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Australia to implement mandatory internet censorship     

Australia will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.

The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.

The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.

The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the Global Network Initiative, bringing together leading companies, human rights organisations, academics and investors, committed the technology firms to "protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users".

Mr Conroy said trials were yet to be carried out, but "we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material."

The net nanny proposal was originally going to allow Australians who wanted uncensored access to the web the option of contacting their internet service provider to be excluded from the service.

Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate "there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it"

Groups including the System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it would unfairly restrict Australians' access to the web, slow internet speeds and raise the price of internet access.

EFA board member Colin Jacobs said it would have little effect on illegal internet content, including child pornography, as it would not cover file-sharing networks.

"If the Government would actually come out and say we're only targeting child pornography it would be a different debate," he said.

The technology companies' move, which follows criticism that the companies were assisting censorship of the internet in nations such as China, requires them to narrowly interpret government requests for information or censorship and to fight to minimise cooperation.

The initiative provides a systematic approach to "work together in resisting efforts by governments that seek to enlist companies in acts of censorship and surveillance that violate international standards", the participants said.

In a statement, Yahoo co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.

"These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted," he said.

"Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people's lives, and the principles we unveil today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world."

Yahoo was thrust into the forefront of the online rights issue after the Californian company helped Chinese police identify cyber dissidents whose supposed crime was expressing their views online.

China exercises strict control over the internet, blocking sites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and those with information on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

A number of US companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Yahoo, have been hauled before the US Congress in recent years and accused of complicity in building the "Great Firewall of China".

The Australian Christian Lobby, however, has welcomed the proposals.

Managing director Jim Wallace said the measures were needed.

"The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must be placed above the industry's desire for unfettered access," Mr Wallace said.
   

Coming to a country near you.....

'Big Brother' bothers Britain     

chicagotribune.com

Each day, the average London resident is filmed 300 times as he or she walks their children to school, takes the train to the office or relaxes after work at a sidewalk cafe. Britain has 4.2 million closed-circuit surveillance cameras, one for every 15 people in the country, security experts say.

In a nation that, like the United States, worries about the potential for terrorist attacks as well as regular crime, most people are hardly bothered by the lack of privacy.

"I wouldn't say I'm worried by it. It's become a way of life," said Louise Hughes, a lawyer living in south London. "Its very presence is a reassurance."

But a new round of government proposals—to dramatically expand surveillance and data collection and to strengthen other anti-terror measures—has some public officials warning that the government must not go too far in this city where George Orwell set "1984," the famous novel about the dangers of an all-seeing "Big Brother" government.

"We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom's back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security state," warned Sir Ken Macdonald, Britain's director of public prosecutions, in a speech last week.

Surveillance data have helped Macdonald's office successfully prosecute 90 percent of terrorism cases, he said, a conviction rate far higher than that in the U.S.

But new technological advances are giving government the ability to track people "every second of every day, in everything we do," he warned. Before passing laws permitting the government to do just that, "we should take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can't bear."

Like Chicago, London has an ever-growing number of discreet security cameras keeping an eye on schools, trains and city streets, particularly in high-crime areas. A growing number of London's cameras can automatically read license plates on cars, compare passing faces to those of criminal suspects and notify authorities about suspicious behaviors.

British spy agencies, like those in the U.S., also have access to telephone records.

But Britain's government wants to begin keeping databases of e-mails sent, calls made on Skype, exchanges on social networking sites, chats on gaming sites, communications made through eBay and a variety of other Internet interactions.

In addition, the government proposes to begin requiring registration of all mobile phones in the country—today more than half are unregistered pre-paids—and it hopes to issue a national identity card for everyone living in Britain, with details stored on a central database. It also proposes giving each newborn child an identity number that will follow them through life.

Jacqui Smith, Britain's home secretary, has called such changes "vital" to the country's anti-terrorism efforts. She emphasizes that the content of e-mails and phone calls would not be recorded. But with more and more people—including terrorists—exchanging information online through a multitude of "chatting" options, tracking the flow of communication on the Web is crucial, she said.

"The communication revolution has been rapid in this country, and the way in which we intercept communications and collect communication data needs to change too," she said in a speech this month. "If it does not, we will lose this vital capability that we currently have and all take for granted."

Privacy protections and civil liberties have eroded around the world in recent years as nations struggle to balance cherished freedoms with efforts to effectively combat terrorism.

The Bush administration has been heavily criticized for setting up in Cuba the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for terror suspects, and Privacy International, a London-based privacy watchdog group, has criticized Congress for approving a presidential spy program that lets the government track any overseas communications on U.S. e-mail providers including Gmail and Hotmail.

Britain's government, faced with a revolt by legislators, recently dropped plans to extend detention of terror suspects without charge from 28 to 42 days. But, in a separate initiative, it appears to be pressing ahead with plans to issue national identity cards that would include chips holding biometric data like fingerprints and photos. A former head of Britain's MI5 domestic spy agency last week called such an effort an overreaction to terrorist threats.

"The British, like the Americans, know there are terrorist cells out there that want to cause mayhem. But they don't yet know how to strike a balance between doing what is absolutely necessary to stop those attacks and preserving the civil liberties that are the essence of Western civilization," said Robin Shepherd, a foreign policy expert at Chatham House, a leading London think tank.

Britain's government has shown some signs of responding to the growing criticism. Many of the security changes, once expected to be formally proposed this year, are now being delayed until next year, officials say, and some may be revised.

Critics of the measures say they hope the plans will ultimately be either scaled back or abandoned altogether.

"Decisions taken in the next few months and years … are likely to be irreversible. They will be with us forever," Macdonald warned.

The better route to standing up to terrorists, he suggested, "is to strengthen our institutions rather than to degrade them."

One Web ID To Rule Them All     

A scheme to allow people to use one name and password on lots of different websites has got a boost from Google and Microsoft

The two tech giants have unveiled plans that will sign-up their users into the Open ID scheme.

The move means the scheme will soon be able to add more than 400 million users to the initiative.

The two firms join others, such as Yahoo and AOL, as backers of the single sign-on scheme.

One-way traffic

Open ID was dreamed up as a way to ease the mental and administrative burden of having a different login identity and password for almost every website.

The idea should mean that anyone with an Open ID identifier can use it to log in to, and use, any and every other site that has signed up to the scheme.

Microsoft and Google were early adopters of the scheme, and took seats on the board of the Open ID Foundation in 2007. However, both are only now releasing the tools and technology to work with the scheme.

On 28 October, Microsoft announced that it was starting technical trials that would lead to all the users of its Windows Live service being enrolled in Open ID in 2009.

The trials are for those running websites to see how Microsoft is working with the Open ID standards, and how to go about accepting that version as a login identifier.

Google has taken a similar route and announced plans to test its implementation of the Open ID technology. This will allow other websites to use logins for Gmail and other Google services alongside their own ID systems.

About 10,000 websites are thought now to accept Open ID as a login route. When both trials by Google and Microsoft are completed, more than 750 million user accounts will be enrolled in the system.

However, as critics have pointed out, much of the backing for Open ID is only one-way.

Other sites are being allowed to accept Google and Microsoft logins in place of their own, but the two tech giants are not reciprocating. At the moment the two are not accepting other Open ID credentials to login to their services.
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Also making it easier for the power that be to see where you go and what you do!

Internet black boxes to record every email and website visit    


Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database.

The vision was outlined at a meeting between officials from the Home Office and Internet Service Providers earlier this week.

It is further evidence of the Government's desire to have the capability to vet every telephone call, email and internet visit made in the UK, which has already provoked an outcry.

Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, has described it as a "step too far".

The proposal is expected to be put out to consultation as part of the new Communications Data Bill early next year.

At Monday's meeting in London representatives from BT, AOL Europe, O2 and BSkyB were given a presentation of the issues and the technology surrounding the Government's Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), the name given by the Home Office to the database proposal.

They were told that the security and intelligence agencies wanted to use the stored data to help fight serious crime and terrorism.

Officials tried to reassure the industry by suggesting that many smaller ISPs would be unaffected by the "black boxes" as these would be installed upstream on the network and hinted that all costs would be met by the Government.

One delegate at the meeting told the Independent: "They said they only wanted to return to a position they were in before the emergence of internet communication, when they were able to monitor all correspondence with a police suspect. The difference here is they will be in a much better position to spy on many more people on the basis of their internet behaviour. Also there's a grey area between what is content and what is traffic. Is what is said in a chat room content or just traffic?"

Ministers have said plans for the database have not been confirmed, and that it is not their intention to introduce monitoring or storage equipment that will check or hold the content of emails or phonecalls on the traffic.

A spokesman for the Home Office said: "We are public about the IMP, but we are still working out the detail. There will a consultation on the Communications Data Bill early next year." 

Speech Police Hired to Roam Queens University Campus

KINGSTON, ON, November 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Queens University in Kingston, ON is coming under criticism for hiring six "dialogue facilitators" to roam its campus and intervene in student conversations in order to promote “diversity” and deal with what they deem to be any “offensive" material.

The six graduate students from diverse backgrounds have been hired to encourage discussion on race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and other social issues, as well as step-in when they hear conversations that could be deemed "offensive."  Each facilitator went through an 11-day training course to prepare them for their roles and have been granted free room and board as well as a yearly stipend as payment.

Critics of the program are questioning what constitutes offensive language, and are worried this initiative will be a step towards effectively squashing free speech rights on the Canadian university.

Social conservatives in Canada have in the last several years expressed increasing alarm at escalating efforts to silence “offensive” speech – efforts that, in practice, have led primarily to the targeting of those with politically incorrect views, particularly Christians with traditional views on sexual morality.

"As Catholics we are very concerned about this because the Church teaches that practicing homosexuality is sinful and homosexual sexual orientation is disordered," said Suresh Dominic, spokesman for Campaign Life Catholic, about the university’s program.  "I am wondering now if Catholics at Queens are going to be discriminated against for openly stating their faith."

Dominic's comments are especially significant in light of the number of Canadians who have been brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) in the last 5-10 years for having defended Christian teaching on homosexuality.

Section 13-1 of the Human Rights Act gives the CHRC authorities the power to deem some speech "hate speech" and has been used quite liberally in attempts to charge many outspoken commentators for committing "hate crimes." These include Christian pastor Steve Boissoin, who was fined and ordered to apologize by a human rights tribunal after publishing a letter to the editor in a local newspaper, expressing his disagreement with homosexual “marriage,” and Scott Brockie, a Christian printer who was fined for refusing to print materials for a homosexual organization.

In a LifeSiteNews.com interview, Theresa Gilbert, executive director of National Campus Life Network, echoed Dominic's concerns, questioning what the "facilitators" might deem to be "offensive."

"We have already had clubs across Canada opposed, banned or discriminated against regardless of what they do but merely because of the fact that they are pro-life," said Gilbert. "Will pro-life students at Queens be discriminated against for their perfectly legitimate pro-live views?"

Other opponents of the Queens program have made jabs at the fact that students are being paid to eavesdrop on other students' conversations – a factor that could suffocate rather than promote constructive conversation on social issues.

"Having a program like this in place could stifle public discussion if people are worried their private conversations are being monitored," said Angela Hickman, managing editor of the Queen's Journal, as reported by the Globe and Mail. "For a lot of people, their opinions get formed in conversations and so stifling that is dangerous."

An editorial in the Queen's Journal said the program "seems to be an inadequate, lacklustre attempt to deal with social inequalities—and especially racism—on campus."

"It's unlikely six facilitators in a crowd of thousands will have much impact on fostering dialogue in residences," it reads.

"On the other hand, if they do become regularly involved in conversations, they risk hostility from students who don't want to be approached in what they consider private social settings. The resulting dialogue likely won't be productive or effective if students feel they're being cornered and become defensive."