Art, Politics

“Watch Out! There’s a Politician About” Election Week Posters (1975) / Scarfolk Council

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10 May 2015
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The general election will soon be upon us so we thought we’d upload a new poster every day during the week’s run up.

All the posters are from the 1970s Watch Out! There’s a Politician About campaign.

Just before the Scarfolk election of 1975 the ruling party was keen to permanently eradicate all political opposition and set out to smear what it called a hazardous surplus of politicians and others suffering from civic delusional disorders. The incumbent’s aim was to bring about a state of emergency that would permit a legal postponement of the election, a postponement that could, in theory, become indefinite.

The smear campaigns knew no bounds as one politician after another was exposed for corruption, sexual and moral improprieties, and poor table manners. The media was awash with reports that many election candidates were telepathically controlled by immigrants, who, it was alleged, were all born of the same non-human mother and functioned as a hive mind.

As the campaign gathered pace, there were even false flag acts of terror. For example, when a bomb destroyed the headquarters of the National Health Service in May 1975, it was blamed on exploding lice carried by the children of liberal and intellectual parents, and in the same month a plot was uncovered to shackle the UK to mainland Europe with billions of tonnes of string below the waves of the English channel.

Use your vote wisely. Alternatively, vote for one of the parties currently on offer — via Scarfolk Council

Politics, Rights, Technology

Google slams Australian piracy site-blocking legislation

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27 April 2015
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Google has said that cutting off advertising from piracy sites is much more effective than censoring the sites from access.

The Australian government last month introduced legislation that would allow rights holders to get an injunction placed on internet service providers (ISPs) to force telcos to block specific overseas piracy websites from access by Australian users.

The rights holders would need to demonstrate that the primary purpose of a website is for the infringement of copyright before the Federal Court will order ISPs to block it. Latest Australian news

The move has been welcomed by rights holders, but faces opposition from Google, which told the parliamentary committee looking into the legislation that site blocking is not the most effective means of stopping piracy.

A recent study of the piracy ecosystem­ in which the authors conducted a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of various anti-­piracy measures found that anti­-piracy efforts directed towards blocking access to pirated content have not been successful, Google said in its submission.

Google said that more effective measures include providing legitimate content that is more attractive to consumers than piracy, and cutting off advertising to piracy websites. The introduction of site blocking could have unintended consequences, Google warned.

Site blocking also has the potential to be used in ways that were unintended, included by blocking legitimate content.

Google said that legislation allowing sites that facilitate access to infringing copyright content to be blocked could lead to virtual private network (VPN) services being blocked.

VPNs also have many other legitimate purposes, including privacy and security, Google stated.

The court should be forced to consider the impact on freedom of speech when blocking sites, the company said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics, Rights, Technology

Google slams Australian piracy site-blocking legislation

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27 April 2015
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Google has said that cutting off advertising from piracy sites is much more effective than censoring the sites from access.

The Australian government last month introduced legislation that would allow rights holders to get an injunction placed on internet service providers (ISPs) to force telcos to block specific overseas piracy websites from access by Australian users.

The rights holders would need to demonstrate that the primary purpose of a website is for the infringement of copyright before the Federal Court will order ISPs to block it. Latest Australian news

Dallas Buyers Club wants alleged infringer details by May 6 The censorship end game of the piracy site-blocking Bill Mandatory data-retention funding to be a Budget surprise Google slams Australian piracy site-blocking legislation NBN Co predicts up to 370,000 premises need work on HFC

The move has been welcomed by rights holders, but faces opposition from Google, which told the parliamentary committee looking into the legislation that site blocking “is not the most effective means of stopping piracy”.

A recent study of the piracy ‘ecosystem’­ in which the authors conducted a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of various anti-­piracy measures found that anti­-piracy efforts directed towards blocking access to pirated content have not been successful, Google said in its submission.

Google said that more effective measures include providing legitimate content that is more attractive to consumers than piracy, and cutting off advertising to piracy websites. The introduction of site blocking could have unintended consequences, Google warned.

Site blocking also has the potential to be used in ways that were unintended, included by blocking legitimate content.

Google said that legislation allowing sites that facilitate access to infringing copyright content to be blocked could lead to virtual private network (VPN) services being blocked.

VPNs also have many other legitimate purposes, including privacy and security, Google stated.

The court should be forced to consider the impact on freedom of speech when blocking sites, the company said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics, Rights, Technology

The censorship end game of the piracy site-blocking Bill

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23 April 2015
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Australian Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has barely even finished introducing piracy site-blocking legislation into the parliament, and already the Helen Lovejoys of the world are trying to get it expanded into a much larger internet censorship scheme.

The legislation introduced into parliament in March would allow film studios, TV companies, and other copyright holders to apply to the court to get specific sites hosted outside of Australia and alleged to be primarily for the purpose of copyright infringement blocked by Australian internet service providers (ISPs).

The court will ideally examine the sites involved, and ensure that they meet all the conditions before ordering a block, though this is not guaranteed at this point.

If the ISPs are ordered to block a site, they can do so in a number of ways — through DNS, IP address blocking, or URL blocking. The exact method, too, has yet to be determined.

Turnbull has stressed that because the court must approve sites being blocked, it is not an internet filter.

It will be a court, not the government, that will determine which sites are blocked. Moreover, this is not an automatic process, but determined by a court with all of the normal protections of legal due process. In other words, a judge will make the decision, after hearing evidence and argument, not an algorithm in the software operating a router, he said.

The lack of an automated process of filtering types of sites means it is not a filter, according to the minister.

Others seem to disagree, however.

Far be it for me to allow the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) to define the meaning of anything ever, but it has described the scheme as an internet piracy filter and called on the government to look at implementing a default clean feed to protect children — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics, Science

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki backs away from ‘flawed’, ‘political’ Intergenerational Report

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15 April 2015
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The man promoting the Government’s Intergenerational Report, ABC science commentator Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, has backed away from the document, describing it as flawed.

Released every five years, the report provides a snapshot of how the nation might look in 40 years, covering everything from population size and life expectancy to public spending and the size of future budget deficits.

Dr Kruszelnicki appears in a number of advertisements promoting the report on television and radio, in newspapers and on social media, but he is now criticising the report’s reduced focus on climate change.

I did it on the grounds that it would be not for any political party but for the Government of Australia as a non-political, bipartisan, independent report, he told the ABC’s AM program.

He said he was only able to read parts of the report before he agreed to the ads as the rest was under embargo.

Despite assurances otherwise, Dr Kruszelnicki now believes he put his name and reputation to a report that is highly political and which largely ignores the impact of climate change — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics, Rights, Technology

What’s Scarier: Terrorism, or Governments Blocking Websites in its Name?

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21 March 2015
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The French Interior Ministry on Monday ordered that five websites be blocked on the grounds that they promote or advocate terrorism. I do not want to see sites that could lead people to take up arms on the Internet, proclaimed Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

When the block functions properly, visitors to those banned sites, rather than accessing the content of the sites they chose to visit, will be automatically redirected to the Interior Ministry website. There, they will be greeted by a graphic of a large red hand, and text informing them that they were attempting to access a site that causes or promotes terrorism: you are being redirected to this official website since your computer was about to connect with a page that provokes terrorist acts or condones terrorism publicly.

No judge reviews the Interior Ministry’s decisions. The minister first requests that the website owner voluntarily remove the content he deems transgressive; upon disobedience, the minister unilaterally issues the order to Internet service providers for the sites to be blocked. This censorship power is vested pursuant to a law recently enacted in France empowering the interior minister to block websites.

Forcibly taking down websites deemed to be supportive of terrorism, or criminalizing speech deemed to advocate terrorism, is a major trend in both Europe and the West generally. Last month in Brussels, the European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator issued a memo proclaiming that Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious terrorist threat, and argued that increased state control over the Internet is crucial to combating it — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics

Obituary: Malcolm Fraser

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20 March 2015
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Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser has been remembered as a giant of Australian politics and a great moral compass following his death early on Friday morning at the age of 84.

It is with deep sadness that we inform you that after a brief illness, John Malcolm Fraser died peacefully in the early hours of the morning of 20 March, 2015, a statement released by his office said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Photo: William West/AFP/Getty Images

Politics, Rights, Technology

A Police Insider Says Data Retention Could Be Used To Catch Pirates

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23 February 2015
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Concerned about the scope of the currently proposed data retention legislation currently being considered by Parliament? An ex-police officer says that one day, your metadata could be used to identify whether you’ve been downloading TV shows and movies illegitimately.

A former police officer who has previous experience with metadata and its potential applications has told ABC Radio National’s Download This Show that the oversight that currently exists over even currently retained metadata is minimal, and is ripe for abuse.

Using the example of an officer or other accredited agency user accessing metadata to check up on their ex-girlfriend, the insider told the program that he had never seen a metadata request denied on the basis of its legitimacy, but only cost. He also said that the agency officials talking up the potential of metadata at the moment, and petitioning for more widespread access, have no hands-on experience: …mobiles weren’t invented when they walked the beat.

The extent of even something as basic as smartphone location metadata can be extremely detailed and granular; the huge amount of data that anyone with any kind of online or digital profile generates would be exponentially more useful for any agency with access to the proposed metadata retention regime. Unless there is enough oversight baked into the legislation and restraint exercised in its scope, the potential for abuse is there — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics, Technology

Inside GOV.UK: ‘CHAOS’ and ‘NIGHTMARE’ as trendy Cabinet Office wrecked govt websites

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19 February 2015
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Poor design and chaotic management by the supposedly crack team at the Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service (GDS) left huge swathes of the British government in disarray, internal documents seen by the Register reveal. The documents confirm that GDS knew its flagship initiative to move all government websites under one roof, GOV.UK, was destroying useful online services and replacing them with trendy webpages bereft of useful information.

One internal report is particularly damning. The Home Office Visa and Immigration site transitioned [to GOV.UK] without a good understanding of users and needs … there was quickly a flood of negative feedback … coming from all directions, an insider states for the record. The report details a breakdown in fact checking described by more than one person as general chaos and a total nightmare.

The disclosures paint a picture that contradicts the public image of supremely confident digital gurus modernising the British government’s many websites, and making them more efficient. For all its vaunted skills in website design, GDS had a far poorer understanding of what the public actually needed than the relevant government departments did — this, according to GDS’ own internal analysis — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics, Rights

Australian government blames Snowden for data retention

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22 January 2015
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The Australian Attorney-General’s Department has pushed back at industry and privacy advocate concerns over mandatory data-retention legislation, stating that the leaks on the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance operations by whistleblower Edward Snowden have hastened the need for the regime.

Under legislation currently before the parliament, Australian telecommunications companies would be required to retain an as-yet-undefined set of customer data for two years, not limited to but including call records, address information, email addresses, and assigned IP addresses.

The legislation is being backed up by Australian law-enforcement agencies, which claim that access to the data without a warrant is vital to almost every criminal investigation. Telecommunications companies and privacy advocates, however, warn that the scheme would be a major intrusion on the lives of every Australian, and that the costs of running the scheme will lead to higher prices for internet and phone services.

Telcos have suggested that existing preservation notices, which agencies can send to carriers, to retain the data for a specific individual under investigation would be much more appropriate than a wide-ranging mandatory data-retention regime.

The Attorney-General’s Department, however, claims in its submission to the parliamentary committee investigating the legislation that there are no practical alternatives to a legislated mandatory data-retention regime — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Politics

Christopher Pyne’s People Movement Poised For The Most Phyrrhic Of Victories

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4 December 2014
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If mean-spirited government incompetence is getting you down then why not sign Christopher Pyne’s petition. And leave a comment. Go on, you know you want to.

Tony Abbott may be the greatest self-harmer in the history of Australian politics, but Christopher Pyne is not too far behind, setting his own cracking pace with his petition demanding that the ABC not close down production houses in Adelaide, despite his government cutting $250 million from the ABC budget.

Except that ironically, it might just turn out to be one of the greatest political victories the Abbott Government is ever likely to enjoy. And we mean that seriously — Greatest Political Victory For Abbott, Ever.

Which says plenty about what constitutes success for the Tories, and even more about just how bad their year has been. 2014 could go down as one of the most Annus Horriblis years on Australian political record.

A fortnight ago, Pyne launched his petition to stop cuts to the Adelaide branch of the ABC. It is lumbering – slowly and inevitably — towards reaching its goal of 5,000 signatures.

Indeed, Pyne is more than halfway there. By Monday afternoon, he’d reached 3360 – just 1640 left to get (an ironic number when you consider that most of Pyne’s political values come from precisely that era of human history).

Although there is a problem. Well, two actually.

The first is that the ABC has already confirmed the cuts to its production facilities in Adelaide. Which is very bad news for the poor staff there, but even worse for Pyne, who will no doubt weep away the summer break internalising the agony of a jobless Christmas for more than a few of his constituents.

The second — and perhaps more troubling — aspect is that almost every single one of the signatures on his petition appears to have been posted for the sole purpose of enabling the petitioner the opportunity to leave a comment… and assault the Minister for Education with the sort of language that our children most definitely do not learn in school (unless they had Professor Barry Spurr for … in which case, maybe) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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