Stop The Filter Protest: Despite excellent organisation, tireless promotion by the Stop The Filter team, and the presence of Senator Scott Ludlam of The Australian Greens party and other minor parties, only 200 or so Australians bothered to attend a protest against what is probably the most worrying civil liberties and democratic rights erosion in Australian history. Some would argue therefore that the people of Australia deserve what is about to become of their once free and liberal democracy. What do you think? Leave your comments or see the photos from the day here.
BBC – China has denounced US criticism of its internet controls, saying it could harm ties between the two countries. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Thursday for China to lift restrictions on the internet. Read article
Israel is arresting a growing number of prominent opponents to its policies toward the Palestinians, say critics who are accusing the government of trying to crush legitimate dissent. In the most high-profile case yet, Jerusalem police detained the head of a leading Israeli human rights group during a vigil against the eviction of Palestinian families whose homes were taken by Jewish settlers. Read article
BBC – A number of opposition figures have been arrested in Iran, a day after at least eight people died during the most violent protests for months. Those detained include senior aides to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and a former foreign minister. Read article
Guardian – Eruption of violence comes as Israelis who opposed the war a year ago say they are being silenced and vilified. Israeli troops yesterday shot dead six Palestinians in two separate incidents, as evidence emerged that an increasingly fragile ceasefire between armed groups loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement and Israel appeared to be in danger of breaking down. Read article
Daily Mail – Six doctors who believe government scientist David Kelly was murdered have launched a ground-breaking legal action to demand the inquest into his death is reopened. They are to publish a hard-hitting report which they claim proves the weapons expert did not commit suicide as the Hutton Report decided. Read article
Ed – Death is, inarguably, the ultimate form of censorship to which there is no recourse.
Daily Telegraph – Army officer-turned singer James Blunt has backed Lily Allen in calling for Internet users who illegally share music files to be disconnected from the web. Read Article
National Post – The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on Wednesday ruled that Section 13, Canada’s much maligned human rights hate speech law, violates the Charter right to free expression because it carries the threat of punitive fines. The shocking decision by Tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis leaves several hate speech cases in limbo, and appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship. It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone hotlines, then expanded in 2001 to the include the entire Internet, and for the last decade used almost exclusively by one complainant, activist Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman. Read Article
The Guardian - Lord Mandelson’s plans to cut off the broadband connections of internetusers who illegally download copyrighted music and films were attacked by privacy campaigners, internet service providers and Labour MPs yesterday as unworkable, unnecessary and potentially illegal. The surprise decision to reintroduce the disconnection idea, which was ruled out in the government’s own Digital Britain report in June, also sparked accusations that the business secretary has been swayed by secret meetings with senior figures from the music and film industry. Read Article
The Historian – Yes its “That” Lord Mandelson proposing this, he who is a regular Bilderberg attendee and holiday’s with the Rothschild’s.
Courier Mail - REMEMBER the images of German soldiers marching through the Arc de Triomphe after conquering Paris during World War II? Or those grainy black-and-white photographs from May 1933 when the Nazis embarked on their campaign of burning all books considered to be subversive? Do you recall the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984? Perhaps the burning books in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? Welcome to Australia in the 21st century, where totalitarian history meets science-fiction and dark political satire. Welcome to the Rudd Government’s internet filter.Like most authoritarian pogroms, the internet filter is being sold as a measure to protect the greater communal well-being. Read Article
WA Today – Stephen Conroy’s mandatory internet filtering plans have earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year at the 11th annual Internet Industry Awards.
The Internet Villain category recognises individuals or organisations that have upset the Internet industry and hampered its development – those whom the industry loves to hate.
As Australia’s communications minister, and supporter of one of the world’s most ambitious internet censorship plans, Senator Conroy beat out tough competition from the likes of the European Parliament and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Read article
ABC – Save the Children has urged the Federal Government to abandon its plans to censor the internet, saying it will not be effective in protecting kids from online dangers.
The child protection group is one of several organisations including Civil Liberties Australia, and the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre who have today released a joint statement opposing the proposed mandatory internet service provider (ISP) filter.
The statement says the filter will neither work to shield children from explicit material nor stop child pornography from being distributed on the internet. Read article
A new campaign has been launched by GetUp! opposing the Australian Government’s move to impose an Internet filter. The advertisement featured below will be aired on domestic flights as politicians make their way back to Canberra for the next sitting of parliament. You can help by supporting the campaign.
CBC – The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is warning free speech will be in danger during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
The organization claims students living on campus at the University of British Columbia are being asked to sign away their right to free speech during the two-week event.
A clause in a new residency contract bars students from posting signage that creates a “false or unauthorized commercial association with the Olympics” that would be visible from the Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre, an Olympic venue.
David Eby, the executive director of the BCCLA, said the terms are too broad. Read article
Telegraph – China has a long history of restricting internet access, but the Green Dam initiative would have represented a new front in the war on information.
For the last decade, China has been fighting – and largely losing – a running battle against the internet, and the free access to information it brings. The government, so used to managing and monitoring the flow of news and disemmination of information within its borders, has at times appeared impotent in the face of a universal technology that has no respect for time zones or geography.
Web users in China are used to intermittent interruptions to services – access to websites such as YouTube and Google is frequently disrupted, while internet access to many foreign news websites, such as the BBC, is often prohibited. The government uses a sophisticated filtering system, dubbed the Great Firewall of China, to “sniff out” web searches for censored material, such as pornography, or politically sensitive terms, such as the outlawed religious group Falun Gong. When the firewall identifies these banned searches, access to the relevant sites is halted on the servers. Read article
Guardian – In a misguided attempt to aid newspapers, one of America’s most influential judges is suggesting a new copyright law.
Those who wish to keep the internet free and open had best dust off their legal arguments. One of America’s most influential conservative judges, Richard Posner, has proposed a ban on linking to online content without permission. The idea, he said in a blog post last week, is to prevent aggregators and bloggers from linking to newspaper websites without paying. Read article
Polemic – Clearly, if introduced, this would have major ramifications across the whole Internet. Not just for news aggregators like OpenYourEyesNews, but also for individuals who use services such as Digg and StumbleUpon as well anyone who posts links across social media such as Facebook or Twitter. It would severely restrict the ability of citizens to inform themselves and assist in informing others, thus ensuring increased control and power to the global media empires.
Times Online – Copies of a book by Scotland Yard’s former anti-terrorism chief were hastily removed from bookstore shelves yesterday after the Attorney-General obtained a last-minute injunction.
The decision to prevent sales of The Terrorist Hunters, by Andy Hayman, was issued by a High Court judge just before midnight on Wednesday after a hearing conducted by telephone conference call.
Although bookstores were alerted, internet bookshops were still promoting the book as a special offer and about 2,500 copies of the hardback edition had been pre-sold.
The hearing was requested by Baroness Scotland of Asthal on Wednesday, even though the book, extracts of which appeared in The Times last week, had been submitted for vetting to a number of government agencies two months ago. Read article
BBC – China is to delay a controversial plan requiring all new computers sold in the country to be equipped with an internet filtering software, state media says. The filter, called Green Dam Youth Escort, was to have been required from Wednesday, but the industry ministry said computer makers needed more time. Its planned rollout sparked widespread disapproval inside China, legal challenges and criticism from overseas. Read Article
Reuters – The Pentagon will create a Cyber Command to oversee the U.S. military’s efforts to protect its computer networks and operate in cyberspace, under an order signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday. The new headquarters, likely to be based at Fort Meade, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., will be responsible for defending U.S. military systems but not other U.S. government or private networks, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Read Article
AP – Savvy consumers often go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services, scouring through comments from everyday Joes and Janes to help them find a gem or shun a lemon. What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all. The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest. Read Article
The Register – The European Commission is once again calling for the United States to let go of ICANN and place it under international supervision.Echoing an earlier appeal from EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, the Commission said in a statement today that future internet governance “should reflect the key role that global network has come to play for all countries.” ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a California-based non-profit group that oversees the internet’s address system. It currently operates under a Joint Project Agreement with the US government, which expires at the end of September 2009. Read Article
City News – It’s not exactly Big Brother and the overall intentions seem to have the public’s best interests at heart. But many are very uncomfortable about a proposed new law introduced in the House of Commons on Thursday that could affect anyone using the Internet in Canada. The bill, with the unwieldy name of “An Act Regulating Telecommunications Facilities to Support Investigations,” would allow police to force your ISP to hand over any records of your emails, chat room conversations, website history or surfing habits to authorities without a warrant. Read Article
The Historian – Censorship happens in two ways. One through external prohibition, the other through self censorship. The internet is slowly being closed down using both methods, this being the latter.
The Independent – MPs finally released their expenses yesterday – but with vast chunks of the documents censored, so we would never have known about their ‘flipping’ and tax dodges. Despite this, it still emerged that Tony Blair claimed £6,990 for roof repairs two days before quitting as Prime Minister, and Tory leader David Cameron had to pay back £947 of wrongful claims. No wonder they wanted to keep us in the dark Read Article
The Guardian – Police blogger Richard Horton has been outed in a ruling that affects online writers from the public sector and beyond. Richard Horton, the Lancashire police detective who for 18 months blogged as NightJack, has had his identity revealed by the Times, after a high court ruling that an injunction against naming him should not stand. According to the Times’s report of the case, the fact that Horton had disclosed information on his blog that could have been linked to live police investigations meant it was in the public interest for his identity to be revealed. It’s understood that Horton has received a written warning from Lancashire constabulary on this count. Read Article
What is Open Your Eyes News?
It is the Big Picture - We aim to bring you the most comprehensive news on what is happening in your world, updated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Open Your Eyes News is compiled from the news feeds of over a hundred mainstream media outlets worldwide.
