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Posts Tagged ‘internet filtering’

The website of the Prime Minister and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) were the subject of an attack yesterday, in support of protest against the Government’s internet filtering program.

This type of attack is called a Denial of Service attack, where hackers flood a website with traffic causing the website to go down. This is a regular occurrence across the internet, but this time the motivation was political and specifically targeted at both the Prime Minister who government introduced the policy, and the ACMA who are administering the internet filtering trials.

It is reported that the attack occurred shortly after 7pm AEST, which took the affected websites off line for a short period of time, both sites now appear to be operating normally.

The attack allegedly carried out by the hacker known as ‘Anonymous’, was labelled as juvenile by Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today.

The attack demonstrates how deeply unpopular the government’s planned internet filtering is within the community. This time most have been surprised at what lengths protesters are prepared to go to, to make their point. Is this just the start ?

Tags: censorship, internet filtering, IT Lawyer, Telecommunications Lawyers
Posted in ISP and Telco Law, IT Law | Comments Off

A new website has been launched by the Federal Government’s Australian Communications and Media Authority to help children and teenagers to have safe and positive experiences online.

The site – www.cybersmart.gov.au – provides comprehensive and practical advice for parents and interactive learning activities and information for children. Cybersmart also features guidance and a range of resources for libraries and schools.

The Acting Chairman of ACMA, Chris Cheah, said the Cybersmart site is about empowering Australian children and young people to be smart online and to become good digital citizens.

“Understanding how to navigate the online world safely is an important element in the development of digital literacy. By providing teachers and parents with clear, current and credible information about cyber safety, we assist them to develop in young people, the critical skills needed to stay safe online and get the most from their online encounters,” Mr Cheah added.

The website also includes an online helpline for young people who have had negative experiences online, such as cyber bullying. The helpline offers confidential advice and support from counsellors who are trained in listening to children and have expertise in cyber safety. Best of all the website has something for parents and teenagers, which are critical to effectively achieve the goals of the website.

The launch of the website raises the question of whether this website is a pre-cursor to the Government considering dropping its hugely unpopular internet filtering plans. Website like this one provide for a more considered solution to protecting children on the internet.

Tags: internet filtering, internet law, isp law, ISP lawyer, online safety, telecommunications lawyer
Posted in General, ISP and Telco Law, IT Law | Comments Off

German domain name regulator, DENIC, has taken down the popular website www.wikileaks.de shortly after it published ACMA’s internet filtering trial black list.

Recent reports have emerged of the ACMA internet filtering trial black list having been published on different websites, potentially compromising the Government’s current internet filtering trials. One such website was www.Wikileaks.de.

Wikileaks had been known for its collection of leaked documents, according to ARS Technica:

Wikileaks has built up an impressive portfolio of leaked documents like those from secretive religious organizations, congressional reports, specs for military hardware capable of jamming IEDs used by insurgents in Iraq, and even its own donors list. In doing so, it has found few friends in governments and courts, with one judge even ordering its DNS record be erased after documents from Swiss Bank Julius Baer were uploaded to the site.

ARS Technica have also reported that German police raided the residence of the German domain name registrant Theodor Reppe who denies any involvement in the posting of leaked documents. The raids are reported to have come shortly after the ACMA blacklist was published. It is unknown at this stage, what involvement if any, ACMA had in closing down this website.

Another mirror site of wikileaks.de, which is hosted on a different domain, still shows links to different versions of what they claim is the secret ACMA black list.

Tags: ACMA, internet censorship, internet filtering, IT Law, IT Lawyers, telecommunications law
Posted in General, ISP and Telco Law, IT Law | Comments Off

Despite massive public opposition to ISP level internet filtering, the Government is pressing on with its internet filtering trials. We don’t yet know what the result of these trials will be, but the Europeans have developed an alternate approach to the issue of protecting children from harmful content online.

Yesterday was Safer Internet Day across the European Union. The European Commission has developed the Safe Internet Programme which has a budget of 55 million Euros, and which has been running since 2004.  According to its website, the programme is aimed at promoting:

safer use of the Internet and new online technologies, particularly for children, and to fight against illegal content and content unwanted by the end-user, as part of a coherent approach by the European Union

It aims to do this by co-funding projects to :

• Increase public awareness;

• Provide the public with a network of contact points for reporting illegal and harmful content and conduct, in particular on child sexual abuse material, grooming and cyber bullying;

• Foster self-regulatory initiatives in this field and involve children in creating a safer online environment;

• Establish a knowledge base on new trends in the use of online technologies and their consequences for children’s lives.

The programme is impressive because it takes a cooperative rather than an imposed position upon website operators. This year’s theme was protection of children on social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and You Tube. This cooperative approach has seen 17 of the leading social networking sites across the internet commit doing more to protect younger internet users.

Is this the solution to all our online child protection issues – not it isn’t but it is a different approach, and may help contribute to the debate on internet filtering.

Tags: European Union, internet filtering, ISP Filtering, isp law, telecommunications law
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The Australian Newspaper is reporting that participants in the Government’s controversial ISP filtering trials will commencing in batches, instead of a universal commencement as originally thought.

Of the 16 ISPs that are taking part in the trial, the Australian is reporting that the batches of ISPs will have different start and finish dates for their 6 week trials, which are to either be (a) the black list managed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA); or (b) the clean feed option.

Tests of the ISP filtering are to be conducted by Melbourne based Enex TestLab.

Even before the trials have commenced numerous public campaigns against the filtering have emerged, with most experts questioning the effectiveness of ISP filtering, in light of the fact that most material of concern is transmitted through Peer to Peer networks.

Tags: internet filtering, ISP Filtering, isp law, ISP Lawyers, telecommunications law, Telecommunications Lawyers
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