Though Australia’s mandatory plan to filter traffic is taking a knee, this past week the major ISPs in the country voluntarily agreed to filter the net for child abuse beginning in July. Telstra, Optus and even Primus are planning on implementing this filtering, but are a little worried about hacktivist reprisals.
The ISPs would be provided a list of child abuse sites to block by the Australian government. This voluntary filtering is a stop-gap initiative which was laid out in 2010 between the government and the ISPs. This initiative will be filtering only the child pornography until the range of material being reviewed for the mandatory filter has been settled on.
A Telstra spokeswoman said they remained committed to the project, “We continue to work with the Australian Federal Police to disrupt the availability of child sexual abuse content in Asutralia.
The ISP filtering scheme has its detractors. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) says it strongly objects to this voluntary filtering due to numerous problems. Jillian C. York, EFF’s director for international freedom of expression, said that that there were problems with lack of transparency in the selection of blacklisted addresses, lack of any real child porn trade determent, problems with false positives and a lack of any real appeals process when a mistake happens. No appeals process also opens up the possibility that the ISPs could deem anything to be child porn if the Australian Communications and Media Authority (AMCA) requested it. Seems like a mandatory filtering process coming in under the guise of anti-CP.
Besides the EFF, Telstra has recently revealed it’s apprehension towards the filtering scheme because of the recent attacks conducted by the LulzSec hacker group. LulzSec has infiltrated a multitude of US government websites including CIA, and Thursday’s Arizona law enforcement humiliation. Anonymous, another hacker group, is well known for their attacks on Australian government websites. Have groups have teamed up and have announced their anti-government agenda. Telestra has yet to make a firm decision because of fears of reprisals from these internet hacktivists.
I think the point is that its an obvious attempt by the Australian government to curb freedoms, pointed out by the EFF. You should be mad at the Aussie’s government PR campaign, they don’t care about stopping child porn. As you say, who would speak out against child porn? Child porn is bad and should be fought, but there are no checks to the fascist deeming of inappropriate material. This is the wrong way to fight the right battle. I believe that the Australian government is scared the Hackers will see through this disingenuous attempt and frustrate a blatantly fascist political move.
typical lies to smear the hacking community that HATES child porn… this writer does not no anything he is talking about and makes a living making up crap to pay the rent like all current money cult worshipers that serve the greater system of exploitation becasue their personal narcissism precedes their humanity…
Hacktivists will not give a flying hoot about filtering kiddie porn websites. Journalists sure do like to make shit up…..
What kinda amoral hacker wants to make sure Australians can visit kiddie porn? Information wants to be free… Little Timmy’s Wang is not information… In fact I’d say it’s the exact opposite of that… Is abuse the opposite of information?
All that shit is in the deepweb anyway. LulzSec is a bunch of tallentless losers.
They start there where will it end?
They better rethink this before a major mistake!