Optus has confirmed it has now put in place the voluntary filter that rival Telstra has had running for nearly a month.
A spokesperson for Optus said today that the Interpol filter was put into operation last thing
on Friday, and has been live
for customers over the weekend — via redwolf.newsvine.com
China has ordered public spaces offering WiFi web access to install costly software to enable police to identify people using the service, state media said.
The software, which also gives police a list of all websites visited by an online user, costs between $2825 and $8500, the China Business News said.
As a result, many establishments such as bars, restaurants, cafes and bookstores have decided to stop providing wireless internet to their customers despite its popularity, to avoid paying the money, the report said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A High Court judge has ruled that BT must block access to a website which provides links to pirated movies.
Newzbin 2 is a members-only site which aggregates a large amount of the illegally copied material found on Usenet discussion forums.
The landmark case is the first time that an ISP has been ordered to block access to such a site.
It paves the way for other sites to be blocked as part of a major crackdown on piracy
The Gillard Government has this week undermined the Labor Party’s long tradition of fairness and social justice. Enough’s enough, says party member Jenny Haines — and she’s not the only one.
Labor Party members are fed up. They are sick of being ignored, especially over refugee and asylum seeker issues. The divide between the politicians in government in Canberra and the party rank-and-file is growing — via redwolf.newsvine.com
New guidelines to target families that take young girls abroad to undergo female genital mutilation are being sent to prosecutors by the government.
Ministers want to encourage more action against those who inflict the brutal procedure on their children and relatives amid concerns that the current approach serves as little deterrent.
Female genital mutilation is an illegal procedure in the UK with those convicted risking 14 years’ imprisonment. The Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2003 also allows for the prosecution of British citizens who breach the provisions of the act and perform the procedure abroad.
But while the law seems strict on paper, it seems to have limited effect in practice. Campaigners say 22,000 girls are at risk each year. However, MPs were this week told that there has yet to be a single conviction, despite 100 investigations being carried out over two years by the Met. By contrast the French authorities have successfully prosecuted in 100 cases — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Stephen Conroy was in the news again, and as usual, the topic was internet censorship.
It seems that three of our biggest ISPs — Telstra, Optus and Primus — have decided to voluntarily filter material related to child sexual abuse. In a bit of black eye to Conroy, they’re using a list of sites provided by Interpol rather than by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, specifically citing legal issues regarding the authority of the ACMA.
Everyone involved was quick to say that this is not censorship, despite it meeting every part of the definition of the term, and Conroy tried hard to spin this as a victory for his policy, calling it an interim measure while certain issues regarding the jurisdiction of the ACMA were worked out, i.e. the fact that it doesn’t have the legal authority to do what Conroy wants it to, and that the government doesn’t want to try changing the laws when they can’t do it without the cross-benchers’ support.
The lies can be this blatant, because after all, who’s going to stand up and argue against measures aimed at preventing child abuse? — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Cultural factors have been used to defend a man who sexually abused a primary school girl for three years until she became pregnant.
The girl, 11, was in grade 6 when she gave birth to a boy last year via caesarean section when she was six months pregnant. She is believed to be one of the youngest people to give birth in Victoria.
She said in a victim impact statement her abuser, whom she called uncle
because of his closeness to her family, had wrecked
her life and she no longer had any friends — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The nation’s attorneys-general will discuss whether laws should be introduced to allow parents access to their children’s Facebook accounts and social networking sites, allowing them to legally breach their privacy — via redwolf.newsvine.com
It’s not every day that a convicted murderer sues the jail that he is being imprisoned in for saving his life. But, Daniel Self is no ordinary inmate.
Self, a convicted murderer currently serving time in Colorado, has a signed DNR (do-not-resuscitate) order — via redwolf.newsvine.com
No possible jail time for Julie Bass after planting a front yard vegetable garden. The City of Oak Park has dropped the misdemeanour charges against her.
Bass was facing a possible 93-days in jail for planting and not removing her front yard vegetable garden after she received a ticket for a misdemeanor violation — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) has joined Loree Rudd, the sister of former PM Kevin Rudd, in accusing supporters of marriage equality of using Nazi tactics in campaigning for equal rights.
The ACL came to the defence of Rudd after she accused same-sex marriage advocates of being a Gestapo
— the Nazis’ secret police — in an interview with The Australian newspaper last week.
Rudd claimed there was a worldwide gay network that fed propaganda
for marriage equality to politicians.
I call them the global gay Gestapo — it is the lobbying movement that is brainwashing people, particularly the young in the community that this [homosexuality] is an optional extra in life,
she said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Doctors are being warned not to befriend patients on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter because of the risk that this could breach rules on confidentiality.
The British Medical Association said medical staff and students should reject any approaches by current and former patients to avoid the risk of blurring the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Four days on from Julia Gillard’s policy announcement, and the most striking characteristic of the carbon tax debate is just how closely it resembles a dozen drunken idiots trying to root a doorknob. Really, everyone needs a few deep breaths and a spell in the quiet corner — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A former patient who sought help from the Christian counseling clinic owned by GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, told ABC News he was advised that prayer could rid him of his homosexual urges and he could eventually be re-oriented
.
[One counselor’s] path for my therapy would be to read the Bible, pray to God that I would no longer be gay,
said Andrew Ramirez, who was 17-years-old at the time he sought help from Bachmann & Associates in suburban Minneapolis in 2004. And God would forgive me if I were straight
Under the banner of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, the big Hollywood studios are flexing their muscles down-under. If the latest rhetoric is to be believed, the country’s ISPs have less than 48 hours to commit to talks on a graduated response system to tackle illicit downloads. Failure to comply, they warn, will result in yet more legal action of the type being suffered by iiNet — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Some estate agents are prepared to flout critical laws that are designed to protect tenants from abuse, a BBC London investigation has found.
One rental manager was secretly filmed explaining he could harass problematic tenants by changing locks, calling them all day and lying to the police that they were running a brothel.
The housing charity Shelter and the National Association of Estate Agents have condemned the shocking
practices uncovered by the undercover investigation and are calling for tougher regulation — via redwolf.newsvine.com
AN image processing system that obscures the position from which photographs are taken could help protestors in repressive regimes escape arrest — and give journalists plausible deniability
over the provenance of leaked photos — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Sandra Rawline, 52, said she was told to come to work wearing younger, fancy suits
and lots of jewellery. And she had to dye that hair — her boss even offered to do the colouring.
When she refused, the Houston Chronicle reports, she was fired within a week and replaced by a woman 10 years her junior. She has sued for discrimination in the Houston courts — via The Guardian
As a leader in the Jewish community and a human rights advocate, he believes he has a responsibility to speak publicly for the first time about the abuse he says dogged his childhood. He hopes his story will empower and encourage others to speak to the police or seek the help they may require.
This is about justice and closure, both for myself and other victims,
says Mr Waks, a vice-president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and president of the ACT Jewish Community, among other senior roles. He wants to hold to account the alleged perpetrators of the crimes and the Yeshivah Centre, which runs the college and which he says betrayed victims by persuading them to remain silent.
Mr Waks also hopes his story will help change the stigma faced by victims of sex abuse. I feel I’ve moved on with my life … you can actually move forward while acknowledging that it has inevitably impacted me in a profound way
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
This month, Australia gets its first mandatory Internet filtering scheme, courtesy of a project which is seeing the nation’s largest ISPs Telstra and Optus block their users from visiting a worst of the worst
list of child pornography sites defined by nternational agency Interpol. But the project hasn’t exactly come up smelling like roses. Here’s five things we find disturbing about the whole thing — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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