The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) yesterday demanded Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) remove a link to an abortion website from their blog, stating it would fine them $11,000 per day if not removed.
The document, issued by the ACMA to EFA’s hosting provider yesterday, explained that it was a final link-deletion notice, and if they did not comply by 6PM next business day their hosting provider, Sublime IP, would be fined $11,000 per day.
Speaking with Mark Newton, an IT expert, Tech Wired understands that a final-link deletion notice must be sent to the Classification Board for it to be “final”.
The decision from the Classification Board, available online, overruled the ACMA’s initial decision of the content being “refused classification”. The Classification Board instead deemed the content as being R18+ of which is also “prohibited content” and in turn blocked.
As seen in March of this year, Whirlpool, a Broadband discussion forum, received an interim link-deletion notice from the ACMA.
It is understood by Tech Wired that Whirlpool’s hosting provider, Bullet Proof Networks, received a final link-deletion notice last week.
Colin Jacobs, a representative for the EFA outlined in a blog post that this should alarm Australians.
“…the link was part of a political discussion about the merits of the existing and future Internet censorship policies,” he wrote.
“Nevertheless, we were forced to remove the link on pain of severe penalties.” he added.
Tech Wired was reminded of what Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said at the ALIA Online conference on January 20th.
“…there has never been any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content.”
This decision by the Classification Board is sure to spark another chapter in the debate of whether blocking political content through ISP-level filtering is right or wrong.
Today saw news that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) had its blacklist URLs leaked on Wikileaks, a website often known for leaking secret documents.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported it exclusively at 11:44am this morning, stating that:
“The Australian communications regulator’s top-secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked on to the web and paints a harrowing picture of Australia’s forthcoming internet censorship regime.”
In less than an hour after publication, Wikileaks published some 2,000+ URLs to its website stating they were blacklisted URLs in Australia for the month of August 2008. Wikileaks is currently offline, suggesting it fell on its back after being linked to from various sources.
Late this afternoon Senator Stephen Conroy and the ACMA issued 2 separate statements regarding the matter.
Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy condemned the reported leak and publication of the list, stating:
“The leak and publication of prohibited URLs is grossly irresponsible. It undermines efforts to improve cyber–safety and create a safe online environment for children,”
He denied that the list of leaked URLs was that of the ACMA Blacklist, stating:
“I am aware of reports that a list of URLs has been placed on a web site. This is not the ACMA blacklist.”
ACMA said in a statement:
“ACMA has previously investigated and taken action on material—including child pornography and child sexual abuse images—at some of the sites on this list of 2300 URLs. However, the list provided to ACMA differs markedly in length and format to the ACMA blacklist. The ACMA blacklist has at no stage been 2300 URLs in length and at August 2008 consisted of 1061 URLs. It is therefore completely inaccurate to say that the list of 2300 URLs constitutes an ACMA blacklist”
What remains to be seen is if the regulator’s official blacklist was in fact leaked. What is known though is that a blacklist of some sort relating to URLs that do exist on the ACMA blacklist list was leaked. One has to ask how such a leak occurred.
Mark Newton, a Network Engineer for Adelaide based ISP Internode told Tech Wired:
“It’s interesting that I’ve been warning about security of the blacklist for close to a year, and it’s only today that the Minister has shown the slightest bit of interest in it. The fact that the blacklist appears to have come from an ACMA-approved filtering software package comes as no great shock, and I guess that means the Internet Industry Association can expect an apology for Minister Conroy’s slur this afternoon suggesting that the list could be made more secure by beefing up the IIA Family Friendly ISP scheme”
A user on Australian Broadband forum Whirlpool did an analysis on one of the governments defunct Net Alert funded filtering products, Integard. The user found a file using reverse engineering techniques to obtain a file named “Websites_ACMA.txt” within the programs architecture.
He found that there were similar URLs on the blacklist when comparing it to the Wikileaks list:
“It’s not the wikileaks list (it’s a month earlier I think) but it sure is similar…and that’s as far as I’m willing to look.”
The user’s post has since been deleted by moderators of Whirlpool as being inappropriate.
ABC did a story on Lateline about the leak, you can watch below:
Senator Stephen Conroy Media Release
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has agreed to the introduction of a short recorded voice announcement (RVA) for the Triple Zero (000) emergency call service.
The short RVA, to be introduced today, will say:
‘You have dialled emergency Triple Zero. Your call is being connected.’
Callers will hear the message before being connected to an operator. Read more
THE Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued a formal warning to Hyarchis Company Limited (who run such services such as ezyfriends.net NSFW) for alleged breaches of the Spam Act 2003.
