Help Has Arrived For Australians Worried About 'Spams & Scams' Coming Through The Portal

from the filter-this dept

We recently wrote about how Australian Minister for Broadband, Stephen Conroy, lover of government censorship and surveillance over the internet, had his "series of tubes" moment when he declared that 20,000 people were "getting infected by these spams, or scams, that come through, the portal." Not one to miss out on an opportunity, it appears that an Australian consumer electronics firm, Kogan, has decided to help out Conroy and all those other "victims." Reader cofiem points us to a new product listing specifically for making Australians safe from "spams and scams that come through the portal": See, Conroy? No regulations needed... Maybe you can work out a deal with some of those charities sourcing mosquito nets...

Update: As pointed out in the comments, they've also put together this fantastic video commercial for it:

Filed Under: spams and scams, stephen conroy

Australian Gov't Says ISPs Should Spy On Users... At The Same Time It's Trying To Attack Google For Doing Less?

from the um,-hypocrisy-much? dept

We've been writing about the Australian government -- mainly Stephen Conroy -- the politician who is actively trying to censor the internet, who is absolutely livid at Google, mainly because the company has accurately pointed out what a bad idea the censorship program would be. He's been making ridiculous and uninformed fear mongering statements about Google for a few weeks now. The latest, which is a blatant falsehood, is that Google's WiFi snarfing collected personal banking details. But, of course, as anyone who actually knows how these things work can tell you, banking sites use encryption. Google can only read unencrypted data, and all of the evidence suggests that Google discarded any encrypted info (not that it could do anything with it anyway).

Of course, while Conroy is grandstanding about how Google might have possibly, maybe collected a tiny snippet of unsecure info that passed through an open WiFi network while it was driving by -- saying that it was "the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies," -- his government, in his area of regulation, is working on data retention plans that would require ISPs to spy on your internet usage. They don't just want ISPs to store your IP addresses. They want your browsing history and every email stored -- just in case the government wants to go back and check it some time.

That seems like a significantly bigger privacy breach than anything Google did.

Filed Under: australia, data retention, isps, spying, stephen conroy

Australian Censorship Boss Has His 'Series Of Tubes' Moment

from the spams-through-the-portal dept

A few years back, you may remember, that former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens got a lot of attention for his infamous description of the internet as "a series of tubes," as part of a longer talk that repeatedly highlights that he didn't quite understand what he was regulating: Given the number of folks in Australia who have been submitting this video of Australian Minister for Broadband, Stephen Conroy (the guy who wants to censor the internet in Australia), it appears that many down under feel that Conroy has had his "series of tubes" moment by talking about how computer users are getting "infected by these spams, or scams, that come through, the portal" To be fair, in both cases, these politicians are extremely inarticulate in trying to make their point. Everyone has those moments. However, it does seem like this "spams or scams through the portal" quote is starting to go viral. When it comes to politicians who are supposed to be regulating the internet, you would think they'd sound a bit more prepared for not sounding like they have no idea what they're talking about.

Filed Under: australia, stephen conroy

Stephen Conroy Continues To Attack Google; Claims WiFi Data Collection Was Done On Purpose

from the proof-plese? dept

Stephen Conroy, the Australian politician who has been pushing hard to massively filter and censor Australia's internet has been fighting Google for a while now. After the company made comments about why such censorship was a bad idea, rather than respond to the issues, Conroy came out swinging by attacking the company for its Buzz privacy mishap, and quoting Eric Schmidt out of context. So, of course, with Google's WiFi data capture admission, Conroy has some new ammo. He's claiming that it couldn't possibly have been an accident and that this represents "the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies."

While it's no surprise that Conroy doesn't like Google and its opposition to his plan to censor the internet, perhaps he should stay away from laughably ridiculous hyperbole. The only data Google collected was what was passed over open WiFi connections in the split seconds that it drove by those access points with its Street View vehicles. These are networks where anyone on those networks could have just as easily have done the same thing -- except if someone was really on one of those networks, they could keep recording that data, rather than moving on when the traffic light changed. Furthermore, there's no evidence that Google ever did anything whatsoever with whatever data it did collect. Making claims about this being some huge privacy breach when there's no evidence that anyone ever even saw the data seems pretty questionable.

Filed Under: australia, censorship, politics, privacy, stephen conroy, street view, wifi
Companies: google

Australian Censor Master Censors His Own Tagcloud To Hide Anger Over Censorship

from the nicely-done dept

Stephen Conroy, the Australian Communications Minister who is the point man on pushing through Australia's latest plan to censor the internet, has apparently been caught doing a bit more local censoring. Yeebok points us to the news that Conroy's own website has a tagcloud, highlighting what people are searching for, but the script that generates the tagcloud automatically blocks the phrase "ISP filtering" from appearing in the cloud. What's most amazing, of course, is that Conroy's tech staff is apparently so clueless that they included this in the javascript which anyone could read, rather than, at the very least, hiding it serverside. Amazing. He's apparently so unable to backup his own position that he has to hide behind a weak technology hack to pretend that people aren't concerned about his plan to censor the internet. Perhaps instead of "ISP filtering" people should start searching for "censorship" on his site to see what happens...

Filed Under: australia, censorship, filters, stephen conroy, tagclound

Australian Domain Authority Circumvents Standard Process To Shut Down Site Critical Of Australian Internet Filters

from the due-process? dept

With the news that Australia has decided to censor the internet, a group of protesters decided to set up a website complaining about this effort by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy (who laughably called internet filters "100% effective" based on absolutely no metrics). In setting up this protest site, they were able to register the domain stephenconroy.com.au. Not surprisingly, that got some press attention, and suddenly the Australian domain authority, AuDA, took notice. As Slashdot points out, AuDA completely circumvented its usual due process mechanism, and it gave the holders of the site a grand total of 3 hours to defend themselves. When they asked for more time, they were shut down. Now, there are legitimate questions about whether or not they deserve this domain name. But you would think that AuDA would be willing to at least give them the normal amount of time to craft a reply and defend why the site is legit. The speed of the takedown certainly suggests political motivations -- more than a typical review process -- and highlights the very problem the site was set up to illustrate: why it's bad when the government can suddenly snuff out websites with views it does not like.

Filed Under: australia, censorship, domain names, filters, stephen conroy
Companies: auda

Australian Filtering Boss: Turning Off Blog And Comments

from the but-listening...-we-swear... dept

With the story earlier this week about Australia's Broadband Minister, Stephen Conroy, considering adding BitTorrent filtering to the country's ISP filtering/censorship program, it was notable that Conroy said he was paying close attention to the commentary about the program online -- including various blogs and social network systems like Twitter. That was actually a small glimmer of hope mixed in with the ridiculous policy -- but it appears that Conroy has decided he'd really rather not listen to the conversation on his own blog. While that post about BitTorrent filtering got a lot of attention, it also got a ton of comments, and now Conroy and his team are turning off their blog and closing down the comments. Way to communicate with the people...

Filed Under: australia, bittorrent, blogs, censorship, comments, filters, stephen conroy

Australia's Slippery Slope Of Censorship Gets Even Slicker With Plans To Filter Bittorrent

from the why-have-an-internet-at-all? dept

It's no secret that plenty of folks are up in arms over Australia's plan to censor internet connections. From the beginning, it was clear that this was quite a slippery slope, and that slope appears to be getting even more slippery. A bunch of folks have sent in the news that the country's Broadband Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy is already talking about using the system to filter and block file sharing and BitTorrent as well, falsely claiming that the technology exists to do so effectively.

It might just be something of an off-the-cuff statement, but so far Conroy and others in the Australian government appear to have been incredibly tone deaf to the complaints about the filtering system. It is worth noting that Conroy claims in a blog post that he's monitoring the complaints on various websites and social networks -- even to the point of following certain keywords on Twitter. That, at least, shows a surprising (but good) recognition of where he should be reading about the protests. Unfortunately, though, so far it doesn't appear that any of those complaints have resonated.

Filed Under: australia, bittorrent, censorship, filters, stephen conroy