As some of those close to me will know, I have recently resigned my membership in the ALP and joined the Greens. Although it might seem a sudden move to some, it has been a long time coming and was not an easy decision or one taken lightly. I’m still new to the party, but I have learned enough to know that I have definitely made the right decision. If you’re curious as to my reasons and experiences, please read on.

Why I joined the Labor Party

I don’t have a background in student politics – I came to political involvement much later in life. I joined the ALP when I lived in California. My political consciousness, while probably not underdeveloped compared to the average voter, was prodded by the continuing outrages of John Howard and George Bush. By the time the Tampa affair, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay were all unfolding, I felt something had to be done – if for no other reason but to feel a little less powerless.

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The campaign against mandatory internet filtering, which any loyal reader will know has consumed a good portion of my life these last few years, has heated up in recent days in exciting ways.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, RSF), after writing an open letter to Kevin Rudd late last year, last week added Australia to an “under surveillance” list of countries showing worrying trends in the field of Internet censorship. Although it doesn’t label Australia an “Internet Enemy” like China, Cuba or North Korea, it is a clear expression that our move down this path is viewed with alarm by those overseas concerned with freedom of expression. The Government is sensitive on this issue, and the Minister took issue with my reporting of the open letter in Crikey last December, firing off a volley to Crikey shortly thereafter.

In a clear sign that we have really touched a nerve, Senator Conroy has attacked both EFA and myself for our campaign in the Senate this week. After having a clear go at EFA for “misleading” RSF in question time Monday (summary here, including my rebuttal; also covered in ZDNet) on Tuesday he lambasted myself, and my colleagues at EFA for what he calls a “disgraceful misinformation campaign”.

Following the government’s announcement last year, civil libertarian group Electronic Frontiers Australia repeated the claims of reporters without borders in an article written by its CEO Colin Jacobs in Crikey. While one could possible excuse Reporters Without Borders for being ignorant of the government’s policy, the same cannot be said of the locally run EFA who through Colin Jacobs, chairman Nic Suzor, and board member Geordie Guy, have run a campaign to deliberately mislead the Australian public.

They have argued there is no child abuse material traded on the open internet yet the latest count there were 355 child abuse URLs on the ACMA blacklist and therefore the open internet.

They have argued that filtering will slow the internet and will result in over blocking despite the independent live pilot trial showing that internet filtering can be done…

Here’s Hansard, or an audio clip of this question time snippet. I believe the Crikey article in question may have in fact have been tabled. A document detailing our purported lies was tabled.

The issues the Minister mentions are ones I am comfortable debating. Although others have used the slowing of internet speeds as an argument against the filter, since the filter’s details became known I have been careful to avoid this topic as I don’t believe it is a major factor. Of course, there is child pornography on the open internet; just not very much, and the evidence shows it does not remain there for long. Nor would the filter prevent deliberate access. I am therefore not inclined to modify my arguments based on this broadside.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, this is good news. Not only does the legislation appear to be temporarily delayed, the Minister has all but conceded our campaign against the filter has succeeded in swaying public opinion. Because we have swayed it against the filter, he has labelled it misleading, basically accusing us of lying to the public. We, of course, don’t see it that way, and will stick to our guns.

I am proud to take part in what appears to be a tradition; EFA has managed to equally piss off one or two of Conroy’s predecessors. This document details EFA’s response, via the Senate Privileges Committee, to remarks made by Senator Alston in 1999.  The situation was much the same, with the Howard government coming under criticism by the ACLU for internet censorship plans. Senator Alston accused EFA of being “low grade, undergraduate political activists” and “maniacs”. “Misleading” seems a bit tame by comparison.

If you’re a politician, and something nasty is brought to your attention, what do you do? The best and sometimes only tool in your toolbox is the one you reach for. The tool is this: to pass a law banning it. Therefore, although it’s always discouraging, a story like this one, is far from unusual or surprising. “Laws to tackle racism on the Internet are set to be beefed up,” it announces.

“Authorities warn they are often powerless to act against online content, which is responsible for almost one in five racial vilification complaints,” it continues, then:

Attorney-General Robert McClelland has ordered the Australian Human Rights Commission to conduct a sweeping review of ”arrangements for dealing with racist material on the internet”.

”While freedom of expression is one of the most fundamental rights, this is not at the expense of the rights of people, while using the Internet, to be treated with equality, dignity and respect,” Mr McClelland told The Sunday Age.

Certainly, nobody likes hate speech. But these words, by our Attorney-General, are concerning. Firstly, they show a terrible lack of  consideration of the complexities of the issue, and secondly, they demote freedom of speech in a significant way.

Banning racist content on the Internet might seem like a good idea on the surface, but you don’t have to dig very deep before the idea becomes problematic. The existing laws throughout the states grapple with some thorny issues. How do you define hate speech? “Kill all Jews” certainly counts, but what about “Liberate Palestine”? Is Holocaust revisionism hate speech? What about an honestly held  opinion on the undesirability of immigration from a certain part of the world? Does this inspire “hatred, contempt or severe ridicule” against a group of persons? These ambiguities will become more problematic if a new national law is introduced that applies to every blog on the Internet.

The proposal also shows a considerable lack of understanding about the realities of censoring the Internet. The Internet, it should go without saying, is global. Billions of web pages are out there, far beyond the reach of Australian lawmakers, and reflecting a multitude of different cultural values. Content hosted in Australia can be removed, but it can just as easily be moved or copied overseas by its authors. It is therefore questionable whether any law could have a meaningful impact.

The comments by the AG and others pay lip service to freedom of speech, but their words lack conviction. Freedom of speech is fine, but “not at the expense of the rights of people… to be treated with equality, dignity and respect.” That sounds like a noble sentiment, but are we certain that freedom of speech shouldn’t include the right to be mocking, disrespectful and offensive? There are definitely limits to freedom of speech that we can all agree on. But the above comments seem more like a dismissal of free-speech concerns than a debate of their merits.

We need to ask ourselves, is this the best way to tackle racism in Australian society? Is racist web content a cause of racist attitudes, or merely a symptom of it? In our view, other, more substantive and community-based policies are needed if we want to see a real improvement in this area.

Stilgherrian has been covering the iiNet trial for Crikey (good job, Stil), and wrote yesterday about Conroy’s rather worrying remarks on the subject indicating that the ISPs and entertainment industry should get together and sort out a way to solve this problem.

This makes some sense if the two parties get together and and discuss a new business model that brings entertainment to Internet users in a way that is convenient and fairly priced, or even if it allowed users to opt-in to a revenue sharing deal that legitimised peer-to-peer file sharing. It seems highly unlikely, though, that the copyright lobby will suddenly wake up and smell the reality. Instead, if they get together with ISPs at all, it will be to find a way to spy on users and shut down Bittorrent any way they can. They will wield the cudgel of legal action without restraint.

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Recently the trends in Internet freedom have been all bad. China’s censorship regime escalated dramatically over the last 12 months, with a more aggressive Golden Shield, tumultuous events in Iran and of course Australia’s own filtering plan. It is therefore extremely heartening to see the tough new stand on Internet freedom taken by the USA.

The new approach was outlined last week in a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who declared the free access to information online as critical a human right as the freedom of assembly or the right to publish. Although barely mentioning China in her speech, Clinton was clearly setting the stage for a showdown with Beijing, declaring that “countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences.” The Chinese government responded angrily, declaring the Chinese internet “open”, demanding the U.S. “respect the facts” and calling the speech”information imperialism” in an official newspaper.

This is a pretty bad look for the Rudd government. It is my belief that they thought the filtering plan would be relatively uncontroversial, would wedge the opposition, and would allow them to check a few boxes to do with election promises and helping kids. Suddenly, they find themselves swimming against a rapidly accelerating tide.

Senator Conroy, I believe, hates it when Australia is compared to China in these sorts of debates. Conroy has no plan to censor political speech in Australia (I certainly believe this), so he sees any comparison to China or Iran as a cheap shot, dishonest and unfair. I think it simply doesn’t occur to him that the system itself is a danger. If you created a secret police force with the express purpose of weeding out terrorists amongst the population, would that be of concern if that was the extent of their mission? Of course it would. People are people, and regularly exceed their mission or their authority. (It’s happened before here – google “special branch” and “cold war”.)

To borrow a phrase from Bruce Schneier, it’s bad civic hygiene to allow our rights to be eroded without an excellent reason. In a free democracy the default position should always be to preserve openness and transparency. The government needs to make a watertight case if they want to take new powers onto themselves.

That case can’t be made for Internet filtering, and the Government knows it. This explains the amusingly defensive tone of Friday’s media release. It’s pure, panicked spin.

I made similar comments to the ABC on Friday. My full take on the subject can be found over at EFA here, or in today’s Crikey here.

The Chinese Government’s sudden announcement that all PCs sold in China after July 1st would have to include its “Green Dam Youth Escort” software came as a surprise to many. With the rationale of protecting the impressionable minds of the kiddies – of course – the software would filter all web access in real time, blocking suspect images, blacklisted web pages, and anything with forbidden keywords. The software is frightening in the extreme – it takes all the worst aspects of voluntary home filtering software such as overblocking, underblocking, security flaws and performance degradation, and combines it with the political paranoia of the CCP. The result is government spyware that not only blocks web pages, but actually terminates the processes of running apps into which the user types banned keywords. And that’s version 1.0!

Chinese internet users seem pretty resigned to the Golden Shield, but this might be a step too far. Let’s see what happens. I am not optimistic of a backdown.

I wrote up a summary of the initiate which appeared in Crikey today (shouldn’t be behind the pay wall too long).

On a personal note, I’ve managed to settle down in Shanghai a bit (more here, so updates and media/writing work should be more regular now.