Blacklist leaks won’t stop Government internet filter plans

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the Government will push forward with its plans to filter internet content despite a new, more accurate blacklist being leaked on the internet.

A list of over 2000 URLs was leaked on to whistleblower haven Wikileaks.org last week that claimed to contain the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s blacklist.

Conroy denied the list was completely accurate, saying that although the list and the leaked content shared links in common, the leaked list had more URLs than ACMA’s official list.

But a new list leaked on to Wikileaks now has 1172 URLs, and Conroy has now confirmed that it resembles the Government’s official list of “unwanted content”.

The new list, which has been viewed by SmartCompany, has been purged of several “innocent” links, including YouTube links and the website of a Queensland dentist. Conroy says these links would have been originally added by the third party that leaked the list.

He also says that despite the new list being leaked, the Government will not stop its plans to introduce a mandatory filtering scheme.

“Does the (leaked blacklist) mean we are going to stop blocking access to the sites? No. People can continue to put up the lists if they are proud to do that,” he told a press conference in Sydney yesterday.

Conroy has also denied that the list contains innocent content. “It is completely untrue that the leaked blacklist contains political content. This is a list which contains sites that promote incest, rape, child pornography and child abuse,” he said.

“The majority of claims and allegations that are made about what we are doing are entirely false. The filter is based on the Broadcast Services Act that does not include political content [and] the same people do the same test for TV, print and radio.”

The Government is moving ahead with trials of the internet filtering system that it says will help block “unwanted content” from Australian computers, but has refused to define what it means by the term.

The plans for the filtering trials were dealt another blow on Monday after internet service provider iiNet said it would no longer take part in trials.

Related articles:

• iiNet withdraws from internet filtering test
• Government’s website blacklist revealed