A letter to the minister. Senator Stephen Conroy.

Australia is proposing a nationwide Internet censorship system. This is what I sent to the party in response.

 

Dear Minister Chairman,

 

May I firstly congratulate you on your proposed waste of public Australian funds on a nationwide filtering system that will reduce internetworking performance internationally for all Australians and conversely non-Australians conducting internetworking transactions with Australian business, and secondly for your attitude that the internet should be cleansed so that it is suitable for 5 yr olds.

 

I would like to point out that business transactions (which are the principal reason for Australia’s investment in the National Broadband Network) on the internet are conducted by people who are older than 5. Introducing a censorship scheme that is this vast in nature introduces immense responsibility that government cannot be trusted with. When presented with an easy opportunity to limit information that is potentially damaging to you what would you chose to do? I wish to offer my own expansionist thoughts for the proposal, and suggest that you should consider changing Australia’s name to Kruddgrad.

 

When you propose the cleansing of the internet so that only material fit for 5 year olds is allowed through (and I do realise that yes news sites will be available as long as you haven’t banned them although the news is pretty shocking these days, what with murders and car smashes and whatnot, you might want to sort that out too), you risk seriously damaging the intellectual capability of those of us who are tucked behind your proposed firewall. You will block 10’s of thousands of legitimate web sites that will be erroneously labelled as illicit by your proposal. Even then there will be ways around your proposed system, I won’t detail them because after-all you are the minister supporting this project, you can’t be trusted with that kind of information. While the world chastises China for its restrictive controls on net freedom  and dissenting opinion, why are you implementing elements of a communist state in Australia?

 

I propose that instead of re-affirming my opinion of Australia (and thereby yourself) as the ‘Global Village Idiot’ the better option is that you re-enforce the message that parents should be watching their children’s internet usage, that won’t cost $125Mil, and it might actually encourage parenting skills, which this legislation will not address. The rest of us grown up’s are old enough to make our own decisions without your interference and your thinly veiled attempt to curtail the freedom of information in this country in a digital age using the most ineffective methods available.

 

I wish to offer my warmest disregards,

K0rs0

Surveilance Society

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” – Pastor Martin Niemoeller 1892-1984

 

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” – The British Government.

 

“If we sit in silence now in its infancy, then it will be too late to cry wolf when it matures.” – K0rs0

 

In Secret

The UK Government secretly adopted an EU directive enabling the UK Governments Justice instruments to remotely hack, analyse, and install remote key-logging software, on any citizens’ computer in the United Kingdom. They are allowed to get and retain copies of e-mail, and any file they find that may be incriminating to the individual who owns the machine. They can do this without warrant or even suspicion.

What can be deemed an incriminating piece of evidence? Well how about those MP3’s stored on your computer? How about that downloaded episode of a TV show you missed last week. How about something the police planted on your home computer to incriminate you, but because there is no warrant you can’t prove either way that you didn’t own it in the first place. This may come as a surprise to some people but the Police twist and plant evidence on occasion. Especially to save face in a scenario with fatal consequences like the assassination of a Brazilian national in public on the London Underground.

The UK is the most heavily surveiled society on earth, and according to the government we’re all safer because of it. But crime is going up in the UK in particular violent crime. You have to ask the question, why is crime increasing despite the freedoms surrendered in secret by the government allegedly to address crime.

Dystopia

“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed–would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper–the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1

Using a computer at home in the UK right now, is like asking ones-self, when will the police come rushing through my door to arrest me? Because ultimately that is the implication of this legislation, this kind of legislation is always brought in under the thin edge of the wedge; ‘We need it to combat child porn; we need it to combat terrorism; we need it to combat crime.’ Nonsense, there is nothing there that can not currently be obtained without a warrant.

The only thing this legislation eliminates is the necessity of suspicion. With thanks to this legislation, you don’t need to have done something wrong or illegal to have your computer searched and your computer’s contents secretly stored for criminal analysis. There are no legal safeguards or protections available to the public if something goes wrong or if a file is placed by police on your computer.
The world of George Orwell’s 1984 was one were everyone was under surveillance to ensure total loyalty to the party.

Tourist Attraction.

Welcome to the United Kingdom of 2009, a country where it is illegal to possess tools such as NMAP or to own or produce the source code of ‘hacker tools’; A country where there are more surveillance cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world; A country where you will receive a jail sentence if you don’t hand over a decryption key for an encrypted file on your computer whether you own the file or not; A country where it’s illegal to tell someone if you have been requested to hand over your encryption keys. A country where your every transaction on-line is now subject to investigation at will without warrant; A country that will shortly require every ‘citizen’ (I should say party member) to carry an ID card so that all and every transaction with government can be tracked; A country where mobile phone owners details are required by law to be registered so that the movements of the phone owners can be tracked by Cell site/location; A country where the microphone of your phone can be turned on without your knowledge so that your conversations with anyone can be recorded.
Enjoy your stay.

What can I do?

• Be vocal, talk to your member of parliament registering your thoughts.

• Protect yourself on-line, install up-to-date anti-virus and a good firewall on your PC that will identify out-going connections.

• Ensure that your router has a firewall that is enabled, and wherever possible disable UPnP (this may prevent some applications from working).

• Use a strong Whole disk encryption application like PGP so that if your house is broken into they can’t install key-loggers on your computer (which is a right granted under the new powers).

• Change your computers BIOS settings so that it will only boot from its hard disk and not any other device.

• Encrypt your e-mails and request that your friends/colleagues and family do the same.

• Encrypt your files so that even if they get beyond your disk encryption they still can’t use your data.

• Strengthen your Wireless Network’s protection by switching to WPA/WPA2 and use TKIPS.

• Use The Onion Router to help anonymise your connections and prevent traceability.

 

Today I’m Listening to

The Beginning of the End by Nine Inch Nails