Anonymous hacks Australian Government in response to Internet censorship

I thinks its only a matter of time before Anonymous gets labelled a terrorist organisation to increase the counter measures / invasive laws that can be used against them.<p>Disrupting Goverment sites and services would be considered as an attack as per the Australian Terrorism definition:<p>(e) seriously interferes with, seriously disrupts, or destroys, an electronic system including, but not limited to<p>(i) an information system; or<p>(ii) a telecommunications system; or<p>(iii) a financial system; or<p>(iv) a system used for the delivery of essential government services; or<p>(v) a system used for, or by, an essential public utility; or<p>(vi) a system used for, or by, a transport system.<p><a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/slaa2002451/sch1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/slaa200245...</a>

As an expat Aussie, the direction the government has taken has saddened, but not shocked me. This is a country famous for having what the Register used to call 'The world's biggest Luddite' Richard Alston appointed as Minister of the Digital Economy. There has been a change of government since those times, but not much seems to have changed.<p>While the idea of censoring certain content types like child porn may be seen as a good things, the issue is that the Net could become a tool of the government. The laws could extend to discrimination of minority groups - and Australia would become like China.<p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2008/gb2008026_169365.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2008/gb2008...</a><p>This article points out that questions remain: there is a lack of detail on what will constitute illegal content, how decisions will be made, and how the filtering technology itself will work. It also said Australia is not the only Western democratic country to look at web filtering - Scandinavia and UK have web filtering. The Oz govt just failed to stem the tide of outrage and bad press.<p>I'm also against getting rid of anonymity on the net, ie forcing everyone to use their full name, for the simple reason that some rogue governments in some countries are persecuting groups and the internet can be a powerful tool for them. Imagine if Mandela and the ANC had the net in the 50s.<p>It's a hugely sticky issue though.

This is so awesome. It's like I'm living in near future cyberpunk novel. With vigilante hacker groups fighting the evil and oppressive corpora^H^H^H^H^H^Hgovernment.

<a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/" rel="nofollow">http://www.aph.gov.au/</a><p>The Parliament of Australia site is down.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

whilst i agree with their protesting of our governments unnecessary proposals on censoring australia, their methods are not helping.<p>a ddos attack on the government only gives the government more ammunition to paint the average protester as a criminal or someone who is trying to harm the government. a peaceful protest is far more effective.