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.

Senator Ludlam's net filter speech

Senator Scott Ludlam's speech on Internet Filtering Legislation from Greens MPs on Vimeo.

Global eyes on Australian NBN, filter

Several speakers at the Communications Day Summit in Sydney this week raised the issue that Australian communications policy initiatives such as the National Broadband Network (NBN) and the internet filter have attracted international attention — but not always in a good way.

Sounding somewhat embarrassed about the filter, Greens Senator and communications spokesperson Scott Ludlam said he had been bogged down taking calls form overseas journalists, asking about the filter — "Who is behind it? What is it?", adding he recently fielded a barrage of questions from a journalist in California.

ZDNet Link:

Conroy must explain why Christian lobby gets net filtering trial update: Greens

The Australian Greens are calling on the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to explain who else besides the Christian Lobby will be given a background briefing on the net filtering proposal.

"The head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, met with communications minister Senator Conroy late last week," Greens Spokesperson on Communications, Senator Scott Ludlam said today.

"Mr Wallace says he has not received any information on the trial results, but is reported to have told the Christian Lobby's national conference that he had "found out" enough on the ISP-level filtering trial to believe that ISP-level filtering worked."

Story Continues:

How does Sen. Conroy honestly expect us to believe that this is not just legislating religion if Mr Wallace is privy to inside information before the general public?

Crikey blogged about it:

The whirlpool forum is buzzing:

I particularly liked this comment:

An Onymous Lefty discusses Clive Hamilton's candidature for the Greens and how, despite his masterminding of the whole netfilter fiasco, the Greens are still our best chance at no net filter.

Senators Ludlam and Conroy on the net filter.

This debate in the Senate between Ludlam and Conroy end in Conroy's admission that filtering will not be able to block peer to peer traffic.

Peer to peer traffic is said to be the best way to share child abuse material.

Police busts are often through police infiltrating boards who share material this way. This means that the government is attacking normal porn, not child abuse material.

Open Australia copy of the Senate Question Time debate.