The government’s response to website attacks by ‘Anonymous’ this evening highlight why such illegal actions do nothing to help the fight against net censorship, with Senator Conroy telling the media that the people responsible are misguided and that the proposed filter would only be used to block illegal content.
The Minister for Communications told the Herald Sun that the campaign that they’re mounting is erroneous and misinformed and that the government is proposing is to filter refused classification content which includes imagery of child sexual abuse, rape and bestiality.
Of course, that’s far from the truth.
Refused classification is an extremely broad classification category and in most cases it is legal to possess and view RC material in Australia (the exception being Western Australia and some indigenous communities in the Northern Territory or where the content is illegal under criminal codes such as child abuse). RC includes material surrounded by political debate like The Peaceful Pill Handbook, as well as films like Ken Park, adult pornography with fetishes (such as spanking) and even content that depicts or deals with drug misuse and addiction. Video games which do fit below the MA15+ classification are also classified as RC.
In fact, in May of this year the Government revealed that the blacklist (at the time) contained only 32% child abuse material. Another 19% was refused classification material and the remaining 49% was rated X18+ or less.
Here’s the criteria from the National Classification Code for determining if a film is RC:
Films that:
- depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified; or
- describe or depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears to be , a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not); or
- promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence
Reports on web forums suggest PM.gov.au was DDoS’ed, but returned after approximately five minutes. However, the Herald Sun reports both PM.gov.au and ACMA.gov.au were down for up to an hour.
Anonymous announced they would carry out attacks on government websites at 7PM Wednesday evening, demanding no Internet filter and the resignation of Senator Conroy. However, such methods and demands suggest little understanding of how political policy is changed in Australia. Acts like this have the potential to unravel the hard work already done by many to try and end this policy.
Understandably, like the majority of Australians, Anonymous are frustrated with the government’s plan to censor the web. However, efforts need to be put into legal and well conceived actions, for these have long last lasting effects, not just brief notoriety.
15 comments
Anon SA » “Operation Didgeridie” and the “war” on the Australian Governmentx says:
Sep 9, 2009
[...] Somebody think of the children [...]
Mike Fitzsimon says:
Sep 9, 2009
Quite right, Michael.
DDoS attacks are *not* going to garner any support from Aussie mums, dads, grandparents, uncles and aunts etc. These are the people who need to be alerted to the evils of censorship and what sort of Australia it would create for our children. These are the people the government listens to through the ballot box.
David Jackmanson says:
Sep 9, 2009
First of all, good takedown (again) of Conroy’s lies. This needs to be said again and again.
However, I’m not 100% sure that this particular subset of Anonymous are wrong here (and I note that AnonSA in the trackback say they do not support the attack)
It’s interesting that in the first paragraph of the “Message to the Australian Government” on YouTube the “conservative culture” of Australia (and the USA) is identified as a problem deeper than any particular politician.
I think this particular strategy may be an attempt to engage with and change that culture, which shifts the whole ground that policymakers stand on.
The attacks could support such a strategy if backed with the following arguments:
– The Internet CANNOT be controlled. The “Message” calls for anti-censorship tech (such as Tor) to be spread widely. The attacks also show the Government can’t control their own websites, let alone anyone else’s.
– Since control is futile, should we be wasting money on it?
– Defiance in spreading the blacklist can also be effective: “We’re letting you know what the Government doesn’t think it can trust you with
Dan says:
Sep 9, 2009
It doesn’t matter what anonymous do, they do not represent the rest of us. If someone of middle eastern descent crashes a plane into a tower block we do not blame everyone from the middle east for it. That sort of vilification is not tolerated by our society however according to our government it’s perfectly ok when the culprit is unidentified.
Craig says:
Sep 10, 2009
While some may be ready to applaude the efforts of this group, it really only gives the other side ammunition to fire back. It also unravels the work done by those who are trying to sink this idea by doing it through the correct channels.
I do agree that the idea of a filter is at best a crazy one, but DDOS attacks aren’t going to stop it from being put in.
Steve says:
Sep 10, 2009
This isn’t helping. I refused to get behind this stuff, I think inundating the minister’s office with letters is a far more effective method to annoy the people involved. What’s more, it’s 100% legal
Kath says:
Sep 10, 2009
I agree that activity such as that taken out by the Anonymous group is often more of a hindrance than a help to the campaign against the plan for a national internet filter. Instead of rallying people to the cause, it alienates those that are hesitant or conservative in their views. We want the conservatives to join us, not be offended at our actions.
We do not need guerilla attacks, we need it to be all out in the open and discussed freely and without aggression or ignorance.
I know a lot of people who understand nothing of the proposal of a national internet filter, yet when they see reports of this kind of guerilla activity, their default decision on the matter is for the internet filter. After all, they ask “Don’t filters keep hackers like these out? I don’t want hackers.”
One thing we need to remember is that most of us who are fighting the good fight have a much stronger grasp of how the internet works, how a filter will affect it and what it will and won’t do. We need to be talking to those people who are not high end users and who do not understand all of the details, and convincing them of what we already know.
Yes, attacks such as we have seen from this Anonymous group get people talking about the cause, but not in a positive and supportive manner for our cause that we want and need them to be.
Sean the Blogonaut says:
Sep 10, 2009
Foolish action whose only result was to play into the hands of Conroy’s speech writers.
Zapps says:
Sep 10, 2009
While most people would disapprove of the attacks on PM and ACMA web sites, it does demonstrate vulnerabilities in online systems – national internet filters included.
If someone can hack these websites, someone can hack the filters. Imagine hackers having access to an entire country’s internet usage logs and being able to redirect and hijack any site accessed.
One of the great things about the internet is that its decentralised nature makes it more resilient to attacks. Forcing everyone through a filter creates a central point of failure and additional security concerns.
The PM and ACMA sites being hacked didn’t affect anything else. But what if the filter was hacked?
Bob Bain says:
Sep 11, 2009
As Fiona Patten pointed out at the FORT forum this week material in the printed media is usually legal while it’s equivilant in video form is usually illegal (to sell in most states).
The Internet is different given that static images that would be legal in a publication are classed as “film” due to the definition of a “computer generated image” in legislation and are treated (as far as legality is concerned) with video tape and DVD. This was the case for the prohibited (but R rated) aborted fetus image.
I can’t say that Jim Wallace appears to have got his head around the practicalties of the Conroy proposals defining it only as a “blunt instrument” but believing that a “blunt instrument” is better than nothing.
At the FORT forum it was pointed out that googling the term “sexual fetish” would return several million results (I just got over 8 million ) and it should be pointed out that some fetish material is legal and some illegal. The term is a generality. Typing other terms will result in thousands of results – some with explicit advertising – and in the countries from which the material originates it is often perfectly legal and is also usually legal to purchase possess and view in the State of New South Wales.
In his “We can’t wait for whales to use the internet” press release he spells Patten Patton indicating to me that his mindset is firmly in the military where he served as a distinguished brigadeer. Patton was a military commander.
It doesn’t appear to have been noted anywhere (and I wasn’t allowed to video or record the proceedings) but when asked if the current classification system was suitable for a dynamic environment such as the Internet Jim Wallace appeared to agree that it wasn’t.
A review of the Australian classification system is long overdue.
james says:
Sep 11, 2009
Notice how the media are pushing a DDoS as some great hacking campaign by a monolithic group.
A bunch of 4Chan kiddies with the low orbit ion cannon is hardly terrifying stuff. It is to hacking what holding hands is to an orgy.
Aik says:
Sep 11, 2009
*shrug* If they’re not going to listen to us, we need to *make* them listen to us – and it’s hard to ignore your website being under DDoS. These attacks got the issue back into the media and the discussion going again, which is more than can be said for other efforts of late.
If it helps put your mind at ease a little – almost all of the comments on the ABC story about this were anti-filter and hesitantly supportative of Anonymous.
Attacks like this show that people don’t want it very strongly – and if no grander organisation is going to take it into their hands to make a big mess of the filter, the Anonymous masses of the internet will do it their own way. Opposition to the filter has been fairly half-arsed since the protests in … when was that? January?
Those protests which, I might point out, largely originated from /b/.
It’s about time the internet community started making itself heard about this again – DDoS is just one nice and vocal way of doing that.
Steve says:
Sep 12, 2009
I was pretty pissed off the way it was reported in the media. I mean, ACMA’s site getting defaced was a hack, DDoS’ing the PM’s site and bringing it down for 5 minutes is like chucking a bunch of stink bombs onto the floor of parliament while it’s in session. It achieved nothing more than making the media :/ I tried to ring the ABC morning show when it happened to actually explain what it was, but couldn’t get through
bagga says:
Sep 14, 2009
Unhelpful tactic.
anonymous says:
Sep 15, 2009
We are bringing the subject matter to the public’s attention again.
We will succeed.