Internet filter blacklist leaked on web

By News Online's Nic MacBean


The communication regulator's blacklist of banned internet sites has apparently been leaked, prompting an internet advocacy group to accuse the Government of making it easy to access child pornography.

The Government is planning to introduce a mandatory internet filter that will block access to a list of dangerous websites.

The list of sites - managed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) - is designed to catalogue sites containing child pornography or other criminal content.

Wikileaks, an organisation that aims to reveal secret information, today published what it claims to be the ACMA blacklist.

As well as child pornography, the list of 2,395 pages also includes online gambling sites, YouTube links, regular porn and fetish sites, and websites of a tour operator, Queensland boarding kennel and a Queensland dentist. It also includes the Wikileaks website.

"We now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater," the Wikileaks site says.

"Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of up to $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist - a list the Government hopes to expand into a giant national censorship machine."

ACMA says it is likely to make a comment on the matter later today.

Wikileaks has previously published similar lists from Thailand, Denmark and Norway. The blacklist includes the Wikileaks website itself.

Internet freedom advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) says the leaking of the list has confirmed their fears that the Government was creating a quick and easy database for dangerous sites.

"This was bound to happen, especially as mandatory filtering would require the list to be distributed to ISPs all around the country," EFA vice-chair Colin Jacobs said.

"The Government is now in the unenviable business of compiling and distributing a list which includes salacious and illegal material and publicising those very sites to the world."

Mr Jacobs also said the list revealed how many sites could be unwittingly dragged into the net of censorship.

"Now that we have seen the list, it is clearly not the perfect weapon against child-abuse it has been made out to be," said Jacobs.

"Many of the sites clearly contain only run-of-the-mill adult material, poker tips, or nothing controversial at all. Even if some of these sites may have been defaced at the time they were added to the list, how would the operators get their sites removed if the list is secret and no appeal is possible?"

The ABC has been unable to contact Broadband and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, but he is quoted by Fairfax as saying any Australians involved in the leak could face criminal charges.

"No-one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list," he said.


ABC 19-3-9

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/19/2520591.htm?WT.mc_id=newsmail

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