Australia pushes further Web censorship

Touted as tool for targeting terrorist sites, new bill allows police to have control of Internet "blacklist".

A bill introduced this week by Parliament would give Australian police the power to control which sites can and cannot be viewed by Australian Web surfers.

Introduced on Thursday, the bill--titled the Communications Legislation Amendment (Crime or Terrorism Related Internet Content) Bill 2007--would empower the federal police to alter the "blacklist" of sites that are currently prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The list currently includes pornography and "offensive material." However, under the amendment, federal police would be able to add other sites to the list, including content that the AFP Commissioner "has reason to believe...is crime- or terrorism-related content."

The definition of material that may be liable for censorship includes Internet content that "encourages, incites or induces," "facilitate(s)" or "has, or is likely to have, the effect of facilitating" a crime.

Once such content has been identified by the AFP, Internet service providers may be responsible for blocking their users from accessing it.

According to the government, the legislation is designed to target phishing and terrorist sites, among other online criminal activity.
"The new arrangements will allow harmful sites to be more quickly added to software filters," said Eric Abetz, a senator for Tasmania, who introduced the bill. "Of course the best outcome is for these sites to be taken down and their hosts prosecuted. But this takes time, particularly as most of these sites are hosted overseas.

"Rapid blacklisting means that the damage these sites can do can be more quickly reduced whilst takedown and prosecution processes are pursued, usually overseas," Abetz said.

Privacy groups have already criticized the legislation as an attack on free speech.

"This government's extremism has reached new heights today," said the chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation, Roger Clarke.

"How can a politician claim the right to hold office if they set out to undermine the critical democratic right of freedom of speech, and blatantly decline to evaluate the impact of measures put before the Parliament?"

http://www.news.com/Australia-pushes-further-Web-censorship/2100-1028_3-6209337.html

Nations that Censor the Net - Reporters Without Borders calls out China, Myanmar, Belarus, and 10 other countries for quashing online political and religious expression.

As effective as the Internet may be in spreading dissent, the methods used to suppress opposition on the Web are no less pervasive. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris group that does advocacy work for press freedom, has compiled a list of the countries that it says go the furthest to censor the Internet.

"We wanted to raise awareness of the history of censorship in these countries among democratic nations, who tend to take advantage of Internet freedoms," says Reporters Without Borders spokeswoman Lucie Morillon. "But we also wanted to provide a means for people in repressed countries to show solidarity."

The group recently staged a 24-hour protest in public spaces of New York and Paris, condemning China and 12 other countries for their steps toward repressive censorship of Internet journalists. The group cited the wrongful jailing of at least 61 "cyber-dissident" reporters, 52 of whom currently remain in Chinese prisons.
Myanmar Leads the List

Some 17,000 attendees of the protest voted for the nation they believed is most in need of greater Internet freedom, and China came in second, with 4,100 votes. Myanmar, under the militaristic regime of the Junta party, was believed by 4,500 participants to present its citizens with the greatest threat to freedom of press on the Internet. The remaining nations, in descending order of votes received, were Belarus, Iran, Tunisia, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, North Korea, Syria, and Uzbekistan.

The Burmese government has begun to monitor its growing population of Internet users by recording screenshots for every five minutes a computer is used in an Internet café—the most readily available outlet for Web access to most people. The Junta also uses California-based Fortinet's software to block access to opposition Web sites.

This tactic is not uncommon in other parts of the world. The Belarus government, under President Alexander Lukashenko, has been criticized for monopolizing communication systems to block Web sites that even hint at political opposition, particularly during election season. Last year, Pavel Morozov, a former student of the European Humanitarian University and member of the Third Way opposition group, was jailed by the KGB at age 26 when he posted homemade animations critical of the President on the Internet.
China's Heavy Ammo

China is described by Reporters Without Borders as a pioneer of Internet censorship, dedicating more resources than any other country to restrict online freedoms. Several of the country's neighbors pursue a similar strategy with what meager resources they have for the matter. In North Korea, for example, Dictator Kim Jong-Il has absolute control of North Korea's media, and grants only a few thousand citizens access to the Internet. When these privileged Net surfers log on, however, they find only around 30 Web sites, which are filled with photos of the leader and praise for the government. The Vietnamese government threatens penalties of as long as three years in jail for voicing democratic sentiments online.

In several Middle East countries, censorship often focuses on religious dissent. Earlier this month, the Egyptian government arrested a 22-year-old blogger named Abdel Karim Nabil Suleiman for posting comments critical of "the rise of religion in daily life" in his country. The young man was expelled from Al-Azhar University, the institution considered to be the highest seat of Sunni Islamic education in the country. The Iranian government routinely blocks hundreds of thousands of independent media Web sites. In 2004 and 2005, several Iranians were imprisoned for blogging, including 23-year-old Mojtaba Saminejad, who was given a two-year sentence for reportedly "opposing the Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."

Reporters Without Borders, a 21-year-old organization, calls the protest a success and may consider a similar event in the future. Its long-term goal is to encourage all 13 nations to change their policies toward censorship to the point where they can be removed from the list.

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