Category: Internet

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Interview with Senator Scott Ludlam

Photograph of Greens Senator Scott Ludlam

On Friday I recorded an interview with The Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam about the leaking of a “secret” Internet censorship blacklist. A few quotes were used in my Crikey piece. Here’s the full audio, just under 5 minutes.

Ludlam reckons Conroy should dump the filter trials and ask the industry for advice. After all, there’s 20 years of Internet expertise out there.

“Ask the question of the online community and the child protection community more generally ‘What’s the best way to protect children online?’, whether it’s from being poached in chatrooms, coming across [adult] material, or falling victim to some of the syndicates that are out there — all of the areas which net filtering won’t even go close to touching,” he said.

Senator Stephen Conroy’s office has reminded me that there is a consultative committee. Still, it does seem backwards to be trialling a specific technical solution before it’s been determined that it’s an appropriate place to be spending the money.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:03 — 5.8MB)

This is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia Licence. You may reproduce, distribute and remix this work, as long as it is for non-commercial purposes, you credit Stilgherrian, and you licence any derivative the same way. Please contact me for any commercial usage.

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Crikey: ACMA’s blacklist just got read all over

Crikey logo

I’m in Crikey again today with an 800-word essay about the leaking of a secret Internet censorship blacklist — exactly what I’d predicted only on Wednesday.

The article is free to read, but here’s a flavour:

Dear Government, look, I hate to say we told you so, but… we told you so. On Wednesday. The more you try to hide your controversial Internet blacklist, the bigger you make it, the bigger the incentive for someone to leak it.

For money. For political advantage. For the sheer bloody fun of sticking it to The Man. And, yes, maybe someone might even leak it because they’re one of that tiny number of sick bastards who get off on child pornography…

American bank robber “Slick” Willie Sutton was (probably apocryphally) asked why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is.” ACMA compiles a virtual bank vault of nasty websites and hands the keys to the makers of filter software and from there, it’s planned, every ISP in Australia — including many low-margin businesses which, let’s face it, don’t have the security procedures of an ASIO or an MI5. As yesterday’s leak to whisteblower website Wikileaks proves.

I go on to analyse the leaked list — I judge it “a pretty shit piece of work” — and drop in a few thoughts from Greens Senator Scott Ludlam. Enjoy.

I’ll post my 5-minute interview with Senator Ludlam tomorrow morning.

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ABC Lateline on the leaked Internet blacklist, with me

Screenshot of Stilgherrian talking on ABC Lateline

I was on the ABC TV program Lateline last night as part of a story on the leaked Internet censorship blacklist.

While Senator Conroy is saying this isn’t the actual ACMA blacklist, it’s certainly indicative of the problems that come with a manually-maintained list of banned content — especially when it’s kept secret.

As I told Lateline, further leaks are inevitable.

As soon as you try and make something secret, there will be someone who wants it to be not secret. Either because they feel politically that it’s wrong that it’s secret, or for monetary gain. I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who’d pay good money to get their hands on the current list and distribute it amongst people who would find the material of value to them.

The ABC has Real Media and Windows Media video streams plus a transcript, as well as a Flash video stream on the program home page. The vodcast will have downloadable MP4 and WMV files later today. And if none of them are suitable, there’s a copy on YouTube.

I’ll have more to say about this in Crikey later today.

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First interview with Fake Stephen Conroy

Screenshot from Stilgherrian Live episode 40

Episode 40 of Stilgherrian Live is now online for your viewing pleasure, including the very first interview with Fake Stephen Conroy aka Leslie Nassar.

Nassar, a Telstra employee, outed himself as FSC on Tuesday. Given that Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, oversees telcos like Telstra, this created some complications. He now appears to be over the worst of what sounded like anger Tuesday night.

The phone conversation with Leslie Nassar is just over 12 minutes into the program.

Of course we also had “Cnut of the Week”…

Continue reading “First interview with Fake Stephen Conroy”