AUSTRALIA–Labor’s controversial mandatory internet filter project is an attack on human rights, and Australians should beware of the project and other tyrannical government policies, free software luminary Richard Stallman has said in an interview ahead of a visit to Australia in October.

“Censorship is an attack on human rights. Australia already practices Internet censorship: it prohibits links to forbidden sites. Rudd was proposing to make this even worse by blocking access to those sites. If that plan is rejected, the existing censorship still stands between Australians and liberty,” Stallman said.

“The government also plans surveillance of Australians’ internet use, and is keeping the details secret to ‘avoid premature debate’,” he said.

“Has Australia taken China as its model?” he wondered. “Australians should stop being distracted by the minor issue of refugees that come from Asia, and start focusing on the real threat: tyrannical government policies that come from Asia.”

From Delimiter

“The Australian Labour government has two plans on the table which will involve censoring the world wide wibble. The first is a filtering plan which means that Australians will not see anything on the net that the government does not want them to see. The other is a top secret plan to snoop on Australians’ web surfing.

However, with an election which is too close to call, the last thing they want is to confirm that they are planning to bring in controls on the internet which even the Chinese have not tried.”

From TechEye.net.