Essential linkage: UPDATED 4.39pm: Wikileaks posts ACMA black list, site now appears to be 'down'. Talk about odd coincidences...
We reported on Asher Moses excellent coverage of the emerging stoush between the ACMA and whistleblowing site Wikileaks. And now, it looks like things are about to get even hotter - Wikileaks, Asher reports today, has uncovered a copy of the black list, and intends to publish it very shortly.
From the article:
But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist. "It seems to me as if just about anything can potentially get on the list," Landfelt said.
But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.
"It seems to me as if just about anything can potentially get on the list," Landfelt said.
Bjorn Landfeldt is an associate professor at Sydney University.
The alarming thing here, as Asher points out in his piece, is that it seems there is very poor oversight on the compiling of the list. This is made worse by the fact that it's secret - what is that poor tourist site to do if it doesn't even know it's being filtered from potential customers!
There's also a lot of alarm about the potential of the list to be damaging in itself, if it should 'fall into the wrong hands', as it were. But that seems a long bow to pull - these sites are already out there, and it doesn't take a Google genius to find some of the nastier corners of the web.
Stephen Conroy has said he's willing to refer the possible leak to the Australian Federal Police - the threat would ring hollow were it not so terribly possible.
"No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list," Conroy says in Asher's article. Well, no one interested in rights and freedom of information should condone it being hid, either.
UPDATE: As of now, Wikileaks has posted the blacklist. From their post:
Most of the sites on the Australian list have no obvious connection to child pornography. Some have changed owners while others were clearly always about other subjects. Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun.
Most of the sites on the Australian list have no obvious connection to child pornography. Some have changed owners while others were clearly always about other subjects.
Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun.
SECOND UPDATE: It appears that someone's taken note of Wikileaks' action. As of sometime this afternoon, the site appears to be being blocked, or has been taken down. We had managed to navigate to the page this morning to peruse the black list, but a recent browser refresh failed, as did trying to open http://wikileaks.org/ itself.
Censorship in action, or just a coincidence? Hmm...
Issue: 107 | December, 2009