Australia’s Vast, Scattershot Censorship Blacklist Revealed
mask.of.sanity writes “Australia’s secretive Internet filter blacklist held by its communications watchdog has been leaked, revealing the government has understated the amount of banned Web pages by more than 1000. Multiple legitimate businesses and Web sites have been banned including two bus companies, online poker sites, multiple Wikipedia entries, Google and Yahoo group pages, a dental surgery and a tour operator. Betfair, a billion-dollar business blocked by the blacklist, CEO Andrew Twaits was furious the government has potentially annexed tens of millions of dollars in revenue after its Betfair.com gambling site was blacklisted. The blacklists were reportedly leaked by a Web filter operator to wikileaks which has published the full list of banned URLs. Outraged privacy advocates say the government has effectively lied about the amount of URLs included in the blacklists, totalling more than 2300, and the type of content which it would ban. The leak follows a series attacks on the watchdog in which irate users successfully lobbied for web sites to be banned, only to be threatened with an ,000 fine for publishing the link contained in the PR response. It was also revealed the watchdog can ban Web sites at a whim, with no accountability.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
