CyberLaw Blog

Archive for March 24th, 2009

Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites – Wikileaks

March 19, 2009, By Asher Moses (Sidney Morning Herald)

The Australian communications regulator’s top-secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked on to the web and paints a harrowing picture of Australia’s forthcoming internet censorship regime.

Wikileaks, an anonymous document repository for whistleblowers, obtained the list, which has been seen by this website, and plans to publish it for public consumption on its website imminently.

Wikileaks has previously published the blacklists for Thailand, Denmark and Norway.

University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt said the leaked list ‘constitutes a condensed encyclopedia of depravity and potentially very dangerous material’.

He said the leaked list would become ‘the concerned parent’s worst nightmare’ as curious children would inevitably seek it out.

But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.

‘It seems to me as if just about anything can potentially get on the list,’ Landfelt said.

The blacklist is maintained by ACMA and provided to makers of internet filtering software that parents can opt to install on their PCs.

However, if the Government proceeds with its mandatory internet filtering scheme, sites on the blacklist will be blocked for all Australians. The Government has flagged plans to expand the blacklist to 10,000 sites or more.

In a special report, written in conjunction with the Internet Industry Association and presented to the Government over a year ago, Landfeldt warned that ‘list leakage’ was one of the main issues associated with maintaining a secret blacklist of prohibited sites.

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, dug up the blacklist after ACMA added several Wikileaks pages to the list following the site’s publication of the Danish blacklist.

He said secret censorship systems were ‘invariably corrupted’, pointing to the Thailand censorship list, which was originally billed as a mechanism to prevent child pornography but contained more than 1200 sites classified as criticising the royal family.

‘In January the Thai system was used to censor Australia reportage about the imprisoned Australian writer Harry Nicolaides,’ he said.

‘The Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun. This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks.’

The leaked list, understood to have been obtained from an internet filtering software maker, contains 2395 sites. ACMA said its blacklist, as at November last year, contained 1370 sites.

Assange said the disparity in the reported figure is most likely due to the fact that the list contains several duplicates and variations of the same URL that stem from a single complaint. Alternatively, some sites may have been added to the list by the filter software maker.

ACMA said Australians caught distributing the list or accessing child pornography sites on the list could face criminal charges and up to 10 years in prison.

Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin said the leaking of the list was irresponsible but highlighted how this type of information could surface despite the efforts of ACMA to protect it, and could be used by those with a perverse interest in its content.

‘The regrettable and unfortunate reality is there will always be explicit and illegal material on the web and – regardless of blacklists, filters and the like – those with the means and know-how will find ways of accessing it,’ he said.

‘Adult supervision is the most effective way of keeping children safe online and people shouldn’t be led into believing by Labor that expanded blacklists or mandatory filters are a substitute for that.’

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the leak was not surprising and would only get worse once the list was sent to hundreds of Australian ISPs as part of the Government’s mandatory internet filtering policy.

He said the Government could be considered a ‘promoter and disseminator of links to some pretty unsavoury material’.

‘The list itself should concern every Australian – although plenty of the material is unsavoury or even illegal, the presence of sites like YouTube, MySpace, gambling or even Christian sites on the list raises a lot of questions,’ he said.

‘There is even a harmless tour operator on there, but there is no mechanism for a site operator to know they got on or request to be removed. The prospect of mandatory nation-wide filtering of this secret list is pretty concerning from a democratic point of view.’

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said the leak and publication of the ACMA blacklist would be ‘grossly irresponsible’ and undermine efforts to improve cyber safety.

He said ACMA was investigating the matter and considering a range of possible actions including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Australians involved in making the content available would be at ’serious risk of criminal prosecution’.

‘Under existing laws the ACMA blacklist includes URLs relating to child sexual abuse, rape, incest, bestiality, sexual violence and detailed instruction in crime,’ Senator Conroy said.

‘No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.’

First seen in the Sidney Morning Herald. Thanks to Asher Moses and the Sidney Morning Herald for covering this issue. Copyright remains with the aforementioned.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China ‘blocks YouTube video site’: “China ‘blocks YouTube video site’

By Quentin Sommerville, BBC News, Beijing, Tuesday, 24 March 2009

China is reported to have blocked the YouTube video-sharing website because it has been carrying video of soldiers beating monks and other Tibetans.

The date and location of the footage, posted by a Tibetan exile group, cannot be ascertained.

A Chinese government spokesman would not confirm whether YouTube had indeed been blocked.

China has a history of blocking websites which carry messages it views as politically unacceptable.

In most of China, YouTube has suddenly become inaccessible.

The site has been carrying a graphic video released by Tibetan exiles, which shows hundreds of uniformed Chinese troops swarming through a Tibetan monastery – a group of troops beat a man with batons.

In another scene a group of men, including a monk, are beaten, kicked and choked, while they lie on the ground. Some have their hands tied others appear to be unconscious.

The date and locations of the footage cannot be confirmed. Beijing maintains that it dealt lawfully with last years protests in Tibet.

On Tuesday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that China ‘is not afraid of the internet’. However, he was unable to confirm if YouTube had been blocked.

Dentist’s website on leaked blacklist – Wikileaks

From Wikileaks, March 20, 2009

By Asher Moses (Sidney Morning Herald)

The communications regulator’s secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked onto the web and includes such innocent sites as a dentist and tuckshop consultant.

The whistleblower site Wikileaks yesterday published the top-secret Australian Communications and Media Authority list. Websites on it will be blocked for all Australians once the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering scheme, which was originally pitched as targeting only ‘illegal’ content.

But, as experts have warned, a secret list is dangerous because those added to the list in error would have little recourse. ‘Any person or corporation that would be identifiable on the list would potentially be deemed by the general public … either a child molester or at least in the same category as child molesters,’ said a University of Sydney associate professor, Bjorn Landfeldt.

Alongside child porn, bestiality, rape and extreme violence sites, the list includes a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, porn sites, Wikipedia entries, sites on euthanasia, fringe religions, fetishes, Christianity, the website of a tour operator and even a dentist.

The dentist, Queenslander John Golbrani, was furious when contacted to inform him that his site appeared on the blacklist.

‘A Russian company broke into our website a couple of years back and they were putting pornographic listings on there – [but] we changed across to a different web provider and we haven’t had that problem since,’ he said.

Jocelyn Ashcroft, who runs a school canteen consultancy in Queensland, also said she had no idea why her site had made it on to the list. ‘The only thing I can think of is that I have emailed schools telling them about my book and CD resource How To Have A Healthy And Profitable Theme Day,’ she said.

‘There is no software involved in this process, just me copy and pasting.’

Daniel Purser, who runs a web hosting and design company out of NSW, was also shocked to learn that his site had been blacklisted. He said there was ‘no chance’ his customers were hosting questionable content.

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, yesterday said the list was not genuine.

‘The published list purports to be current at 6 August 2008 and apparently contains approximately 2400 URLs whereas the ACMA blacklist for the same date contained 1061 URLs,’ he said in a statement.

‘ACMA advises that there are URLs on the published list that have never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation.’

But Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, said the disparity in the reported figures was most likely owing to duplicates and variations in URLs.

First seen in the Sidney Morning Herald. Thanks to Asher Moses and the Sidney Morning Herald for covering this issue. Copyright remains with the aforementioned.

Ministers spending billions on unlawful databases: “

Rowntree Trust unwraps everyday ‘Transformational Government’

A report on the Database State (pdf) claims that 40 out of 46 key government databases are not fit for purpose, and 11 of those are ‘almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned’.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Aussie ISP pulls out of firewall trial: “

Can’t reconcile with corp responsibility

iiNet, Australia’s third largest Internet Service Provider, is withdrawing from the government’s censorship trial.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)