce.

For all we know this is just a doomed-to-fail ploy by Rudd/Conroy to appease the fundy Fielding so he can say "I tried" and get some juice on Fielding for the next floor crossing.

At the moment, the only tangible outcome I see from this "look ma - no brains" exercise of the Labour government is that a shitload of one of their core demographics (left leaning under 30s) will be voting Green or other next election. Society at large may be totally apathetic to this shit, but the same internet wave which Obama and Rudd tried to capitalise on is certainly going to come back and bite them in the arse before too long.

"We put this fence here, but damn if it doen't stop water going in that giant hole over there"

Glory%20Hole%20-%20Monticello%20Dam.png

Edited by apothecary
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