Three months ago hundreds of us marched on our nations capital, Canberra.  Given the pass-the-hat budget, and the mainstream media driven publicity we attained to the cause of free speech in Australia, this was a mamoth achievement.  Three months ago we also could not foretell what was to come on the day we scheduled our next series of national rallies across the nation.

Two days ago several large unions answered the call of a large push online to demonstrate in all capitals regarding the situation in Iran, as this is an emergent issue and was unexpected, and given the climate that the police in all capitals will be dealing with  having so many people demonstrating it has been decided that the 27th protest shall be called off out of respect for those who have died in Iran and those who support the democratic process.

As the dust clears from these rallies we will, of course, regroup and recommence rallying.  In the interim ongoing lobbying has been underway at all levels, from the street, to Canberra itself.  The pro-censorship lobby have been awfully silent though, but we all know they won’t accept rationalism that easily.

From news.com.au

AAP

March 30, 2009 01:35pm

The media this week has been awash with articles regarding Internet censorship, the ACMA Blacklist and proposed Internet filter.

Following are artlices from www.news.com.au regarding these issues.

Website watchdog ACMA says it wasn’t behind German police raid of Wikileaks.de, 26 March 2009

Telstra worker Leslie Nassar hasn’t been sacked for Fake Stephen Conroy - yet, 26 March 2009

Rudd Net filter ‘a shambles’, 25 March 2009 Thank you Senator Minchin for your comments, we most definately agree with you. - ” “I don’t think (Communications Minister) Senator (Stephen) Conroy thought the policy through at the time,” he told ABC Television. “It’s been a shambles from the outset.” ”

New ‘ACMA blacklist’ leak claims banned websites list was recently edited, 24 March 2009

Whilst many members of Anonymous have shown undying support for the free speech posse of the Digital Liberty Coalition, their international brothers and sisters have released a call to arms.  Offers of support have flooded in from the ‘hackers on steroids’ from ebaumsworld, with bold rhetoric threatening to thwart any attempts to censor Australia.

“The Internet is a medium founded on free speech and anonymity. What they are doing threatens that. Information is supposed to be free. Knowledge is power. And they are seeking to remove that power from us. It is well known that Australia is being used a test ground for this idea to spread it to the rest of the world. ISP bans such as this one have already been implemented in various nations such as China, Thailand, and some Scandinavian countries such as Sweden. We cannot let this happen. Everyone has the right to information. The criminals responsible for the illegal material should be brought to justice to remove this problem, the Internet users themselves should not be censored from this as well as things that do not fall into this illegal category. This must not be allowed to be spread to the rest of us. If we don’t stop it now, it will come for us.”

The 21st of March marked the first meeting of all stake holders from all states who have come together to form the Digital Liberty Coalition. Speakers included Colin Jacobs, Jim Stewart, John Kaye, Fiona Patten and the DLC’s very own Jeremiah Hutchinson, with entertainment on the day provided by A.COE, Super Best Friends, and Dave the Happy Singer.

The day started slow, with small clusters of the great unwashed brothers and sisters of the digital realm milling about in the shade, distributed like a peer to peer network, eyes catching packets exchanging, confusion rife. As soon as the PA’s crackled to life the crowd began to form, a brief head count revealing that the trickling distributed masses numbered into the hundreds.

We wish to thank everyone who came out on the day to show your support for free speech, and equality for internet users. The government would NEVER use an arbitrary heuristics driven pithy program to filter print medium, or television, so it follows that it is illogical for the internet to be subjugated to Stephen Conroy’s cut down version of Windows 3.11 1984.EXE and the horrific effects it would have on internet speed across our great nation.

“This is a digital generation, this is a digital century, to slow down the internet is to give our economy a lobotomy,” said John Kaye, before suggesting that a one size fits all internet filter is an open door to censorship and dictatorship suggesting an alternative of taking the $44,000,000 the Government plans to waste on censoring the internet and instead provide half to the federal police to stop child pornography at its source and the other half to an education program to ensure children and parents are net savvy.

Jim Stewart addressed the fact that with the Google adaptation of the Gutenberg project, arbitrary censorship using filtering technology would yield to utter irony with the most likely censoring of George Orwell’s 1984, “I don’t care about these surveys out there that say 80% of teenagers stumble upon porn while doing their homework, rubbish, that’s what I tell my mum too!”

It is worth noting that Canberra is quite an abhorrent city to navigate, and whilst we’re thankful to all the wonderful netizens (and even the IRL mobs) that showed up and made the trek to convene on our nations capital, it goes without saying that clearly seeing the brain numbingly poor road network and complete lack of public transport we can see why parliamentarians would be foolish enough to think censorship, in any form, is an acceptable way to stop any action. Their minds are clearly addled by the hot days, cold nights, and horse shoe’s being passed off as ‘circles’ with hidden slip roads marked ‘heavy vehicles only’ usually being the only way to get where you’re going.

We’ll leave you with YouTube videos of some of the wonderful speakers who graced us with their orations thanks to an unknown videographer; the Digital Liberty Coalition had two broadcast quality cameras running at the event but as volunteers are in short supply getting the film edited and put together takes a little while, that footage will be up soon!

Earlier today the ACMA blacklist was leaked on Wikileaks.

We have declined to comment to the media for the most part at present, and are waiting for Saturday’s national rally to point out some interesting things we noticed, even before the list went live. A full statistical work up was carried out on the list, and chatter amongst the DLC staff over Conroy’s inevitable need to deny it’s the ACMA list has continued for days.

The stats are in, and it’s pretty novel what we’ve found. Further, as predicted, about an hour ago at a press conference Conroy finally came out rather than being ‘unavailable for comment’ with a blanket denial that it’s the ACMA list.

I submit one question to Senator Conroy; if it’s not the ACMA list, why is an ACMA staffer who’s been discussing the list with several anti-censorship folk been running around asking what to do with it? Giant practical joke, or Conroy caught in a lie, you be the judge.

Whilst the list in question contained a certain amount of porn, it did not by any means limit itself to that. It’s interesting to note that independent researchers doing statistical run downs on the list have noticed almost every single website linked to from the TGP’s on the blacklist conform with 18 U.S.C. 2257, meaning they keep records on file that all models depicted are over legal age in the US.

What is more interesting is the other sites that are on the list. Wikipedia? Seriously?

See you all down in Canberra, let’s put an end to this pithy tirade of idiocy. It’s quite clear to all of us now that we have few parliamentarians who are in touch with contemporary technology, or internet savvy in any way other than news websites and email. It’s time we show them if they want to represent the Australian people, they ought to at least TRY and be in touch with social norms, or at least consult with us before blanket banning half the net. Let’s make sure our voices are heard this Saturday.

Senator Minchin says that whatever the result of the tests, any national implementation will have to come under scrutiny from the Senate, where it would face some tough questions.

“At the very least, the Senate at least would have the opportunity to express a view on a disallowable instrument,” he said. “I think Senator Conroy should commit now to it being done legislatively, so the Parliament can have a say in this. He shouldn’t try to sneak it through the back door, through a regulation or other instrument. I think he should just come upfront and say if he’s going to do it, it being such a significant issue, it should be done by legislation to remove any doubt.”

A spokesman for Senator Conroy says the Minister is still looking into whether the filter would require legislation, or could be implemented through another means.

Adapted from ABC.

As reported by Asher Moses in The Sydney Morning Herald today (linked here) Senator Nick Xenophon has withdrawn his support for a mandatory filter saying “the more evidence that’s come out, the more questions there are on this”.

This is great news for those of us who are opposing the filter so far, but that does not mean that the fight is won.  Senators can cross the floor, deals can be made (look at the recent stimulus package) and coming up is a half Senate election where if Labor gains a few extra seats, there is not much that could stop the government as the Labor party would have enough seats themselves to push through any furhter legislation.

Senator Conroy has ignored all advice on technical issues, the problems behind the filter (such as easy bypass, blocking of legitimate sites etc.) but he still has the means to go about blanket censorship for the Australian people.

In addition to ignoring what Australian citizens want and need, and having the means to go about his plans, The Senator and his staff have decided to add more content to the ACMA black list and are considering blocking sites which include legal content.  Drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence etc.

If Xenophon can admit that the Government is going down the wrong path in their attempt to protect the children, then how many other politicians are going along with this against their better judgement.

“I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent.”  This quote from Nick Xenophon just about sums up the governments plan.  They have good intentions in wanting to protect the children.  We all want that.  But this is going about it in a very, very wrong manner.

61 per cent of a recent survey by Netspace strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering.  6.3 percent strongly agreed.  Our Government is trying to change the lives of over twenty million people for a minority.

With proper education of children, parental discretion and a voluntary filter the goals the government are aiming for are easily attainable at minimal costs.

The fight for our freedoms is far from over, yet this is truly good news.

The Australian’s Superblog about the internet filter (links following) was an opportunity for both sides to have a say in what they believe the filter is going to be for Australia.

Our own Andrew Kellerman had this to say.

“DURING 2009 while the rest of the world seeks faster networking infrastructure, we are taking a huge leap back in time.

Whether the current government is courting a certain senate seat or has become completely detached from reality and the average Australian has yet to be seen, but one thing is for certain; this filter is not what any educated Australian would want.

About $44 million will be spent on a white elephant that has been proven to take seconds to bypass by downloading Tor or any other proxy program readily available, slowing internet speeds anywhere up to 70 per cent.

We’re definitely on the right path to set Australia’s commercial infrastructure back to the 80’s, probably round about 1984.

Our Government’s policy on broadband and big promises of future-focused technology being rolled out is grand, but with censorship on the agenda it’d take more than just a massive increase in speeds and decrease in prices to make up for the fact that your average home user will be set back to the days of dial-up, for a filter that has — like all filters — proven in other countries to be completely ineffective.

Nearly identical systems are currently in force in China, Iran and North Korea; however those nations have a bill of rights governing the implementation of it.

At present the Government wants to ban illegal content and unwanted content without being able to tell us exactly what that defines and they have ‘no plans’ on how to ensure that future Governments will not use this filter system to suppress political views.

If you criticise Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s plans you’re accused of being a child porn collector, as even Greens senator Scott Ludlum found out.

The governing advisory board for this is a closed-door group which has overtly criticised anyone opposing this censorship as being ‘as bad as child abusers’. The very thought of a secretive group having the right to, without any consultation nor any transparency, remove content that they feel to be inappropriate for us to view is abhorrent.

If implemented this will be the greatest insult to democracy Australia has ever seen.

It’s all well and good to claim it’s ‘to protect children’, but when there’s barely over 100 legitimate cases investigated by the ACMA annually yielding action and with even law enforcement bodies saying that this filter will impact on their ability to chase criminals you have to question the ethics and objective reasoning on display here.

Serious freedom-infringing decisions should always include open public consultation and objective, logical thought. After all we don’t ban water; we teach our children how to swim.”

Day 1: Bernadette McMenamin, Child Wise CEO

Day 2: Cory Bernardi, Liberal Senator, South Australia

Day 3: Professor Bill Caelli, QUT

Day 4: Michael Malone, iiNet managing director

Day 5: Anthony Pillion, Webshield Internet Services managing director

Day 6: Mark Newton, System Administrators’ Guild of Australia

Day 7: Andrew Kellerman, President of the Digital Liberty Coalition

Day 8: Clive Hamilton, Charles Sturt University

Day 9: Senator Stephen Conroy, Communications Minister

Websinthe has put together anti-censorship shirts for the March in March with all profits going to the Leukaemia Foundation.

These shirts are a great way of supporting two causes at once and for once dispelling the idea that the anti-censorship lobby is doing nothing to protect children.

So if you’re planning on attending the March in March or are just looking to support two good causes at once, it might be time to whip out the credit card and place an order or two.