“So is it true that radio presenters get their stories from cow intestines?” Websinthe asked as he lit another emo.

“Only when their sundials need calibrating.” ABC’s Andrew Davies replied. He reached out for Websinthe’s emo and took a drag, passing it around to Ben Grub from Techwired AU. 

“Is anyone else running out of things to blog about?” @Strictly asked. She had to take a step forward to avoid being hit by a passing bus.

“Ahh, guys, why are we standing on a traffic island?” asked Senator Conroy in a highly predictable cameo appearance.

“Holy Shit Steve, we’re trying to prove a point here!” Websinthe replied.

“About what?” Senator Conroy cried.

@Strictly pulled out her iPhone and started tweeting. She looked up at ABC’s Andrew Davies and sized him up. “What do you think? Should I twitpic him or add him to Facebook?” she asked.

Websinthe exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I think we’re about to see the second coming of Jesus.” he said.

The small group laughed. Ben Grubb from TechWired AU raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

Websinthe pointed up at the sky. A man somewhat resembling the Lamb of Hosts was descending from a cloud wearing brilliant robes, a halo and a 2nd Gen iPod. 

Senator Conroy dropped his pants. “Holy Shit!” 

The rest of them just stared at the Stigmata endowed Lord of Christian Nations as he gently made foot fall on the small traffic island. 

“BEHOLD!” He said with the voice of Metatron. “I AM THE CHRIST, THIS IS THE DAY OF DA….”

“Fucking hell man!” Websinthe cried, cigarette still hanging out of his mouth, “Your hands are pissing blood!”

“Jesus, he’s right!” said the ABC’s Andrew Davies.

Jesus raised an eyebrow. 

“We need to get him to a hospital!” @strictly screamed. Everyone looked at her and nodded. Senator Conroy and Websinthe looked at each other and then at the Son of God.

Jesus, still pissed at his awesome entry being interrupted, raised the other eyebrow. Senator Conroy and Websinthe both charged forward and manhandled the Alpha and Omega into a human stretcher position. 

“Don’t worry Jesus,” Senator Conroy said, “we’ll get you patched up in no time!”

“Do you think we’ll get votes for this?” Websinthe asked through gritted teeth. 

“I might but I doubt you will.” Senator Conroy replied. 

The group stretchered the struggling Savior of Mankind across four lanes of busy traffic before hailing a taxi. The taxi, seeing that the Firstborn of all Creation was in desperate need of hospitalisation swerved towards them and opened his doors.

“Get in! Get the fuck in!” Screamed the Taxi Driver.

Ben Grubb from TechWired AU was the first in the car. He handed over his credit card details and shook the man violentl by the collar. “Take us to a hospital!” He screamed.

Everyone else had crammed into the back. Websinthe and Senator Conroy were still trying to assure The Judge of the Living and the Dead that he was in good hands. All the Jesus was still hollering something about the time being at hand and they should all – he was interrupted by a ring tone. 

Jesus answered his phone as the taxi battered lesser vehicles out of the way. 

“Hello? Oh, yeah hi dad…  no, not exactly… well… hey! I’ll do it in my own time!… For your sake dad! Would you just let me do my thing? No I am not a child! I’m hanging.. I’m hanging up dad!  I swear, I’m… I’m hanging up!” Jesus ended the call.

“Wow, still treating you like a kid?” the ABC’s Andrew Davies asked.

“Yeah, it’s not fair. He wants to give me all this responsibility and then can’t just… you know what it’s like.” the King of Ages shrugged.

“What, do I know what it’s like to be the only son of God, sacrificed to save us from sin and then treated like a child when coming to judge all nations?” @strictly asked.

“Yeah.” Jesus replied.

“All the time, I know how you feel.” @strictly nodded.

The taxi gained speed as it approached the front of the Hospital. The Driver didn’ even blink as he rammed the car through the front doors, destroying the people waiting in the reception area. They all tumbled out of the cramped taxi.

A group of angry and relatively well dressed people stood watching them angrily as they picked up the Jesus Christ. 

“Crap! It’s the Russian Mob!” Senator Conroy screamed.

“Fuck off it is.” Websinthe grunted through the butt of a half-smoked cigar. “It’s Jim Wallace and his Christian cronies.”

“Oh, you’re right. I never could tell the difference.” Senator Conroy replied.

Jesus had stopped struggling now and was hanging limply between Senator Conroy and Websinthe, sharing the cigar and blowing smoke-rings. 

“All right,” Jim said, holding out a hand to stop them, “hand over our lord.” 

The group just looked at him funny as the King of Kings began laughing hysterically. Jim’s face started melting, his screams heard across Brisbane.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for years.” The Christ giggled.

Yesterday’s cracking of the classification board by XYLITOL is more than a humorous prank born out of a population’s frustration with a belligerent government. 

Pros

• The message was spread to a significant number of people with links to other anti-filter material. This campaign is about exposure and making sure that the general public is aware of this attack on their rights as citizens. 
• The attack highlights that the government is still behind the ball on security issues and probably always will be. If their policies rely on secrecy, they’re bad policies. 
• We all got to have a laugh. 

Cons

• The increase in ‘civil disobedience’ from fringe members of the campaign makes it harder to see us as the good guys (admittedly it’ll be a long time before our side of the campaign resembles the super-conservative and fundamentalist aspects of the pro-filter campaigners).
• They cracked the wrong site. That’s right, they hacked the wrong organisation. The classification board is relatively innocent in all this. They are an open and transparent organisation that merely labels content based on its maturity level. It’s the DBCDE that are threatening to say whether or not we can view that content (in a practical sense) and the ACMA is the group keeping the blacklist from citizen’s eyes.
• We really need to be encouraging the kind of openness and transparency that the classification board, as distinct from ACMA, shows in its dealings.  

I know that the filename of the screenshot I took was purile and a web-forum throwback, but the comments in that article are still valid. This situation also goes to show that a filter is not going to have a significant impact on the ills of the internet compared to the effect of increased police resources.

*Update* I’ve changed the term ‘hacker’ to be ‘cracker’ as this is a more accurate term in this case. A hacker is someone who can create innovative solutions to problems using creativity. A cracker is somebody who deliberately intrudes, harms or defaces in an electronic environment.

At roughly 7pm tonight (Thursday 26th March), news came through the twitter feed that the classification website in Australia had been cracked and the front page altered to better reflect the function they provide here in Australia.

Just in case the nine to fivers whose parents told them to get a stable government job have noticed the changes and broken it again, here’s a screenshot of the hacked site:

And we're supposed to have faith in these guys?

So far nobody has stepped up and claimed responsibility – they don’t need to. They’ve shown that our government is asking us to have faith in an organisation that can’t even keep their front page out of harm’s way, let alone protect children.

I wonder, if the cracker had posted child porn, would ACMA have to send itself a take-down notice? Would it just blacklist itself and then not tell itself?

If the ACMA site can be so easily cracked, then what is preventing it from being hijacked the same way as the poor dentist that found himself on the blacklist.

As public servants, you’re doing a terrible job. Step up and do your job. It’s been nearly an hour now and nothing’s been fixed.

If the price of freedom is eternal vigelence, then I wonder what it is we have given that this bunch is asleep at the wheel?

*Update* I’ve changed the term ‘hacker’ to be ‘cracker’ as this is a more accurate term in this case. A hacker is someone who can create innovative solutions to problems using creativity. A cracker is somebody who deliberately intrudes, harms or defaces in an electronic environment.

ITnews.com.au has posted an article claiming that the Intergard Internet filter has been cracked and the blacklist extracted. I know that a lot of people in the #Nocleanfeed movement cherish this kind of article and hold it up as proof of Conroy’s idiocy, but in this case it’s probably done us more harm than good.

First of all, the article cites no sources, names no names and provides no proof that this actually occured. I could ring them up now and tell them I’ve cracked Conroy’s personal computer and they’d probably publish it given the traffic we generate with news like this. 

Next, there hasn’t been a reciprical posting on any of the mainstream news channels. This tells me that it didn’t pass the most rudimentary of bullshit filters at the Courier Mail. 

I spoke to John Hedges, Technical Director at Race River and, despite ITnews saying they couldn’t get a comment out of him, found that he hadn’t even seen the article, making me wonder how hard the site tried to contact him if at all.

“We are investigating the claims and if there is a security problem with Integard it will be rectified as soon as possible.”

So, why do we NOT want this article to be true? Because the more damage we do to PC based filtering vendors like Race River, the more ammunition Conroy and his cronies have to claim we need ISP based filtering. While there are a whole bunch of forum kiddies out there just hoping for more government ’stuff’ to trash, some of us need to be thinking about how we’re going to get this stopped.

And no, marching on Canberra with 150 /b/tards and kindie-goths with parasols isn’t going to do anything. 

We’ve already seen nearly 3 copies of the blacklist as it is and Conroy has poured water on it to little effect. Throwing articles like this on the fire without any evidence or citation is only going to cause noxious fumes and headaches.

It turns out that Jeff Martin from the Tea Party isn’t such a nice bloke. I managed to miss his tour with The Armada last November but reports from the staff that did work that night are that he came across as sleazy, arrogant and a genius on stage. My dreams of meeting him have become somewhat less urgent.

I’ve just spent the weekend with my walking gear wrapped around a 250cc Intruder. Besides being more fun to ride than a Swedish backpacker, it’s more masculine than a carton of VB during Bathurst. A thousand thanks go to Peter Jeremijenko for lending it to me.

When I was a kid I used to spend entire days just exploring on my push bike. I never really lost that explorative urge and a motorbike feels the same way my push bike did all those years ago, except now I’m not so scared of steep hills.

I’ve just read an article about the blacklist being revealed a third time by crackers having a go at Intergard. It doesn’t surprise me but given my relationship with John Hedges I’d still like to see a little more proof that it can actually be done. I know how much effort he puts into keeping Intergard ahead of the ne’r-do-wells and 30 seconds seems a little quick given that I can’t even turn the bloody thing off.

I just found out yesterday that my Auntie Cath has been diagnosed with a 7cm long tumor in her brain. This woman has kept me out of more trouble than is worth mentioning and has always been there for me. I’m sending prayers and a whole lot of my unpublished writing down to her (as per her request) to keep her occupied while she deals with the upcoming months. 

I’m heading over to the Filter Forum at QUT with Senator Ludlum, Nick Suzor and the venerable Irene Graham tonight. I’ve met Nic but so far haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the good Senator or Irene. I’m looking forward to it and hope to learn something at the same time. I’m sure that spending 4 hours a day readin about this shit isn’t enough to cover everything. 

I’ve been having serious identity issues over the last week. I’m so keen to write that I spend most of my time in over my head and wondering where I’m going to fit in the literary world. I think that my passion really lies in editing and political discourse but I’m still feeling like a toddler amongst adults. If it wasn’t for Kaiser Nelson’s landmark article on writer’s block I’d probably have let despondancy keep me in bed for a week now. 

Trying to keep up with what’s going on around me is becoming a full time occupation. This is one of those times where I wish I was back under my rock and able to shroud myself in obscurity. I’m committed now, no turning back. I am a writer, all I need to do now is get paid for it.

While the debate still rages over Internet censorship at the hands of the DBCDE, it may be ASIC that lands the first punch in censoring forums and blogs.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has released a discussion paper on the need to require Internet Discussion Sites (such as forums and blogs) to hold an Australian Financial Services licence (AFSL) in order to carry posts about financial matters. 

Internet discussion sites (IDSs) are internet websites that provide a place for people who are not financial services professionals to share information, recommendations and opinions about financial products such as shares.

Under the current law, the activities of IDS operators and users may constitute the provision of financial services, for which an Australian Financial Services licence (AFSL) is required. ASIC proposes to update its policy to give specific guidance on which IDSs are likely to need an AFSL. ASIC does not propose to grant IDS operators relief from the financial services licensing and disclosure regimes, meaning operators will need to hold an AFSL unless a pre-existing exemption applies to them.

So far this is just a discussion paper but the language used in the introduction quoted above means that forums, blogs and other social networking sites is that they’re going to may need an AFSL license if it is found that members are discussing financial matters in an ‘advisory manner’.

Information on who needs an AFSL is sketchy even to trained lawyers and this discussion paper makes a significant jump in the concept of who is offering financial services.  It’s beyond the scope of my financial resources to engage a lawyer for advice on this matter and my own legal training is insufficient to cover something this complex – I’ll leave it to my readership to agree or disagree with my reading of the terms above. 

By the term ‘internet discussion sites’ (IDSs), we mean internet websites, such as web-based bulletin boards, ‘blogs’, or chat rooms, that provide a forum for people who are not financial services professionals to display information, recommendations and opinions about financial products.

My interpretation so far is that online communication will now be subject to the same rules that govern commercial communication, even when that conversation is between private citizens. For example, if HotBabe445 posted that she was thinking about buying Telstra shares and BigDaddyXOXO told her not to on the basis that “Telstra sucks”, BigDaddyXOXO may be required to hold an AFSL as, according to the discussion paper,

[...]informal commentary about financial products posted to an IDS may amount to financial product advice.

Slightly more worrying is that the person who runs the forum on which BigDaddyXOXO made his post may need an AFSL as well, regardless of the nature of the forum.

Operators who do not post comments containing financial product advice themselves, but who authorise or arrange for others to post such comments, may also require a licence. This is because authorising or arranging for a thing to be done is generally treated in the same way as actually doing the thing under the Corporations Act.

The exception to this situation would be if the person running the forum had no ability to modify the post or in no way tampered with the post itself.

Of course, confusion sets in with an isolated section that adds an additional restriction on the application of the AFSL.

We think that the current law sets an appropriate line between those who need a licence, and those who don’t, and that there are no policy grounds for ASIC to alter this by granting special relief to IDS operators. Therefore, we consider that if:

(a) a person is providing financial product advice through an IDS (whether as the IDS operator or otherwise); and

(b) the advice forms part of a financial services business,

that person should, like any other provider of financial product advice, hold an AFS licence…

While this puts a dousing on the fire I’ve lit earlier in the article, the bolded requirement is practically meaningless given that the 2001 changes to licensing removed the need for the advice to be part of a business.

The FSR Act replaced the concept of carrying on an ‘investment advice business’ with the concept of carrying on a business of ‘providing financial product advice’…

When taken within the context of the Rudd government’s overall Internet policy base, this is a relatively scary situation. The line between the formal and the informal is being drawn too far into the ‘casual conversation’ zone and risks alienating Australians from the streamlined online participation more modernised countries enjoy. 

Though I may be wrong, comments are appreciated.

It was only a matter of time, but it’s finally happened. The DBCDE has alienated enough of its private sector partners that one of them has leaked the blacklist. 

Asher Moses from the SMH posted an article about the leaking mere hours ago.

The EFA has promptly responded that this is a ‘wake up call’ to anyone concerned with secret government censorship. It’s also a wake up call to child protection agencies now that the ACMA has allowed a list containing links of child abuse to be published to the world. Failure.

It’s unfortunate that not a week after Senator Conroy asked Australians to ‘have faith’ in his department and the ACMA, proof arises that his attempts at child protection are a facade and that a significant proportion of the blacklist are in fact gambling sites or, in some cases, harmless MySpace and YouTube profiles. The site of a Queensland dentist was also put on the blacklist though no reasons for this have been forthcoming.

The ACMA has already come out threatening 10 years jail to any Australian that publishes (snip! -ed) the blacklist in an effort to control the blunder. 

Who leaked the Blacklist?

Until recently there was only a limited number of people with access to the blacklist, including ACMA officials, DBCDE staff and official Internet Filter vendors. Recently, however, the DBCDE opened the gates to the blacklist by accepting small home run businesses into the ISP filter trial. 

The DBCDE failed to heed warnings that this was a serious security risk and proceeded anyway.

So who has the DBCDE specifically alienated? Besides Telstra and all but one of Australia’s largest ISPs, the DBCDE hasn’t made itself popular with many PC based filtering vendors that were either shut out of the process entirely or, in the case of Optenet, booted out of the Net Alert scheme with no public reason given.

Now that the DBCDE has included 6 more companies, including a home-run ‘mum and dad’ operation, it’s anyone’s game, though the security around tech2u.com.au is probably not so crash hot that some bored script-kiddy couldn’t have lifted the list without much problem.

In the meantime, Net Alert Filter vendors are literally preparing for raids by Federal Police after hearing about the Blacklist being leaked.

The question now remains, will the ACMA take legal action against, or attempt to blacklist the twitter profiles of people who have linked the blacklist on twitter?

There’s a long list of political figures and government organisations that claim a mandate to filter the Internet. Senator Conroy, the DBCDE, the ACMA and the Labor party in general all flex and banter about how ‘the people are crying out for ISP filtering’. This was a surprise to me, I’d seldom heard anyone even know what it was let alone crying out for it. 

Still, the ‘mandate’ had to come from somewhere. Apparently it came, amongst other places, from this petition:

The Internet is a great educational tool. However children can too easily access pictures of violent cruelty and extreme pornography on the Internet. Labor wants a “clean feed” technology that can block access to these kinds of sites.

To the Honourable President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled:

This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the Senate, the danger of children accessing Internet pornography and other Internet pages.

Your petitioners therefore ask the Senate to make laws that:

All Internet service providers be required to offer a “clean feed” Internet service to all households, schools and public libraries that blocks access to websites containing child pornography, acts of extreme violence and x-rated material.

by Senator Conroy (from 20,646 citizens).

Strangely, this petition was delivered at various other points between October 2006 and March 2007 , almost verbatim, by 

• Senator Calvert (3 citizens)
• Senator Ludwig (10,806 citizens)
• Senator McEwin (75 citizens)
• Senator Calvert (again, this time extended to ‘access to websites containing child pornography, acts of extreme violence and x-rated material.’) (18 citizens)
• Senator Calvert (this time as President of the Senate) (22 citizens)
• Senator Calvert (again as President) (16 Citizens)

Also submitted was an interesting little petition from Senator McGuaran, the only one that actually supports mandatory filtering, signed by a grand total of 15 citizens.

So far, it would appear that the number of citizens actually petitioning for mandatory filtering totals 15 people. Compare this to the 98,000 people that have signed the GetUp! petition (though at time of writing, the petition is yet to be submitted – God only knows why not).

For some reason Conroy has decided that there are calls for mandatory filtering that are beyond ignoring. Sure, 32,000 people asking for an offering of filtered content from ISPs is convincing enough, I don’t think anyone opposes an optional filter. 

The problem is that there are only 15 voices recorded officially by parliament as asking for mandatory filtering. Combined with the fact that Labor did not go to the election with mandatory filtering as a policy, I fail to see how there is any mandate for mandatory filtering. 

It would be interesting to see how many of those petitions can be linked back to Jim Wallace himself. I’m also interested to know why so many separate petitions have such incredibly similar scripting wording. 

Although Calvert’s name pops up repeatedly in petition submissions, there’s very little on the Internet about him. He’s a farmer from Tasmania that found himself on numerous top level committees as a Senator and represented Australia on a diplomatic trip to China. Oh, and he’s a Liberal. Not a lot in it and he’s had his day in Parliament – though I’d wager he’s mates with a couple of familiar names.  

If we knew who was behind scripting this petition we’d at least know who it was that framed this as a ‘clean feed’ debate. In the meantime, the writing’s on the wall. There is no mandate for this legislation. 

“Only if you’re paying” is one of those phrases you only say to your dad when you’re old enough to have moved out and gotten well out of his hair. Thankfully for me, I’ve done both so the comment drew an honest smile instead of a raised eyebrow.

Just down Musk avenue in the Kelvin Grove precinct, across the road from a quiet construction site, is a row of smallish restaurants. The row, like everything that surrounds it, is all kitted out to serve the fresh faced creative industries students from up the hill. Very kitsch. My father and I walked into the row’s dark but open Vietnamese restaurant and began looking like we’d never seen a menu before.

The service was pleasant from the start. We were greeted at the service counter promptly by a smile and friendly nods. We placed our orders, dad paid, and we turned around to find some outdoor seating. The outdoor tables didn’t look to be as well presented as the indoor furniture but were still comfortable and attractive. The overall decor of the restaurant, while dark, wasn’t glum or depressing but instead cosy and, at least inside, intimate.

It wasn’t long before our meals were brought out to us; I’d say it was no more than 15 minutes. I’d ordered the beef and clear noodle soup and a plate of mini spring rolls while dad had decided on the garlic prawns. I’m often surprised by the servings sizes at south east Asian restaurants and my meal didn’t disappoint, it was huge. The soup was served in a bowl I could have drowned in and came with a small plate of traditional garnishes such as lemon grass, oyster sauce and chili sauce.

The soup, beef and noodles were all delicious. The beef, despite coming in shapes for which I was untrained to handle, was tender and well flavoured by the broth. The Noodles broke records for being difficult to operate with chop sticks. Even using a spoon made little difference.

Reader, I must warn you, when this shop gives you a red sauce that smells of chili, be prepared to have the wrath of God laid upon your tongue should you try and eat it. It is hot, and not just unusually so, it’s hot enough to start some kind of pilgrimage amongst heat lovers everywhere.

The beef and clear noodle soup was enough to over fill even my generous proportions and I’m not sure the mini spring rolls were worth the extra space required. While they were well cooked, they were a little on the small size for their price and tasted a touch bland.

Meanwhile as I was trying to fit my own ambitiously sized meal into me, dad was happily making his way through the garlic prawns. The dish was a fair deal smaller than mine but there were still plenty of prawns of a decent size. From the prawn I tasted it would appear that my own mediterranean greed for garlic hadn’t been communicated to the cook here but would probably suit a more traditional Australian palette.

The true draw card of the place came as I walked away. I noticed a pearl tea sign at the front counter and was cautiously pleased to see a taro flavoured tea. It had been years since I’d indulged in Taro so I had one made. The drink was delicious in a way most Australians, being unfamiliar with Taro, are used to. It’s a smooth and creamy taste, ever so slightly sweet and with a flavour you’ll find hard to peer. If you go to Kelvin Grove for only one reason, go for the Taro.

Now, if I could just remember what the bloody place was called I could submit this for uni.