Secret internet filter blacklist posted on web

ArticleData Array ( [Article] => Array ( [article_id] => 1012393 [headline] => Secret internet filter blacklist posted on web [abstract] =>

The Australian communications regulator's blacklist of banned internet sites appears to have been leaked on an anti-censorship webpage.

[keywords] => censor, censorship, page, webpage, web, website, internet, pornography, [content] =>

The Australian communications regulator's blacklist of banned internet sites appears to have been leaked on an anti-censorship webpage.

Wikileaks, an online repository for top-secret documents collected by whistleblowers, has published what it claims is a list of sites classified 'dangerous' by the Government.

All 2,395 sites are said to be in the sights of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), ahead of the introduction of a mandatory internet filter.

But alongside the expected child pornography, fetish and gambling sites, the list also includes the webpages of a boarding kennel and a dentist, both based in Queensland.

"Wikileaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, [but] we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater," the group said on its site.

Leak 'grossly irresponsible'

"Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of up to $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist - a list the government hopes to expand into a giant national censorship machine."
 
Wikileaks itself is also included on the censorship list.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has condemned the apparent leaking of the list as "grossly irresponsible", and said it was under investigation.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald that anyone involved in the list's publication was at risk of criminal prosecution.

"The ACMA blacklist includes URLs relating to child sexual abuse, rape, incest, bestiality, sexual violence and detailed instruction in crime," he said.

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

 

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The actual number may be higher, but the OpenNet Initiative had the time and capabilities to study only 40 countries and the Palestinian territories.

Even so, researchers said they found more censorship than they had initially expected, a sign that the internet has matured to the point that governments are taking notice.

"This is very much the revenge of geography," said Rafal Rohozinski, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge in England.

China, Iran, Burma, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam had the most extensive filters for political sites. Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen had the strictest social-filtering practices, blocking pornography, gambling and gay and lesbian sites.

In some countries, censorship was narrow. South Korea, for instance, tends to block only information about its neighbouring rival North Korea.

Yet researchers found no filtering at all in Russia, Israel or the Palestinian territories, despite political conflicts there.

Governments generally had no mechanism for citizens to complain about any erroneous blocking, with Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates being among the exceptions.

The OpenNet Initiative, a collaboration between researchers at Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the University of Toronto, has previously published reports detailing censorship in specific countries. The latest study was its attempt to compare filtering worldwide.

The study did not attempt to chronicle the effectiveness of the efforts. Some technical approaches are better than others in blocking sites, but all can be bypassed with enough technical know-how to use "proxy" techniques or special software.

The organisation said the regions chosen for review should not be considered comprehensive. It didn't include any countries in North America or Western Europe on grounds that filtering practices there have been better known than elsewhere. It also excluded North Korea and Cuba for fear of risks to collaborators it would need in those countries.

The group supplied software to volunteers in each of the countries tested. Websites checked include those for gambling, pornography and human rights abuses.

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at Oxford, said filtering appeared to occur most widely in countries where internet penetration is higher, possibly explaining the lack of any censorship efforts in Russia and Egypt.
[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 18 May 2007 [articletime] => 18 May 2007 [display_order] => 0 ) ) [comments] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [articles_ugc_id] => 17383 [author] => James [source] => Kew East [content] => Censorship is wrong and I can't believe it happens in Australia.
This is disgusting and is in direct conflict with the fundamentals of our democracy. [user_headline] => BOOOOO [comment_date] => 19 Mar 2009 17:42 AEST [agree] => 6 [disagree] => 0 ) ) ) [winston] => test )