A whistle-blower organization claims a secret list of Web sites that Australian authorities are proposing to ban includes such innocuous destinations as a dentist’s office.
The Australian government denied that the list — published by renegade Web site Wikileaks.org — was the same as a blacklist run by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). However, a manager at the dentist’s office said ACMA had confirmed her site’s inclusion on the ban list.
Wikileaks’ publication of the list last week reignited a debate over whether a government proposal to impose an Internet filter for all Australians could have unintended consequences for innocent businesses.
The list in question is provided to the creators of Internet filtering software that people can opt to install on their computers. But Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has proposed mandating that Australian Internet service providers implement the list, which would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among democratic countries. Several Internet providers are conducting trials of the filter through June.
The authority says the list largely contains the addresses of Web sites promoting child pornography and sexual violence, but it has refused to release its contents publicly.
The proposal has prompted protests across the country, with critics slamming it as censorship. Internet providers argued that a filter could slow browsing speeds, adding that illegal material such as child pornography can be traded on peer-to-peer networks or chats, which would not be covered by the filter.
On its site, Wikileaks accused Australia of “acting like a democratic backwater” and said “Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun.”
The site — which casts itself as an outlet for “untraceable mass document leaking and analysis,” with a focus on exposing oppressive regimes and unethical behavior — did not explain how it obtained the purported blacklist.
The list published on Wikileaks contains about 2,400 Internet addresses, many of which are clearly for child pornography. But the list also includes a dental office, online poker parlors, a kennel and a school-cafeteria consultancy firm.
Kelly Wilson, a manager at Dental Distinction in Queensland, said she had no idea her office’s site had been blacklisted until a newspaper reporter informed her on Thursday. Wilson contacted ACMA, which she said confirmed the site was on the blacklist. She said she was offered no explanation.
The site was hacked about a year ago and visitors were temporarily redirected to an adult Web site.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS