Censorship? Look for Liberals and/or Jews
Pogrom
Net attack hits Australian sites
By Zoe Kleinman
Technology Reporter, BBC News
An activist group that temporarily blocked access to key Australian
government websites plans to continue its cyber attacks, the BBC has
learned.
The group, known as Anonymous, was protesting against the Australian
government's proposals to apply filters to the internet in the country.
A man claiming to be a representative of the group said that around 500
people were involved in the attack.
The method they are using is known as Distributed Denial of Service
(DDoS).
DDoS is illegal in many countries including the United Kingdom. There is
no indication that the attack was carried out from within Britain. DDoS
attacks typically call on machines in many different nations, making them
hard to trace.
The sites were intermittently blocked on 10 and 11 February. The action
has been condemned by various bodies including the Systems Administrators
Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) and Electronic Frontiers Australia.
"All it takes is a few people to basically send junk traffic to their
websites which is causing them to be offline," the man, calling himself
Coldblood, told BBC News.
"The people who are currently attacking (the government websites) are
planning to keep doing it. It will probably keep happening until either
they get bored or it gets sorted out."
The sites are currently back online but the domains of individual
politicians, including that of Stephen Conroy (minister for broadband,
communications and the digital economy), were among those targeted.
Web filters
Anonymous is protesting against Australia's plan to apply a country-wide
filter to block certain content in 2011.
The Australian government has said that trials have shown the filtering
technology to be 100% effective in preventing access to designated sites.
The banned sites would be selected by an independent classifications body
guided by public complaints, Senator Conroy has said.
He said the aim of the filter is to make the internet a safer place for
Australian children.
Speaking to the BBC, Coldblood said that the activists did not support
the creation of illegal content but that banning it would not tackle the
issue.
"If something is illegal which is done on the internet the government
should try and prosecute them," he said.
"If they ban it it will just appear somewhere again. What they really
need to do is go after the people who are making this content."
The group consists of "a few thousand people" based all over the world
Coldblood said.
They staged cyber attacks on Iran following the election protests and
have publicly protested against the Scientology movement.
This was sparked after the Church of Scientology requested the removal of
a clip from YouTube featuring Hollywood actor Tom Cruise.
"One of our main missions is against censorship on the internet," said
Coldblood.
The group had not had any direct contact with the Australian government,
he added.
SAGE-AU said the attack was "the wrong way to express disagreement with
the proposed law."
"The impact of DOS attacks is frequently felt less by government agencies
than by system administrators, many of them SAGE-AU members, who are
responsible for managing websites and servers," continues a statement on
its website.
YouTube in Australia
Senator Conroy has also contacted Google requesting that the company
begins to filter YouTube content in the country.
Google says that while it complies with the laws of the individual
countries in which it has a presence, it would only investigate and
consider removing content after receiving a "valid legal request" about
something already posted on the site.
"We first check that the request meets both the letter and spirit of the
law, and we will seek to narrow it if the request is overly broad," said
a spokesperson.
"YouTube is a platform for free expression. We have clear policies about
what is allowed and not allowed on the site."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/8513073.stm