Heya. I usually don’t forward these sorts of things, but this is something I’m seriously passionate about. Yesterday the current labor government announced that beyond considerations, they have finally decided they absolutely wish to go ahead with their plans to censor the internet, mandatory for every australian citizen.
In doing so, they scared off international investors, and businesses all around the world, for fear that their internet services would be arbitrarily blocked in our country by anonymous members of the classification board, with no means of appeal, no means of accountability. They’ve soured our international relations, and breached UN guidelines on freedom of expression and speech.
They wish to censor the internet using a similar system to that which china uses today. It will be incapable of censoring your emails, or Peer to Peer traffic. It will however force your internet provider to break open your encrypted communications, even online banking, to snoop inside, and all of your web browsing. This will often cause your web browser to display scary warnings when you access your bank or other encrypted services, but you’ll have no choice but to allow the insecure connection, with the risk that someone other than your ISP, like a neighbour, or a telstra employee, are in fact tampering with your connection, stealing your passwords, and the contents of forms filled out on webpages, like banking details. You’ll no longer have the ability to detect if someone is doing this, rendering your encrypted connection totally meaningless. They’ll do this so they can deny you access to anything controversial or considered distasteful by the anonymous staff of the classification board.
Due to leaks, which can be found on wikileaks.org - a website we wouldn’t be able to access if this government succeeds with censorship, we can see the list contains anti-abortion websites, as well as pro-euthenasia websites, pornography, gambling, and even a dentist work website. Our government has repeatedly justified this scheme with the claim that it would curb Child Pornography, but the simple fact is that child pornography does not happen on ‘the web’ (that which is accessed via your web browser, internet explorer, firefox, or what have you). It happens on peer to peer systems, often heavily encrypted and impossible to censor or observe, and it happens in private email. The system they propose will not affect the transmission of child pornography in any manner. It is clearly a lie, used to slander anyone who dares to oppose their plans with claims that they somehow support child pornography, in opposing this scheme.
The pre-existing list already censors politically relevant material. How could we possibly entrust such a powerful tool to a government who has already demonstrated their intent to abuse it in order to deny us access to the very information we need to have informed debate about important social issues of today, like euthanasia?
Worse yet, the world is watching. Many governments around the world are today quite scared of the internet, and it’s power to inform. Their absolute power over us has been diminished immensely. These world governments are watching us, as a ginny pig. Not only could our own democratic freedoms be at stake, but we stand to inspire governments around the world to follow suit if we allow these invasions of basic human rights, to succeed.
The Pirate Party of Australia is an offshoot of the Swedish pirate party, which now holds two seats in the european union after their own government tried to similarly invade and control their culture and their freedom to read and to learn about whichever topic they please.
They need to reach 500 ‘Founding Members’ however, to be registered on the next electoral ballots here. It costs $20, and the effort of filling out a few details on one single A4 page, faxed, scanned and emailed, or posted to their sydney PO Box.
If you care about democracy, this is one way you can fight against this. It’s not often we have the chance to save our country and the world from something bad with so little effort. Don’t let this pass by. There isn’t someone else who will do this if you don’t. The onus to fight for your rights is entirely on you.
There may be protests too, and on the getup.org.au website, you can write messages to Stephen Conroy - the leader of this campaign to censor the internet, and have it delivered via email, or fax, at no cost to you. I doubt he cares, as he appears to be on a religious crusade now, paying no attention to public opinion. But his staff do read these messages. If you convince his staff of his insanity, we may be able to convince the Labor party that the PR nightmare which is Stephen Conroy isn’t worth it any longer. Worth the effort of writing a message on a webpage, I figure!
Thanks for bothering to read all this, now, go save the world! Below I forward an email from the pirate party, talking about Founding Memberships, and some good ideas on how to convince various people why the pirate party would be good for them. :)
Check out http://pirateparty.org.au/ and consider giving a stuff about politics, if only for today. :)
