[AusNOG] Conroy censoring dissent?

[Bevan Slattery]

***BELOW IS BASED ON THE SMH ARTICLE BEING ACCURATE***

Ausnoger's

I have forwarded this to Carolyn Dalton and Lloyd Ernst being two
members of the IIA Board.  I found the apparent interference by
Government officials to be a very alarming development.  The IIA has no
power, mandate nor should it seek to be involved in passing threats and
intimidation on behalf of any Government.  The IIA now needs to make a
clear, concise and public statement on it's position with respect to
both the response to Government regarding their request to seek
censorship on their behalf and secondly the idea of censoring *all*
'illegal' content on the Internet.

I also fear that as every URL is now being checked it is highly likely
that this, or a future government will require every URL to be
recorded/retained against the account.  So not only will Australian's
internet use be censored, but highly likely, be historically recorded
for later investigation.  Now we are in China.  They will use 'Child
Pornography' as the tag to get the filter in place and 'Terrorism' to
get the URL history in place.

People will then start using remote (out of country) VPN services to
obtain their content free from government logging or worse still
establish a cottage industry in closed encrypted networks.  Sounds
familiar?  The Government may start to ban encrypted VPN's without
government approval.  Now we are in India 3 years ago.  Alternatively
the Government may just ban organisations/people from using VPN's with
higher than 40 bit encryption .  Now we are in the US 7 years ago.  Keep
this up and we will be in 1984.  Mind you I think we are there already.

I would have thought this issue is of such importance that the
Government would spend a little more time considering the repercussions
of imposing 'blanket decisions' without appropriate consultation.  Much
like blanket guarantees on bank deposits, these well-intended decisions
will have serious implications and unintended consequences on those who
the Government is trying to protect.

[b]

PS:  And for the record, I (and my old Infopro/iSeek business partner)
brought N2H2 filtering into Australia in 1998 which provided filtering
for somewhere near 5000 schools (almost half the entire schools in
Australia).  So before someone suggests I am for Kiddie Porn, then I
would suggest they think very hard before they try to throw that 'fear
grenade' my way in a lazy, uneducated and almost 'McCarthy'ism' "Reds in
the Bed" attempt to discredit my understanding of this very complex
issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bevan Slattery 
> Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 9:07 AM
> To: Carolyn Dalton (carolyndalton); Lloyd Ernst
> Subject: 
> http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/labors-net-gag-w
> orse-than-iran/2008/10/23/1224351430987.html
> 
> Hi guys,
> 
> This whole concept of 'opt-out but not really' censorship is 
> disgraceful and unacceptable.  Furthermore, the 
> bullying/attempting to censor people's opinions is completely 
> unacceptable and as a member I feel the IIA needs to take a 
> very serious stand on this issue.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> [b]
>