To Be Fair To Australia, Your Average Forklift Is A Dirty, Dirty Whore

Jul 16, 2009

By Ken.

Law

Patrick previously wrote about Australia’s internet censorship laws, which prohibit linking to various banned sites. I wrote about the censorious ambitions of some of its politicians, including in regards to games.

So I was interested to read Canadian free speech advocate Ezra Levant’s article discussing — well, more accurately, ridiculing, Australia’s internet blacklist. In what should be no shock to anyone who has ever read about a list of banned books, a no-fly list, or any other list of forbidden people or topics put together by the government, it’s arbitrary, capricious, and laughable:

Needless to say, I was tempted to skim the names of the banned sites. Most of them are porn sites, and some have names that suggest child pornography, which is a crime. But that’s what we have courts for. The Australian blacklist wasn’t written by a court; there was no hearing where evidence was brought that these sites were criminal sites. A group of busybody human rights activists simply wrote the blacklist. Sounds Canadian, actually.

Many banned sites are merely offensive, but not illegal. And some sites are perfectly innocuous. For some secret reason, the web site www.vanbokhorst.nl is on the blacklist. If you’re not in Australia, feel free to give that one a click. It’s not a pornographic site. My Dutch is rusty, but it appears to be a web site for a forklift rental company in Holland.

How did Van Bokhorst get on the blacklist in Australia? Nobody knows because the process was kept secret, even from Van Bokhorst. It’s unlikely that Van Bokhorst had any Australian customers. But that’s not the point. Someone is making these clandestine decisions about what Australians can or can’t see.

Well, now, “forklift” just sounds dirty, so maybe that’s it.

By the way — not only is the process secret, apparently the list itself is secret. So some group of bureaucrats — or possibly special interests selected by bureaucrats — are using secret, unreviewed, and unreviewable criteria to make a secret list of sites that Australians can’t visit. For their own good.

Are Australians putting up with this? If so, why?

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7 Comments

Australia, Free Speech, Nanny State

6 Comments

Shaunbacca • Jul 16, 2009 @5:23 pm

We’re really trying! It’s been deeply unpopular with vast swathes of the community and seems to be coming more and more unpopular but the government still presses on.

Some background is at the last federal election in 2007 there was a complete change in government for the first time since 1996. The incoming government said they would continue the previous government of filtering web content which was done by making available, for free, local (on PC) web filtering software. Despite this being available and publicised most people didn’t take up the offer, hopefully because they realise the best way to protect their kids on the internet is to, you know, be parents and actually keep an eye on what their kids are doing.

Unfortunately, some of the members of the incoming government have decided the way to popularity is an overt display of religious moralising through the tried and true “won’t somebody think of the children” route (also, it’s the name of a good site on the filtering issue). The current minister for communication, Stephen Conroy, was recently voted as internet villain of the year, joining the preceeding communications ministers Helen Coonan (successfully watered down cross media ownership laws) and Richard Alston (aka the world’s greatest luddite) in infamy.

So now we have a government that plans to take money away from child protection schemes that actually work, such the specialised child protection unit inside the Australian Federal Police (local equivalent of FBI), to pump into this stupid ISP level filtering scheme. Anyone with a reasonable level of internet savvy, like a lot of people who want to access child pornography, will be able to get around this by setting up a VPN and accessing the internet through an encrypted connection. Internet speeeds will quite possibly be degraded depending on the type of filter they set up.

There’s a whole range of issues here, not the least of which is that the Government still can’t make up its mind on what will be blocked by the filter. It has gotten so bad now that even children’s welfare groups have joined the call to stop the filter. People are trying, largely driven by the GetUp! group, to stop this thing from going ahead and to try to get a sensible system in place. The government continues to be obstinate and deaf to pleas.
Ken • Jul 16, 2009 @5:25 pm

That’s a tremendously informative post, Shaunbacca. Thanks.
Shaunbacca • Jul 16, 2009 @5:29 pm

Damn, just realised that the article was dealing with the existing crappy filtering system rather than the one that government is trying to bring in.

The existing one sucks as it is not possible to find out exactly what is on the list, unless it gets leaked like it did about six months ago, and it’s terribly easy to moan about something you don’t like to the people who run the list and get it added.

It’s yet another thing we’re currently trying to get fixed as well, but at the present time people are more concerned about de-railing the proposed ISP-level filtering than dealing with not quite as bad, though still crappy, current system.
Bruce • Jul 16, 2009 @9:44 pm

Australian’s all let us rejoice,
For we are young and…free

The balance of power in our senate is owned by Mr 1.5% Fielding of the ‘Family First’ party. In exchange for his support on key legislation, both the current and immediately previous government threw him a bone in the form of ‘morality’ legislation. Hence the current and proposed legislation for thinking of the children.

The current system is bad, but is merely naive and ineffectual. Akin to setting up a small picket fence at the low tide line on a single beach and is relatively cheap in comparison to other government follies.

The proposed mandatory filtering at an ISP level is disastrous. It will be massively expensive and equally ineffective. Only a few ISPs have worked on the trial so far. A trial with no actual test goals which will presumably leave some wriggle room for Conroy. Even my Nana thinks this is a terrible idea.

And I’m sure you can imagine the quality of debate we are getting. EFF and the like pushing the ‘all censorship is evil and I can watch anything I like’ line while the pro filter group (don’t call it censorship – people don’t like censorship) will brand anyone even questioning the plan as pro kiddy porn.

I worry about what will come from the trial results. If they go as expected and show that a smart 10 year old can render them worthless, will that be the prompt to dump the idea – or push for an even more draconian regime?
Edwin Greenwood • Jul 23, 2009 @3:52 am

Van Bokhorst is nothing to do with salacious forklifting. It’s a driving school.

It gets curiouser and curiouser.

(There was a case in the UK where a driving instructor stuck a giant carrot down the front of his trousers to ‘impress’ female pupils. Perhaps that explains it.)
Richard • Dec 25, 2009 @1:34 am

Hi, I didn’t know this weird story. I live in Holland.
The site is probably on the list because the name looks like the name of the Dutch senator “van Bronckhorst” or “van Bronkhorst” or the foundation with the same name. The politician was against sexual repression and for sexual freedom in the 1970s like a majority of politicians. The age of consent was 12 and for some time there were even discussions to lower it or abandon it completely.
The senator was awarded for his work and was offered the honor chair “senator for life” when he retired. In the 1990s Dutch laws changed and the age of consent was raised which this senator did not agree with. Religious right was on the rise. After public outcries over some horrible abuse cases like Dutroux he was avoided by most active politicians because nobody dared to burn their fingers since he was openly pedophile. He committed suicide some years ago because of harassments and health issues as I recall. There is probably a wikipedia page with more details.