Rudd retreats on web filter legislation

Looks like the MISP is on the back burner (how many back burners does Rudd have? Clearly he owns a Big Stove) till after the election:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/rudd-retreats-on-passing-web-filter-legislation/story-e6frgakx-1225859630452

Some interesting articles from the ARIN6902 Diigo site

Couple of things my fellow students have posted on Diigo recently that relate to the protest movements and ISP filter themes of this blog.

Firstly, some US stats on filtering software:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1015864.1015865

Next, an article from the OZ about our Government's 10th place ranking with Google for requesting content removal:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/google-ranks-requests-for-content-removal/story-e6frg6nf-1225857167875

And finally, an article on Lifehacker listing 10 ways to access blocked content:

http://lifehacker.com/5516305/top-10-ways-to-access-blocked-stuff-on-the-web

happy surfing...

Larvatus Prodeo writes for EFA

Great Larvatus Prodeo post over the weekend, written for Electronic Frontiers Australia about the internet filter. Quite long, but here is a key quote:

“The Internet ... is part of that secular movement towards the democratisation of social relations; and of knowledge. It’s precisely because the Internet affords so much promise for those who wish to decide their destinies in common, to learn, to form an informed judgement and habit of thought that its freedom from state interference is so important at the level of principle.”

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/04/16/left-reasons-to-oppose-the-net-filter-nocleanfeed/

Hackers: not just geeks, but activists

Thanks to Elizabeth Gan for posting this article from the Toronto Star on the ARIN6902 Diigo list. It's about 'white hat' hackers who are helping to make the online world a better place. Of relevance in this article to my little blog about protest movements against internet censorship, is the work of Nart Villeneuve from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab:

Nart Villeneuve, the chief research officer of Citizen Lab, is a self-taught coding expert. As an undergrad, he used his white hat skills to research Internet censorship by the Saudi Arabian and Chinese governments.

“I didn’t think you could make a living detecting Internet censorship,” Villeneuve says. He’s since unearthed two major cyber espionage rings and continues to study how governments monitor their citizens.

(from http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/791274--hackers-not-just-geeks-but-activists)

On Nart's site, he posts some very interesting articles about internet censorship, well worth a further read, especially his posts tagged 'censorship circumvention'

Meanwhile the Citizen Lab site covers the lab's broader work on "advanced research and development at the intersection of digital media, global security, and human rights".

US ambassador critical of Conroy's internet filters

Follow up article to Ambassador Bleich's appearance on Q&A last night, where he said the "internet has to be free" and that there were other means of combating nasty content such as child pornography. "We have been able to accomplish the goals that Australia has described, which is to capture and prosecute child pornographers ... without having to use internet filters" Surely a strong American stance against the MISP means no MISP...?

Net filters a 'modest measure': Conroy

Is Conroy backing down or just trying a new approach? the Minister has described the MISP as a 'modest measure' in a speech to the Sydney Institute last night, in an effort to make it sound like a perfectly normal - or uncontroversial - thing to do...

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/net-filters-a-modest-measure-conroy-20100413-s542.html

Piers Ackerman vs. ISP filtering

Even Piers Ackerman thinks the Government's proposed ISP filtering is a bad idea! Possibly the first time I've ever been on the same side of a debate as Ackerman, makes me feel a little nauseous. Granted, this is really just another avenue of Rudd/Labor bashing for him, but it shows that there are people on both sides of the political divide who oppose internet censorship.

Ackerman's main points of concern are that the filtering would likely hobble the broadband scheme (in terms of speed) and is against the interests of business and our US allies - recurring issues in much of the discourse surrounding this debate. He also mentions some costs, which I haven't seen come up much so far - $43 billion for the broadband network, and $125.8 for the filtering scheme.

He also mentions an app called the Onion Router that allows anonymous access to web content, which I will look into and explore in an upcoming post. Happy Friday...