Australian censorship hilarity continues

[General Zod]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... ilters.ars

The Australian government found itself victim of a cyberattack on Wednesday morning as a protest against the government's plan to begin filtering certain types of pornography from being accessed online The attack was carried out by the group Anonymous (yes, that Anonymous) as part of "Operation: Titstorm," an effort to push back on Australia for including a plethora of perfectly legal content as part of its Internet filtering initiative. Two government sites were taken down temporarily, and officials have (unsurprisingly) condemned the attacks.

The denial of service attacks began at 8am Australian Time Wednesday morning (5pm Eastern Time Tuesday night) and targeted the Australian government's main website as well as the Parliament site. The plan was DDoS government servers first, and then follow up with "a s***storm" of porn-related e-mails, faxes, and prank cell phone calls to government officials, with a special focus on three types of content that has fallen under the ban: small-breasted porn, cartoon porn, and female ejaculation. (Australia's Classification Board had previously determined female ejaculation to be a form of urination, while small-breasted women simply "appeared" to be underage.)

"The Australian government will learn that one does not mess with our porn," someone wrote on behalf of Anonymous in an e-mail sent to media outlets. "No one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason."

Australia has been under heavy criticism for its plan to filter pornographic content since it began discussing the proposal in 2007. Despite the fact that its own government-funded studies have shown that ISP level filtering won't work, the government forged ahead, even throwing perfectly legal—if not a little gross—content into the mix. Most of the legal-but-objectionable content falls under the government's optional filter (there is also a required blacklist that is short and specific), but whether or not to implement the second blacklist is a decision made at the ISP level.

Australia's Department of Parliamentary Services confirmed with the Sydney Morning Herald that the parliament site was getting up to 7.5 million hits per second at its peak. The spokesperson said that the site was inaccessible for about an hour and then intermittent for several hours after that. A spokesperson for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy added that the attacks were "totally irresponsible" and could have denied services to the Australian public.

Somehow, we get the feeling that Anonymous doesn't care much about what the Communications Minister thinks is "responsible." Still, other groups that oppose Australia's filtering plan also condemned the attack: Stop Internet Censorship cofounder Nicholas Perkins said the action brought negative attention to the issue. "It would be much more helpful for these people to put their efforts behind legitimate action to stop this ineffective and inefficient attempt at censorship by the Australian government," Perkins said in a statement.

I expect if this goes the way of 4-chan's usual shenanigans, they'll grow bored and find something else to do once the noise dies down. At any rate I find the whole situation to be incredibly hilarious and sad.

[Oskuro]

You've gotta hand it to Anonymous.... Operation: Titstorm is an awesome name.

Appart from that, what Mr.Perkins said, infantile pranks such as these will only strengthen the Australian government's resolve, while also providing them with evidence of their actions being justified.