21 ms·

ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

202 points by Melchizedek 8y ago

terragon 8y ago
The mobile operator Jio does the same thing here in India. Any content that offends their conservative interests, is routinely blocked without any legal repurcussions. If ISPs want to act as curators to content they just provide access to, then they should be held legally liable for illegal content. Else, just act as a dumb pipe and give up all responsibility.
- IdontRememberIt 8y ago
  "then they should be held legally liable for illegal content" Thanks for bringing this point.
aphextron 8y ago
The government of New Zealand’s entire response to the shooting incident, as well as the public’s cheering for it, is the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen. The level of authoritarian curbing of freedoms that has seemingly happened overnight at the stroke of a pen should seriously concern anyone who values constitutionally limited government. I’m all for the debate, but as an American it’s unimaginable to see such reactionary, arbitrary, far sweeping action taken by a supposed free country with almost no discussion or legal process.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  If NZ is actually, as is widely reported, a great bolt hole for the elite, then the last thing you as a member of the elite want to have in a massive economic downturn and crisis, is a ticked off bunch of natives to the area with firearms and a real time communication system, isn't it?
- amanzi 8y ago
  "is the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen" I think you need to go re-read some Orwell books.
- sebthedev 8y ago
  Which aspects of the New Zealand government's response do you object to? Off the top of my head, the government has: used the existing regulatory system to temporarily halt sales of the sort weapons used in the terrorist attack; introduced legislation into parliament to permanently halt sales of the sort of weapons used in the attack, which will proceed through the regular legislative process; announced plans to investigate how the attack was not prevented by security services; and facilitated memorial services for victims.
  - incompatible 8y ago
    So they haven't actually done anything to try to restrict the shooting video, at least on foreign websites (it may be illegal under existing NZ law?) It suppose it wouldn't actually be hard for them to seize the copyright (perhaps with a new law if required) and start issuing DMCA takedowns or threats of lawsuits.
    - erentz 8y ago
      Common misconception that this is directed by the government, like Mubarak ordering the internet cut off or something. The Office of Film and Literature classification reviews and classified media material in NZ, similar to how the MPAA does for films in the USA. It can also classify materials as “objectionable” at which point they become illegal to possess or trade (except by certain request, eg if you’re an academic wanting to study it). This is extremely rare. It must meet the definitions under the law that the office operators under. And it is free from political influence because the role is separated and operated independently as a commission. It is checked by the ability of the judicial branch to evaluate these cases against the definition in the law. And the law can be changed by the citizens electing new representation and giving mandate for that to be done. The takedowns that Facebook and YouTube have been performing started immediately after the attack loooooong before the video was classified as objectionable. This is because Facebook and YouTube do not want to distribute these videos. That’s all.
      - incompatible 8y ago
- erentz 8y ago
  > the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen. The level of authoritarian curbing of freedoms that has seemingly happened overnight at the stroke of a pen should seriously concern anyone who values constitutionally limited government. Woah hold the hyperbole. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. What actions specifically are you even referring to? The change in gun laws? Australia banned semi-automatics. It’s survived. Pretty sure New Zealand will be okay without them too. This post is about the ISPs banning sites, not something that the government of either country directed. (As the post makes clear Australia’s largest telco is also banning these sites.) > I’m all for the debate, but as an American it’s unimaginable to see such reactionary, arbitrary, far sweeping action taken by a supposed free country with almost no discussion or legal process. What was far sweeping and done with no discussion or legal process? You pretend like there isn’t a parliament with elected members, a far more representative and democratic parliament that any US government due to the use of proportional representation. This parliament is the legislative branch and can, well enact legislation, which is doing to ban semi automatic weapons based on the results of previous government enquiries into the matter that weren’t acted on. (Talk about throwing stones here, seemingly nobody remembers 9/11 and the Patriot Act, and mass spying on Americans, and trillions spent on false wars that followed.) A civil debate about the actions of these ISPs and the ability of private companies operating as utilities to censor or throttle or otherwise mess with neutrality of the utility they provide is very much warranted, but you’re not doing that here.
  - huntie 8y ago
    The ISPs aren't banning sites for kicks. New Zealanders have been arrested for distributing the video.
    - erentz 8y ago
      Note the bans on some of those NZ ISPs started before the video was classified as objectionable. So they’re not banning them to prevent their customers from facing charges. They’re doing it for other poorly explained reasons that aren’t legally required.
      - 8y ago
- abraae 8y ago
  Almost everyone in NZ that I've talked to, which includes a few gun owners, has been in broad agreement with the moves to ban MSSA weapons - cheering for it is probably a good assessment. I cannot fathom how anyone could call that Orwellian, it feels more like plain common sense.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    You're not likely to hear from people who are not in broad agreement right now for this exact reason - they'd be tarred and feathered by the supermajority in favor.
  - hackerman12345 8y ago
    "Guns are too dangerous, give them to us or we'll shoot you and take them from your cold, dead hands" might be a little bit totalitarian.
    - abraae 8y ago
      Attitudes are different in NZ from the US. There is no right to bear arms, and self defense is not a valid reason to hold a firearm licence. An overwhelming majority of people believe that military style weapons have no place in society, and that those guns - though not all guns - are too dangerous, and that accordingly yes, you must hand them over.
      - hackerman12345 8y ago
        Even if an overwhelming majority of people believe state shootings (with guns) of people who won't hand them over is moral and ok in society.. the point of my reply still stands and has nothing to do with the right to self-defense etc. There are plenty of times in history when overwhelming majorities beliefs took away minority rights. When reading the wrong words can get you 10 years in prison, it probably does trend towards Orwell's future though.
        mallets 8y ago
- StavrosK 8y ago
  What did they do? I'm only aware of the gun bans, which strikes me as reasonable. The TSA, for example, with the random luggage and body searches strikes me as an order of magnitude more Orwellian.
  - erentz 8y ago
    Don’t forget the 60,000 strong force that is allowed to stop anyone within 100 miles of a border, ask for papers, and put anyone they like, including American citizens in jail without trial or normal legal process, sometimes for years.
    - adventured 8y ago
      > put anyone they like, including American citizens in jail without trial or normal legal process, sometimes for years. So in a country of ~330 million, with 32 million flights every year across the US, would you mind listing the total number of times that actually happens? Where people are detained for years with no due process by that 60,000 force. If something happens a few times per year at that scale, while being shameful non-the-less, it's a freak outlier in fact and is not a legitimate example of common outcomes to support your comment.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    The bans will, for the most part, be useless, as most gun bans based on features usually are. To see why, look up e.g. "MARS action rifle", or "lever release AR-15". At the same time, countries that don't bother with stuff like that, but instead regulate who can own firearms much more stringently than US does - e.g. Czech Republic - are doing fine.
    - aspett 8y ago
      > At the same time, countries that don't bother with stuff like that, but instead regulate who can own firearms much more stringently than US does - e.g. Czech Republic - are doing fine. I think you'd have said the same thing about New Zealand a week and a half ago, yet here we are.
- baconhigh 8y ago
  All the political parties of NZ government agreed on the ban of semi-automatic military style weapons, which should have been illegal long ago. What 'curbing of freedom' do you see happening, exactly?
- apostacy 8y ago
  Thank you, very well said! I'm also disappointed with the response on HN as supposedly free governments cut off entire chunks of the Internet. Any concern about this is met with "but if we don't kill the Internet then the Nazis will win!" I'm most horrified by people's defense of the government getting really good at arresting people for "trolling"[1] [1]: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-people-a-day-in-fight-against-web-trolls-b8nkpgp2d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nzealand 8y ago
  > the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen Even compared with the patriot act and the war against Iraq?
- peterashford 8y ago
  The Chief Censor is independent from the NZ government.
MBO35711 8y ago
There is free speech, and then there is sensible. In NZ we don't use the perpetrators name and we don't want you looking at his messages. Get over it!
- PostOnce 8y ago
  Well, we could just turn the entire internet off, then the messages would surely be hidden. Archive.is has a lot more than one page.
  - MBO35711 8y ago
    Well that would be silly.
    - PostOnce 8y ago
      the point is, you have to draw a line somewhere, and if the line is "nobody can see anything this guy wrote" then the collateral damage is going to be perhaps just too much. When I said Archive.is has more than one page, I meant we're blocking millions of non-offending pages for the sake of blocking one that offends. So, how far will we go? Block Archive.is? Block Facebook? The whole internet?
      - apostacy 8y ago
        This level of heavy handedness was unprecedented in the west, and is more characteristic of China than anything else.
  - tootahe45 8y ago
    You joke, but I'm convinced our police and government know even less about technology than in Australia where they tried to ban encryption.
- gruez 8y ago
  >we don't want you looking at his messages. Get over it! Do you realize how authoritarian you sound?
doesnt_know 8y ago
Not everyone holds the same absolute views on freedom of speech as those drawn up in the American constitution. There is also plenty of opposing views of a "constitutionally limited government" that seems to be at the heart of American culture. Frankly, it's pretty disturbing how many Americans are unable to comprehend that their way isn't the "only way" that can be valid. The New Zealand Bill of Rights provides freedom of expression, but it's also limited by the human rights act. Racial disharmony is illegal. Even if the shooter didn't follow through with the shootings, he could have been punished for simply publishing that manifesto of his.
- PostOnce 8y ago
  The New Zealand Bill of Rights is the single most toothless, feeble, pointless piece of legislation I have ever read. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM225500.html http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/D... Literally everything else overrides it, if I'm reading this right: -------- Other enactments not affected No court shall, in relation to any enactment (whether passed or made before or after the commencement of this Bill of Rights),— (a)hold any provision of the enactment to be impliedly repealed or revoked, or to be in any way invalid or ineffective; or (b)decline to apply any provision of the enactment— by reason only that the provision is inconsistent with any provision of this Bill of Rights. -------- So if every other law automatically overrides it, what is the point? Are they even rights at all, at that point? We need a stronger set of rights.
  - cam_l 8y ago
    I mean i don't disagree, but speaking as an Aussie, at least you have one..
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Well, your Bill of Rights is just a law passed by the Parliament. As such, it can be repealed by the Parliament, if and when they feel like it. This is your parliamentary sovereignty system at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty
MBO35711 8y ago
My apologies. Might I ask a question, please? How do we otherwise stop the internet being hacked to support these vile creatures?
- huntie 8y ago
  I don't know what you mean by hacked, but this would have been less of an issue if New Zealand had not tried to censor it. The Streisand effect is very real. If you're looking for a technical solution, there is none. The most valuable feature of the Internet is its resistance to censorship. Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place.
  - MBO35711 8y ago
    Hacked, in this case would mean that the violence was designed to drive traffic towards the manifesto, which would have otherwise vanished into obscurity. But I take your point regarding censorship.
  - Carpetsmoker 8y ago
    Streisand effect doesn't apply here. It's about relatively small thing being blown up by a disproportionate reply. This isn't some small event, everyone already knows about it.
- rgoulter 8y ago
  I'm concerned that "censorship of bad views" leads to radicalisation. e.g. if you have concerns that are morally unacceptable to express, the only place you can express those concerns are in morally unacceptable areas. I think the hope of censoring bad views is to increase that friction before people get there; make it harder for 'ordinary' people to stumble across vile sites, and reduce access to vile sites to those determined to get it. I'm concerned that having a hammer of "censorship makes this problem goes away" makes it easier to see other social problems as nails. One line to draw is "censor speech which directly incites or leads to violence". It seems the line NZ is drawing (and ISPs preemptively drew) is "objectionable" or "injurious to the public good". That seems much easier to abuse.
sebthedev 8y ago
Those websites were distributing material that was illegal under New Zealand law (content relating to the recent terrorist attack). Any person in New Zealand who possesses objectionable content is liable for imprisonment for up to 10 years. Distributing the objectionable content can result in imprisonment for up to 14 years. The ISPs were simply declining to distribute or possess the objectionable content (which would have be illegal for them to distribute or possess). https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-Objectionable-and-Restricted-Material https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-Objectionable-and-Restric...
- layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
  Reminds me of the first episode of Black Mirror, when the British PM is preparing for his act with the pig, his aides try to calm him by saying that the parliament have just passed a law that prohibits the possession of the material that’s about to be broadcasted.
  - cam_l 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_%28Black_Mirror%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_%28Black_M... See also.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate
- incompatible 8y ago
  Do ISPs in NZ have no safe habour provisions? If one of their customers downloads or uploads something illegal, the ISP can be prosecuted too?
  - Taniwha 8y ago
    I don't believe so in this case, in NZ these laws were written with film in mind - more generally the safe-harbour laws are largely written for copyright issues on behalf of the content people
- robocat 8y ago
  Incorrect. The ISPs blocked within hours. It wasn't declared objectionable until much later. There are catch all rules for objectionable content, but our ISPs weren't applying those rules to those websites even though they carry much equivalent content. I don't know if they blocked at request of the politicians or police. But it is very possible the ISPs management and techos just did it. These are not huge organisations!
roel_v 8y ago
Ironically, this page itself is unavailable from AU - or is it just me?
- shenki0 8y ago
  I can't reach it either
- joneil 8y ago
  I can read it just fine from here (Telstra 4G)
Jason_Genova 8y ago
EDIT: removed because I did not realize what kind of website the site I linked was.
- doldge 8y ago
  trying to be charitable here; could you perhaps expand on the point you're trying to make by posting this exchange? It otherwise looks like a very insensitive, small-minded person responding overly aggressively to what is otherwise a very reasonable and restrained request from the NZ Police.
  - Jason_Genova 8y ago
    Sure, the meat of what I thought interesting was the initial email. I thought it was concerning that the NZ police were looking to get IP/email addresses of people merely conversing about the attacker. The rest of the thread is just funny because the police respond in the best way possible to the site operator's freakout.
    - doldge 8y ago
      in what world is that concerning? They've been trying to discern if there was a cell of people around who harbour the same intent as this man, or if he was acting alone. New Zealand, a sovereign nation, has every right to request that information. The email was simply a case of whether the maintainer of the site would respond reasonably to a request from the NZ judicial system, or whether they would need to subpeona the information using the US judicial system. If that maintainer of that site is serving content to New Zealand, that it seems reasonable that he should be beholden to NZ laws. As a part of there investigation into the act this man committed, they're looking at all activity around the event and the sort of people engaging with it. From a quick look at that website and the thread you linked, I expect (and at least hope), that most of the people who frequent it are now on a watch list after the events of last week.
      - Jason_Genova 8y ago
spondyl 8y ago
While not an official statement, this forum post from a Spark employee is worth a read: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=184&topicid=248227&page_no=6#2198928 https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=184&topicid=24... --- I am NOT officially empowered to talk about this but I want to shut down any conjecture right now. No actions of Spark taken now or over the next 24 hours or so should be considered representative of policy. They may turn out to be temporary, they may even with hindsight not be considered the best move. However the number of direct links going around to certain sites and threads where some truly horrific and almost certainly illegal material was being hosted met a threshold for immediate and extraordinary action. We're killing the DNS entries for a couple of sites. I should note that this had approval from the highest levels, and we're not the only ISP doing this. Right now is where we all get a chance to demonstrate our humanity in the face of a terrible tragedy. Reach out and help people. I know many people in Chch and around the country that are in shock. I know I am - and I know there are hundreds or thousands of people that are directly massively impacted by this today. At some point in the near future we'll evaluate what to roll back. But not today. Cheers - Neil Gardner
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > No actions of Spark taken now or over the next 24 hours or so should be considered representative of policy. That's not how it works. When you claim to have a policy, and don't bother to even pretend that it governs your actions, your actions will be taken to represent your policy, because what people care about is your actual policy, not a document you happen to call your "policy".
- Taniwha 8y ago
  Of course a US ISP could do this too, completely legally - the 1st amendment only binds the government - and the Trump administration's removal of net neutrality gives ISPs carte-blanche to do whatever they like in this area
mnm1 8y ago
So just like after 9/11 in the US, the terrorists win. They scare the powers that be into making life worse for an entire country's citizens. I guess people never learn from history. Both corporations and the government end up doing the terrorists' bidding while thinking they are protecting people. The people have no say. I bet the shooters are laughing from their cells just like al quada did from its caves. Terrorism all around. I'm sure this is just the beginning just like 9/11 was just the beginning of a terror campaign mostly waged by our own government here in the US.
- sarcasmOrTears 8y ago
  He evn wrote in the manifesto that the current nz goverment reaction was what he wanted.
- ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
  Why do you say life is worse here? We’ve banned most semi auto guns. And his writing and video have been classed as objectionable... Why’s my life worse off for the governments actions?
  - identity-haver 8y ago
    For one, your ability to defend your self and your family has been partially abrogated. Now it depends more on physical strength and the wealth to live in a safe area with other defenses. Second, your ability to access the internet has been shown to be arbitrarily limitable, kind of like China's great firewall. Third, your ability to speak and communicate about political issues has been tamped. Today it's possessing somebody else's anti-Muslim manifesto that gets you 10 years, tomorrow it's an anti-party manifesto. Let me take a look through all your private messages and documents, and believe me, I will find something that I can "class as objectionable".
    - ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
      NZer's weren't stock piling guns to defend themselves with so your first argument just isn't valid to begin with. This isn't a government ordered blocking. NZ does have a govt blacklist but it isn't enforced, ISP's opt into it. My ISP didn't block anything. No one needs to read that manifesto to debate far right fascism.
baconhigh 8y ago
All the sites in the article were hosting illegal (in NZ) content - they were temporarily blocked till the video (of a terrorist killing innocent people) was taken down. Nobody needs to see that. It's not about free speech. The sites in question are used to spread hate, racism, violence and bigotry. Why are we tolerating this kind of media in our lives? Why are we letting people upload this? It is not free speech. It is targeted hate.
- Jach 8y ago
  "Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." ― Dwight D. Eisenhower I have yet to see the video, don't really intend to as I've seen enough other material, but for you to say "Nobody needs to see that" is to deny people an education about a grotesque part of human nature. Denying that education leads to denial of the nature itself. Nothing good comes from denying that reality.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  Hate speech is free speech that you happen to not like.
  - ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
    Except this is hate speech. Or are you saying it isn’t
    - DuskStar 8y ago
      I dislike it, so it's hate speech, of course! But I tend to believe that I should not have the power to determine what can or cannot be said, and that no one else should have that power either.
      - Throwway32 8y ago
        If you were to say, make a pro-ISIS video, or Tweet, would you expect to remain unmolested by the authorities in the United States? All societies set boundaries on what is acceptable speech.
berti 8y ago
I just checked, and only three of the thirteen "blocked" sites are not working. Of those eztv.is appears to have a DNS problem (no A record, only an SOA record pointing at a parking address of the registrar), and traceroutes archive.is and archive.fo get as far as an address in the Netherlands, so I don't think they're blocked in NZ. ISP is 2degrees, Cloudflare DNS. On a side-note, I'm probably now on some watch list.
- NemosDemos 8y ago
  What I'm finding somewhat interesting is that Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) appears to be sinkholing that DNS request for me (I'm currently inside Australia - 127.0.0.3 is being returned) whereas Google (8.8.8.8) does not (51.38.113.224 returned). Doesn't look like it's just me either - ViewDNS [1] is currently showing 'www.archive.is' returning 127.0.0.3 from Sydney. [1]https://viewdns.info/propagation/?domain=www.archive.is https://viewdns.info/propagation/?domain=www.archive.is
  - captn3m0 8y ago
    CloudFlare UK is returning the same results. This is not good. Edit: It is a known misconfiguration at archive.is nameservers: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
  - eastdakota 8y ago
    archive.is intentionally returns the wrong result to us: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182... We've asked them, repeatedly, to stop doing this. They refuse. It's bizarre.
zzo38computer 8y ago
If they censor in this way then they are not a real internet service and should not call that (nor should they be given the enough IPv4 address ranges like ISPs; so, maybe they will run out if they are not a real ISP!) (unless perhaps you can get rid of the censorships by disabling NAT which you would freely be allowed to do, maybe). Real internet connect through proper protocol routing to the address based only on the packet header, and not the port number or payload (unless the packet is directed to the ISP's servers anyways), for the purpose only to routing to the correct destination and to receive the correct reply (if the payload is incorrect, they should send it anyways; that is not for the ISP to consider unless the packet is directed at their own servers) (however, if the header is incorrect (including specifying addresses that are impossible, but not only if they are merely censored), then they can block it; note I mean the IP header, and not the TCP or UDP header, which is at the other level than the routing, so they should not tamper with). (For example, if the packet specifies 127.0.0.1 as the source or destination address, then they are allowed to block it; and if you do such thing too much, they can even warn you to correct your computer.)
jjcm 8y ago
The problem with censoring and banning the information outright (in the case of NZ) is that it gives power to the manifesto. So much of what Jacinda Ardern said after the shooting was about denying the person a platform: "We, in New Zealand, will give him nothing. Not even his name." "He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety, and that is why you will never hear me mention his name." And yet by the ISPs banning sites and with the New Zealand government classifying the manifesto as objectionable, they've done just that. They've told the people that the manifesto and the video are notorious by their decisions around it. They've put it on a pedestal and said, "this here holds power, and we should be scared of those who consume it".
- tootahe45 8y ago
  I think one of the core reasons they don't want people to read it is that in the aftermath they're doing everything he wanted and more.
  - roca 8y ago
    Some of the things his manifesto says he wanted, like stricter gun control, are indeed happening. Others, like a cycle of revenge attacks, are not, at least not yet. Of course it would be unwise to believe that he told the truth about his aims in his manifesto. Even if we could figure out what he really wanted, figuring that out and then doing the opposite would not be a rational way to respond to an incident like this.
    - pryce 8y ago
      He wanted a the political left and right to fight over gun control. He didn't get that, at least not in NZ.
    - terryd 8y ago
      > Others, like a cycle of revenge attacks, are not, at least not yet. This is why censorship is so dangerous. I immediately thought of 3 attacks following NZ that could be interpreted as reprisals. I was completely unsurprised to see that no further details have been released in the week between then and now. We only know that the perpetrators were migrants from troubled parts of the world, and were already known to authorities - having developed criminal records since their arrival. A priest was stabbed in Canada, 3 people were killed in the Netherlands (3 more wounded), a bus in Italy with 52 children onboard was set ablaze. The spokesman for ISIS called for attacks after several months of radio silence, Erdoğan has been stirring his people up (which has historically resulted in violence). Were you unaware of these events, or do you consider them normal? If you were unaware of them, do you think that is a result of selective reporting? I can tell you that absolutely no in depth reporting has occurred - no effort beyond that of news wire copy-paste.
kristianp 8y ago
Interesting that https://www.archive.is/ https://www.archive.is/ is on the list. I find that a little hard to believe, but perhaps there were popular links to it being shared.
jpollock 8y ago
New Zealand has operated a country-wide content filter for years. It is primarily used to filter out "content depicting the sexual abuse or exploitation of children and young persons" [1]. Filtering of objectionable content is entirely within the social norms of New Zealand. For comparison, since the video and manifesto have been labelled "objectionable" [2] it would be illegal to burn either to a disk and then carry the disk across the border. The argument the government will make is that this is applying the same rules to content imported into the country via the Internet instead. If the population expects the social networks to take this content down, they will expect ISPs to remove access to social networks which do _not_ take the content down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_New_Zea... [2] https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/latest-news/christchurch-attacks-press-releases/#christchurch-attack-video-footage-and-document-has-been-banned-in-nz-what-this-means-for-you https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/latest-news/ch...
- SturgeonsLaw 8y ago
  Questions of appropriateness in this scenario put aside, the fact that an internet filter which started for "please think of the children" reasons has expanded in scope is eminently predictable.
yongjik 8y ago
(A) An alt-right terrorist shoots up and kills 50, in a country where such things were unheard of. (B) The nation bans the terrorist's message. Half of HN: "Oh wait, now that sets a worrying precedent." Yes, HN, never change.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago
  No, they have banned a bunch of random sites, while the main distributor of the video (Facebook) remans unblocked.
- dang 8y ago
  Would you please stop posting snarky comments about divisive topics on HN, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are? You've done it a lot, and the site guidelines ask you explicitly not to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, we'd appreciate it. You'll notice that they also include the following guideline, which your comment also broke: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
  - yongjik 8y ago
    You're right. I apologize.
Taniwha 8y ago
I think that the main thing missing here is that the NZ ISPs started blocking access to the snuff film within hours of the terrorist's slaughter, the government started making proclamations days later. The snuff film fetishists started passing it around within minutes of it being broadcast, if anything one can argue that the ISPs started too late. Remember by NZ law something like this snuf film is created 'obscene', the censor just confirms that it is, you're legally responsible for not breaking the law by copying it, or publishing it from that first moment that it exists ... and so are our ISPs, these laws were written for film, transient copies caused by their customers accessing the illegal content puts them at legal risk, all they can do is to refuse to let people access the places which could put them (the ISPs) at risk
repolfx 8y ago
Did anyone else notice that ZeroHedge is apparently now a site so dangerous that entire populations can't be exposed to it? ZEROHEDGE? Jeez, I've been reading articles on and off there for years and have never hurt a fly. What are they afraid of exactly, mass outbreaks of gold hoarding, extremists who disagree with central bank monetary policy? I just visited and one of the top stories is objecting to an apparent trend of US cops shooting dogs. How is this site considered systematically dangerous by New Zealand ISPs? Or is this what we always see censors do - decide terrorist attacks by white men justify blocking large swathes of ordinary conservative political opinion that has nothing to do with race or religion?
cco 8y ago
I would encourage everybody who was taken aback by the shooting to read the manifesto, if you are legally allowed to. It helped me better understand this groundswell of overt racism we've seen in the last few years and, by an inverse reading of it, provided some strategies on how we might resist it. If you're there type of person that reads this manifesto and thinks, "yes I agree with this and I should do what it says" then you'd also react the same way to Mein Kampf and you're already a violent racist. These writings provide really valuable insights into what drives these abhorrent political movements and how to counteract them. They don't go away if you close your eyes.

202 points by Melchizedek 8y ago

The mobile operator Jio does the same thing here in India. Any content that offends their conservative interests, is routinely blocked without any legal repurcussions. If ISPs want to act as curators to content they just provide access to, then they should be held legally liable for illegal content. Else, just act as a dumb pipe and give up all responsibility.

IdontRememberIt 8y ago
"then they should be held legally liable for illegal content" Thanks for bringing this point.

aphextron 8y ago

The government of New Zealand’s entire response to the shooting incident, as well as the public’s cheering for it, is the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen. The level of authoritarian curbing of freedoms that has seemingly happened overnight at the stroke of a pen should seriously concern anyone who values constitutionally limited government. I’m all for the debate, but as an American it’s unimaginable to see such reactionary, arbitrary, far sweeping action taken by a supposed free country with almost no discussion or legal process.

patrickg_zill 8y ago
If NZ is actually, as is widely reported, a great bolt hole for the elite, then the last thing you as a member of the elite want to have in a massive economic downturn and crisis, is a ticked off bunch of natives to the area with firearms and a real time communication system, isn't it?
amanzi 8y ago
"is the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen" I think you need to go re-read some Orwell books.
sebthedev 8y ago
Which aspects of the New Zealand government's response do you object to? Off the top of my head, the government has: used the existing regulatory system to temporarily halt sales of the sort weapons used in the terrorist attack; introduced legislation into parliament to permanently halt sales of the sort of weapons used in the attack, which will proceed through the regular legislative process; announced plans to investigate how the attack was not prevented by security services; and facilitated memorial services for victims.
- incompatible 8y ago
  So they haven't actually done anything to try to restrict the shooting video, at least on foreign websites (it may be illegal under existing NZ law?) It suppose it wouldn't actually be hard for them to seize the copyright (perhaps with a new law if required) and start issuing DMCA takedowns or threats of lawsuits.
  - erentz 8y ago
    Common misconception that this is directed by the government, like Mubarak ordering the internet cut off or something. The Office of Film and Literature classification reviews and classified media material in NZ, similar to how the MPAA does for films in the USA. It can also classify materials as “objectionable” at which point they become illegal to possess or trade (except by certain request, eg if you’re an academic wanting to study it). This is extremely rare. It must meet the definitions under the law that the office operators under. And it is free from political influence because the role is separated and operated independently as a commission. It is checked by the ability of the judicial branch to evaluate these cases against the definition in the law. And the law can be changed by the citizens electing new representation and giving mandate for that to be done. The takedowns that Facebook and YouTube have been performing started immediately after the attack loooooong before the video was classified as objectionable. This is because Facebook and YouTube do not want to distribute these videos. That’s all.
    - incompatible 8y ago
erentz 8y ago
> the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen. The level of authoritarian curbing of freedoms that has seemingly happened overnight at the stroke of a pen should seriously concern anyone who values constitutionally limited government. Woah hold the hyperbole. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. What actions specifically are you even referring to? The change in gun laws? Australia banned semi-automatics. It’s survived. Pretty sure New Zealand will be okay without them too. This post is about the ISPs banning sites, not something that the government of either country directed. (As the post makes clear Australia’s largest telco is also banning these sites.) > I’m all for the debate, but as an American it’s unimaginable to see such reactionary, arbitrary, far sweeping action taken by a supposed free country with almost no discussion or legal process. What was far sweeping and done with no discussion or legal process? You pretend like there isn’t a parliament with elected members, a far more representative and democratic parliament that any US government due to the use of proportional representation. This parliament is the legislative branch and can, well enact legislation, which is doing to ban semi automatic weapons based on the results of previous government enquiries into the matter that weren’t acted on. (Talk about throwing stones here, seemingly nobody remembers 9/11 and the Patriot Act, and mass spying on Americans, and trillions spent on false wars that followed.) A civil debate about the actions of these ISPs and the ability of private companies operating as utilities to censor or throttle or otherwise mess with neutrality of the utility they provide is very much warranted, but you’re not doing that here.
- huntie 8y ago
  The ISPs aren't banning sites for kicks. New Zealanders have been arrested for distributing the video.
  - erentz 8y ago
    Note the bans on some of those NZ ISPs started before the video was classified as objectionable. So they’re not banning them to prevent their customers from facing charges. They’re doing it for other poorly explained reasons that aren’t legally required.
    - 8y ago
abraae 8y ago
Almost everyone in NZ that I've talked to, which includes a few gun owners, has been in broad agreement with the moves to ban MSSA weapons - cheering for it is probably a good assessment. I cannot fathom how anyone could call that Orwellian, it feels more like plain common sense.
- int_19h 8y ago
  You're not likely to hear from people who are not in broad agreement right now for this exact reason - they'd be tarred and feathered by the supermajority in favor.
- hackerman12345 8y ago
  "Guns are too dangerous, give them to us or we'll shoot you and take them from your cold, dead hands" might be a little bit totalitarian.
  - abraae 8y ago
    Attitudes are different in NZ from the US. There is no right to bear arms, and self defense is not a valid reason to hold a firearm licence. An overwhelming majority of people believe that military style weapons have no place in society, and that those guns - though not all guns - are too dangerous, and that accordingly yes, you must hand them over.
    - hackerman12345 8y ago
      Even if an overwhelming majority of people believe state shootings (with guns) of people who won't hand them over is moral and ok in society.. the point of my reply still stands and has nothing to do with the right to self-defense etc. There are plenty of times in history when overwhelming majorities beliefs took away minority rights. When reading the wrong words can get you 10 years in prison, it probably does trend towards Orwell's future though.
      - mallets 8y ago
StavrosK 8y ago
What did they do? I'm only aware of the gun bans, which strikes me as reasonable. The TSA, for example, with the random luggage and body searches strikes me as an order of magnitude more Orwellian.
- erentz 8y ago
  Don’t forget the 60,000 strong force that is allowed to stop anyone within 100 miles of a border, ask for papers, and put anyone they like, including American citizens in jail without trial or normal legal process, sometimes for years.
  - adventured 8y ago
    > put anyone they like, including American citizens in jail without trial or normal legal process, sometimes for years. So in a country of ~330 million, with 32 million flights every year across the US, would you mind listing the total number of times that actually happens? Where people are detained for years with no due process by that 60,000 force. If something happens a few times per year at that scale, while being shameful non-the-less, it's a freak outlier in fact and is not a legitimate example of common outcomes to support your comment.
- int_19h 8y ago
  The bans will, for the most part, be useless, as most gun bans based on features usually are. To see why, look up e.g. "MARS action rifle", or "lever release AR-15". At the same time, countries that don't bother with stuff like that, but instead regulate who can own firearms much more stringently than US does - e.g. Czech Republic - are doing fine.
  - aspett 8y ago
    > At the same time, countries that don't bother with stuff like that, but instead regulate who can own firearms much more stringently than US does - e.g. Czech Republic - are doing fine. I think you'd have said the same thing about New Zealand a week and a half ago, yet here we are.
baconhigh 8y ago
All the political parties of NZ government agreed on the ban of semi-automatic military style weapons, which should have been illegal long ago. What 'curbing of freedom' do you see happening, exactly?
apostacy 8y ago
Thank you, very well said! I'm also disappointed with the response on HN as supposedly free governments cut off entire chunks of the Internet. Any concern about this is met with "but if we don't kill the Internet then the Nazis will win!" I'm most horrified by people's defense of the government getting really good at arresting people for "trolling"[1] [1]: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-people-a-day-in-fight-against-web-trolls-b8nkpgp2d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nzealand 8y ago
> the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen Even compared with the patriot act and the war against Iraq?
peterashford 8y ago
The Chief Censor is independent from the NZ government.

MBO35711 8y ago

There is free speech, and then there is sensible. In NZ we don't use the perpetrators name and we don't want you looking at his messages. Get over it!

PostOnce 8y ago
Well, we could just turn the entire internet off, then the messages would surely be hidden. Archive.is has a lot more than one page.
- MBO35711 8y ago
  Well that would be silly.
  - PostOnce 8y ago
    the point is, you have to draw a line somewhere, and if the line is "nobody can see anything this guy wrote" then the collateral damage is going to be perhaps just too much. When I said Archive.is has more than one page, I meant we're blocking millions of non-offending pages for the sake of blocking one that offends. So, how far will we go? Block Archive.is? Block Facebook? The whole internet?
    - apostacy 8y ago
      This level of heavy handedness was unprecedented in the west, and is more characteristic of China than anything else.
- tootahe45 8y ago
  You joke, but I'm convinced our police and government know even less about technology than in Australia where they tried to ban encryption.
gruez 8y ago
>we don't want you looking at his messages. Get over it! Do you realize how authoritarian you sound?

doesnt_know 8y ago

Not everyone holds the same absolute views on freedom of speech as those drawn up in the American constitution. There is also plenty of opposing views of a "constitutionally limited government" that seems to be at the heart of American culture. Frankly, it's pretty disturbing how many Americans are unable to comprehend that their way isn't the "only way" that can be valid. The New Zealand Bill of Rights provides freedom of expression, but it's also limited by the human rights act. Racial disharmony is illegal. Even if the shooter didn't follow through with the shootings, he could have been punished for simply publishing that manifesto of his.

PostOnce 8y ago
The New Zealand Bill of Rights is the single most toothless, feeble, pointless piece of legislation I have ever read. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM225500.html http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/D... Literally everything else overrides it, if I'm reading this right: -------- Other enactments not affected No court shall, in relation to any enactment (whether passed or made before or after the commencement of this Bill of Rights),— (a)hold any provision of the enactment to be impliedly repealed or revoked, or to be in any way invalid or ineffective; or (b)decline to apply any provision of the enactment— by reason only that the provision is inconsistent with any provision of this Bill of Rights. -------- So if every other law automatically overrides it, what is the point? Are they even rights at all, at that point? We need a stronger set of rights.
- cam_l 8y ago
  I mean i don't disagree, but speaking as an Aussie, at least you have one..
- int_19h 8y ago
  Well, your Bill of Rights is just a law passed by the Parliament. As such, it can be repealed by the Parliament, if and when they feel like it. This is your parliamentary sovereignty system at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty

MBO35711 8y ago

My apologies. Might I ask a question, please? How do we otherwise stop the internet being hacked to support these vile creatures?

huntie 8y ago
I don't know what you mean by hacked, but this would have been less of an issue if New Zealand had not tried to censor it. The Streisand effect is very real. If you're looking for a technical solution, there is none. The most valuable feature of the Internet is its resistance to censorship. Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place.
- MBO35711 8y ago
  Hacked, in this case would mean that the violence was designed to drive traffic towards the manifesto, which would have otherwise vanished into obscurity. But I take your point regarding censorship.
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  Streisand effect doesn't apply here. It's about relatively small thing being blown up by a disproportionate reply. This isn't some small event, everyone already knows about it.
rgoulter 8y ago
I'm concerned that "censorship of bad views" leads to radicalisation. e.g. if you have concerns that are morally unacceptable to express, the only place you can express those concerns are in morally unacceptable areas. I think the hope of censoring bad views is to increase that friction before people get there; make it harder for 'ordinary' people to stumble across vile sites, and reduce access to vile sites to those determined to get it. I'm concerned that having a hammer of "censorship makes this problem goes away" makes it easier to see other social problems as nails. One line to draw is "censor speech which directly incites or leads to violence". It seems the line NZ is drawing (and ISPs preemptively drew) is "objectionable" or "injurious to the public good". That seems much easier to abuse.

sebthedev 8y ago

Those websites were distributing material that was illegal under New Zealand law (content relating to the recent terrorist attack). Any person in New Zealand who possesses objectionable content is liable for imprisonment for up to 10 years. Distributing the objectionable content can result in imprisonment for up to 14 years. The ISPs were simply declining to distribute or possess the objectionable content (which would have be illegal for them to distribute or possess). https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-Objectionable-and-Restricted-Material https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-Objectionable-and-Restric...

layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
Reminds me of the first episode of Black Mirror, when the British PM is preparing for his act with the pig, his aides try to calm him by saying that the parliament have just passed a law that prohibits the possession of the material that’s about to be broadcasted.
- cam_l 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_%28Black_Mirror%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_%28Black_M... See also.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate
incompatible 8y ago
Do ISPs in NZ have no safe habour provisions? If one of their customers downloads or uploads something illegal, the ISP can be prosecuted too?
- Taniwha 8y ago
  I don't believe so in this case, in NZ these laws were written with film in mind - more generally the safe-harbour laws are largely written for copyright issues on behalf of the content people
robocat 8y ago
Incorrect. The ISPs blocked within hours. It wasn't declared objectionable until much later. There are catch all rules for objectionable content, but our ISPs weren't applying those rules to those websites even though they carry much equivalent content. I don't know if they blocked at request of the politicians or police. But it is very possible the ISPs management and techos just did it. These are not huge organisations!

roel_v 8y ago

Ironically, this page itself is unavailable from AU - or is it just me?

shenki0 8y ago
I can't reach it either
joneil 8y ago
I can read it just fine from here (Telstra 4G)

Jason_Genova 8y ago

EDIT: removed because I did not realize what kind of website the site I linked was.

doldge 8y ago
trying to be charitable here; could you perhaps expand on the point you're trying to make by posting this exchange? It otherwise looks like a very insensitive, small-minded person responding overly aggressively to what is otherwise a very reasonable and restrained request from the NZ Police.
- Jason_Genova 8y ago
  Sure, the meat of what I thought interesting was the initial email. I thought it was concerning that the NZ police were looking to get IP/email addresses of people merely conversing about the attacker. The rest of the thread is just funny because the police respond in the best way possible to the site operator's freakout.
  - doldge 8y ago
    in what world is that concerning? They've been trying to discern if there was a cell of people around who harbour the same intent as this man, or if he was acting alone. New Zealand, a sovereign nation, has every right to request that information. The email was simply a case of whether the maintainer of the site would respond reasonably to a request from the NZ judicial system, or whether they would need to subpeona the information using the US judicial system. If that maintainer of that site is serving content to New Zealand, that it seems reasonable that he should be beholden to NZ laws. As a part of there investigation into the act this man committed, they're looking at all activity around the event and the sort of people engaging with it. From a quick look at that website and the thread you linked, I expect (and at least hope), that most of the people who frequent it are now on a watch list after the events of last week.
    - Jason_Genova 8y ago

spondyl 8y ago

While not an official statement, this forum post from a Spark employee is worth a read: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=184&topicid=248227&page_no=6#2198928 https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=184&topicid=24... --- I am NOT officially empowered to talk about this but I want to shut down any conjecture right now. No actions of Spark taken now or over the next 24 hours or so should be considered representative of policy. They may turn out to be temporary, they may even with hindsight not be considered the best move. However the number of direct links going around to certain sites and threads where some truly horrific and almost certainly illegal material was being hosted met a threshold for immediate and extraordinary action. We're killing the DNS entries for a couple of sites. I should note that this had approval from the highest levels, and we're not the only ISP doing this. Right now is where we all get a chance to demonstrate our humanity in the face of a terrible tragedy. Reach out and help people. I know many people in Chch and around the country that are in shock. I know I am - and I know there are hundreds or thousands of people that are directly massively impacted by this today. At some point in the near future we'll evaluate what to roll back. But not today. Cheers - Neil Gardner

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> No actions of Spark taken now or over the next 24 hours or so should be considered representative of policy. That's not how it works. When you claim to have a policy, and don't bother to even pretend that it governs your actions, your actions will be taken to represent your policy, because what people care about is your actual policy, not a document you happen to call your "policy".
Taniwha 8y ago
Of course a US ISP could do this too, completely legally - the 1st amendment only binds the government - and the Trump administration's removal of net neutrality gives ISPs carte-blanche to do whatever they like in this area

mnm1 8y ago

So just like after 9/11 in the US, the terrorists win. They scare the powers that be into making life worse for an entire country's citizens. I guess people never learn from history. Both corporations and the government end up doing the terrorists' bidding while thinking they are protecting people. The people have no say. I bet the shooters are laughing from their cells just like al quada did from its caves. Terrorism all around. I'm sure this is just the beginning just like 9/11 was just the beginning of a terror campaign mostly waged by our own government here in the US.

sarcasmOrTears 8y ago
He evn wrote in the manifesto that the current nz goverment reaction was what he wanted.
ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
Why do you say life is worse here? We’ve banned most semi auto guns. And his writing and video have been classed as objectionable... Why’s my life worse off for the governments actions?
- identity-haver 8y ago
  For one, your ability to defend your self and your family has been partially abrogated. Now it depends more on physical strength and the wealth to live in a safe area with other defenses. Second, your ability to access the internet has been shown to be arbitrarily limitable, kind of like China's great firewall. Third, your ability to speak and communicate about political issues has been tamped. Today it's possessing somebody else's anti-Muslim manifesto that gets you 10 years, tomorrow it's an anti-party manifesto. Let me take a look through all your private messages and documents, and believe me, I will find something that I can "class as objectionable".
  - ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
    NZer's weren't stock piling guns to defend themselves with so your first argument just isn't valid to begin with. This isn't a government ordered blocking. NZ does have a govt blacklist but it isn't enforced, ISP's opt into it. My ISP didn't block anything. No one needs to read that manifesto to debate far right fascism.

baconhigh 8y ago

All the sites in the article were hosting illegal (in NZ) content - they were temporarily blocked till the video (of a terrorist killing innocent people) was taken down. Nobody needs to see that. It's not about free speech. The sites in question are used to spread hate, racism, violence and bigotry. Why are we tolerating this kind of media in our lives? Why are we letting people upload this? It is not free speech. It is targeted hate.

Jach 8y ago
"Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." ― Dwight D. Eisenhower I have yet to see the video, don't really intend to as I've seen enough other material, but for you to say "Nobody needs to see that" is to deny people an education about a grotesque part of human nature. Denying that education leads to denial of the nature itself. Nothing good comes from denying that reality.
DuskStar 8y ago
Hate speech is free speech that you happen to not like.
- ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
  Except this is hate speech. Or are you saying it isn’t
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    I dislike it, so it's hate speech, of course! But I tend to believe that I should not have the power to determine what can or cannot be said, and that no one else should have that power either.
    - Throwway32 8y ago
      If you were to say, make a pro-ISIS video, or Tweet, would you expect to remain unmolested by the authorities in the United States? All societies set boundaries on what is acceptable speech.

berti 8y ago

I just checked, and only three of the thirteen "blocked" sites are not working. Of those eztv.is appears to have a DNS problem (no A record, only an SOA record pointing at a parking address of the registrar), and traceroutes archive.is and archive.fo get as far as an address in the Netherlands, so I don't think they're blocked in NZ. ISP is 2degrees, Cloudflare DNS. On a side-note, I'm probably now on some watch list.

NemosDemos 8y ago
What I'm finding somewhat interesting is that Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) appears to be sinkholing that DNS request for me (I'm currently inside Australia - 127.0.0.3 is being returned) whereas Google (8.8.8.8) does not (51.38.113.224 returned). Doesn't look like it's just me either - ViewDNS [1] is currently showing 'www.archive.is' returning 127.0.0.3 from Sydney. [1]https://viewdns.info/propagation/?domain=www.archive.is https://viewdns.info/propagation/?domain=www.archive.is
- captn3m0 8y ago
  CloudFlare UK is returning the same results. This is not good. Edit: It is a known misconfiguration at archive.is nameservers: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
- eastdakota 8y ago
  archive.is intentionally returns the wrong result to us: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182... We've asked them, repeatedly, to stop doing this. They refuse. It's bizarre.

zzo38computer 8y ago

If they censor in this way then they are not a real internet service and should not call that (nor should they be given the enough IPv4 address ranges like ISPs; so, maybe they will run out if they are not a real ISP!) (unless perhaps you can get rid of the censorships by disabling NAT which you would freely be allowed to do, maybe). Real internet connect through proper protocol routing to the address based only on the packet header, and not the port number or payload (unless the packet is directed to the ISP's servers anyways), for the purpose only to routing to the correct destination and to receive the correct reply (if the payload is incorrect, they should send it anyways; that is not for the ISP to consider unless the packet is directed at their own servers) (however, if the header is incorrect (including specifying addresses that are impossible, but not only if they are merely censored), then they can block it; note I mean the IP header, and not the TCP or UDP header, which is at the other level than the routing, so they should not tamper with). (For example, if the packet specifies 127.0.0.1 as the source or destination address, then they are allowed to block it; and if you do such thing too much, they can even warn you to correct your computer.)

jjcm 8y ago

The problem with censoring and banning the information outright (in the case of NZ) is that it gives power to the manifesto. So much of what Jacinda Ardern said after the shooting was about denying the person a platform: "We, in New Zealand, will give him nothing. Not even his name." "He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety, and that is why you will never hear me mention his name." And yet by the ISPs banning sites and with the New Zealand government classifying the manifesto as objectionable, they've done just that. They've told the people that the manifesto and the video are notorious by their decisions around it. They've put it on a pedestal and said, "this here holds power, and we should be scared of those who consume it".

tootahe45 8y ago
I think one of the core reasons they don't want people to read it is that in the aftermath they're doing everything he wanted and more.
- roca 8y ago
  Some of the things his manifesto says he wanted, like stricter gun control, are indeed happening. Others, like a cycle of revenge attacks, are not, at least not yet. Of course it would be unwise to believe that he told the truth about his aims in his manifesto. Even if we could figure out what he really wanted, figuring that out and then doing the opposite would not be a rational way to respond to an incident like this.
  - pryce 8y ago
    He wanted a the political left and right to fight over gun control. He didn't get that, at least not in NZ.
  - terryd 8y ago
    > Others, like a cycle of revenge attacks, are not, at least not yet. This is why censorship is so dangerous. I immediately thought of 3 attacks following NZ that could be interpreted as reprisals. I was completely unsurprised to see that no further details have been released in the week between then and now. We only know that the perpetrators were migrants from troubled parts of the world, and were already known to authorities - having developed criminal records since their arrival. A priest was stabbed in Canada, 3 people were killed in the Netherlands (3 more wounded), a bus in Italy with 52 children onboard was set ablaze. The spokesman for ISIS called for attacks after several months of radio silence, Erdoğan has been stirring his people up (which has historically resulted in violence). Were you unaware of these events, or do you consider them normal? If you were unaware of them, do you think that is a result of selective reporting? I can tell you that absolutely no in depth reporting has occurred - no effort beyond that of news wire copy-paste.

kristianp 8y ago

Interesting that https://www.archive.is/ https://www.archive.is/ is on the list. I find that a little hard to believe, but perhaps there were popular links to it being shared.

jpollock 8y ago

New Zealand has operated a country-wide content filter for years. It is primarily used to filter out "content depicting the sexual abuse or exploitation of children and young persons" [1]. Filtering of objectionable content is entirely within the social norms of New Zealand. For comparison, since the video and manifesto have been labelled "objectionable" [2] it would be illegal to burn either to a disk and then carry the disk across the border. The argument the government will make is that this is applying the same rules to content imported into the country via the Internet instead. If the population expects the social networks to take this content down, they will expect ISPs to remove access to social networks which do _not_ take the content down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_New_Zea... [2] https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/latest-news/christchurch-attacks-press-releases/#christchurch-attack-video-footage-and-document-has-been-banned-in-nz-what-this-means-for-you https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/latest-news/ch...

SturgeonsLaw 8y ago
Questions of appropriateness in this scenario put aside, the fact that an internet filter which started for "please think of the children" reasons has expanded in scope is eminently predictable.

yongjik 8y ago

(A) An alt-right terrorist shoots up and kills 50, in a country where such things were unheard of. (B) The nation bans the terrorist's message. Half of HN: "Oh wait, now that sets a worrying precedent." Yes, HN, never change.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago
No, they have banned a bunch of random sites, while the main distributor of the video (Facebook) remans unblocked.
dang 8y ago
Would you please stop posting snarky comments about divisive topics on HN, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are? You've done it a lot, and the site guidelines ask you explicitly not to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, we'd appreciate it. You'll notice that they also include the following guideline, which your comment also broke: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
- yongjik 8y ago
  You're right. I apologize.

Taniwha 8y ago

I think that the main thing missing here is that the NZ ISPs started blocking access to the snuff film within hours of the terrorist's slaughter, the government started making proclamations days later. The snuff film fetishists started passing it around within minutes of it being broadcast, if anything one can argue that the ISPs started too late. Remember by NZ law something like this snuf film is created 'obscene', the censor just confirms that it is, you're legally responsible for not breaking the law by copying it, or publishing it from that first moment that it exists ... and so are our ISPs, these laws were written for film, transient copies caused by their customers accessing the illegal content puts them at legal risk, all they can do is to refuse to let people access the places which could put them (the ISPs) at risk

repolfx 8y ago

Did anyone else notice that ZeroHedge is apparently now a site so dangerous that entire populations can't be exposed to it? ZEROHEDGE? Jeez, I've been reading articles on and off there for years and have never hurt a fly. What are they afraid of exactly, mass outbreaks of gold hoarding, extremists who disagree with central bank monetary policy? I just visited and one of the top stories is objecting to an apparent trend of US cops shooting dogs. How is this site considered systematically dangerous by New Zealand ISPs? Or is this what we always see censors do - decide terrorist attacks by white men justify blocking large swathes of ordinary conservative political opinion that has nothing to do with race or religion?

cco 8y ago

I would encourage everybody who was taken aback by the shooting to read the manifesto, if you are legally allowed to. It helped me better understand this groundswell of overt racism we've seen in the last few years and, by an inverse reading of it, provided some strategies on how we might resist it. If you're there type of person that reads this manifesto and thinks, "yes I agree with this and I should do what it says" then you'd also react the same way to Mein Kampf and you're already a violent racist. These writings provide really valuable insights into what drives these abhorrent political movements and how to counteract them. They don't go away if you close your eyes.