Stephen Conroy: Minister For Fascism 

"AS JULIA Gillard clears the decks for an election that could be called as soon as next weekend, she has moved to limit the political fallout from Labor’s controversial plans to filter internet pages by putting the proposals off indefinitely.

The politically motivated deferral — which the opposition immediately branded a ‘‘humiliating backdown’’ — follows other recent policy reversals, softenings and adjustments as the government rushes to allay the concerns of various constituencies before the poll."

Gillard Dodges Flack on Filter - HERE

"Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy says the filter will not be put in place until an independent review can be carried out into what content would be banned.

The review, which Senator Conroy says is likely to take about a year, will look at what makes up "refused classification" rated content."

Conroy puts internet filter on backburner - HERE

"Friday's announcement about mandatory internet filtering is just what the Government needed: a way to get this toxic issue out of play before the federal election.

Even better, it gives everyone a chance to feel like they've achieved a minor victory - even though the policy hasn't actually changed."

Filter delay: backtracking or backburning? - HERE

"The federal government is hiding controversial plans to force ISPs to store internet activity of all Australian internet users - regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing - for law-enforcement agencies to access.

Political opponents and other critics of the scheme have described the draft policy as "alarming" and accused the government of going "on a fishing expedition for as much data on the public as they can get". One ISP executive has described the plan as "a nanny state gone totally insane"."

Web snooping policy shrouded in secrecy - HERE

"Conroy had reportedly warned of the potential for the financial information to be collected, as part of ongoing public attacks he has made on the search giant for what many believe to be a gross breach of privacy by its Street View cars, which it has acknowledged collected some payload data from Wi-Fi networks on their travels across the globe.

But in a statement released today, the Systems Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) said Conroy’s banking claims were “misinformation verging on fear-mongering”."

Sysadmins slam Conroy’s Wi-Fi “misinformation” - HERE

"My three-and-a-half year old daughter got my iPhone last night and has disabled it, and I haven't worked out how to get it to work yet -- so any tips anyone has got about how to get your iPhone working after your three-and-a-half year old has been playing with the settings, please see me afterwards" Conroy said...

The filter-loving Senator's phone was disabled by a persistent 3 year old - HERE

Nuff said.

'Put your money where your mouth is,' Conroy told - HERE

'Petulant' Conroy accuses Google of 'single greatest privacy breach' - HERE

Due to other commitments our News Coverage has been a little behind over Febuary. We're in the process of updating it now and it should be all current sometime in the next few days. It's interesting to note that just in the course of the last month alone...

• The failed NBN tender process Senator Conroy presided over was revealed to have cost taxpayers $17m HERE.
  
• He approached, and was rejected by, Google requesting that they apply filters to Australian YouTube search results HERE.
  
• He went skiing and held secret meetings with TV boss Kerry Stokes directly before handing the industry a $250m licensing reduction HERE.
  
• Finally, it's been revealed that his Govt. website intentionally hides references to the filter HERE.

Curiously, right about the time we were posting about the SA Labor Government's move to stifle open political discourse in their state they were in damage control over the issue. Following a furious public reaction, Attorney-General Michael Atkinson today publicly announced that if re-elected his government would repeal the law.

He spoke with Leon Byner on radio 5AA about the issue and his government's decision to back away HERE.

A recurring theme through the interview is Atkinson's relation to a time where 'letters-to-the-editor' had to be signed by their author. This is the same guy who is on the public record vehemently opposing a R18+ rating for computer games in Australia. Right.

We've thus-far generally attempted to steer clear of posting anything not directly related to Conroy's Clean Feed here. However, earlier today a story was published in Adelaide paper The Advertiser under the headline Labor gags internet debate that rightfully raised eyebrows:

"SOUTH Australia has become one of the few states in the world to censor the internet. The new law, which came into force on January 6, requires internet bloggers, and anyone making a comment on next month's state election, to publish their real name and postcode when commenting on the poll."

To summarise: the South Australian Labor Government has passed legislation which directly targets anonymous free speech where it relates to the electoral process. An article in the same publication under Censoring free speech in the secret state criticises the law, saying:

"South Australia is a state that grants more suppression orders than any other, it is a state where it is acceptable to leave hundreds, if not thousands, of parliamentary questions unanswered for years at a time, where pursuing Freedom of Information requests is nothing short of a battle."

Unfortunately Australians don't have an explicit or protected right to free speech, as examined HERE. The only way we can prevent governments from introducing these sorts of draconian measures is to shout them down in publiclc and by voting against them in the polls. We strongly urge you to do so.

Interestingly the highest volume of traffic originating from .gov.au domain to this site is from httpgate.sa.gov.au, a government proxy... So, Mike Rann, hopefully this sort of behavior is the final nail in your party's long overdue political coffin. Maybe once you've been defenestrated from parliament you'll be less burdened with such annoying trivialities like, well, good governance.

International media coverage of the censorship problem has been vast since our last update, with Google becoming involved in a public war-of-words with China over their censorship apparatus. For all intensive purposes this seems like a good thing for us as it's provoked increased local media coverage of Conroy's plan.

We haven't been directly linking media coverage of the China issue except where it's particularly relevant to the Australian debate. For those who are interested (that's all of you, right? ... ), Google has vast news resources available HERE.

The EFA this week launched a public petition against the Australian filter. They are planning to present this to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia and claim to be receiving upwards of 100 signatories per hour, which is a great result. We strongly urge all of you to take a look at it HERE. They also announced that they will be dropping the 'No Clean Feed' campaign and re-launching it in a format more friendly to the non-tech public.

Last week Jim Stewart from Stewartmedia kindly gave us some SEO tips which we implemented on the site a little while ago. As a result we're now #2 and #3 in the Google search results for 'Stephen Conroy', cheers Jim!

Finally, Happy Australia Day for this Tuesday. We hope all you other censorship opponents can find a little time between raping children and watching beastiality films to celebrate appropriately!

We've had a busy week here at SC! At the start of the week our .com.au domain space was regained, check the auDA Takedown page for more details. Make sure you check back over the coming week or so as we'll be in the process of updating the site and publishing much more comprehensive information for people looking to take action against the filtering plan.

Our friends over at EFA have been making some good progress this week, see articles HERE and HERE.

Finally, we had a huge response to our last poll, thanks to everyone that voted...

Will you punish Labor at the next Federal Election if they persist with mandatory internet filtering?
Yes Votes: 10095 | 96.34%
No Votes: 381 | 3.64%