Australia's national net nanny agency has threatened to fine anyone who links to websites on its blacklist, which apparently it keeps secret without even a hint of irony.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) issued a threat last week to fine the online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool AUS$11,000 per day for linking to a blacklisted anti-abortion website.

It also added several webpages at the anonymous whistleblower website Wikileaks to its blacklist, because the banned pages display Denmark's blacklist of prohibited websites.

Wikileaks then replied to its blacklisting by ACMA with the observation, 'The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.'

Wikileaks has also published Thailand's internet blacklist of prohibited websites, and has noted that, in both Denmark and Thailand, internet censorship has quickly been extended from blocking child pornography, in line with its initial justification, to blocking of other content, including political discussions and opinions that authorities deem inconvenient.

ACMA has the power to force Australian websites to remove webpages that it decides are 'prohibited', as well as links to 'prohibited' content, apparently.

The agency has such sweeping powers already, even though the Australian government's proposed internet censorship scheme has yet to be tested, the testing planned will likely be worthless because the country's largest ISPs won't be participating, and it appears probable that Australia's Parliament won't pass the ill-conceived internet filtering plan.

The Sydney Morning Herald notes that ACMA's internet blacklist has already expanded to include 1,370 websites, 506 of which would be classified as R18+ and X18+ and therefore legal to view, but would be blocked from access by all Australians under the government's internet censorship proposal. The government has also said it was considering expanding its internet blacklist to cover 10,000 websites or more.

Reporters Without Borders, in a report on enemies of internet freedom last week, added Australia to its 'watch list' of countries that might be imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could open the way for abuses of power and control of information. The main issue cited was the Australian government's proposed internet censorship scheme. X

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