[Infowarrior] - First rule of Internet censorship: Hide the block list

[Richard Forno]

First rule of Internet censorship: Hide the block list

Like many countries, Australia currently runs a blacklist of child  
porn sites. And like many countries, it doesn't want that list  
published. It doesn't even want other countries' lists published, and  
is in fact banning such links.

By Nate Anderson | Last updated March 18, 2009 8:20 AM CT

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/first-rule-of-internet-censorship-hide-the-block-list.ars

Australia's telecom regulator, the Australian Communications and Media  
Authority (ACMA), has the authority to blacklist Internet sites,  
authority used almost exclusively to address childhood sex pictures  
(children's rights groups don't like the "child porn" label, which  
suggests a degree of agency that children involved in the practice  
don't have). But it also came to light recently that ACMA is willing  
to blacklist pages that simply list the censored websites, even though  
they contain no offensive images.

The Sydney Morning Herald noted today that ACMA's blacklist even  
includes certain Wikileaks pages, including a list of Denmark's  
censored websites (3,863 blocked). The page is apparently included on  
the theory that a massive list of sites with "lolita" and "youngyoung"  
in the their domain names is basically an invitation to Australians  
who might not otherwise know where to go to get an underage fix.

If that's true, ACMA will have to keep blocking. Wikileaks also hosts  
the leaked blacklists from countries like Thailand (11,329 blocked)  
and Finland (797 blocked).

All three of those lists are largely concerned with sex, but the size  
difference can be chalked up to the fact that Thailand appears to be  
banning all sorts of porn websites (along with proxy services), while  
the Nordic countries are exclusively concerned with sexual images of  
children.

The ACMA blacklist will be used as the basis for the government's  
nationwide Internet filtering system—should that system ever be put  
into place (it's currently facing serious opposition from ISPs and  
even from the Australian Senate). For now, though, the blacklist can  
be used by ACMA to go after websites that link to the censored  
content; those that don't remove such links after a day or so face  
fines of $11,000 per day.

The blacklist itself is secret, as it is in most countries that censor  
content. This angers some activists who believe that secrecy lends  
itself to abuse. In Finland, for instance, a man who runs a website  
arguing that the blacklist approach is ineffective was called in for  
questioning last year after publishing "a list of a few hundred  
censored sites." His own site was then placed on the blacklist, which  
means that visitors from Finland are greeted by a message saying that  
the site they are trying to reach contains illegal images.

Those in favor of keeping the lists secret claim that publishing them  
is simply providing a centralized resource for those interested in  
child sex abuse, but without any real way to see what's on the list or  
to challenge its contents, the list makers will always invite charges  
of incompetence or arbitrariness (indeed, one Finnish site claims that  
most of the domains on the blacklist appear to be legal pornographic  
sites).

This was the case recently in the UK where the censorship list creator  
(which is not a part of the government) added a Wikipedia image of an  
old Scorpions album cover to its block list and later retreated after  
protests.

Right or wrong, the first worldwide rule of Internet censorship  
currently seems to be "you don't talk about what's being censored."