Net filter 'will give parents a false sense of security'

By ABC News Online's Tim Leslie

Internet advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia has attacked the Federal Government's plan to introduce mandatory ISP-level internet filtering.

The Federal Government is poised to start trialing the system, which is intended to block child pornography and other illegal material.

In an opinion piece for ABC News Online, EFA vice-chair Colin Jacobs says the plan will not protect kids.

"Material that should be targeted will slip through, and much that should be allowed will be blocked, as the Government's own tests have demonstrated," he said.

"The more accurate the filter, the worse the impact on network performance - a slowdown of up to 86 per cent was observed in the same trials.

"Where does this leave Australian kids? With slower internet and an inaccurate or inappropriate filter. Parents may have a false sense of security, but the real risks remain unaddressed."

Mr Jacobs says the filter will do nothing to address other, more pressing, dangers children face online.

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Not to mention it can be designed to remove good fascinating filth from the cyberbizo to satisfy the Moralizators...see toon at top.

The Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has effectively been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required to get the scheme started.

The Opposition's communications spokesman Nick Minchin has this week obtained independent legal advice saying that if the Government is to pursue a mandatory filtering regime "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required".

Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he withdrew all support, saying "the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this".

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has consistently ignored advice from a host of technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/web-censorship-plan-heads-towards-a-dead-end/2009/02/26/1235237810486.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

The founder of the World Wide Web says the pace of innovation on the web is increasing all the time.

Marking the 20th anniversary of his proposal to create the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee said "new changes are going to rock the world even more".

The future of the web lies in mobile phones, he said at the Swiss research centre where he was working when he proposed the web.

He also warned of user profiling on the internet and the risks of "snooping".

Sir Tim was working at the Cern nuclear research centre, near Geneva, in March 1989 when he proposed to his colleagues a hypertext database with text links that would help scientists around the world share information quickly.

----------------

Meanwhile, the French had invented and operated the "minitel" before that... AND managed to make money out of it, unlike the www...

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove "prohibited" pages and even links to prohibited pages.

Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government's censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.

"The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship," Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/banned-hyperlinks-could-cost-you-11000-a-day/2009/03/17/1237054787635.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

As predicted by many, the ultra top-secret blacklist of banned websites maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has been leaked. If you link to one of the banned websites, you can be fined $11,000 per day that the link is in place. Although, how you would know that you are linking to a banned site that is contained on a secret list is anyone’s guess.

Wikileaks, an anonymous whistleblower site that has since been added to the blacklist (which is why I am not adding in the link), leaked the blacklist.

So much for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s election promise to protect whistleblowers.

What is interesting is that many of the sites on the blacklist are legal sites. Some of the sites blacklisted are a dentist in Queensland, a tour bus operator and Christian sites. The question now being asked and not being answered by the ACMA is why are these sites blacklisted?

The problem for the owners of these sites is that they have absolutely no recourse. Once you are on the blacklist, you are on and that is just your bad luck. The only way you can ever know that you are on the list is if some brave whistleblower facing fines and jail terms leaks the list.

So how does one get blacklisted?

Quite easily.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8714&page=0

from Crikey …..

Two thirds of ACMA blacklist out of date

Stilgherrian writes:

Not only is the list published by whistleblower website Wikileaks over the weekend "definitely" the ACMA blacklist of banned internet content, it’s also "rubbish", according to an industry source.

Senator Stephen Conroy finally admitted that the Wikileaked material "seemed to be close" to ACMA’s current blacklist of banned internet content. Given the evidence Crikey presented yesterday, that was obvious. What’s so hard about saying "Yes", Minister?

ACMA’s blacklist is compiled from complaints received from the public. Manufacturers of internet filters pay $15,000 for the list, which must be included in their products to be eligible to participate in the government’s current field tests of ISP-level internet filtering.

Our contact in the internet filtering industry is highly critical of the ACMA blacklist’s quality.

"I’ve had a look at the list and it’s rubbish," they told Crikey this morning.

"I wouldn’t pay $100 for it, let alone $15,000. That list would make my filtering look really bad," they said.

The leaked ACMA blacklist dated 18 March 2009 contains 1168 URLs (distinct web addresses), of which roughly half relate to child pornography or child-abuse material. The rest is material Refused Classification (RC) for other reasons, or is rated MA15+ or higher without an age-verification mechanism in place. Or "potentially" so on the secret say-so of an unaccountable ACMA staffer.

Our source says around two-thirds of the URLs in the ACMA blacklist don’t go anywhere or are otherwise out of date. By comparison, their own company’s list contains around quarter of a million URLs covering child-related activity alone, checked every three months to remove out of date or inactive entries.

In other words, ACMA’s blacklist of stumbled-upon material reported by the public represents maybe 0.2% of the child-abuse material on the public web, let alone what might be traded secretly.

Meanwhile, German police have raided the homes of a Wikileaks volunteer, Theodor Reppe, in Dresden and Jena. Wikileaks says that according to police documentation, the search was for "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence". Reppe is the registrant the German internet domain Wikileaks.de.

"The raid appears to be related to a recent German social hysteria around child p-rnography and the controversial battle for a national censorship system by the German family minister Ursula von der Leyen," Wikileaks writes.

There’s wild speculation on Twitter and in the blogosphere that the raid was related to the leak of the Australian blacklist. However Wikileaks has also published the internet censorship blacklists of Denmark, Norway and Thailand.

Some media reports have claimed Reppe "owns" Wikileaks. Wikileaks in fact operates from Sweden, and Reppe merely sponsored the registration of their German domain name. Neither does Reppe "own" Tor, the network of proxy servers used to help preserve anonymity on the internet. He merely runs one popular German node on this global network.

The German police "search protocol" document shows that Reppe was not informed of his rights. Reppe also claims that he did not agree to "not having a witness" present, and has refused to counter-sign the documentation. Obviously this has the potential to invalidate any evidence gathered.

From the SMH

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has begun distancing himself from his controversial internet censorship policy in what one internet industry engineer has dubbed "the great walkback of 2009".

Senator Conroy has long said his policy would introduce compulsory ISP-level filters of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's blacklist of prohibited websites. But last night, he said the mandatory filters would be restricted to content that has been "refused classification" (RC).

When the ACMA blacklist was leaked last month, it caused great controversy, partly because it included a slew of R18+ and X18+ sites, including regular gay and straight pornography and other legal content.

But on SBS' Insight program last night, Senator Conroy said "it's mandatory refused classification, and then parents - if the trial says that it is possible to go down this path ... have the option to block other material".

This about-turn has done little to assuage the concerns of online rights groups...

see toon at top...

Child rights groups have come out in force to criticise the Rudd Labor government's controversial plan to censor the internet, saying the scheme will divert around $33 million away from more effective ways of tackling online child pornography.

In a joint statement with lobby group GetUp, both Save the Children Australia and the National Children's & Youth Law Centre believe the resources could be better spent on law enforcement agencies battling to eradicate child pornography on the internet.

GetUp national director Simon Sheikh said the mandatory filter won't work on most of the content it is intended to block, and that would be money down the drain.

"Protecting children online is crucial but the government's command and control approach will miss the vast majority of content it intends to stop," he said.

"Around $33 million each year will be wasted on a futile and fundamentally flawed scheme."

Mr Sheikh estimates the sum could fund 300 extra police officers to fight online child pornography.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25756003-15306,00.html

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has slammed the Federal Government's internet censorship policy, saying it will have very limited, if any, success in achieving its aims.

Nicholas Cowdery, QC, made the comments in response to a question from a journalist at a conference on e-crime in Sydney yesterday.

"Crime prevention methods need to be practical ... I'm not an expert in the field, but talk of filters, blocking mechanisms and all of that sort of thing, I think, ultimately, in a society like ours, are going to have very limited, if any, success in achieving the aims that their proponents set out for them," he said.

The Government plans to implement mandatory filters in ISPs that would block, for all Australians, sites that have been "refused classification" by Australian regulators.

This includes child sexual-abuse imagery, bestiality and sexual violence material but also content that is perfectly legal to view in Australia, such as regular gay and straight pornography, and innocent sites that have been added to the secret blacklist by mistake.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/dpp-blasts-net-censor-plan-20090805-e9mq.html

The Federal Government's internet censorship trials have been repeatedly delayed over the past nine months, leading to claims from the Opposition that the Government is deliberately withholding the results to avoid embarrassment.

The Opposition's communications spokesman, Nick Minchin, today called on the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, to "end this farce and produce his long overdue trial results for independent assessment".

Live trials of the filtering policy, which is intended to block "prohibited content" for all Australians as determined by a secret Government blacklist, were initially slated to begin in December last year and take about six weeks.

They were then pushed back until July, then September and, today, the Government is still unable to put a date on when it will release the results to the public.

Privately, the ISP industry, communications experts and several politicians believe that Senator Conroy might use the results of the trial as an excuse to quietly axe the plan, which was an election promise that has become deeply unpopular.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/conroy-urged-to-end-net-censorship-farce-20090902-f7n3.html

from Crikey .....

ACMA iTunes and the failure of net filtering

Stilgherrian writes:

Whether Australia's internet "filtering" trials are successful ... whether "success" has been defined, which it hasn't ... whether the Opposition baits Senator Stephen Conroy to produce the trial report ... none of these things matter. The underlying censorship process is unworkable, and always will be. Opponents of the filter are busy proving it.

In January, network engineer Mark Newton filed a complaint with ACMA about Apple's iTunes Store, which was selling the movies V for Vendetta and American Gangster. Both are rated MA15+ and are being sold for profit. iTunes must therefore have a restricted access (age verification) system, but it doesn't.

An open-and-shut case? No. It took ACMA seven months to resolve.

iTunes content is partially hosted in Australia on the Akamai content distribution network, a system that ensures customers download a file from a nearby server, reducing long-distance internet traffic. By the letter of the law, ACMA should have served a takedown notice on Akamai. Instead, they finally ruled that for Australian customers, iTunes may no longer offer the "Gift this Movie" function.

"I've told ACMA that it is the single weirdest decision I've ever seen an Australian Government agency make, bar none," Newton told Crikey.

"The films are still available, 12-year-olds can still use prepaid credit cards bought at their local Caltex service stations, or iTunes gift cards bought at Woolies to obtain them. But no Australian of any age is allowed to give movies as gifts to anybody else of any age," Newton said.

Also in January, a complaint was filed by Geordie Guy, a board member of watchdog group Electronic Frontiers Australia and now technology policy co-ordinator for the Democrats (remember them?). Guy noted that BigPond Movies was selling Reservoir Dogs, rated R18+, again without an age verification system.

"After six months I got an email notification saying that the content that I was complain about was no longer offered at that location, so the investigations had been discontinued," Guy told Crikey.

Did ACMA have a quiet word with BigPond in there? Neither organisation was able to respond before today's deadline.

No content was added to ACMA's secret blacklist, so the special exemption to Freedom of Information legislation doesn't apply. Guy has filed an FOI request for any and all documents related to this investigation, any other investigations into BigPond content, and the next five internet content complaints lodged chronologically since his. ACMA's response is due in a few days.

A fundamental flaw in Australia's internet censorship process is that it's based on public complaints. That's why the blacklist of prohibited content hosted overseas is just a couple thousand internet addresses and, as revealed in Senate Estimates after questions from Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, the grand total of takedown notices issued for content hosted inside Australia since 1 January 2000 is just 372 items.

"It took Geordie and I 15 minutes to lodge our complaints, which turned into seven months of effort and untold thousands of dollars in lawyers' bills for ACMA to resolve," Newton said.

Imagine the mayhem if every anti-censorship campaigner started hitting ACMA's red complaint button.

The Federal Government's decision to press ahead with compulsory internet filtering has come under fire from lobby groups and the Greens.

The Government wants to pass laws to force internet service providers to block banned material hosted on overseas servers.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says he intends to introduce legislation in the first half of next year.

The legislation would require all service providers to ban refused classification (RC) material hosted on overseas servers. RC material includes child sex abuse, bestiality, sexual abuse and detailed instructions for crime or drug use.

Senator Conroy says the new filter rules are not designed to curtail freedom of speech.

---------------

see toon at top...

How the world sees our great firewall. International media has been keeping a close eye on the communications minister Stephen Conroy's internet filter.

The BBC reported the news on Tuesday. An expert told the BBC of the need for "extreme caution" in the implementation of such a policy as the "noble aims" of the filter could be easily lost. A report from France 24 focused on the intended secrecy surrounding the blacklisted sites.

The Huffington Post said that the filter would make Australia one of the strictest internet regulators among the world's democracies, while also likening the plan to regulations imposed in Egypt, Iran and China.

References to Iran and China have featured across multiple media outlets, with Fox News describing Australia as "joining" the two nations, and the Bangkok Post labelling the filter as "China-style".

Duncan Riley, writing on The Inquisitr, went just a little bit further, claiming that the "dark clouds of totalitarianism are descending on Australia" as governments who step on the censorship road usually don't stop at just one step. - Elly Keating

and, from cartoon corner .....

Stephen Conroy website spoof: In protest to the Minister's proposed internet filter, a fake Stephen Conroy website has been established at www.stephenconroy.com.au. The reason behind the site:

"The interesting part of this is that it shows that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has not even been forward thinking enough to register his own name domain." - stephenconroy.com.au

 

Internet fades to black in filter protest

The Greens says their website will fade to black on Australia Day as part of a nationwide protest against the Federal Government's proposed internet filter.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam says he believes more than 500 websites will take part in "The Great Australian Internet Blackout".

The Federal Government's proposed internet filter would force all internet service providers to block "Refused Classification" material.

From the SMH

Google says it will not "voluntarily" comply with the government's request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad "refused classification" (RC) content rules.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google's censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally.

Google warns this would lead to the removal of many politically controversial, but harmless, YouTube clips.

University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, one of Australia's top communications experts, said that to comply with Conroy's request Google "would have to install a filter along the lines of what they actually have in China".

As it prepares to introduce legislation within weeks forcing ISPs to block a blacklist of RC websites, the government says it is in talks with Google over blocking the same type of material from YouTube.

YouTube's rules already forbid certain videos that would be classified RC, such as sex, violence, bestiality and child pornography. But the RC classification extends further to more controversial content such as information on euthanasia, material about safer drug use and material on how to commit more minor crimes such as painting graffiti.

Google said all of these topics were featured in videos on YouTube and it refused to censor these voluntarily. It said exposing these topics to public debate was vital for democracy.

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see toon at top and in between...

The US government says it has concerns about Australia's plan to introduce a mandatory internet filter.

The Federal Government wants to force internet service providers to block offensive material, including child pornography and instructions for criminal activity, from overseas websites.

The Government is facing growing pressure from anti-censorship and internet groups to drop the idea.

Now the US government has added its voice to those expressing concern.

A spokesman for the US state department says its officials have raised the issue with Australian officials but would not comment on the nature of the concerns.

Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says it would be inappropriate to talk about discussions with the US government.

Skyful of Lies Nik Gowing reveals the new vulnerability of governments and big institutions of power in times of crisis - when citizens can record events and upload them to be seen worldwide within minutes

from the SMH

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

In an interview on ABC Radio last night, Senator Conroy also said he was unaware of complaints the Obama administration said it had raised with the government over the policy.

The government intends to introduce legislation within weeks forcing all ISPs to block a blacklist of "refused classification" websites for all Australians.

Senator Conroy has said the blacklist will largely include deplorable content such as child pornography, bestiality material and instructions on crime, but a large and growing group of academics, technology companies and lobby groups say the scope of the filters is too broad and will not make a meaningful impact on internet safety for children.

Google, which has recently been involved in a censorship spat with China, has been one of the filtering policy's harshest critics. It has identified a range of politically sensitive and innocuous material, such as sexual health discussions and discussions on euthanasia, which could be blocked by the filters.

------------------------

Stephen Conroy should give up now...

cuting facebook off

Pakistanis woke up on Thursday to find access to popular websites Facebook and YouTube blocked after a government crackdown on websites seen to be hosting un-Islamic content. The BBC's Aleem Maqbool reports on the reaction from Peshawar.

This site is restricted" is the plain message on a white background that most Pakistanis have been getting when they try to access the Facebook website.

It follows a High Court ruling ordering all internet service providers in the country to block the popular networking site until further notice.

What triggered the action was a Facebook group inviting people to draw, and post, cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

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Porn ban on net and mobiles mulled by South Africa

 

A South African government official is proposing a complete ban on digitally distributed pornography.

Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba has approached the country's Law Reform Commission to ask whether a change in the law is possible.

He has also had talks with the Justice Alliance for South Africa (JASA), a respected group which has written its own draft bill on the issue.

Internet security experts have dismissed the idea as "madness".

"Cars are already provided with brakes and seatbelts... There is no reason why the internet should be provided without the necessary restrictive mechanisms built into it," said Mr Gigaba.

US President Barack Obama would be granted powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet under a new bill that describes the global internet as a US "national asset".

Local lobby groups and academics have rounded on the plan, saying that, rather than combat terrorists, it would actually do them "the biggest favour ever" by terrorising the rest of the world, which is now heavily reliant on cyberspace.

The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by independent senator Joe Lieberman, who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.

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see toon at top...

The stage has been set for what many predict will be an ugly fight over broadband plans for US citizens.

The Federal Communications Commission has taken the first formal steps towards tougher rules for broadband.

It asked for public comment on three different plans, igniting an expensive lobbying campaign by all sides.

The looming battle follows a court ruling questioning the FCC's right to regulate internet service providers after one throttled traffic to users.

That court ruling dealt a major blow to a central plank of the FCC's broadband plan called net neutrality which demands that all data traffic be treated equally.

The five commissioners on the FCC board were split 3-2 in putting out for public comment proposals on new regulations for the broadband industry.

'Third way'

One of the three plans the public is being asked to comment on, and which is favoured by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, is called the "third way".

This would involve reclassifying broadband so it went from being a lightly regulated service to one with more vigorously oversight.

Facebook's prude police are out in force yet again, this time threatening action against a Sydney jeweller for posting pictures of exquisite nude porcelain dolls posing with her works.

Victoria Buckley, who owns a high-end jewellery store in the Strand Arcade on George Street, has long used the dolls as inspiration for her pieces and hasn't had one complaint about the A3 posters of the nudes in her shop window.

But over the weekend she received six warnings from Facebook saying the pictures of the dolls, which show little more than nipples, constituted "inappropriate content" and breached the site's terms of service.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/now-facebook-bans-doll-nipples-20100705-zwnr.html

The Federal Government has deferred the introduction of its mandatory internet filtering program.

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.

Senator Conroy says internet service providers Telstra, Optus and Primus have agreed to block websites known to contain child pornography in the meantime.

"I applaud these industry members for taking this stance, for stepping up to the plate, in recognition that there is some content that is not acceptable in a civil society," he said.

"This approach is consistent with what is happening around the world."

Over 90 academics, practitioners and public interest organizations from six continents have collectively warned that a secretive global treaty, currently being negotiated by governments of the world's largest economies would see tight controls placed on the internet and would threaten other fundamental rights and freedoms.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has received fleeting public attention, yet it has been quietly evolving for a number of years. On it's face ACTA is described as a countermeasure directed at the rise of counterfeit goods, medicines and pirated copyright protected material, including "piracy over the Internet".

If officially ratified, however, ACTA would mark the formation of a major new global legal infrastructure with relation to standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. 

It would also see the formation of an international governing body to oversee implementation of the agreement. That body would operate beyond the jurisdiction of national governments and even beyond that of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations. ACTA would effectively challenge already defined national court precedents regarding consumer rights and "fair use" laws and could fundamentally alter or remove limitations altogether on the application of intellectual property laws.

The US, along with all the countries of the European Union as well as Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a handful of other countries, have been involved in the ACTA negotiations since 2006. Leaked drafts of the agreement in 2008, 2009 and most recently in April 2010 have raised concern over the legal scope of the proposed treaty. The secrecy surrounding the negotiations has also prompted further worry over the draconian provisions within the agreement. The Electronic Frontier Foundation , along with other notable watchdog organisations, have called for more transparency on ACTA.

A group of international experts was convened last month by the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at The American University Washington College of Law to debate the proposed treaty. The group later released a communique that makes worrying reading. "ACTA is the predictably deficient product of a deeply flawed process." The statement reads. "What started as a relatively simple proposal to coordinate customs enforcement has transformed into a sweeping and complex new international intellectual property and internet regulation with grave consequences for the global economy and governments' ability to promote and protect the public interest." 

The communique bullet points the following four key conclusions:

• Negotiators claim ACTA will not interfere with citizens' fundamental rights and liberties; it will.
• They claim ACTA is consistent with the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS); it is not.
• They claim ACTA will not increase border searches or interfere with cross-border transit of legitimate generic medicines; it will.
• And they claim that ACTA does not require "graduated response" disconnections of people from the internet; however, the agreement strongly encourages such policies.

Those who endorsed the statement include professors from leading universities across the globe and several European members of parliament who have formed a working group on ACTA. The group identified at least seven critical areas of global public policy in which ACTA is hostile to the public interest. They define these as: "fundamental rights and freedoms; internet governance; access to medicines; scope and nature of intellectual property law; international trade; international law and institutions; and democratic process." 

Pending Global Treaty Threatens Free Internet & Fundamental Rights

From the SMH

A Sydney jeweller has castigated Facebook for its "opaque" and "arbitrary" moderation system after the site apologised for censoring her images of a nude porcelain doll posing with her works.

The social networking site admitted this morning that it made a "mistake" in removing Victoria Buckley's photos, after last week sending her several warning notices for publishing "inappropriate content" and erasing both censored and uncensored versions of the image from Facebook.

"We've investigated this further and determined that we made a mistake in removing these photos," Facebook said in a statement.

----------

see third comment above this one...

The federal government has censored approximately 90 per cent of a secret document outlining its controversial plans to snoop on Australians' web surfing, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, out of fear the document could cause "premature unnecessary debate".

The government has been consulting with the internet industry over the proposal, which would require ISPs to store certain internet activities of all Australians - regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing - for law-enforcement agencies to access.

All parties to the consultations have been sworn to secrecy.

Industry sources have claimed that the controversial regime could go as far as collecting the individual web browsing history of every Australian internet user, a claim denied by the spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

The exact details of the web browsing data the government wants ISPs to collect are contained in the document released to this website under FoI.

The document was handed out to the industry during a secret briefing it held with ISPs in March.

But from the censored document released, it is impossible to know how far the government is planning to take the policy.

The government is hiding the plans from the public and it appears to want to move quickly on industry consultation, asking for participants to respond within only one month after it had held the briefings.

ISPs Spying On Australians: Government Document Heavily Censored

The Federal Government has abandoned its controversial plan for a mandatory internet filter, five years after it was first promised.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says internet services providers (ISPs) have instead been issued with orders to block websites listed on Interpol's 'worst of' database.

"We've reached agreement with all of the telco service providers that they will block the worst of the worst - the child abuse pornography material that's available on the public internet," Senator Conroy told AM.

"Police have issued notices to a whole range of companies, and the few remaining companies that make up about 10 per cent will (soon) start receiving notices."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-09/government-abandons-plans-for-internet-filter/4362354?WT.svl=news1