Wikileaks has published the secret list of sites blocked by Australia’s state-sponsored parental filter — a list that the government plans to expand to the entire Australian Internet, making it the basis for a new Great Firewall of Australia. The list is compiled in secret and is not readily inspected or appealed, and the officials who maintain it have secretly expanded its mandate so that “half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of 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.”
Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, dug up the blacklist after ACMA added several Wikileaks pages to the list following the site’s publication of the Danish blacklist.
He said secret censorship systems were “invariably corrupted”, pointing to the Thailand censorship list, which was originally billed as a mechanism to prevent child pornography but contained more than 1200 sites classified as criticising the royal family.
“In January the Thai system was used to censor Australia reportage about the imprisoned Australian writer Harry Nicolaides,” he said.
“The Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun. This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks.”
Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites
ACMA list on Wikileaks (down as of 0618h GMT 19 MAR 09)