From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

A horrifying pivot towards Communist Chinese style censorship and tyranny is in progress in Australia, as Aussie politicians threaten Elon Musk with prosecution and jail, for refusing to remove truthful content which politicians deem socially unacceptable from the internet.

Utter contempt’: Elon Musk goes to war with Australian government over violent content

Elon Musk has stepped up his war of words with the Australian government, reacting to one Senator’s call for him to be “jailed”.

Frank Chung@franks_chung
April 24, 2024 – 9:54AM

Elon Musk has stepped up his war of words with the Australian government over demands the X social media platform remove videos of the stabbing of a Sydney bishop, as the controversy around violent content spirals into a wider free speech debate.

The eccentric billionaire has been publicly feuding Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant for the past week over what he has characterised as an “attempt to censor the entire world”.

“The Australian people want the truth,” Musk wrote on Tuesday, sharing a post stating that X had become the most downloaded news app in Australia. “X is the only one standing up for their rights.”

Mr Albanese had earlier blasted the Tesla chief executive as “arrogant” and someone who “thinks he’s above Australian law”, while Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie — prior to shutting down her X account — suggested he was a “friggin’ disgrace” who “should be in jail”.

“This woman has utter contempt for the Australian people,” Musk responded.

…

“Australia has made clear they believe in stripping away human rights (freedom of expression) in order to satisfy what they deem appropriate for your eyes and ears,” Mr Pavlovski wrote on Tuesday.

“Australia is officially NOT a free country.”

…Read more: https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/utter-contempt-elon-musk-goes-to-war-with-australian-government-over-violent-content/news-story/9226d2bc38a90504ba1c82e97b9711fd

The following is an Aussie federal senator demanding Musk be jailed for ignoring Australia’s demands for censorship;

Pro-censorship Aussie news outlets are attempting to use appeals to Nationalism to whip up opposition to Musk’s attempts to defend Australia’s freedom to view uncensored news.

Big victim or big mouth? Time for Australia to put Elon Musk in his place

David Crowe
April 23, 2024 — 7.45pm

Elon Musk’s legal team revealed a curious problem for the billionaire when they told an Australian court on Monday night that they could not get legal instructions because it was 2am on Sunday at their client’s American headquarters.

The remark was revealing because Musk’s social media platform, X, has been operating in Australia for more than a decade, collecting whatever revenue it can make, but now lacks a local office to make the big calls on urgent requests to take down violent posts.

…

Federal Court judge Geoffrey Kennett ruled against X on Monday night, but another hearing is due soon and a final decision is yet to be made. So far, federal eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has gained the injunction she wanted to force the company to act.

…

The legal argument is full of technical questions, such as the way virtual private networks allow people to dig under the barbed wire that countries try to install at their online borders. The VPN is a wonderful invention for dissidents evading dictators in some countries, just as it helps drug-runners dodge police in others. It blurs the idea of national borders.

Watch out, however, for any argument that says Australia should not dictate terms to the social media giants because that’s what China does. That is classic false equivalence. The eSafety Commissioner is acting with the authority of a federal law passed by a parliament that reflects the will of a free people in a democracy.

…Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/big-victim-or-big-mouth-time-for-australia-to-put-elon-musk-in-his-place-20240423-p5fm01.html

I’m not sure why “acting with the authority of a federal law passed by … a democracy” makes censorship OK. If every act of a democratically elected parliament is acceptable, would it also be acceptable for an elected parliament to pass a law abolishing all future elections? Would establishment journalists like David Crowe then write an article explaining that the abolition of elections was legitimate, because the politicians who abolished future elections were elected by the people?

You have to draw the line somewhere. A free press, unfettered access to news, is as much a pillar of democracy as holding elections. Would voters choosing politicians based on biased and heavily censored access to news, having their decisions fed to them by one sided media content, with opposition silenced by a government managed news cartel, be any less of a tyranny than a state which completely abolished elections?

Violent content is the wedge issue politicians are using to attempt to strip the right of Australians to view uncensored news, but other issues such as climate skepticism are likely also in the sights of politicians, under their blanket war against “disinformation”. Of course, politicians have written an exception for themselves into the new laws – if a news item is an official communique from the Australian Government, it is explicitly excluded from being considered as possible disinformation.

What can Australians do about this Orwellian nightmare? Voting for politicians who oppose this kind of censorship is the obvious solution, but most Aussies simply aren’t aware of the danger. With the exception of courageous conscientious objectors, all the mainstream political parties in Australia appear to support a significant increase in censorship. Political parties like One Nation, which consistently oppose prosecuting people for telling the truth, are routinely vilified by the establishment press.

Did I mention the establishment press also has some protection against these new disinformation laws, providing they behave? Of course, if the Aussie government no longer recognises a news outlet as a professional news organisation, they might struggle to remain protected under the misinformation laws.

One option which is not currently illegal to my knowledge is downloading tools which allow circumvention of any censorship. One such tool is the TOR Browser.

TOR makes it very clear where they stand on internet censorship – from the TOR about page: “all of the people who have been involved in Tor are united by a common belief: internet users should have private access to an uncensored web.“

The TOR project was created to allow mainland Chinese and other oppressed peoples circumvent harsh national censorship policies, by disguising the internet route to censored site, using relay stations provided by volunteers.

TOR takes advantage of the fact that it is impossible to conduct commerce on the internet without encrypted communications. But that encryption which makes e-commerce possible also makes it possible to disguise which website you are visiting, with the help of relay stations outside the national firewall, provided by volunteers who support the TOR network.

Obviously use at your own risk – no system is 100% safe. And when it becomes clear that corporate VPNs and tools like TOR have turned the Aussie Government’s attempt to crack down on internet freedom into an embarrassing political failure, they may double down, and make a serious effort to outlaw attempts to circumvent their censorship laws.

Until today, I thought of TOR as a tool only people living under Communist tyrannies need, not as a tool myself or other Aussies might need to use, to gain uncensored access to the Internet. But I guess that is the risk you run living in a nation which does not provide a constitutional guarantee of free speech. What is not guaranteed might one day be taken away from you. And even that which is guaranteed must be defended, by electing politicians who regard upholding and defending the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution as a sacred trust.