Tag: Rudd

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Conroy screwed as Xenophon sees the light

In the SMH, Asher Moses reports that Opposition Senator Minchin has obtained legal advice that the conservative Labor government will almost certainly have to pass legislation to enable net censorship filters to be installed at ISP level.

With Senator Xenophon changing sides on the issue, net censorship legislation would be comfortably blocked in the Senate.

Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he withdrew all support, saying “the more evidence that’s come out, the more questions there are on this”.

…

Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling “pedophiles through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups”.

Technical experts have said the filters proposed by the Government would do nothing to block child porn being transferred on encrypted peer-to-peer networks.

“I’m very skeptical that the Government is going down the best path on this,” said Xenophon.

“I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent.”

Of course, Rudd, Conroy and Co. might produce some juicy carrot to entice Xenophon back into the faith-based net totalitarian camp. Yet with recent polls showing immense public disagreement with the government’s censorship proposals along with overwhelming criticism from technical experts, the prudish Pixie mob will face an uphill battle to implement their ludicrous, unworkable filters.

This week, a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.

A recent survey by Netspace of 10,000 of the ISP’s customers found 61 per cent strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering with only 6.3 per cent strongly agreeing with the policy.

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New Rudd Thoughtcrimes Proposal

Santa Rudd

 

No Right Turn looks at Rudd’s plans to replace the existing Australian sedition laws

with new laws with worrisome wording:

There’s this bit:

“The new counter-terrorism laws – to be drafted in the first half of next year – will cover attacks that cause psychological as well as physical harm…”

This current internationally accepted definition of terrorism (as seen in e.g. New Zealand’s Terrorism Suppression Act) includes acts which are carried out for the purpose of “induc[ing] terror in a civilian population” – but it still requires that they cause death, injury, or serious destruction. So, in order to be “terrorism”, it has to involve killing people or blowing stuff up. Allowing psychological as well as physical harm runs the risk of substantially lowering that threshold, allowing the misclassification of other offences as “terrorism”, with all that that entails. Given that anti-terror laws are already overused, that would be a Very Bad Thing.

In view of the sinister scope creep which is becoming characteristic of the Rudd government, let’s consider what might fall under the new Act’s ambit – like the incessant terrifying media reports of recession / depression we’ve come to know and loathe and which proved a self-fulfilling prophecy over the past year or so. What about religious preaching that induces psychological terror in congregations through threats of eternal fire and brimstone for transgressions? then there’s Santa Claus – he knows when you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake!

More pertinently, what about when government attempts to manipulate its electors into accepting a nanny state by implying that those who don’t back net censorship are pedophiles?