Internet Filtering

On 21 March 2006, the Federal Labor Opposition announced in a media release that a Labor Government would require all Internet Service Providers (”ISPs”) to implement a mandatory Internet filtering/blocking system. This means that you cannot opt out. This list has already been started and has been leaked to the Media organisation Wikileaks. The current list already includes sites that would not be deemed illegal like online gambling some porn sites and a dog boarding kennel. A reasonably well written article appeared in Wired News. This fiasco being perpetrated upon the Australian public by the current labour government is making us look rather totalitarian. "History shows that secret censorship systems, whatever their original intent, are invariably corrupted into anti-democratic behaviour," WikiLeaks said in a statement. "This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring WikiLeaks.". Excellent company our country is keeping in that little list. Thailand start mandatory filtering of internet feeds and the initial list mainly included Child pornography. However since it was introduced hundreds of sites that criticised the King of Thailand have been added to the list. This from Wikileaks "In December last year we released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand. Of the sites censored in 2008, 1,203 sites were classified as "lese majeste" -- criticising the Royal family. Like Australia, the Thai censorship system was originally pushed to be a mechanism to prevent the child pornography.Research shows that while such blacklists are dangerous to "above ground" activities such as political discourse, they have little effect on the production of child pornography, and by diverting resources and attention from traditional policing actions, may even be counter-productive". With Australia's list being secret and unveiwable how long would it be before some aspiring politician placed websites that criticised him on it.

In 'Labor’s Plan for Cyber-safety' from 2007 They sate the dangers that face Australian Children are:

• having their identities appropriated by others;
• having photos or videos of themselves published online without their permission;
• suffering from computer and/or internet addiction;
• being traced by strangers from details they have entered online;
• being the subject of cyber-bullying;
• picking up a virus or trojan or being the victim of a phishing attack; or
• inadvertently downloading illegal content when file-sharing.

Only this last point (highlighted) has even a slight relation to IPS internet filtering and the report from ACMA report of the trial internet filtering concluded that none of the Current tested filtering method could identify illegal content in non-web based traffic. All file sharing happens on what are called P2P networks which are not web based. This means that file sharing would be in no way affected by the ISP filtering as P2P networks are not html content. This means that this filter is an inappropriate response to a non-existent problem.

Yes it is not a problem. This from Electronic Frontiers Australia - A filtered internet feed, if it could be fully implemented, would help only to mitigate so-called “content risks” - the risk of a child being exposed to content inappropriate for their age or maturity level. However, even the Government’s own literature suggests that content risks are the least serious of concerns to parents or children themselves. The 2008 ACMA report Developments in Internet Filtering Technologies and Other Measures for Promoting Online Safety identifies the further categories of “communication risks” and “e-security” risks. The former include issues such as scams, inappropriate advances from strangers, and online harassment, while the latter includes things such as viruses, spam, and the theft of personal information.

Few to no details of the plan have been given except that it would be a IPS based filtering meaning that you do not get to choose weather you have access to the entire internet. Pages and websites would be filtered out before they get anywhere near your computer. The following is from the Wikileaks website "While Wikileaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater. Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of upto $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist". So your not allowed to view the list, your not allowed to know whats on the list, but if you inadvertantly link to something you don't know is on the list you will be fined $11000 a day. That would make for an interesting courtroom arguement!!

I have a couple of questions for the government over this stupid little idea of theirs.

Who decides what sites go on the list?
Is there a system of notification and appeal?
Why can the Australian public not see and comment on the list?
Do parliamentarians have any say in what sites go on the list?
If I run a site and get a link to a banned site placed on my website through spam will my site be added to the list?
If it is added to the list how would I get it off the list?
Who will maintain the list and what measures will be put in place that ensure legitimate sites with legal content are not blocked?
What compensation can be sought for loss of revenue if a site is inappropriately blocked?
If only the government of the day can decide what goes on the list what is to stop the Liberals, once they get back into government, from putting ALP and union sites on the list?

I have to say this Idea could be a complete tradgety for Australia. It has the possibly to be a major cancer in Australian Democracy.

Election

I had quite a sad revelation yesterday. I was looking at the candidates and deciding who I should vote for as my first choice. I couldn't pick one!!

We have five candidates in my electorate surely one of these people should be a person that I could vote for. Well who is there to vote for I said to myself. I know I'll run through them and see where I would put them on the Ballot paper.
The Greens - can be a good choice but they have had Jenny Stirling as there candidate for ages and she has some strange and unrealistic ideas/policies. They might not be a great choice so maybe not #1.

Labour - has been in government for the last 11 years and really don't seem to have any vision or new ideas. Also they are pushing through a Canal development that very few people in Townsville want, so put them in the middle somewhere either 3 or 4 I thought.

LNP - Are led by Laurence Springborg. I don't really need to say more if you've seem him on TV. These guys are probably going on the bottom of the list.

Family First Party - This state run by the Assembly of God. No Thanks!!! Definitely bottom of the pile.

An Independent - Some one with new Ideas, a fresh way of doing things unencumbered by party politics, This could be good. Then I saw his campaign letter sent out to many people in this electorate. An literate idiot representing my area in the state parliament, at least he would be better than the Family First Party.

At this point the sad realisation hit me. I will be voting from the bottom. I will be voting from the candidate I like the least in number 5 to the one that is the least worst (yes I know this is very poor English I'm trying it out to see if I should vote for the independant candidate) in position 1. What a sad day it is when there is no-one that you can vote for, only people to vote against.

Slackness Inc.

Well it's been a rediculously long time since I updated this site, and I have many things that should be going up here. Hopefully over the next little while I will get to this site a bit more and up date it a bit.
Also I think there will be some rants put up on this blog soon as well.

God I hate the Family First Party

The below story comes from the ABC website. The family first party doesn't seem to live up to it's name. I don't see anything in this decision by Senator Stephen Fielding that puts families first. One of the parties stated aims is"FAMILY FIRST believes Australia has a binge drinking problem which is killing Australians, particularly young Australians. Alcohol is a part of life and social drinking is fine, but we must change our culture which celebrates alcohol and accepts
drunkenness and drink-driving;". This was taken directly from their website. The previous stated position and Senator Fieldings vote yesterday don't seem to dovetail nicely do they. That's right I forgot The name of the Party should be Assembly of God Families First, or as they want to be know now Australian Christian Churches. Religious organisations for the past couple of Millennia have reserved the right to be completely contradictory so why should the Assembly of God party be any different.

Alcopops defeat a win for distillers

By Jennifer Doggett

Posted 1 hour 0 minutes ago
Updated 51 minutes ago

Senator Fielding's decision to vote against the alcopops tax bill is a win for the spirits industry. (AAP)

It's "families first" for Senator Stephen Fielding but only if your family happens to be named Bacardi, Hennessey, Smirnoff or similar. Those of us whose families don't own multi-national distilling companies can only lose from the Senator's decision to block the Government's alcopops tax bill.

The bill sought to increase the tax on alcoholic soft-drinks or 'alcopops' by 70 per cent from $39 to $66 per litre. This would have raised $1.6 billion over four years, some of which would have gone to alcohol harm reduction campaigns, due to the deal reached between the Government and the Greens with Senator Nick Xenophon.

Senator Fielding's decision (along with that of the Opposition) to vote against the bill is a win for the spirits industry, which had been campaigning vigorously against the tax. For ordinary Australian families it simply means that alcoholic soft drinks will become cheaper, and therefore more accessible, to their teenage children and that that less funding will be available for campaigns to address the harms associated with youth alcohol consumption.

There is good evidence to support a targeted approach to reducing alcopop consumption by young people. Alcohol researchers estimate that around 70-80 per cent of alcohol consumed at risk levels by 14-17 year olds is in the form of alcopops. In 2000 14 per cent of girls aged 15-17 reported that an alcopop was the last alcoholic drink they consumed. By 2004, this figure had grown to a staggering 62 per cent. Alcopops are not simply substituting one alcoholic beverage for another, they are in effect creating a new market for teenage alcohol consumption.

Senator Fielding, along with Liberal Party and Nationals senators, argued that there was no evidence that the tax had reduced binge drinking among young people. However, the Government never claimed that this measure alone would stop young people from misusing alcohol. The tax increase was only ever presented as part of a broader approach to reducing unsafe alcohol use, in the context of the National Binge Drinking Strategy, which includes funding for community and sporting organisations and health promotion campaigns.

Risky behaviours, such as unsafe alcohol use, can never be addressed through one single measure. In other areas of public health, for example tobacco control, this is accepted. The dramatic reduction in smoking in the Australian community over the past 30 years is a result of the multi-faceted approach taken to reducing tobacco-related harms, including taxation increases, advertising bans, point-of-sale restrictions and bans on smoking in public places. While overall these strategies have been successful in reducing tobacco consumption in Australia it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate out the individual effect of each single measure on smoking rates.

Luckily, Senator Fielding was not around at the time that the ban on cigarette advertising on television was introduced. Had he required evidence that the ban would result in an immediate drop in smoking rates before he supported the legislation, we would still be seeing the Marlboro Man riding his horse into the sunset on our televisions today.

Senator Fielding also asked the Government to ban alcohol company sponsorship of sporting events in return for his support, a position not supported by any major health groups. While most health advocates would be in favour of a ban on alcohol sports sponsorship in the longer term, no-one had argued in the Senate inquiry into the bill that this was essential to the success of the Government's taxation measure.

As the history of public health in Australia demonstrates, sponsorship of sporting events is not a barrier to the success of other harm reduction measures. A ban on tobacco company sponsorship of sporting events was one of the last measures introduced to combat tobacco-related harms in Australia. In fact, the last tobacco sponsorship of a sporting event occurred less than three years ago. Most of the decline in tobacco use over the past 30 years has occurred alongside some sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco companies.

Senator Fielding, along with his Liberal Party and Nationals colleagues, should learn a lesson from history and seize every opportunity to reduce youth alcohol misuse. While other measures are clearly required to address this complex issue, a tax increase on alcopops makes perfect sense when the group most vulnerable to harms associated with these products are also the most price sensitive. Unfortunately, by voting against this important bill they have simply managed to swell the coffers of the distillers while doing nothing to reduce the growing health and social problems associated with the consumption of alcopops by young Australians.

Happy Birthday Glen

I haven't sent your present yet so here is a picture of Bear as a prepresent