New Zealand’s internet filtering system went live last month – but the government forgot to mention this to its electorate until its hand was forced by online freedom campaign, Tech Liberty. Thomas Beagle, a spokesman for the group, said he was “very disappointed that the filter is now running” and that its launch had been conducted in such a “stealthy mode”. He added: “It’s a sad day for the New Zealand internet.” It’s sad indeed, that things like this are possible in modern democracies.
Please fix URL, there’s a wrong character at the end.
And I’m appalled that in an allegedly progressive country such as ours we have had this forced upon us (in secret!!) without any public consultation.
It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
New Zealand, you’ve changed. You used to be cool.
I wonder what he REALLY typed?
the goal seems noble – fighting child abuse – but I don’t think that’s the way to do it. Plus I am absolutely certain that it won’t prevent child pornography to be send and receive through it because there is no way they can do it.
If you think this isn’t coming to your country you are fooling yourself. Australia’s will be live soon too, implemented in a similar fashion. There are already “news” stories about “sophisticated software” in use by authorities in Australia to look at ALL P2P traffic to catch those illegally downloading movies and music as well as anyone supposedly accessing illegal material like child pornography – although taking a photo of your kids skinny dipping in your own pool can be considered child pornography so whatever you do, don’t email it to their grandmother!
New Zealand and Australia are very small population bases, and the totally underwhelming response from the general population in those countries about these filters is a clear indication to governments that they can do this stuff with little negative impact, so they will.
And then they can control exactly what you do and don’t get to see, and I’m not referring to illegal content…
Edited 2010-03-12 22:02 UTC
I’d think that you, as loyal Apple promoter, would approve of things like this.
INSERT WINKING SMILEY FACE
Sadly the part that’s lost on unfortunates like yourself who claim to be unbiased yet who’s article posts portray a completely different story is that these filters have no actual benefit, they are purely for control, whereas filtering of apps have a real actual benefit to a very large part of the target audience who live in countries where a rogue application could literally cost thousands of dollars in data charges. There is no denying it also gives Apple tight control but this article had nothing to do with that, yet as is always the case you took the opportunity to use an article that has absolutely nothing to do with Apple to yet again have one of your infantile digs at them.
Tell us again how biased you aren’t…
It was a joke… The big capitals didn’t do the trick?
And the fact you reacted the way you did makes me wonder whether what I meant as a joke is closer to reality than I anticipated.
I was just trying to be lighthearted. Lighten up dude, not everything is an attack on Apple.
Edited 2010-03-12 22:46 UTC
The distinction between apps and content is not clear.
When Apple censors apps, it is recently because of their content. The latest example is the Bild application. The problem is not with the code, with its stability, with its security. The problem is only that it allows a user to see ladies’ nipples.
In a similar way, the problem with the book search app they banned was not stability, security, or usability. The problem was that it allowed people to find and then read the Kama Sutra.
The Bild people, commenting on this, said quite correctly that today it was nipples, but tomorrow it would be politics.
The desire to control what people do with their purchased goods is in the end about authoritarianism and control of what people read and see. Apple is a fifties style company, masquerading as cool and up to date. Its the mentality of Walt Disney circa 1952.
Nothing shows it more clearly than this mania with stopping people seeing what they can see any summer on any European beach, in most European tabloid newspapers every day. And what most every member of the human race saw and felt every day of their babyhood till they were weaned!
I didn’t see anything in the original comment to suggest disapproval, just neutral fact. Governments will do anything as long as people let them get away with it, and most people don’t give a **** about anything beyond their TV screen these days anyway. Pathetic. I’d say those people deserve what they’ve got coming, except that we’re all gonna get it and not just them.
In New Zealand, Internet searches you!
I follow most of the trends on the net quite closely and this announcement after the fact has taken me by surprise. No one that I know is aware this thing was even being planned.
I don’t want to sound rude but you must have living under some sort of rock for the last 2 years because it is the most well known secret out there. All this is being done under the banner, “but won’t someone please think of the children!”.
‘Peter the Pedophile Photo Sharer’ isn’t going to suddenly stop buggering his kids and uploading the photos/videos nor will blocking overseas sites going to stop a pedophile from having those thoughts and acting upon them. The same sort of stupidity is applied to other behaviour and always results in epic fail – they some how think using the same techniques will end up solving the problem?
As for NZ’s horrific rate of child abuse; a beer soaked culture mixed with a rugby fuelled faux macho subculture and a lack of responsibility taken by parents – this is the result. The only difference between now and 30 years ago; the media has suddenly started giving a toss.
Indeed it must be a rather large rock as neither I nor my associates have seen this in the press. I think the Australian version got more press coverage but then I tend to read international newspapers.
Things done out of pure moral panic, leading to a selective eviction of some constitutional rights, almost always get out of control and abused by ruthless people.
google leaving china and kiwiland soon?
Don’t see that happening.
What about Australia too since they have had a filter for a while. Same goes for India.
Edited 2010-03-14 22:52 UTC
[…] the website filtering system prevents access to known websites containing images of child sexual abuse.
That’s a pathetic excuse and I’m shocked it’s being used in NZ. Child abuse existed before the internet and filtering website content will not stop it.
Politicians worry about the internet, but everyone knows child abuse happens mostly at home. Moreover, it’s curious that so little is being said about paedophiles who prey on children after natural disasters happen in underdeveloped countries. In Haiti you can easily find people in the street willing to help you to buy a child if you want one. You can even go shopping for several children from an orphanage in full anonymity. The orpahanages close down after all the children in them have been sold.
Politicians have no sense of morality. It’s been already said they’re worse than paedophiles.
Child porn and piracy is just a pathetic excuse to enforce Internet Filtering. The real reason behind this is that they want to control what you do and don’t, what you can see, form your opinions, allow you to share your opinions or not, leave you without privacy. New Zealand and Australia are just small test to see the populace’s reaction. We will see Internet Filtering in more and more countries. It’s not Conspiracy Theory, it’s the truth: New World Order is coming.
Anonymity networks like Tor Network and use of cryptography begin to matter more and more these days.
Oh, of course! It’s totally the “New World Order!” That explains everything!
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon‘s_razor
Keep the woo off OSNews thanks.
EDIT:
I feel that I should point out that extreme attitudes like your are the cause of the issues we have today. By making claims about the “NWO” you’re basically alienating yourself and your cause.
For example, if I where to come up to you and say “strange green lizards run the government and are trying to kill us all!” You’d probably think I’m crazy.
So next time keep a level head, some humour, but most importantly, stick to logic, not fantasy.
Edited 2010-03-15 09:24 UTC
This is not a surprise. South Korea has been trying to install internet censorship WORSE than China every since the current president is in power.
You know if you live in a “generic” democratic country when: censorships is promoted without the citizens’ approval.
And when most citizens don’t give a f**k.
In South Korea’s case, the right-wing media (secretly pro-American and pro-Japanese) wants to get rid of 60% of the media establishments. Every South Korean commoner knows this from the fact of oppressive American influence being imprinted within the public.
In some countries, democracy and socialism both mean oligarchy. Sometimes I wonder whether westerners have the most naive attitude towards politics because of the historical “Cold War” social attitudes continuing today. Then again, my Korean relatives in Australia often make fun of Aussies and Zealies for being “more socialists” than the North Koreans and the Chinese.
But wow, I hadn’t expected New Zealand to become exactly like China when it comes to internet censorship. Maybe New Zealand should be called “People’s Commonwealth of New Zealand” in the future.
You’re surprised? up until 1984 New Zealand had only two television stations owned by the government and all televisions sold in New Zealand were only allowed to get those two television stations. Two mandated television stations as the sole source of all information. The clamp down was made even worse under Muldoon who used to evict journalists from press conferences and banned them from printing information regarding it unless they towed his political line. Lets not try to delude ourselves; New Zealand has a long and rich history when it comes to political control of the media – and all being marketed to the unwashed plebs as having noble ends.
As for socialist; the New Zealand government still owns:
* NZ Post
* Kiwibank
* Solid Energy (Coal mining)
* Five electricity generators
* Kiwi Railway
* TVNZ – Channel 1, 2, 6, and 7
* 80% of Air New Zealand
* Land Corp – which is a giant farm producing beef, lamb, dairy and some other primary goods.
* Kordia – broadcaster for all television and radio, also owns Orcon ISP
I’m sure there are many, many more businesses own by the government – which makes many devoutly socialist countries seem freemarket but in defence of NZ due to the small size and good legislation (SOE Act) we as a country can get away with it.
Do you all honestly care? I mean it is two ISP’s using it and both already had strong filtering in place for those who wanted to block pornography, families with young children etc.
If we don’t want our Internet to be filtered we simply go with a different ISP. Seems a lot of osnews readers like to make mountains out of mole hills.
Well it’s probably different in NZ due to the size of the country, but here in the US your ISP options are rather limited by your geographic area. You may have one, you may have several, it depends. But if they were to bring internet filtering here, and you’ve only got one ISP choice in your area and it’s filtered, you’re kind of screwed. It could be a nice business opportunity though, unfiltered ISPs would probably start popping up in those areas in a relatively short time… unless, of course, they’d require filtering by law on all ISPs. In that case you would have to use Tor or some other proxy to bypass it.
If it became law it certainly would be a different story but until then I personally won’t get to worried.
You should be, because once something becomes law it’s damn hard to get rid of it, sometimes impossible. Haven’t we learned yet what the “oh, it won’t happen yet” attitude has gotten us?
Sadly, I stopped wondering about the short-sightedness of conservative people and their knee-jerk reactions to change and technology.
I do wonder about the programmers and sysadmins implementing this stuff, though. They should know better! And unless forced at gunpoint, refuse to implement this antidemocratic/antisocial crap. I think they are just as much to blame for this nonsense as are the politicians.
While I do not endorse child abuse (or abuse in general) in any way what so ever, taking away everyones freedom and treating everybody like a criminal clearly is not a good solution.
You don’t just burn your crop because of one sick plant!?
I am really suprised by Osnews users. They are generally intelligent, well informed and smarter than average people. Yet they lack to see the truth. They talk about USA, Holland, France, New Zealand, Germany, China. This is nonsense. With a few exceptions (most notable North Korea) , we live in a Globalized World, even if you, like it or not.
So if something bad is happening in New Zealand and Australia, it is expectable to see that in the rest of the countries in the next future. New Zealand is just a test, if all goes “well”, there is no public scandal and outrage about hurting people’s rights and intimacy, it is highly expected we will see those things happen in USA and Europe, too.
Wow thats sad! Countries that use such filtering are basically telling their own people that they are too dumb to decide what they can and cannot see!
Jess
http://www.big-brother-watching.net.tc
It is sad. Media and Hollywood is brainwashing us, governments begin to adopt legislation that hurts our freedom, our rights, our privacy. We think that we are the champions of the democracy, we laugh at 3rd world countries, we laugh at theocracies like Iran, we laugh at the countries that we think are ruled by feudalism or totaliarism.
We laugh at them, but our foolproof, rock solid, established western democracy is heading to a wordlwide dictatorship.
We no longer care about our future, our rights, our privacy. We no long have a clue about what is good and what is bad. We no long have a scale of values. We no long think with our brain. If TV or Hollywood says that a thing is good, than is good. If TV or Hollywood says that a thing is bad, than is bad. If a retarded like Bush says that we must invade Iraq, than we invade it.
We no longer can decide our future, there are groups who decide on our behalf, groups who will told us what to do, who will decide on our behalf what is right or not. But we don’t care, do we? They are deciding those things in our best interest, don’t they? I mean, they are protecting us, don’t they? What if we all, are a bunch of murderers, brainless, stupid people? And pedophiliacs. And drug dealers. Don’t we deserve to be watched, monitored and eventually punished as a preventive measure. Maybe we don’t have the right political convictions. And that’s a crime, isn’t it?
Maybe I tell a bunch of bullshit, but maybe there’s a chance that I’m right. Maybe there’s a chance that malefic, powerfull groups like Bilderberg and others are the master puppeteers. Maybe such groups who control the most important banks, the media, US and EU politics are controlling us too. Maybe some conspiracy theories, aren’t conspiracy theories after all.
Members are
* Australia
* Burma
* China
* Cuba
* Egypt
* Iran
* North Korea
* Saudi Arabia
* Syria
* Tunisia
* Turkmenistan
* Uzbekistan
* Vietnam