Darkness at Noon

As most readers will no doubt be aware, the Federal Government, will introduce legislation into parliament early this year which will make ISP level filtering of the internet mandatory. The filter will block any material rated RC (refused classification).

The details of the way this will work are still sketchy, but on basic principle, the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice oppose the filtering of the internet. Our concerns are that, while the government assures us that it will not use the filter to block forms of political expression, history tells us that there will always be some sort of ‘creep’ with legislation like this. We also don’t have this guarantee from future governments (because that would be impossible). The filter will do nothing to stop the spread of child pornography which is supposedly the purpose of the filter. Finally, the way the debate has been framed to date gives concerned parents who are not as familiar with the goings on of the internet the false impression that their children are regularly stumbling upon highly objectionable imagery when the rest of us know this just isn’t true.

Electronic Frontiers Australia are doing a fantastic job to raise awareness of the issue and fight against it.

They have launched an online petition which I’d urge all of you to sign. It can be found here.

The internet has thrived because it is so open. Let’s keep it that way.

So Google have decided that they will no longer censor Google.cn. Hurray!!! To hell with censorship, to hell with these limits to freedom of speech and so on. Don’t you just hate Chinese human rights violations!
I hate Chinese human rights violations. I also hate Australian human rights violations. One thing I like though, is my privacy.

Reporting on Google’s decision to stop censoring Google.cn, the ABC reported:

Google said it detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on its corporate infrastructure in mid-December that resulted in the theft of intellectual property.

[Google chief legal officer] Mr Drummond says evidence indicated the attackers were trying to get access to email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Now firstly, it is noteworthy that your GMail account is, to Google, their ‘intellectual property’. Legally, I get that. Intellectually I struggle with it.

Secondly though, Google knows a LOT about you. Where you eat, what books you read, who your friends are and your political allegiances. It knows your search history, probably has a fair idea of where you live and therefore has a picture of your house with your car out the front. Now Google isn’t the only organisation that can do that, but, other than ASIO, it is probably the only organisation that could cross-reference all that information. And all that is without even beginning to think about what Google might know about you if you are using Google Docs.

Google’s business model is built around trust and it doesn’t seem to be in short supply. As a result, there are probably few organisations that will protect your privacy with more vigilance than they will.

But at the end of the day, the ability for Google to protect your privacy has two vulnerabilities. Firstly, all its data is necessarily stored online making it vulnerable to a cyber attack as we have seen, this time in the case of the Chinese Government launching an attack. The other is that it is a legally incorporated entity with the associated obligations.

Do you remember the case of model Liskula Cohen? She took legal action against Google for hosting a blog called Skanks in NYC on Blogger which gave her the unenviable title of “Skankiest in NYC”. The blog was anonymous so a court ruled that it was reasonable for Cohen to sue the author for defamation and forced Google to reveal the identity of the blogger.

I am a staunch believer in privacy and think that it is an important ingredient for human rights – perhaps more so than censorship. So before we get on the “Google is championing human rights” bandwagon, let’s take a moment to reflect on the risk Google represents to our privacy and consider just how much trust we have placed in their ability to protect that privacy.

Given our Lobbyocracy campaign, I guess I can’t go without commenting on Rudd’s back-down. Problem is, what’s to say?

The proposed changes were pissweek and would have had little to know impact on donations to political parties, but now any additional levels of transparency will also go by the wayside.

I know the Centre put a lot of work into a submission to the Green Paper on electoral reform and I was sure Falkner was genuinely committed to reform. Whether or not Ludwig taking over from Falkner when Falkner moved to Defence had any impact is impossible to say.

It’s also not surprising that it would appear that it is Victorian Labor that has kicked up a fuss give Victoria has the worst record in the country when it comes to this sort of thing.

*sigh*