EFA's "Time to Tell Mum" campaign continues to go well with over 42,000 people reporting that they told their mums about the Government's dodgy internet filter policy. There's still a lot of people to reach, but we're very pleased with the impact the campaign has had so far. Overall, the feedback from the public has been great; we've had plenty of feedback along the lines of "it's about time you got the message out there to the families."

EFA vice-chair Geordie Guy, who has been running the campaign, posted some comments a few days ago. Once again, I'd like to thank Fnuky, the creative agency who put it together for us.

Of course the reception hasn't been entirely positive - a few people thought it unfunny or merely unnecessary, but some thought it was a bit sexist with all this focus on Mums. So why are we exhorting Australians to dob Conroy in to their mums?

Firstly, it's not because we think mums are too clueless to understand technology, and need things explained to them in simple words. Nor because we think mums only care about their kids and need matters of public policy rendered to them in these terms. If that was true, the campaign might indeed be described as sexist.

In reality, we liked the idea of telling mum for the opposite reason - because our families can understand the policy and make a rational decision, if only they can get adequate information. In contrast, the Minister has treated Australian parents with contempt by trying to scare them with misleading rhetoric about protecting children from internet nasties. By substituting alarming statements about bestiality for actual information on what the filter would do for children (nothing), Conroy himself has not given mums the respect they deserve.

It's been suggested that it's offensive to behave as if mums only care about technology if it affects them or their kids. Far from being an inaccurate sterotype, I think this is actually true - not just about mums, but about most people. Unless you're a nerdy technophile (like me), you aren't going to be particularly interested in technology for its own sake, but what it can do for your life and that of your family. This is the core of the campaign - reaching out to people who wouldn't take an interest in technical things, and educating them about a government policy and how it affects them directly.

Finally, the campaign was never meant to exclude non-mums. "Time to tell mum" has more of a ring to it than "Time to talk about policy with the wider community". Everybody has a mum, and most of us talk to our mums on a regular basis. Who better to start with when spreading important news?

So contrary to reports elsewhere, like this piece in ZDNet, we aren't apologising for the campaign - we're happy with the way it turned out. Of course, we'd rather nobody was offended, and sincerely regret it. But offending nobody is only possible without any risk-taking, and a risk-free campaign is unlikely to break any new ground.

However, we welcome your feedback. How can we make out next campaign even more successful at reaching the ears of ordinary Australians?

Just 24 hours after the Time To Tell Mum campaign has launched it can be declared a massive success. Everywhere you look there is evidence that this is one of the most impactful initiatives we've ever undertaken, with over 14,000 people telling their mums that Internet censorship is bad so far. We know from recent research this means 14,000 fewer supporters of the proposal.

The campaign has been covered in The Australian, ITWire, iT News, ZDnet, Gizmodo and other outlets, bloggers have blogged, the announcement was an #openinternet "Top Tweet", hundreds of Facebook users have shared and liked the site and in a one hour radio show this morning the campaign was discussed on Dr Katherine Albrecht's radio show and syndicated across the entire United States, and around the globe online.

We're back to working on the next steps, but I'd like to personally thank everyone for their support.  From Fnuky Advertising in Adelaide to the guy who donated $3 to the Open Internet drive, we've had a heap of assistance to get this launched.

We're excited to announce that EFA have today launched a new campaign to raise public awareness of the Government's internet filter: "Time to Tell Mum."

The campaign features well-known comedian Akmal Saleh and exhorts Australians to tell their mums about the filter plan and what it won't do for Australian families.

One of the big challenges in the debate so far has been combating the myth that the filter is - or ever was - a cyber-safety tool designed to keep kids safe online. It's not. It's designed to "harmonise" censorship laws, not protect children from inappropriate content. It's censorship for its own sake.

We know that the more people understand the proposal, the less there are that support it. This is an opportunity for those 'in the know' to help in educating the wider community, with a focus on parents who are the most worried about cyber-safety issues, but won't be helped by the policy. We hope this campaign will reach some new people, and further highlight the myths about Conroy's Filter.

You can watch the video and share it with your friends here at http://www.timetotellmum.com

Oh... and tell your mum.

Many people do not know that the internet in Australia is already heavily censored, even before the Rudd Government's plan for mandatory ISP filtering is implemented. In fact, Australia almost undoubtedly has the most restrictive internet censorship regime in the Western world. Under amendments made to the Broadcasting Services Act in 1999, material rated as low as MA-15+ can be prohibited. More details are available here. In particular, material is prohibited if:

(a) the content has been classified RC or X 18+ by the Classification Board; or
(b) both:
(i) the content has been classified R 18+ by the Classification Board; and
(ii) access to the content is not subject to a restricted access system;

The penalty for hosting prohibited material, or even linking to it, can be a fine of $11,000 per day.

The saving graces of the system are twofold. Firstly, that the Australian Communications and Media Authority do not proactively go looking for such material, but respond to complaints from the public only. Secondly, if content is not hosted inside Australia, the material goes on a blacklist but this blacklist is not enforced in any real way. Thus, despite the millions spent every year on the system, it's pretty ineffective at accomplishing anything but occasionally causing somebody to sign up with an overseas web hosting company instead of one inside Australia.

Nevertheless, the system can have consequences. EFA recently tested some of those consequences.

In May 2009, EFA published this blog post discussing the current censorship regime in the context of the new filtering system soon to be introduced. As part of that discussion, we included a link to a page on American website abortiontv.com that we discovered was on ACMA's blacklist. Abortion being a sensitive political issue, we felt it illustrated the dangers of internet censorship in general and a secret blacklist in particular. Furthermore, since discussion site Whirlpool had received a notice instructing them to delete the link, we thought it highlighted the serious way in which internet content in Australia is already regulated.

Shortly thereafter, EFA's web host at the time, Sublime IP, received a "Link Deletion Notice" of their own, for the link contained in the EFA post hosted on their servers. They contacted us, and given the fines involved, EFA complied. (The post in question is still redacted.)

Despite removing the link, EFA felt that there were several problems with the way ACMA proceeded to issue the notice, and we encouraged Sublime to request a review of the decision before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). Because Sublime, not EFA, were the recipients of the notice, we couldn't directly appeal ourselves, and although we wrote to ACMA inviting them to issue the notice to us instead, they declined to do so. Sublime, with advice from EFA, took the case to the AAT and argued the case before Deputy President Handley in April this year.

Our case was twofold. Firstly, given the article was political in nature and the content that was linked to was done as a demonstration of the political effects of censorship policy, we argued that the decision contravened the implied right of freedom of political communication in the constitution.

Secondly, it was argued that EFA, not Sublime, should have been issued the notice as EFA were the authors of the content, controlled its delivery, and met the definitions under the law of the responsible party.

Last week, the AAT handed down its decision, upholding ACMA's decision to both issue the notice and to issue it to Sublime instead of EFA.

On the issue of freedom of political communication, Schedule 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act, which details the censorship system in question, has a specific exemption in cl 121, which states:

(1) This Schedule does not apply to the extent (if any) that it would infringe any constitutional doctrine of implied political communication.

This right has been recognised by the High Court in several landmark decisions in the 1990s. In order for a law to contravene this implied right, it must effectively burden speech while not having a constitutionally appropriate and legitimate end of its own. Considering this, in his decision Deputy President Handley wrote:

In the Tribunal’s view, imposing restrictions on access to the internet, in some instances, could effectively burden communication about government or political matters. It is common knowledge that the law concerning the practice of abortion is a sensitive political matter. It is possible that opponents of the practice might wish to use material including pictures or images of aborted foetuses as a means of educating (and shocking) members of the public about the results of the practice. Thus, an executive decision that restricts access to such material could effectively burden communication about government or political matters.

However, the tribunal found "any constraint on communications was, in our view, minor and left the words penned by the author of the article untouched." Furthermore, because the page in question was rated R-18+, we could have put the link behind an elaborate "Restricted Access System" to identify web users, and that - since Australian citizens need to be 18 to vote anyway - this would not have restricted political discussion either.

As to whether the Link Deletion Notice should have been issued to EFA instead of Sublime, we argued that it would be very unlikely that most web hosting companies would take the trouble to appeal any such content removal notices by ACMA, thus depriving the material's authors (their customers) of the right to contest a decision that affected their speech. Indeed, the Tribunal did find that there was some merit to this argument and that EFA qualified as a "Links Service Provider" under the Act, and could have been the recipient of the notice. However, since Sublime also qualified, ACMA had acted in accordance with the law in issuing the notice to them.

We are disappointed but not surprised by this decision, which we feel highlights many issues with the current system. Those who choose to can simply move their content overseas or change the address of the web page in question, leaving those who abide by the spirit of the law to remove their material, or have it removed for them by their provider. From the leak of the blacklist, we saw that many of the sites on there were far from obscene, but contained all manner of harmless, controversial and borderline political material. This raises enormous concerns. Could debate and culture thrive in Australia if all R-rated material was effectively blocked?

Finally, we note that compared to the announced plans of the Government to require their censorship to move to mandatory, real-time blocking of RC-rated prohibited material, even the current system is relatively benign. When the material blocked is hosted overseas, nobody will even receive the courtesy of a letter from the Government informing them of the decision. It will simply go on a secret blacklist, with as yet unknown remedies for appeal and rectification mistakes. We hope that despite the Tribunal's decision, this case has highlighted the need for extreme caution in censoring material in a medium as dynamic and important as the internet.

Wearing my EFA Board Member hat, I spoke today at an event at Parliament House hosted by the Menzies Research Centre in a debate with Tony McLellan of the Australian Christian Lobby. The audience was primarily members of the Australian Liberal Students Federation; young Liberals destined for jobs as political staffers and politicians.

Below is the text of my part of the debate.

Let me begin with a short anecdote.

On Monday night as we watched Four Corners and Q&A, my not-quite-13 year old daughter, Hannah, made a particularly interesting observation. “Gee, Dad,” she said, “I think I’ve just seen more rude pictures in that story than I’ve ever seen on the Internet.”

Hannah has been using the Internet since she was four.

Certainly, much of that time it has been under our supervision, but increasingly it’s not. When Hannah uses the Internet, she uses a connection at home that is completely unfiltered, neither by the router we use nor by activating the fairly comprehensive parental controls that come as a standard part of modern operating systems. She has administrator access to the machine she uses and she also knows and understands how to access and manage the home network.

Knowing I was coming here today, I conducted something of a straw poll of that observation amongst friends and acquaintances with kids of a similar age. I deliberately avoided asking only “‘Net savvy” parents.

Universally, the experience was the same; none of our children had ever inadvertently encountered pornographic or other offensive material on the Internet, let alone material of the kind that falls under the umbrella that the National Classification Code defines as Refused Classification. None of the children had filtered or managed Internet connections. All of them used computers placed in public spaces in their homes and several had their own computers in their rooms.

The most recent research into public opinion on the filter, carried out by the Safer Internet Group consisting of Google, Internet Industry Association, iiNet, Australian Council of State School Organisations and the Australian Library and Information Association and others shows a marked increase in doubts about the filter amongst parents.

There is significant opposition to the government’s filter as proposed. Rather, parents first want greater education options and at-home filtering and as a next-best option, an opt-in filter. Mandatory filtering runs a long last.

So too, our friends internationally, including most notably the US Ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, speaking on Q&A have come out publicly against the filter as it stands. Ambassador Bleich, an internationally recognised authority on human rights, was particularly clear, when he said:

“We have been able to accomplish the goals that Australia has described, which is to capture and prosecute child pornographers … without having to use internet filters. We have other means and we are willing to share our efforts with [the Australian government].”

The arguments of the government and its supporters in favor of the filter regularly hang on the matter of RC material. On this, I’d like to first highlight two matters of interest that seem to cause some real confusion.

First, is the myth that all RC material is illegal. This is simply not true.

The fact is that of all material classified RC, it is only material depicting the sexual abuse of children that is that is illegal to own. For good reason. No reasonable person in today’s society believes that such material is suitable for adults to access, let alone children.

Material that falls under the RC umbrella is unquestionably sometimes distasteful or controversial or contains or depicts concepts of an adult nature; drug abuse, explicit material about abortion, guides to assisted suicide, violence. Whether you personally approve of such things or not, none of this material is illegal to possess in this country; it’s perfectly legal for me or you to own a copy of Baise Moi or The Peaceful Pill, just not to make it available for sale.

Yet the filter seeks to change this. Our classification system in Australia is something that largely works and is designed to empower adults and minors alike to make appropriate, relevant choices. When implemented, and have no doubt, the government’s plans for the filter are far from abandoned, it will take away adults’ ability to decide for themselves whether or not to access material that is by-and-large, legal in this country.

Second, is the fantasy that stumbling across material that is RC on the public web is something that occurs with frightening regularity. It’s not even easy to stumble across R- or X-rated material, not all of which is pornographic in nature and none of which will be targeted by the filter. You have to go looking for these things very deliberately. Looking for material that is RC is even harder.

The material the government proposes to filter is, in some cases, completely appropriate to access. For that which is not, child sexual abuse material, it is well known that the criminals who trade in this matter do so using tools and protocols that will not be managed by this or any other filter. Rather criminals trade their materials in private networks.

Additional dollars and human resources for law enforcement by the Australian Federal Police ought to be supported. It is only through the diligent and successful efforts of the AFP and its overseas collaborators that those people purveying child sexual abuse material are apprehended and put in jail where they belong.

Let’s look in turn at a number of the other issues around the proposed filter.

First, the matters of cyber-safety, education, self-determination and digital citizenship.

There is no question that as adults and particularly as parents, we wish to protect our society and children from danger and from exposure to deeply offensive or inappropriate material. Certainly, as a father, this is paramount in my concerns.

In order to do this, I have a responsibility. As a parent as and a member of society, it is incumbent on me to educate myself, my child and those who I come into contact with about issues such as good digital citizenship and appropriate online behaviors. Doing so helps us, particularly, to protect ourselves from threats the filter will not even address such as cyber-bullying (and bullying in the flesh-and-blood world), from online predators, from identity theft.

These issues are certainly much higher in the minds of the parents, teachers and students I speak to regularly as a part of my work than are matters like RC.

Despite the marked increase in this country of policy that erodes our freedoms, pushing back against personal determination and our ability to make decisions for ourselves, the fact is that the vast majority of Australians are not complete dullards who need the Nanny State to tell them how to run their lives. Rather, they are perfectly normal, intelligent people who are capable of self-determination, of critical thinking and decision-making.

Australian parents are largely not irresponsible and incompetent at bringing up their kids. Most of them are entirely the opposite, doing a fine job of parenting and making appropriate decisions about child rearing. They are perfectly able, as parents and adults, to decide what is and isn’t appropriate for their children to see online and elsewhere. Equally, they are able to teach their children, with help from educators, law enforcement and others, how to behave as reasonable digital citizens.

The millions of dollars the government proposes to spend on the filter, a technology that will not actually work as advertised and will be easily circumventable, would be far better spent on law enforcement and on thorough programs for teachers and parents to educate themselves on risks, on teaching how to manage their own and their children’s access to the Internet, on appropriate online behavior and, where they wish to, how to filter their own computers directly and by choice; provably the most effective form of filtering and placing the power to conduct themselves firmly in the hands of individual people rather than in the hands of a government.

In more than one research study, both here and overseas, strong evidence exists that the risks to minors of exposure to unwanted, by which I do not mean only illegal, material, are considerably overblown. Children are not irreparably damaged by seeing things that may be distasteful or inappropriate online, particularly if they are surrounded by a framework of parents, mentors, educators and other support services that can help them make sense of these things.

Even if some form of filter is ultimately introduced, it would be far better if such a thing was opt-in rather than mandatory, as it was in Labor’s original pre-election policy. This leaves the decision-making in the hands of parents, where it belongs. Indeed, many opponents of the current filter scheme have stated that their objections would largely be mitigated of opt-in was the choice.

I don’t want to spend a great deal of time on the technology, as the concepts here have been argued at length and in detail by others. Suffice it to say that, in spite of Senator Conroy’s arguments to the contrary, there are major technical issues with the filter that remain unanswered or lacking in enough detail to be satisfying:

• secure web sites, such as we use for online banking and e-commerce cannot be filtered without making them less secure
• there remains a risk that if a popular and culturally valuable sites such as Wikipedia, the National Gallery of Australia or YouTube were subject to a filtered URL, overall access to those sites may be measurably degraded
• the introduction of the NBN and networks running at those speeds have not been tested under filter conditions at all
• only material published on the web will be subject to the filter, other distribution methods such as BitTorrent, email and instant messaging, often used by criminal networks to distribute offensive material, will not be subject to the filter
• bypassing the filter is, as admitted by Senator Conroy on more than one occasion, a trivial exercise, even for relatively non-expert users
• mandatory filtering is less flexible and customisable than home-based, on-router or on-computer filtering

All of these issues require evidence-based, thorough answers.

The blacklist itself is problematic on a number of fronts. These too have been discussed at length, but let’s look at them briefly.
The list is secret. In a world where open government in modern democracies is receiving significant attention, this is, at the very least, interesting. We hear arguments that a secret list protects us from exposure to the URLs that contain the offensive material. However, if the URLs are filtered, in what way do we risk exposure? The argument fails its own logic. Beyond that, it’s simply offensive to me to think that any government believes that I am incapable of enough independent thought to determine what URLs I do and do not visit.

By its very secrecy, if my website ends up on the blacklist, I am unable to know how and why it got there. It’s also unclear how I get off the list if I’m there unjustifiably. What happens if someone opposed to your political views or faith manages to get your site on the list?

Secret things have a tendency to leak through the cracks. The blacklist has already been leaked once. It’s not inconceivable that it will happen again. And again. And again.

The list is tiny. In a world where the public web is now in the trillions of pages, a list of something around 10,000 URLs barely scratches the surface of any pool of offensive, let alone illegal, content that may exist.

Which brings us to criminal networks distributing child sexual abuse material – I’ve already mentioned this, but it bears repeating – these networks do not use the public web to distribute their wares. The technologies they do use – private networks and peer-to-peer – will not be filtered.

The only effective way the distribution of this illegal material can be stopped is through active law enforcement. The AFP has a highly competent cybercrime unit that could be more effective if it was the beneficiary of additional funding and resources.

Last, to matters of filtering and free speech.

Senator Conroy, on Monday night’s Four Corners, stated clearly that for the purposes of the filter, his government’s policy was to filter RC content only and that he would be amongst the many voices raised in protest should some subsequent government decide to broaden the scope of the filter.

The filter covers material legal in other forms and media. It lacks accountability and appelability which are at odds with our open democracy and markedly different to equivalent decisions that are open to scrutiny when subject to other media.

While the Senator’s and the government’s hearts may certainly be in the right place, we cannot be so certain about unknown future governments and their thoughts on the nature of what could and should be subject to filtering. It is entirely possible that over the long term not only material that is RC will be subject, but perhaps dissenting political voices, matters of taste or voices belonging to certain faiths may be censored.

So, here’s a summary of the issues as I see them:

• there’s no serious Internet content problem to solve – you just can’t inadvertently stumble on RC or child porn on the Internet
• even if there was, few want the government to solve it this way – there are better, more effective, more workable and more societally acceptable options
• the technology presents a real risk – we’ve seen the trial results and the extensive analysis which points out the flaws
• the blacklist itself is a problem – it’s secret, unappelable, deals with material that remains legal, it’s already been leaked and will again (you’ve heard of the Streisand Effect, right?)
• the filter will not address criminal distribution of illegal material – it’s far better to ensure funding and resources for law enforcement, who are the only people equipped to deal with this problem properly
• the filter impinges on the freedom of Australians to determine for themselves  – it represents a real shift in the ability for Australians to determine what is and isn’t appropriate for them to view online and significantly changes a fairly workable classification system in other media to cope with a medium that is changing rapidly
• the filter will be administered by governments ill-equipped to do so – the technology and policy are complicated and problematic. We’ve seen several policy and program stumbles lately, do we want one over this?
• there is no guarantee that future governments will not change the scope of what is filtered – the suppression of material based on moral or political grounds is anathema to what Australia is about

This is far from a simple issue.

I’d like to close with a few words from Will Briggs, an Anglican priest from my wife’s home town of Somerset, Tasmania. Will is a strong voice in the discourse on the filter. He said:

“[This issue] is best [addressed] through clear information, balanced argument, reasoned debate…[on the] multiplicity of issues… [it is] a debate which is not simply about sexual ethics but about freedom of speech, the reductionism of morality, and the role of government in society… by… simplifications in this case [we] look like simpletons.”

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam yesterday rose to address the Senate specifically on the subject of the Rudd government's mandatory internet filter. The speech is easily the most substantial given in Parliament to date, and was withering in its assessment of the merits of the scheme.

Calling the filter "an inappropriate and off-target attempt to engage with a series of problems that deserve a much more serious and nuanced response", Senator Ludlam outlined three major areas in which the policy was a failure. Firstly, it doesn't achieve its policy objectives such as protecting children online. Secondly, it "establishes the architecture" for future censorship, as the list is expanded in future. The third line of attack deals with the technical unworkability of the system.

Summing up the policy failures, Senator Ludlam said:

If the government has its way and if it is passed through this parliament none of the issues that parents grapple with, that teachers are concerned about, that child safety and protection advocates worry about will have disappeared as a result of the enactment of this filter. It will not result in a single prosecution, it will not close down a single illegal website and it will not result in the removal of a single harmful image from the internet. So let us be very clear about that.

Many of us in the community have long noticed that what was presented as a "cyber-safety" policy, applying to internet connections with children, has since become a plan to "harmonise" our censorship and classification scheme by targeting material only adults would see. Clearly the Government did not get a mandate from the electorate to introduce a new censorship system for its own sake.

Read more ... »

Senator Conroy's office today provided answers to Questions on Notice asked by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam some months ago. Among the dozens of answers reiterating standard positions were some welcome details that have been frustratingly hard to come by before.

You can download the entire exchange (see below), but here are a few pieces of information we think are interesting.

On Circumvention:

Ludlam:
Will an ISP be allowed to offer a service or product that aids in the bypassing or circumvention of the filter if;
(a) the product or service is solely for the purpose of circumventing or bypassing the filter; or (b) the product or service has other uses apart from bypassing or circumventing the filter.

Read more ... »

EFA has received the text of a letter from Liberal Party Senator Sue Boyce to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith demanding they come clean on the nature of representations made by the U.S. government regarding their internet censorship policy.

Recent revelations that the U.S. Department of State had broached the subject with the Australian government, followed up by a diplomatically-worded but damning statement by U.S. ambassador Jeff Bleich on Q&A last week leave little doubt that Australia is on the U.S.'s watch list. The Obama administration drew a line in the sand in January with Secretary of State's Hillary Clinton's landmark speech on internet freedom. Despite disingenuous attempts to spin it otherwise, Senator Conroy's mandatory censorship scheme clearly crosses that line.

This has not been lost on Senator Boyce. In her letter, she questions Senator Conroy's assertion that the U.S. government merely asked for some background information on the censorship plan. "I am sure that [State Department spokesperson] Mr Clay would have chosen his words carefully and I find it difficult to reconcile a statement that the US Government had 'raised concerns' with Minister Conroy's assertion that the US Government had only asked for background information."

Referring to Ambassador Bleich's comments, Senator Boyce goes on to say,

It is a deplorable situation when Australians have to rely upon the frankness of a foreign diplomat to provide information about bilateral discussions on a very important matter because relevant Australian Ministers either dissemble or just refuse to say anything.

Given the Ambassador's statement that the US Government has been "able to accomplish the goals Australia has described … without having to use internet filters" I would appreciate your advice as to whether the US Government has advised the Australian Government about how that has been managed in the USA, when that advice was provided and to whom.

To those following the debate it will be well known that the mandatory filtering plan has drawn criticism for its technical flaws, confused goals, free-speech risks and ever-shifting details. The fact that it is drawing international opprobrium is not new - for instance, Conroy's receipt of the "Internet Villain of the Year" award - but the remarks by the United States show just how seriously this is being taken.

When Reporters Without Borders named Australia as a country "under surveillance" as an internet enemy earlier in the year, the Minister tried to deflect the blame onto EFA for misleading them. Are we also to blame for misinforming Secretary Clinton, ambassador Bleich, and even President Obama himself? Or could it just be that it's possible to understand Senator Conroy's policy and harbour serious concerns without being sympathetic to child pornography? While we don't expect the Minister to concede this any time soon, the broad array of organisations opposing the filter is making this line of attack increasingly untenable.

In any case, EFA looks forward to hearing the Ministers' response to Senator Boyce's timely questions.

The full text of the letter is available here.

For all his faults, Stalin was a pioneer in the field of image manipulation. Airbrushing liquidated foes from official photographs was the photoshopping of its day. And although Stalin (like modern dicatators) would have loathed the internet for its uncanny ability to let the truth slip out, he would have admired the way information can be changed in realtime and disappear instantly.

Many companies and individuals have been caught out trying to redact embarrassing material, but we can't always be sure when, how and why information is changing. When do personal and corporate interests take over, and when is the law at play? As a champion of an open internet, while at the same time a corporate citizen in hundreds of jurisdictions around the world, Google has a fine line to walk. To many, Google is the internet and they are bombarded with requests to remove unwanted material. They have no choice but to take those that come from governments and the courts very seriously.

Today Google have announced a new initiative to bring some transparency to this process. Google's Government Requests page, announced here, shows breakdowns by country of the number of requests they get to remove information by service. The statistics for Australia for the last 6 months of 2009 are interesting in particular:

155 data requests (requests for private user data for purposes of criminal investigation)

17 removal requests (52.9% of removal requests fully or partially complied with)

• 1 Blogger
• 1 Geo (except Street View)
• 1 Web Search
• 14 YouTube

Despite the important role they play, Google are a for-profit company and not a government department or some kind of public utility. This can be a cause for concern; when the corporate interest an the public interest conflict, such as in matters of privacy, we can only hope that Google's directors give the latter due consideration. We also have no explicit right to know about the inner workings of Google's information management systems. We are therefore encouraged with Google's latest move which we can only take as a good faith attempt to be a better internet citizen.

Around the world it has often been difficult to get a picture on how prevalent such requests are and the Google information will be examined with some interest. The fact that they have released these statistics voluntarily is a welcome sign and Google should be congratulated for doing so. They have raised the bar for the other companies that play such an important role in managing and safeguarding the information that makes up our digital lives.

Earlier this week, I stepped down as the Chair of EFA, and will shortly be leaving the EFA Board. I'll be moving to the US for the 2010/11 academic year, and will be focusing on my academic work after completing my PhD dissertation.

I step down with some regret; I have very much enjoyed being a part of this important organisation. Over the last few years, I really think we've done some great work here; we're starting to see much wider attention on the Open Internet campaign against mandatory ISP filtering; we've been working hard on computer game classification, on ACTA, and on telecommunications interception, to name but a few topics. I've been very pleased to see EFA's profile continue to increase in the past few years, and honoured to have served with the other members of the Board and all members and other individuals who have pitched in to try to make a positive difference to Australian internet regulation and policy.

The new Chair is Colin Jacobs and the new Vice-Chair is Geordie Guy, both of whom should be very familiar names to those of you follow EFA's activities. I wish the best of luck to them both — and the rest of the Board — in the continued campaign against filtering and all of the other areas within EFA's remit.

   -- Nic Suzor

This week, our former website hosts, Sublime IP, are contesting a Final Link Deletion Notice that was issued to them for content on our website in May 2009. (See the story we posted at the time.)

Sublime, with our support, are arguing that (a) the notice should have been issued to EFA, not our hosts; and that (b) the issuing of the notice infringes our constitutionally protected right to free political communication. This is particularly important as, under the legislation, only the person to whom the links removal notice was issued has standing to appeal the decision to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Dale Clapperton, former chair of EFA, is arguing the matter before the AAT on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

It is my understanding that the hearing will be open to the public for any members in Sydney who may wish to be present. Details are:

Tuesday and Wednesday this week, 10am start both days
Level 5, 55 Market St, Sydney

We will post any updates here as they become available.

This guest post is written by Mark Bahnisch from Lavartus Prodeo for our series of blog posts on the importance of online civil liberties as part of EFA’s 2010 Fundraising Campaign …

There are a range of good arguments against the Rudd government's internet filter, some emphasised for persuasive or tactical reasons, some reflective of deeply held political and political positions. Among the latter, liberal and libertarian arguments tend to dominate. This is not necessarily to say that those advancing such arguments (which we might usefully summarise under the slogan 'information wants to be free') are liberals or libertarians in a consistently ideological sense, or on the political right. It's more that the deep logic of the internet's history produces an argument in terms of freedom, and that view seems natural to those who are passionate about the online world. In this article, I want to present a somewhat more sociological argument, and one that seeks to build on an alternative (though, in part, complementary) set of assumptions drawn from left and progressive thought and tradition.

In so doing, the target at which I want to aim is not the internet filter itself, or Stephen Conroy himself. To my mind, the personalisation of the debate has not been a helpful aspect of the campaign against the filter proposal. What I think is useful and important to understand is the underlying cause of the government's move, which casts the argument around freedom in something of a different light.

What is at issue here is the desire to govern the private choices of individuals, a desire which has had its apogee in the communitarian aspects of New Labour governance in the United Kingdom. To adapt a judgement made by The Economist, thirteen years of New Labour government has seen the state grow, personal freedom greatly diminish, but the underlying social patterns of inequality little disturbed. The urge to shape and dictate private choices has been growing among Labor governments in Australia, with the long lived Bob Carr style state regimes leading the vanguard. Mark Latham tempered the communitarian rhetoric to a high flame during his leadership, and despite his repudiation by the ALP, the Rudd government has seemingly adopted a similar governing mentality, albeit at more of a simmer.

The causes of the desire to govern the soul are multiple, though interconnected and interwoven.

It's no coincidence that an increasing drive to interfere with private decisions and choices accompanied the election of the first generation of centre-left governments after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Francis Fukuyama's proclamation of the End of History. The ideological climate where social democrats lost any sense of the capacity to transform, and the desirability of transforming economic and social relations lent itself to a statism without long term purpose, a statism that manifests itself in interventions to transform private lives rather than to transform national and global society. Stripped of the power, and the will, to restructure economic life so as to negate deeply structural inequalities in a globalised world, purpose and the will to do good manifests itself into a micro-level of intervention; what Michel Foucault called 'biopolitics' - a politics of governing the individual body and soul.

Reflected through the prism of the constant campaign, the spectacle of the symbol in politics, and the 24/7 media cycle, 'bite-sized' policies have the capacity to substitute for social change over the long term and to feed the drumbeat of moral panic sounded on a repetitive and moment by moment time scale.

Secondly, in a risk society, individuals are less trusted to make choices for themselves, governed by their desires, their use of private reason, and their consciences. The sub-politics of risk, to invoke the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, concerns itself with the downside of modernity and complexity - the costs of the aggregation of private decisions to public finances and purposes. In areas like health, child development, and many others, the costs of perceived negative choices are transferred to a public purse unable to deal with them, and in a neo-liberal culture, the production of a docile and compliant workforce is key both to the legitimation of governance in a chaotic environment and to the reproduction of late capitalist patterns of work, consumption and distribution.

Thirdly, the micro-government of the individual is a key point of contestation at the site where democratisation and authority clash. An increasing climate of openness from the 1960s onwards, and the democratisation of culture among whose effects is a resistance to assertions of authority, later supplemented by the growth of populisms both right and left combined to render the notion that policy is an effect of expertise shaky. 'Evidence-based policy' is something of a backlash. With politics denuded of big picture ideological conflicts, the void is filled with hordes of experts, who with the best will in the world, think that they know what's good for us. Labor governments, stripped of any real transformational purpose, obsessed with symbolic campaigning and feeding the media beast, and concerned about the governance of risk, seize upon (and cherry pick) crumbs from the table of thinktank, private and public research expertise.

So, then, the internet filter is part of a bigger picture. It's one more item, among the alcopops tax, the national testing regime in schools, and many others, of a form of governmental mentality which seeks to shape, or to dictate, choices to citizens, who are presumed to be unable to discern their own best interests. Evidence, research and policy step in, and electoral advantage is sought through the intertwined machine of political communication and media dissemination.

Yet, there is another left tradition.

That is the tradition embodied in movements for popular education from the 19th century onwards, in the habits of auto-didacticism of early trade unionists and activists, of the respect for reason and informed conscience and judgement imparted to English speaking socialisms and Labourism from the dissent of chapel and the world of workplace dispute and argument. This tradition is one of the cultivation of the capacities of all citizens to apply reason to human affairs, to make conscientiously good decisions in their private lives through collective learning and civic conversation, for opportunity to be opened up rather than to be circumscribed.

This fundamentally progressive attitude and set of dispositions seeks to expand the capabilities of ordinary folk and to enable and facilitate citizens' desires for autonomy, self-government and collective government of communal and state institutions.

It's part of a sweeping movement of democratisation, which popped up in another context at the height of the administered society in the 1950s and 1960s, in a desire for participatory decision-making and for individuals together to question the force of ingrained social norms. It's part of an activist culture manifested in social movements such as feminism and other liberatory and transformational currents. At its heart, it represents a fundamental optimism, a philosophical anthropology foundational to left politics (and to liberalism, too) which holds that humans are thinking beings able to be trusted with choice, and whose choices deserve a basic level of respect.

The internet, as I alluded to at the outset, is part of that secular movement towards the democratisation of social relations; and of knowledge. It's precisely because the internet affords so much promise for those who wish to decide their destinies in common, to learn, to form an informed judgement and habit of thought that its freedom from state interference is so important at the level of principle. I'm not so interested in the particulars of the reasons advanced by the Rudd government for this latest instance of the desire to micro-manage individual choices. I'm much more interested in opposing, in principle, anything that partakes in the disrespect for the capacities of individual citizens to decide severally and collectively how best to regulate their own lives. That's a principle, in my view, that from a left and progressive position, is well worth fighting for.

This guest post is written by Stilgherrian for our series of blog posts on the importance of online civil liberties as part of EFA’s 2010 Fundraising Campaign …

“The only difference between a Nation State and a Mafioso protection racket is the letterhead and the rituals -- and the series of concessions, hard-won over eight centuries, that we call ‘civil liberties’.”

That’s how I was going to start this article about the importance of defending our civil liberties online. I was going to write about dusk falling at the end of another busy day, the shopkeeper counting the cash in his till, only to have two thugs turn up to demand their share as “protection money” lest something terrible happen to his business. Or his kneecaps. I was going to compare this to the State demanding its share of the shop’s profits in the form of taxes to pay for the state’s defence, and the shopkeeper’s defence, from unspecified enemies. And the penalties if that money wasn’t paid.

I was going to explain how the State is different from a criminal enterprise because the State has a clearly-defined set of rules, due process, fair trials and – at least in a democracy – that the rules governing all of this have been agreed upon by us citizens, and that we have mechanisms for investigating when things appear to have gone wrong and to seek redress.

And then I watched the video that Wikileaks just posted at www.collateralmurder.com, where it seems that in 2007 some American helicopter crews in Baghdad misidentified a photojournalist as an enemy and killed him and the people who tried to save him.

Now I’m conflicted here.

It’s all too easy for armchair warriors to notice after the fact that it wasn’t an AK-47 slung over Namir Noor-Eldeen’s shoulder, but a camera. Those helicopter crewmen were looking for people with weapons. I’m guessing confirmation bias led them to see something long and black as a weapon – especially when another guy was carrying a tripod.

It’s all too easy for us to sit here in our comfortable homes and offices and complain that these young men shouldn’t have expressed joy at having dealt out death. Yet what’s wrong with someone being pleased with a job well done? After all, we employ these men specifically to deal out death, to do the dirty work that we won’t handle ourselves, so we can luxuriate in petrol that’s ten cents a litre cheaper than it otherwise might have been.

Not that the War in Iraq is about oil.

And yet, when things go wrong, what differentiates a democratic Nation State from a criminal enterprise is our ability to investigate what went wrong and to learn from it. So that’s why when Reuters asked for the footage so they could see for themselves how their people had ended up dead, the US Department of Defense immediately released the footage and… sorry… no? They didn’t?

No they didn’t.

The Pentagon blocked the Freedom of Information request. This footage has only come to light because someone leaked it.

Oh.

Civil liberties, says Wikipedia, are the rights and freedoms that protect us individuals from the state. Civil liberties set limits on government so that its members cannot abuse their power and interfere unduly with the lives of private citizens.

It’s taken, as I say, eight centuries to win these liberties, from the Magna Carta of 1215 to more recent codifications such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of WWII. Millions, literally millions of people have died to create and defend these rights.

That’s why it’s simply not good enough for the Rudd government to want to install a secret device in every internet service provider to block our access to … well, it’s a secret. Maybe it’s this ill-defined “Refused Classification” material today, but what might it be tomorrow? Can we really take a government’s word on this? And not just this government’s, but the one after it, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Even if we choose to believe Senator Stephen Conroy’s claim that this is only about protecting us from inadvertent access to child abuse material, once the system is in place, could a government resist the temptation to extend the scope just a little bit? And a little bit more?

Mandatory internet filtering is one piece of a jigsaw puzzle, the full picture of which we do not want.

Organisations like the EFA are needed to look beyond the immediate “protect the children” rhetoric, to look at the implications of what’s being proposed not just for today but for years to come.

Electronic Frontiers Australia is currently running a fundraising drive so that we can continue to expand and campaign for your online civil liberties.  Although EFA has been leading the Open Internet campaign against the Government's proposal to censor the Internet, that is just one aspect of our activities and interests.  In addition to Internet censorship, EFA campaigns on a wide range of issues relating to Internet regulation, including copyright, defamation, R18+ for computer games, telecommunications, ISP liability, privacy, domain names, trade marks, and the digital economy.

To highlight the diverse range of topics EFA is engaged in, and to demonstrate the importance of online civil liberties in this country, we have posting a series of blog posts from a variety of digital thought leaders on an aspect of online civil liberties of their choosing. So far there have been some really excellent contributions:

• Nic Suzor explained EFA's ongoing struggle to defend civil liberties online;
• Colin Jacobs set out why the online community needs a champion;
• Mark Newton imagined a meeting between Senator Stephen Conroy and Electronic Frontiers Australia;
• David Harrison, the editor of AusGamers looked at R18 Games, censorship and DRM and why you should care about online civil rights;
• Michael Meloni, from Somebody Think of the Children, asked for a little more conversation, a little less panic; and
• Gwen Hinze, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, looked at global digital civil liberties and EFA's key role.

As you read these posts, we hope you will appreciate the vital role EFA plays in this space and will be encouraged to contribute to our fundraising drive. If EFA is to continue to expand and launch further campaigns to protect your civil liberties online, we need money for media, organisation and lobbying.

If you have already donated, or are unable to donate, please let your friends, family and colleagues know about this fundraising drive:

	Tweet Your Support
	Add to Facebook
	Share this Page
	Email to a friend

This guest post is written by Gwen Hinze, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for our series of blog posts on the importance of online civil liberties as part of EFA’s 2010 Fundraising Campaign …

The Internet enables access to knowledge and new opportunities for freedom of expression for all the world's citizens. Digital communications technologies can empower citizens to live rich and rewarding lives, participate in civic life, take part in important decisions that affect them, and share with one another across borders. We have seen individuals use new communications technologies to democratize the creation of culture, up-end traditions, and create innovative new business models.

Citizens empowered with digital technology have changed the course of history, as evidenced, for example, by the worldwide scrutiny Iranian dissidents were able to bring to their country's election in 2009.

But empowered individuals can be disruptive to those who have traditionally been in control. More and more, Internet users find themselves in conflict with vested interests in the entertainment industry and governments trying to control their citizens' freedom of expression. For instance, the Iranian government was able to employ its considerable resources to censor and surveil its citizens' communications on the Internet.

While the Internet is global, it is rooted in a physical infrastructure that makes it vulnerable to national policies, laws, and technical measures.

In many countries across the globe, debates are currently raging over a suite of Internet policies, including government-mandated online censorship, whether ISPs should be required to police the speech of their users, and whether users should face disconnection from the Internet -- a type of digital exile -- on the basis of entertainment industry concerns. The results of these debates are important to all of us, because, unfortunately, short-sighted proposals adopted in one country often pop up again in other places. For example, the French HADOPI law that requires automatic Internet disconnection after a person has been accused of sharing copyrighted material three times is now being considered in the UK, New Zealand and in the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

As you read this, many individuals and governments are watching to see whether Australia will be the first western democracy to adopt network-level Internet filtering that follows the approach taken by the Great Firewall of China.

Defending the free and open Internet and the rights and freedoms of technology users is an international task. It requires coordination and collaboration by a global network of organizations with a passionate commitment to citizens' civil liberties, and the technical and legal expertise to know how to fight and win these battles.

Electronic Frontiers Australia has always played a crucial role in fighting against Australian government Internet censorship threats and has been a key player in the global fight for digital rights. EFA played a key part in defeating Senator Alston's previous Internet censorship proposal.

EFA now needs your support to continue the fight to protect the free and open Internet and your right to use digital technology as you choose.

Gwen Hinze is International Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital civil liberties organization based in the United States. Although not formally affiliated, EFF and EFA work together on many global initiatives in the fight to protect the free and open Internet and to defend the rights and freedoms of individuals in the online world.