Why Are Australia's Would-Be 'Net Censors So Opposed To Transparency?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the let's-try-the-best-of-disinfectants,-shall-we? dept

A lot of people have been submitting the news that Wikileaks has obtained and published the secret black-list of websites to be banned under Australia’s proposed Internet censoring exercise. The list of more than 2300 websites is about half child pornography and half “online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.”

As Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, explains, by making these lists secret and threatening to fine disclosure of the list at $11,000 per day, the democracy of Australia is “invariably corrupted.” There is no due process to to add sites to the list, or to remove them, and as previous leaked lists show, even censorship systems set up to block legitimately illegal sites end up being abused. As web censorship scholar Derek Bambauer has written, an Internet censorship regime should be judged on openness, transparency, narrowness and accountability, but by keeping the list secret and threatening those who would allow democratic deliberation about its contents, Australia’s web censors undermine the political process of a democracy.

Filed Under: australia, censorship, transparency