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Senator Conroy wants to filter but Chrome comes with a SafeSearch function built in to keep kids away from adult content.

Minister slams Facebook breaches

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has attacked the social networking site Facebook and its former college student founder for what he says is its ''complete disregard'' for privacy.

Senator Conroy is under fire from many in the internet industry for his proposed mandatory net filter. He has previously attacked Google, a key critic of the filtering plan, but last night in a Senate estimates hearing turned his attention to Facebook.

''Facebook has also shown a complete disregard for users' privacy lately,'' Senator Conroy said in response to a question from a government senator.

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This has to be a joke. Conroy has personified the invasion of privacy. He wants to determine what goes on in every bedroom in the country. Today it's no normal porn via computers. Recently the government introduced a "are you carrying porn" question onto the Australian visa applications. Tomorrow he'll be checking that sex is performed in Opus Dei approved missionary position.

His character attacks rolled forward in this session. Now he's after Google over their gathering of wireless network data while photographing for google maps. Again, unlike Conroy, Google stopped when the public objected. See this important step that you are missing, Conroy? It's the "listen to the public" step of democracy. Very important. You don't have the power to make laws and decisions, you have temporary permission. Fuck it up (like now) and you get voted out.

Ludlam says it best:

"The minister's on a bit of a hair trigger so anyone who's criticised the net filters becomes a target for character assasination, whether it be an advocacy group like EFA [Electronic Frontiers Australia] or one of the world's largest technology companies like Google," Senator Ludlam said.

"It comes across as really petulant - the guy's a minister of the Crown, you don't need to be bawling out technology companies just because they've taken a critical stand on his filter."

"I just think the minister's being a little bit oversensitive to criticism - it would be helpful sometimes if rather than shooting the messenger he listens to what he's being told."

Senator Ludlam and Colin Jacobs, chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia, both agreed that the Google Wi-Fi bungle was a serious matter but said Senator Conroy appeared to be beating it up for political gain.

"The Minister's hyberbole, bordering on hysterical, is counter-productive," said Jacobs.

Google runs to US over Australian filter

Google has confirmed that it has gone to the US State Department, including other parties, to voice its concerns on the filter.

"Google is deeply concerned by Australia's plans to introduce a widely scoped, mandatory ISP filtering regime. We have voiced our concerns publicly and with many groups including the US State Department," Google spokesperson Lucinda Barlow told ZDNet.com.au today.

The search giant has not been quiet about its views on the system which it has said has too broad a scope and is "heavy-handed".

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Government goes to war with Google over net censorship

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

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It probably wont get put up.

Conroy's plan to equalize the current censorship of videos and books and the internet has merit. Let's get rid of censorship entirely.

I'm not against classification so that people don't get a nasty fright. The DVD player is such a wonderful baby sitter after all. Classification laws need one more category: Unclassified. Parents know that there could be anything on there so don't give it to the kids.

I'm an adult. If I want to watch adult material - we are talking about just normal sex like hundreds of thousands of Australians are doing right now - what does that have to do with Senator Conroy and his ACMA.

He says that this isn't about banning porn but so much porn is banned. Excellent, sex positive porn like Tony Comstock's films showing positive, conscentual loving sex between loving, sexual partners. That is a definite No-no.

Porn is part of a person's sexuality. According to 'The Porn Report' - based on a long term, peer reviewed study, not a hunch or a religion - 1/3 of people like porn and people either like it or they don't, there is little point in trying to convince people otherwise just like GLBTI people. Conversion doesn't work because our sexuality is hard wired into us. Try converting a straight person to GLBTI, it doesn't work. Politicians have no place interfering with other peoples sexuality.

Senator Conroy announced the filter results to the Australian Christian Lobby before the public. With the Vatican besieged by child abuse allegations I wonder why we allow our actions to be informed by people who claim to have a direct line to god.

China hits back at Google with the Great Firewall

The ''Great Firewall of China'' appeared intact yesterday despite an announcement from Google that it had stopped censoring its Chinese-language search engine.

The internet giant said on Monday that it had stopped filtering results on Google.cn based in China and was redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong - effectively closing down its mainland site.

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Google's just told China to get stuffed. They have lodged a strong complaint with the Australian Government too. Why is it that only Rudd and Conroy can see that this idea sucks?

How to fix Refused Classification online: start again

On the same day that Google stopped censoring search results in China, the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy published the 174 public submissions it received on the oddly Kafkaesque issue of improving the transparency of creating a secret censorship blacklist. You can see why Minister Conroy couldn't introduce legislation into the autumn session of parliament as planned. The criticism is comprehensive.

The "Submissions on measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material" were meant to focus on how the list of RC material to be blocked by the mandatory internet filter is compiled and managed. A discussion paper put forward six options for consideration.

Crikey:

Stephen Conroy has expressed admiration for what he termed as Google's role in suppressing controversial web content in China...

APC Article

In the latest twist over his controversial Web filtering scheme, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has expressed admiration for what he termed as Google's role in suppressing controversial Web content in countries like China, Thailand, and elsewhere - and confirmed he is trying to use similar filtering to prevent Australians from viewing offensive content via Google-owned YouTube.

Google denies this claim.

Google, however, is having none of it, denying both Conroy's claims about deep-packet filtering and suggestions it would voluntarily filter RC content. "We don't believe the comparisons between how China filters the Internet, and how Australia is looking at it, are relevant," Google Australia head of policy Iarla Flynn told APCmag.com.

Did Conroy not see the news story where Google recently told China to get stuffed? This might be a good example of Conroy's internal filter in action. You can tell him anything and he will hear what he wants to hear every time.

Google's fight: US-China lock horns.

GOOGLE'S fight with Chinese censors risks escalating into a fullblown US-China showdown over cyber warfare, as claims emerge about the unprecedented scale of Chinese attacks on US commercial and defence systems.

Conroy's mentors are up to no good again.

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