A Personal 2009 End Of Year Political Shame List

Like many people who use the Internet on a daily basis I have been alarmed at where the Rudd Government's mandatory national ISP-level filtering scheme is leading both Australian society and ordinary citizens going quietly about their daily business.
Also like many others, I have begun to express my concerns to elected members of Federal Parliament by telephone, letter and/or email.
So as part of my efforts during December I sent each and every Labor member of the Senate and House of Representatives a short email on the subject.

This is a list of those members of the Labor Government who have apparently decided that the issue of Internet censorship is not worth even a brief moment of their time and therefore deleted my emails without reading:

Forshaw, Michael (Senator) Senate webpage
Pratt, Louise (Senator) Own website
Sterle, Glenn (Senator) Senate webpage
Bevis, Arch (MP) Own website
Bird, Sharon (MP) Own website
Burke, Anna (MP) Own website
Combet, Greg (MP) Own website
Danby, Michael (MP) Own website
Ferguson, Martin (MP) Own website
Irwin, Julia (MP) ALP webpage
Kerr, Duncan (MP) Own website

Marino, Nola (MP) Own website
Neumann, Shayne (MP) ALP webpage

Perrett, Graham (MP)Own website

Price, Roger (MP) Own website
Rea, Kerry (MP) Own website
Sullivan, Jon (MP) Own website
Turnour, Jim (MP) Own website

Bloggers who are on the Commonwealth electoral role might like to take note of these names.

In their turn, those listed politicians with their own websites might like to consider what would happen to their election campaigning or general self-promotion if one of their website entries addressed a subject falling within ACMA's very broadly defined 'Refused Classification' category or they directly linked (or indeed linked to a site which in turn linked) to a URL which was accidentally or deliberately included in the official secret blacklist.
Remembering of course that it is ludicrously easy to end up on this complaints generated banned list (and even the nine politicians on this list who tried to place their websites beyond the current reach of ACMA and auDA would get short-shift under a new censorship regime).
As for researching any contentious new bill before Parliament - well that could become rather tricky if the need to know was related to certain political/social/health issues and, such post-2011 research would not be something which MPs could reliably pass across to the Parliamentary Library with a request for assistance because the librarians' ability to access Internet searches may be compromised as well.

UPDATE:
Polley, Helen (Senator) at http://senatorhelenpolley.com.au/ has added herself to the list of parliamentarians who deleted the email without bothering to read.
While I'm at it I think that a hat tip is due to all those Federal Labor politicians who did read actually my email, from Treasurer Wayne Swan through to various ministers, parliamentary secretaries and a bevy of backbenchers.
A special thanks to hardworking Labor MP for Page, Janelle Saffin, who took the time during her Christmas break to personally acknowledge receipt of the email.

Favourite word picture of 2009 and other quirks

Favourite word picture of 2009:
"just got booted out of the conference center..."
{The limp lettuce leaf in any Oz political salad, Senator Steve Fielding, tweeting at COP15}

Least favourite second incarnation on the Internetz:
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) died years ago. This think tank had fun slogans like "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world", "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" and "a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence.
Unfortunately Kristol and Co are now up and running again at Foreign Policy Initiative which started up in 2009. The new website tells us that "The United States remains the world's indispensable nation -- indispensable to international peace, security, and stability, and indispensable to safe-guarding and advancing the ideals and principles we hold dear."

Most predictable election result:
"Preference data for the Bradfield by-election has now been published by the Australian Electoral Commission, making it possible to assess the success or otherwise of the Christian Democratic Party's tactic in nominating nine candidates for the by-election.Standing nine candidates has been costly for the CDP, as none of its candidates reached the 4% required for return of deposit or to attract public funding. In total the nine candidates received 2,524 votes or 3.58% of the vote, but 1,054 votes or 1.49% were recorded by James Whitehall who had the Number 1 position on the ballot paper and so received the donkey vote." {Antony Green's Election Blog 25th December 2009}

A quote to remember:
"As Boris said over on Stoat, "If there's something stupid to believe, there is someone on the internet who believes it." {From Rabett Run 21st December 2009}

The growing litigation pile belonga Monsanto:
"A mountain of lawsuits against Monsanto and related companies have been removed to federal court.This summer and fall, 161 lawsuits were filed in Putnam Circuit Court alleging Monsanto and related companies are responsible for causing cancer." {The West Virginia Record 23rd December 2009}

Worst OZ commercial decision of 2009:
iSnack 2.0 - nuff said!

Something for the 'Obama is the Anti-Christ' assorted nuts:
"The first family arrived on the island of Oahu and President Obama and his wife Michelle started Christmas Day with a gym workout at 6.40am, returning more than an hour later. The first couple did not exchange gifts, aides said, and did not attend church." {The Sydney Morning Herald 27th December 2009}

A little festive season hysteria:
"Police from Blacktown Local Area Command want to dispel rumours circulating on a social networking website that a man, Dennis Ferguson, is living in Doonside in Sydney’s west.The claims have been investigated by police, in consultation with the Department of Housing, and the information posted on the website is incorrect. This is a case of mistaken identity and the resident of a street in Doonside is not Dennis Ferguson as has been reported on the social networking site. Police are urging those people transmitting false information to cease immediately." {NSW Police media release 22nd December 2009}

Most disturbing statistic of the year:
"NSW Council for Civil Liberties secretary Stephen Blanks said a pattern of police shootings had emerged in the past year. Four people have been killed by NSW Police this year." {The Sydney Morning Herald 27th December 2009}
This propensity to ape a fictional vision of police machismo by using deadly force appears to have been growing steadily in recent years.
Between 1990 and 2007 87 people were shot and killed by police in Australia and the most dangerous time of day to have an aggressive confrontation with police seems to be between 4pm and 8pm.

Most likeable blog:
Still Life With Cat - Clarencegirl once told me that this was a quietly insightful, gently humorous, venom-free zone and I wholeheartedly agree!

That unwanted prediction for 2010:
"ELECTRICITY, gas, water and public transport costs will all increase in 2010, while the average grocery shop will make a bigger dent in the family budget." {The Sydney Morning Herald 27th December 2009}

Most laughable Oz politician of this any year:
Just take your pick! Abbott, Abetz, Tuckey, Minchin, Pyne, Joyce, Fielding, Keneally,............

The Arsehat of all Arsehats in 2009:
Andrew Bolt - for services to Oz's racist underbelly, the anti-science lobby and general contrariety. {See almost any post on his Herald-Sun blog}

Pic from Crikey

*Season's Greetings for 2009 from the* *******North Coast Voices crew*******

Best wishes for the festive season from all at North Coast Voices

Clarencegirl, Clarrie Rivers, Petering Time, WaterDragon, K. Roo and others

North Coast Voices will be on holiday until New Year's Eve

Animation from Google Images

Mandatory National ISP-Level Internet Filtering: Mark Newton sends a letter

Mark Newton has published yet another letter to his Federal Labor MP Kate Ellis and it is well worth reading.

Excerpt from PDF copy of the letter dated 20 December 2009:

EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY FORMULATION

For the year that it has taken to conduct his six-week trial, the Minister has claimed that evidence gained from the trial will inform the policy.

The Minister also relied on evidence supplied by Mr. Tom Woods in 2007 as a justification for moving from user-based filtering (under the Coalition's policy) to ISP-based censorship due to Mr. Woods' ease of bypassing the Coalition's NetAlert filters.

So it's curious that the evidence5 delivered by Enex Testlab in the trial results released on 15 December weren't similarly persuasive.

Enex found that all of the solutions they tested could be trivially bypassed when blocking defined blacklist

(with success rates for circumvention blocking ranging from 16.2% down to a lousy 8.1%).

The success rates were higher when additional censorship methods were employed, but even then none of the products successfully prevented circumvention and all of them experienced reduced reliability.

Specially notable is that WebShield, the ISP in Australia with the most experience at running censorship systems, was included in the testing and was circumvented.

Even the experts can't prevent bypass, leaving the efficacy of these systems worse than the PC-based filtering systems employed by the previous Government.

At least a PC system can intercept your Google search to block knowledge of bypass methods.

ISP systems have no such defensive capability.

Other results of the trial include further confirmation that increases in accuracy lead to decreases in performance (You can have it fast or good - Pick one) and a moderate increase in underblocking errors as measured against the 2007 lab trial previously carried out by Enex Testlab for ACMA.

5 http://www.dbcde.gov.au/online_safety_and_security/cybersafety_plan/
internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot"

Report into the conduct of the trial. Recommendation is to ignore the Minister's press release and examine the raw data in the Enex report.

The real Rudd Family 2009 Chrissie card pic

I believe the inscription inside the Chrissie card might have read:

Will do better try to do better continue our triumphant progress on behalf of the Australian people next year.
Merry Christmas. KRudd

Moggy Musings [Archived material from Boy the Wonder Cat]

At last a tweet I understand! musing:

stilgherrian Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Yes I know.

A Get well soon, Apollo musing: Apollo (a very intelligent cat who cunningly found himself a very comfy berth in the stilgherrian household) has just had a big op. A big get well soon wish from one moggie to another!

A Smartypantz Cats musing: Rod3000 has the best tweets. He found a Wikipedia entry which shows that cats, George, Oliver, Oreo & Henrietta all received degreees or diplomas after handing over hard cash - which was some feat for H'etta as she had been deddy for some time past.

A media says it's true musing: A Bolivian man's cat saves him from being deported from the U.K. About time that having a moggy in the family was judged to be part of a hoomanz human rights!

A cat in the dog house musing: I'm not coming out from under the bed until Clarencegirl apologises for wagging her finger at me because I went into the herb patch and mowed down the lemon grass before moving on to trim those young tomato plants - can I help it if I like my greens?!

A Just like our house musing: An amusing tweet - stilgherrian I am home and arguing with the cats about the logistics of the fishing industry.

A By George! musing: George the Pillar Valley staffie saved his owner on 25 September 2009, when he raced to her rescue and killed a highly venomous brown snake slithering near her feet. Although not normally condoning snake killing, George is being feted by his family for this daring deed.

A gaming cat musing: I had to snicker behind a paw as I watched Clarencegirl try to Circle the Cat in this itty bitty online game.

Next year's must see movie!

Click on poster to enlarge

Kevin Rudd gets anti-censorship mail from Paris

From Reporters Without Borders:

The Hon Kevin Michael Rudd

Prime Minister

Parliament House

Canberra ACT 2600 Australia

Paris, 18 December 2009

Dear Prime Minister,

Reporters Without Borders, an organisation that defends free expression worldwide, would like to share with you its concern about your government's plan to introduce a mandatory Internet filtering system. While it is essential to combat child sex abuse, pursuing this draconian filtering project is not the solution. If Australia were to introduce systematic online content filtering, with a relatively broad definition of the content targeted, it would be joining an Internet censors club that includes such countries as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy announced on 15 December that, after a year of testing in partnership with Australian Internet service providers (ISPs), your government intended to introduce legislation imposing mandatory filtering of websites with pornographic, paedophile or particularly violent content.

Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the risks that this plan entails for freedom of expression.

Firstly, the decision to block access to an "inappropriate" website would be taken not by a judge but by a government agency, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Such a procedure, without a court decision, does not satisfy the requirements of the rule of law. The ACMA classifies content secretly, compiling a website blacklist by means of unilateral and arbitrary administrative decision-making. Other procedures are being considered but none of them would involve a judge.

Secondly, the criteria that the proposed law would use are too vague. Filtering would be applied to all content considered "inappropriate," a very slippery term that could be interpreted very differently by different people. In all probability, filtering would target "refused classification" (RC) sites, a category that is extremely controversial as it is being applied to content that is completely unrelated to efforts to combat child sex abuse and sexual violence, representing a dangerous censorship option. Subjects such as abortion, anorexia, aborigines and legislation on the sale of marijuana would all risk being filtered, as would media reports on these subjects.

The choice of filtering techniques has not been clearly defined. Would it be filtering by key-words, URL text or something else? And what about the ISPs that are supposed to carry out the filtering at the government's request? Will they be blamed, will they be accused of complicity in child sex abuse if the filtering proves to be ineffective, as it almost certainly will?

Your government claims that the filtering will be 100 per cent effective but this is clearly impossible. Experts all over the world agree that no filtering system is effective at combating this kind of content. On the one hand, such a system filters sites that should not be affected (such as sites about the psychology of child sexuality or paedophile crime news). And on the other, it fails to filter targeted sites because their URLs contain key-words that are completely unrelated to their content, or because their content (photo and text) is registered under completely neutral terms. Furthermore, people who are determined to visit such sites will know how to avoid the filtering by, for example, using proxy servers or censorship circumvention software or both.

The Wikileaks website highlighted the limitations of such as system when it revealed that the ACMA blacklist of already banned websites contained many with nothing reprehensible in their content. According to Wikileaks, the blacklist included the Abortion TV website, some of the pages of Wikileaks itself, online poker sites, gay networks, sites dealing with euthanasia, Christian sites, a tour operator's site and even a Queensland dentist's site.

The US company Google has also voiced strong reservations. Google Australia's head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said yesterday: "Moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information."

As regards paedophilia, the most dangerous places on the Internet are websites offering chat and email services. So if this project were taken to its logical conclusion, access to sites such as Gmail, Yahoo and Skype would also have to be blocked, which would of course be impossible.

There are more effective ways to combat child pornography, including tracking cyber-criminals online (by means of cookies, IP address comparison, and so on), combined with police investigation into suspects and their online habits. Why did your government end the programme launched by the previous government, which made free filtering systems available to Australian families? This procedure had the merit of being adapted to individual needs and gave each home the possibility of shielding its children from porn.

A real national debate is needed on this subject but your communications minister, Stephen Conroy, made such a debate very difficult by branding his critics as supporters of child pornography. An opportunity was lost for stimulating a constructive exchange of ideas.

We also regret the lack of transparency displayed by your government as regards the tests carried out in recent months using procedures that have been kept secret. Your government paid some 300,000 Australian dollars to ISPs to finance the tests. Australian taxpayers have a right to be given detailed information about the results.

Finally, you must be aware that this initiative is a source of a concern for your compatriots. In a recent Fairfax Media poll of 20,000 people, 96 per cent were strongly opposed to such a mandatory Internet filtering system, while around 120,000 Australians have signed a petition against Internet censorship launched by the online activist group GetUp. The withdrawal of this proposal would therefore satisfy public opinion as well as prevent a democratic country from introducing a system that threatens freedom of expression.

I thank you in advance for the consideration you give to our recommendations.

Sincerely,

Jean-François Julliard
Secretary-General

Stranger than fiction.......

Stumbled across this as I tiptoed through the tulips in Yahoo! ANSWERS.
Seems someone's done a variation on an Einfield recently:

"I've just received a speeding infringement notice form Victoria Police, Australia - although I have never been to Australia! They have my correct name, correct street name (not number) and a postcode from a few streets away. I believe I know who has given these details, and old acquaintance who moved to Australia a year or so ago - they lived in the street which the postcode on the notice had. So my question is, what should I do with this? Go to the police in the UK? Ignore it? Or will they chase it up? Also, what is likely to happen to the person who gave the false details?"

Mr. Disspain sinks his fangs in....

I think the creator of www.stephenconroy.com.au (later http://stephen-conroy.com) might think himself lucky that Chris Disspain CEO of .au Domain Administration Ltd at least endeavoured to be a little polite in correspondence, as he summarily booted the spoof site off the Australian Internet with only glancing reference to any AuDA dispute resolution policy.

Mr. 'I'm endorsed by the Federal Government' Disspain is not always polite.

Here is a sentence found in one his own company emails sent during a dispute with Larry Bloch's Netregistry: Rebelling against an 'over-zealous' regulator or just plain media whoring?

Now that's very proper executive officer language that is!
This is the man who has day-to-day control over domain registration of at least 6 million Australian websites?

Just another example of how rural & regional NSW is being let down

The Daily Examiner editor points out the inequity in energy service delivery costs across New South Wales.

Comment from The Daily Examiner, 21 December 2009
Click on image to enlarge

Obama's baby brother is a movie star named Marx?

Much of this Monday 14 December article from the Chinese media mentioning Obama's younger brother, Jiang joined the new film "Let the bullets fly," more and more powerful lineup, may be lost in awkward translation but the picture tells the story.
American conspiracy wingnuts must be ecstatic over the half-brother's first name, "Marx"!

Send Stephen Conroy an anti-censorship gift this Christmas via Electronic Frontiers Australia

A ‘blacklist’ of thousands of websites.

Click on The Gift of Censorship for Christmas and send short e-message to the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
For every thousand anti-Internet censorhip messages sent to Electronic Frontiers Australia for delivery to Senator Conroy, EFA will also send a Christmas stocking containing coal.

The fool's playing with us, right?

In the Herald Sun last Friday from one barking mad pollie:
BIBLE classes should be compulsory so children have a fundamental understanding of Christianity on leaving school, federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.
"I think everyone should have some familiarity with the great texts that are at the core of our civilisation," Mr Abbott said. "That includes, most importantly, the Bible.
"I think it would be impossible to have a good general education without at least some serious familiarity with the Bible and with the teachings of Christianity.
"That doesn't mean that people have to be believers."

Bible classes, Tones? Next you'll want all school kids to have a compulsory Christian baptism before they leave pre-school!

I wonder how many more people can you alienate before New Year - you appear to be going for a national record.

Pic from the Herald Sun article

Australia you've been Gherkin'd!

Clarence Valley teens have launched their own interactive website for youth called Gherkin.

Those deadly rappers JACCAS have a great song This is where we're from playing on the home page.

Go there!