In the first minute of Gordon Brown’s TED talk on using the Internet to make the world a better place, he makes the greatest argument against censorship I’ve ever seen.

I say ’seen’ quite deliberately, because he was talking about something completely different at the time. In his introduction he shows several images that have at one point or another kicked the world into action against a dire situation. He showed the image of Kim, the naked Vietnamese girl running, terrified, away from the napalm that scorched her back and explained how the image punctuated the civilian populations of the world to the horrors of war. He showed the image of Birhan from Etheopia, a girl so neglected, abused and deteriorated that LiveAid followed in her image’s wake. He showed the Chinese student standing in front of tanks. He showed a Sudanese infant naked and moments from death. All these images slammed home the message that ‘things need to change’ with an urgency no other messenger could match.

Yet all of these images either have been, or would qualify to be, censored.

I made the point last week that open information is a prerequisite to a just and safe world. I had no idea at that point that it would be Gordon Brown who would so clearly link social justice to seeing, in full candor, the horrors of the world. It’s amazing how the Christian lobby is so keen to insulate us all (not just their followers) from ‘the worst of the worst’ and at the same time claiming a monopoly on good works around the world. The Christian claim that today’s free world is founded on a Christian set of morals is a painful and damaging lie. The progression in social justice over the last fifty years has occurred in spite of the broader Christian moral structure.

Enough of the Christian bashing, back to censorship.

We cannot realistically judge who we are as a society if we continually try to blind ourselves from the gaping sores. We will not choose the right path if we don’t see the whole picture. We could very well end up patting ourselves on the back for our safe world ‘mission accomplished’ while all the evidence of our disease and decay is batted away by representatives who’ve been conned into helping these horrors stay hidden.

With the recent turmoil in the Catholic church, it makes sense to me that the Australian Christian Lobby would want to keep people from finding out about those kinds of activities. If the evidence is out in the open, people tend to get caught.

Senator Conroy may find himself on a blacklist as the international organisation Reporters sans frontières puts Australia on watch as a potential enemy of the internet.

The RSF report, released on the 12th of March, lists Australia along with South Korea as candidates for its exclusive list of nations that threaten both the proper operation of the internet and the integrity of journalistic expression. The current list includes countries such as Burma, China, Iran, Syria and Egypt.

Opposition Senator Suzanne Boyce raised the report in question time, asking Conroy whether or not he was concerned to put alongside South Korea and Turkey as a potential enemy of the Internet. Conroy’s response was surprisingly uncivilized. His usual reliance on pre-written responses dove into outright lies, claiming that the RSF report was informed by misleading information published by Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA).

Par for the course for Conroy, he was then lampooned for being the only person in Australia who, apparently, wasn’t mistaken about the filter, and for jealously guarding the distinction by hiding as much of the relevant information as possible.

The EFA responded today outlining Conroy’s misleading statements about the EFA misleading citizens. Their response also stated that the RSF report was not officially or even secretly informed by the EFA, and that their conclusions were arrived at by their own reckoning of the situation. Given that the RSF isn’t the first organisation to come to the conclusion that the filter is dangerous, I find it easy to believe.

Of course, in the end, neither Conroy nor Rudd are apologising for slapping citizens with a filter that, after they leave office, they will cease to control.

I wet myself a little when reading Hillary Clinton’s opinions on internet freedom and allowed myself a little gloat in the direction of our very own Minister for Botching Everything he Touches, Senator Conroy.

Her speech contains some of the most rational and future-proofed analysis of the internet in its global political context ever published. Conroy’s response, however, is hackneyed, uninformative and fails, in every sense, to engage Clinton’s arguments. I’ll attempt to illustrate this disjunction without flooding the page with quotes, but Hillary’s words are too erudite and well constructed for me to paraphrase too often.

Clinton launches the thrust of her speech by quoting Obama’s warning to China,

the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become.

Even Conroy can’t disagree, saying that

The Rudd Government agrees with Secretary Clinton that the internet can transform societies and enable and empower individuals to engage, connect and have a greater impact than they ever have

So while Conroy nods his head and mumbles along in fluent pollie-speak, Clinton begins pushing the concept further, condemning Governments’ use of censorship.

technologies with the potential to open up access to government and promote transparency can also be hijacked by governments to crush dissent and deny human rights… [As] history itself has already condemned these tactics.

Conroy by now is slowing his vigorous head-nodding as he realises he’s on the wrong side of the fence. Just in time, however, Clinton throws him a line:

Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, using the internet to promote the mass murder of innocent people across the world. And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing challenges that the international community must confront together. And we must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities.

Our Minister for Broadband Hindrance and the Digital Expolitation of Children sighs in relief, he’s said the exact same thing!

Australians have always recognised that there is some content which is not acceptable in any civilised society. [So we're going to censor the internet]

Unfortunately for Senator Steve, the line Clinton threw him came complete with bait and hook:

But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.

But Conroy’s not trying to violate our rights, right? Right? Hillary?

Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights,

At this point our friend in the Senate should be rethinking his policy’s impact on diplomatic ties with the US. Hell, even Google thinks the plan is a disaster. Unfortunately, even the most powerful woman in the world can’t persuade the least receptive man in the world. In the very same press release as his insubstantial agreement with Clinton, he goes on to plug his censorship plans as a good thing. So Australians are in the hole now right? Wrong.

We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship.

Thank you Hillary, thank you. Now if you could just leave the installation materials for TOR on my doorstep I’ll be able to circumvent Con-job Conroy’s censorship machine.

Tune in next time for how the anti-censorship campaign needs to move forward to beat this once and for all.

*Edit: Fixed the first link to Clinton’s speech.

I have noticed the collective apoplexy being experienced by Australia’s dubiously educated soccer mums and under-employed social academics over Sandilands’ latest trick. I have noticed the vitriolic and panic-stricken cries of the media as they reach for the low hanging fruit of public angst. I have noticed everyone getting off on the chance to once again take a piss into the wind that is Kyle bloody Sandilands.

So while Hetty and friends sharpen their knives and polish their cheque books, Kyle has been apologising and dodging bullets. I’m sure the Labor party is grateful for his ability to distract the ‘feral goldfish’ and take the pressure off them for a few minutes while they sit down with their mates and work out how to deny next month’s installment of Two and a half Factions.

Mother’s Milk

Kyle didn’t pull the plug in time. That is all. He was not trying to verbally molest the poor girl. That was the mother’s job. This woman has to be one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen.

Listen lady, Kyle’s getting a beating over this, so here’s your turn. You are a bad mother. You have failed your daughter. You sold her out for tickets to a concert. You were too fucking stupid to avoid a very obvious and very dangerous subject on national fucking radio. You were asked by the producers if such information existed and you fucking lied.

I’m inclined to believe that you lied deliberately so this situation would arise. That’s abuse on an appalling level.

Kyle’s career as a shock jock is nothing compared to your lack of upbringing. Your daughter was failed by an older man and failed by your lack of maternal ability. Sixty thousand years of evolution has been fucking lost on you.

Moral Decay?

Meanwhile the term ‘moral decay’ has reared it’s ugly head at least once. Moral decay hey? Well, thank God I’m a writer, I’m relevant regardless of how dystopian we get. There’s a word that means, exactly, the application of moral decay to this whole scenario; practice it with me.

Bullshit

It might take you a while to sound it out, especially given contemporary standards of literacy. Moral decay is not the right term here. Let me explain.

Moral decay is a result of moral stagnation. Put simply, morals will only decay if we let them stand still for too long. The world moves and so must our morals. Keeping them set in stone is a wonderful way of sending society backwards. Even Clive Hamilton writes about the need to establish new moral standards. Unfortunately for Clive, his definition of ‘new’ is ‘what he remembers from watching The Brady Bunch‘. Even worse, he’s not alone. Kevin Rudd’s neo-conservative movement has been a rallying cry for the bigots and religious throwbacks of the country.

This leads me to the real point…

This is about stupidity, not manners

Sure manners comes into it, but only on the periphery. Kyle was too stupid to pull the plug on a woman who was too stupid not to sexually abuse her daughter on national radio. The media is too stupid to pick the real culprit and the public is too stupid to realise that the media is shafting them.

Someone shows us a front page and our brains go to shit.

We’re shown to be a nation of dumbasses by the level of entertainment we crave, something goes wrong because of the vapid tits that come up with this shit and then the professional crybabies rush in and, instead of contributing any useful analysis, simply reinforce the notion that we’re collectively brain damaged by being intellectually lazy.

Andrew Bolt, I’m looking squarely at you here. Though I may be hasty, your editor probably dragooned you into that position. It’s not your fault, you were just following orders.

With this in mind, I’ll make my point in simple language so your average mortgage holder can understand.

We’re not getting nastier, we’re getting dumber. This is because you watch shit, read shit, and think shit. The old days were not better. This happened because our moral framework is out of date and nobody puts any thought into it. Kyle Sandilands is not an evil pedo, the girl’s mother is. Stop bitching and send the poor girl some flowers. She’s been hurt, and your focus on Sandilands is just making it worse.

Young lady, I’m so sorry that your mother failed you like this. If you’re one to look for a silver lining, hopefully it will be that your situation makes some parents wake up and do a better job of defending their children instead of hoping somebody else will do it for them.

Update: I just found this article written by the man himself.

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.

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.