From WikiLeaks

May 27, 2009

WIKILEAKS EDITORIAL

The Australian government told a Senate estimates hearing this week that less than 32% of the country's secret internet censorship list is related to underage images.

During the hearing, the government also stated that the WikiLeaks publication of the full list in March has now been officially referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) "blacklist" is slated to form the backbone of a national, mandatory, internet censorship system.

ACMA admitted that:

A mere 32% of the secret censorship list is related to a category covering potentially sexually provocative images of persons appearing to be under the age of 18, pages with links to these images or other "child abuse" information. The list is claimed, by the government, to be for tackling child pornography.

After an unusual delay, the Australian government have now officially referred the publication of the list to the Australian Federal Police. It is alleged that WikiLeaks' release of the censorship list is illegal under Australian law.

Subsequent to revelations by WikiLeaks that the secret list contained many harmless or political sites (including WikiLeaks itself) around 150 have been removed from the list. At the time ACMA admitted the list held over 1100 URLs. ACMA now claims the censorship list has 977 URLs.

In light of the Senate testimony, it is worth repeating what WikiLeaks stated when it released the censorship list on the 18th of March, 2009:

"While WikiLeaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater. Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of upto $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist — a list the government hopes to expand into a giant national censorship machine.

History shows that secret censorship systems, whatever their original intent, are invariably corrupted into anti-democratic behavior.

This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring WikiLeaks. We were not notified by ACMA.

In December last year we released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand. Of the sites censored in 2008, 1,203 sites were classified as "lese majeste" — criticizing the Royal family. Like Australia, the Thai censorship system was originally pushed to be a mechanism to prevent the child pornography.

Research shows that while such blacklists are dangerous to "above ground" activities such as political discourse, they have little effect on the production of child pornography, and by diverting resources and attention from traditional policing actions, may even be counter-productive. For a fascinating insider's account, see "An insight into child porn".

In January 2009, the Thai system was used to censor Australian reportage about the imprisonment of Harry Nicolaides, an Australian writer, who wrote a novel containing a single paragraph deemed to be critical of the Thai Monarchy.

Most of the sites on the Australian list have no obvious connection to child pornography. Some have changed owners while others were clearly always about other subjects."

Children depend, even more than their parents, on the quality and viability of government. Corruption of those traditions which keep government honest and accountable - public oversight, natural justice, and protection from state censorship - is not just an affront to Enlightenment ideals, but an assault on the interests of children.

The full Senate transcript follows:









Australian Parliament Hansard (transcript) for 25 May 2009—Senate Estimates Committee

ACMA - Australian Communications and Media Authority

AFP - Australian Federal Police

Ms O’Loughlin - speaking for ACMA

Senator Conroy - Government minister responsible for ACMA

Senator BIRMINGHAM —Can you tell me how many sites are currently on the ACMA blacklist?





Ms O’Loughlin —At 30 April ACMA’s blacklist contained 977 URLs.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —How does that stand against where ACMA was over the past six to 12 months?





Ms O’Loughlin —That is a lower number than has been the case in the last six to 12 months. As part of our normal processes, we go through a regular process of updating the URL list to get rid of URLs that are no longer there. We have done a recent review of that, and the current list is 977.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Where do you stand with the international agreements at present and accessing and sourcing sites from other bodies and agencies?





Ms O’Loughlin —We have been in conversation, as you know, with the Internet Watch Foundation and colleagues in the US. At this stage we are looking at what processes need to be put in place for those lists to be used, given that they are developed under different laws than in Australia. Also, there are some technical amendments that need to be made to the industry code of practice to allow those to flow through to industry. I would have to say that it is still a work in progress. We have not added anything to the blacklist.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —What is the time line that you see for achieving those technical amendments?





Ms O’Loughlin —We will be working on it over the coming months.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —One of the government’s policy commitments was to ensure the ACMA blacklist is more comprehensive. I am assuming this is the key means by which that is being achieved.





Ms O’Loughlin —There are a couple of means. We also want to concentrate on raising public awareness of the capacity for the public to complain to us about material that they see online. Obviously, the more things that we are looking at that come to us in the complaints mechanisms available to us the more we can make sure that the blacklist is reflecting community concern.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —What steps are being taken to raise public awareness?





Ms O’Loughlin —Some of the work that we are doing on the cybersafety programs goes to that as well, in making sure that people not only know the benefits of technology and some of the risks that are out there, but also what they can do if they find things online that concern them, and one of those is to come to us.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —With respect to all of the courses, lessons and teachings that you were discussing with Senator Wortley before, is one of the end options, if you find inappropriate content, to contact ACMA?





Ms O’Loughlin —Yes. Under the legislation we have that role.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Is it conveyed under all of those teachings, courses and so on?





Ms O’Loughlin —Yes. We include it on our website as well.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Do you include your website as a link for people to get more information and so on?





Ms O’Loughlin —Yes.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Where have you gone in terms of investigating the apparent or alleged leaking of the blacklist?





Ms O’Loughlin —In what regard?





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Referring to the apparent posting on the Wikileaks website of the blacklist back in March this year?





Mr Chapman —We have referred that matter to the AFP.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Have you been provided with any recent updates in terms of their investigations?





Mr Chapman —No. It was a relatively recent referral. I would not expect to hear for a month or two.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Does ‘relatively recent’ mean that the offence was relatively recent in that it was March or ‘relatively recent’ in that it was only referred in the last couple of weeks?





Mr Chapman —It was referred in the last couple of weeks.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Why was there a delay between the March leaking of the list and the referral to the AFP?

Mr Chapman —I do not think there was any reason for it other than the process that we went through in going through the right protocols and getting the paperwork together and satisfying ourselves it was a matter worthy of referral. We have referred it. It is with the AFP.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —If the AFP had advised you of certain paperwork that you had to get together or something like that then that would make sense, but it seems unusual that you would take a couple of months to think about it and discuss it internally. Did you conduct any internal investigations into it yourselves in that time or were any other steps taken by the ACMA in the time from March until a week or two ago when it was referred to the AFP?





Ms O’Loughlin —It was just part of the process. As you will remember, the discussion around the so-called leak at the time really came down to the hacking of a filter from a particular filter provider, so we did not feel there was any concern in regard to the security of our list as was passed on to filter providers, but there was certainly an issue in regard to how those filter providers were keeping information from us within their own walls. There is a process to go through, as the chair said, around the AFP. We had significant information to pull together, which we have done. We have provided that to the AFP.

In terms of what we have done, obviously the capacity for someone to obtain any list out of the filter is of concern to us. We have written to the 13 Family Friendly filter providers under the IIA scheme to whom we provide that list. We asked them to provide information back to the ACMA with regard to any security vulnerabilities. We stopped distributing the list at that point in time until we were satisfied that we had information from those vendors as to what they would put in place. We have received a number of substantive responses to those. Our IT security staff have reviewed those responses to give us some greater confidence that those filters will not be able to be reverse engineered.

We are currently seeking some information from a couple of the vendors. We are now more confident that the list is being provided in a way and kept more secure within those filter providers than previously. We have distributed the revised list again in the last week, but only to the vendors who have provided us with information that has satisfied us. We also have asked the IIA to follow up vendors who have yet to respond, and we are also asking them to include new security criteria in their testing of filters that they accredit under the Family Friendly filter scheme.

Senator BIRMINGHAM —Of the 13 vendors, how many have responded?





Ms O’Loughlin —Eight.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Eight have responded and five have not?





Ms O’Loughlin —That is right.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —How often would you normally provide updates to the blacklist?





Ms O’Loughlin —Weekly.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Normally on a weekly basis?





Ms O’Loughlin —That is correct.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —Have they been suspended from March right through until about a week ago?





Ms O’Loughlin —Yes.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —All of that sounds like quite reasonable internal processes. I am still unclear as to what the process was that you went through internally between discovering the leak and deciding that it was worthy of an AFP referral.





Ms O’Loughlin —We were gathering information during that period. As you will remember at the time, there was a rolling program of information that came out publicly over that first week in online forums and discussion forums. We started off very much concerned about our internal process, but then as more information came to us it became very clear that where the alleged list was acquired from was actually from the filter itself, so we focused very much on both fixing the immediate problems for ourselves in terms of making sure that we were providing lists to secure filters and also at the same time dealing with a large number of complaints and looking at the matter of the AFP. We had a number of things running at the same time. The AFP paperwork required us to provide quite a lot of documentation, which we have done. It was really just a matter of getting the referral together.





Senator MINCHIN —Have you satisfied yourselves that it cannot possibly have come from within ACMA and therefore must have come from someone to whom you provided the list? Is that what you are telling us?





Mr Chapman —That is the essence of it, yes.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —When did you first make contact with the AFP about this leak?





Ms O’Loughlin —It was around a month ago. We are talking about a formal referral. We have been in discussions with the AFP, but we have now formally referred.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —I am just getting a clearer picture of the timeline of events. You said in response to the last answer that you had gone through the paperwork that was required for the AFP’s referral. It now makes sense that you had spoken to them around a month ago, which then gets us to being only a few weeks or so at most after the leak before that first contact occurred and then the processes of actually putting together the formal referral. Do the Family Friendly providers range in size in terms of ISPs and who they provide to?





Ms O’Loughlin —They are filter providers.

Senator BIRMINGHAM —Of course. I understand the difference there.





Senator MINCHIN —They are the only people who have received the list?





Ms O’Loughlin —They are the only people we provide it to at this point, yes. The current scheme only requires us to provide to Family Friendly filter providers.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —That is quite a mouthful.





Ms O’Loughlin —It is.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —You are doing very well. What reasons do you have, if any, for why the five have not yet responded?





Ms O’Loughlin —I do not have those reasons with me at the moment.





Ms Wright —It is fair to say that one or two have said prior to anything that happened this year for their own reasons their business had gone in a different direction and they were not utilising the list so they would not be coming back to us with a substantive reply.

In other cases we have followed up on a number of occasions and we have found that within those companies there have been changes of personnel. Should they come back to us and satisfy the security issues we would consider releasing the lists to those parties. In fact, I noted that one of the stragglers had contacted us today and there had been a change of personnel recently in that company. There are those sorts of issues, but we also thought we had reached the stage where it would be appropriate with IIA to be following up with the remainder because they are a party to that scheme under the internet industry’s own code.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —How is the list of URLs conveyed to the providers?





Ms Wright —When we provide a full list we have always encrypted it. We have taken this opportunity to look at our encryption measures and we have raised the bar in that regard.





Senator BIRMINGHAM —It is encrypted and then provided electronically?





Ms Wright —It has a password. If we make a notification they have to come back to us. There is a dialogue active with them before they can receive the list.





Senator MINCHIN —You would remember at the February hearings we raised the issue of the anti-abortion material that had been blacklisted, for want of a better word. I think you said that it had been added to the list in January. I am advised by my staff that through the Parliament House filtering system, Websense—I do not know whether they are one of your 13 Family Friendly providers—you can still look at this material despite the filtering system.





Senator Conroy —I think you are proving my point.





Senator MINCHIN —Am I?





Senator Conroy —Yes.





Senator MINCHIN —I am happy to do that if that is what I am doing.





Ms O’Loughlin —We could take that on notice.





Senator MINCHIN —On the face of it, is the Websense filter one of the 13 that receives the list? If it is, why can you still see this material?





Ms O’Loughlin —We would have to take that on notice. I would be interested to know whether it is the specific page.





Senator MINCHIN —That is what I am told, yes.





Ms O’Loughlin —If it is the specific page we could take on notice whether Websense is one of the Family Friendly filter providers or whether there are any other arrangements.





Senator MINCHIN —Presumably it should not take this long for it to be filtered out if they were one of your providers.





Ms O’Loughlin —No, it should not. Our expectation is that those new lists are provided—





Senator Conroy —It is only if the filter was downloaded and put on to the Senate system. That is what this process currently is.





Mr Chapman —Just for clarification, are you talking about the specific page off the website?





Senator MINCHIN —Yes. You sought to clarify what I was saying, not unreasonably, last time. It was not the whole site. It was just part of the site.





Mr Chapman —We will have to take that on notice. Our understanding is that it is one of the Family Friendly filter providers.





Senator MINCHIN —We are a very family friendly place here, of course, but I would be interested to know about that. You might do your own check as to whether what I am advised is, in fact, correct and, if so, why.





Ms O’Loughlin —We will.





Senator Conroy —Were your staff over 18?





Senator MINCHIN —I like to keep them pure. I do not like them seeing sordid things.





CHAIR —Thank you. Are there any further questions on this issue?





Senator LUDLAM —Yes, I have a couple.





CHAIR —Senator Ludlam.

Senator LUDLAM —I wanted to bring up the issue of the trial that is underway at the moment into expanding the scope of filtering. Is ACMA involved in any regard or should I direct these questions to the department a bit later in the evening?

Ms O’Loughlin —To the department.





Senator LUDLAM —So, you have no formal involvement?





Ms O’Loughlin —That is correct.





Senator Conroy —Other than supplying the list.





Ms O’Loughlin —Other than supplying our current blacklist to people involved in the trial.





Senator LUDLAM —I would like to come back to where we began. You said there were 977 sites. Is that right?





Ms O’Loughlin —That is correct.





Senator LUDLAM —That is down a little bit. Do you track and publish the number of referrals? I understand that ACMA does not go out looking for this material. You are a complaints based system.





Ms O’Loughlin —That is correct.





Senator LUDLAM —Are complaints up, down or sideways since the last time we discussed this?





Ms O’Loughlin —Our complaints have generally been up.





Ms Wright —In the last 18 months the rate of complaint to us has increased by 90 per cent.





Ms O’Loughlin —For example, in 2006-07 we received 602 complaints to us that were legitimate complaints under the scheme. As I mentioned earlier, between July 2008 and April 2009 we received 1,002.





Senator LUDLAM —Do you have any way of knowing whether there is more of this material proliferating out there or are people just being more vigilant in seeking it out and more aware of your processes for reporting it?





Ms O’Loughlin —I would probably hazard a guess that people are more aware that they can complain to us.





Senator LUDLAM —I just had a quick look on your website and it is actually hidden two or three levels deep. It is obviously people who care a fair bit. Are there organisations, in particular, that are making it their business to find and report this material or are you getting complaints from a range of individuals?





Ms O’Loughlin —In one of the questions on notice that we provided we stated there are quite a number of complaints provided directly to us by law enforcement agencies and child protection agencies. I do not have the question on notice in front of me at the moment. They are probably the only groups we get multiple complaints from.





Senator LUDLAM —Can you provide a rough proportion? I am trying to get a sense of whether it is mostly referrals from people who happen to find this stuff.





Ms O’Loughlin —During the period 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008 ACMA received 1,122 complaints about online content. Forty-six complaints were anonymous and did not contain contact details. Because they are lodged online we do get anonymous complaints. Complaints containing contact details in the form of a contact email address came from 740 unique email addresses. Of 469 complaints received from people or organisations who lodged more than one complaint, around one quarter of those complaints were from law enforcement agencies, one-eighth were from child protection bodies, including overseas hotlines, and the remainder were from individuals who did not identify themselves as representing an organisation.





Senator LUDLAM —Are you quoting a response to a question on notice or is that from an annual report?





Ms O’Loughlin —That is from a question on notice.





Senator LUDLAM —Thank you very much. We discussed before that there is a lot of churn in these sites and that they do not have a very long residence time. Of the 977, how many would have been there 12 months ago or does the list turn over completely?





Ms Wright —In overview, what we understand from a search done by IWF that would reflect experience is that, should the material be child sexual abuse or child pornography, as it is often referred to, that would turn over within a two-month period. When we review our list we would find that the most movement has been for child sexual abuse material. Some of the other material does not move as quickly.





Senator LUDLAM —That makes sense. Is it still the case that just a little under half of the list is child sexual abuse related material? I think that is what you quoted us in October or February.





Ms O’Loughlin —With the current breakdown at 30 April, 51 per cent were refused classification and around 32 per cent were child abuse material and child sexual abuse material.





Senator LUDLAM —Is that of the entire list?





Ms O’Loughlin —That is right.





Senator LUDLAM —That is down quite a bit on 49 per cent, which is what I think you quoted to us last time.





Ms O’Loughlin —As Ms Wright pointed out, you do find that turns over quite a bit.





Senator LUDLAM —It jumps around a lot?





Ms O’Loughlin —Yes, it jumps around a lot.





Senator LUDLAM —I am obviously very concerned, as with many commentators, that there are currently 13 copies of the blacklist out there, plus the ISPs who are currently participating in the trial who have signed non-disclosure agreements of some sort. How many ISPs will you have to distribute this list to if and when every ISP in the country is required to have a copy of the list?





Ms O’Loughlin —That will be a matter for the government.





Senator LUDLAM —It has got to be for everybody. Do you have a rough idea how many ISPs there are in the country?





Senator Conroy —No. There are different methods of applying the policy. One of the methods that has recently been tested overseas—I believe it might be New Zealand—has found a way to do it without distributing the lists.





Senator LUDLAM —Maybe we will get to that a little bit later.





Senator Conroy —I am not an expert in it. I just saw a reference to it recently, but I think it is New Zealand.





Senator LUDLAM —I might come back to this when we have the officers of the department at the table. Encryption has been known for years, probably since the internet has existed, as a bit of an arms race. We figure out a better form of encryption and then people figure out how to hack it and how to distribute it.





Senator Conroy —If people want to spend their time unencrypting titles of child pornography and child sexual abuse images that is a comment on them rather than the broader community.





Senator LUDLAM —I was not making a comment on that at all. It is just that we have found that within a couple of years of such a list existing it has been hacked and distributed. Are you concerned that this sort of behaviour is likely to continue into the future?





Senator Conroy —As I have said publicly on a number of occasions, if people believe it is a victory for free speech to help disseminate a list of child pornography sites that is a sad reflection on the individual.





Senator LUDLAM —You know that is not where I am going. That is not the question that I asked.





Senator Conroy —It is not something that I support and it will not affect government policy.





Senator LUDLAM —I will take that as a no, that it does not concern you that this sort of activity—





Senator Conroy —I just said it will not affect government policy. You do not have to take it as anything. I actually said it.





Senator LUDLAM —That is a no. I would like to talk about the blacklist, because obviously some of the list that was leaked was not necessarily—





Senator Conroy —Is this the first leak that was claimed to be the list or the second leak, which was more of a closer approximation?





Senator LUDLAM —I will go to either of them because no-one has any way of checking how closely they matched the original, having not seen them. What is the process of getting off the blacklist for somebody who finds themselves on there? Can you appeal your appearance on there or is a site notified? There are a couple of examples that have been used.

Senator Conroy —This is the blacklist that has existed for nine years that you are talking about?





Senator LUDLAM —That is correct, yes. What is the process for getting off that if you are put on it inadvertently or if somebody has hosted material on your website that you were not even sure was there?





Ms O’Loughlin —Generally, if somebody came to us in the first instance to say that they felt that they were on the blacklist for a reason that they did not understand then, of course, we would look at the matter.





Senator LUDLAM —How would they know that they are there? The list is secret and we are not meant to know what is on the list.





Ms O’Loughlin —That is an issue. There are two parts to the scheme itself. Firstly, for those sites we find prohibited located in Australia, their hosts receive a takedown notice, so they are very much aware.





Senator LUDLAM —That is right. It is the overseas hosts.





Ms O’Loughlin —It is the overseas hosted. Very rarely do we receive any correspondence. In fact, it is quite often difficult to find overseas hosts and overseas providers. There is no requirement under the current act for us to notify overseas based providers when we do add them to the filter. The concern over the last few months has been some websites when we have investigated them that have had links through to child abuse images which have been placed there. Their sites have been hacked. They have been placed there by other parties. A couple of months later, in most of those cases, you will find that they came off our blacklist.

In those circumstances it is quite difficult for us because often, particularly if it is child sexual abuse imagery, we have referred those to law enforcement agencies and it is really incumbent on us not to do anything with those sites until law enforcement agencies have finished their investigations. It is quite a difficult area for us. We try to handle it by this regular review that we do of the URLs to make sure that if those links no longer provide access to prohibited content we remove them as quickly as we can.





Senator LUDLAM —I will quote the examples that we were aware of earlier this year, MD Web Hosting, a Dental Distinction website and the Maroochydore boarding kennel site. ACMA was basically convinced that the sites had been hacked by criminals and that the material had been put there that—





Ms O’Loughlin —All we are saying is that when we investigated those sites—remembering that we only look at specific URLs, specific pages, not the whole domain—they contained links to child sexual abuse material, so they were added to the black list at that time. As we have previously stated, they were also removed from the black list when we reviewed that black list a couple of months later.





Senator LUDLAM —Is it a coincidence that those reviews took place after the list or some form of it had been made public and for what period of time were they removed—





Ms O’Loughlin —They were removed in May 2008.





Senator LUDLAM —Was what was floating around in the release later an old list that was not reflective of your current list?

Ms O’Loughlin —I think we have been clear before that some of the material that appeared on that list was not—





Senator LUDLAM —You cannot be held responsible for what people may have done with it once it was leaked.





Senator Conroy —The Broadcasting Services Act sets out the regime which requires ACMA to assess online content. It also sets out the mechanism for the ACMA black list, and this has been in place since 2000, as I have already mentioned. The government is considering options for greater transparency and accountability in respect of the black list. It is not possible to publish the list as it contains links to child sexual abuse material and this would be a criminal offence. We are considering options which could include a regular review of the list by a panel of eminent persons or a parliamentary committee or a review of all URLs by the classification board. These issues will be considered along with the pilot trial on filtering before the government makes final decisions on the implementation of the new policy.





Senator LUDLAM —Can you tell us what you are reading from there? Is that a press release or is it an internal document?





Senator Conroy —No, it was my notes.





Senator LUDLAM —Thank you for that.





Ms O’Loughlin —If I can just add also that any person who is adversely affected by our classification decision can apply for review of the decision to the Commonwealth Ombudsman or the Federal Court obviously. Where we have gone to the classification board for an assessment they can also go to the review process through the classification review panel board as well.





Senator LUDLAM —I guess I would go back to where I started with this, which is that because the list is secret for the reasons that you have both outlined, certainly in the case of the examples that I just mentioned, they were not aware that their sites had been hacked until they read about it in the media. Because the list itself is secret your rights of appeal are a bit limited.





Senator Conroy —That is not quite right. I was on the Insight program with one of the gentlemen whose site had been hacked and he clearly knew well in advance of the recent publicity that this site had been hacked and in fact described on the program how he had had to change his ISP provider and redesign his site. He certainly seemed to have known in advance of the publicity from when the alleged list was published. That was certainly the impression I got. I am not sure whether you watched the program. Hopefully you have better things to do with your evenings—





Senator LUDLAM —No.





Senator Conroy —But that was certainly what I think he described or it was certainly the impression I got of what he described.





Senator LUDLAM —If I could just come back to you, Ms O’Loughlin, about the actioning of what you do? Under your act you are required to refer some of this material to law enforcement agencies. What is the split between the material that you track on your list hosted locally and hosted internationally?





Ms O’Loughlin —The list only includes those—





Senator LUDLAM —What I am interested to know is what proportion—

Ms O’Loughlin —The large proportion of things we investigate are overseas hosted content.





Senator LUDLAM —The overwhelming proportion?





Ms O’Loughlin —The overwhelming proportion.





Ms Wright —If I could add to that, as to the URL you referred to, Dental Distinction, I think we mentioned whilst it was taken off our list in May, that web page and those from a number of other Australian businesses were all hijacked, if you like, at much the same time. There were about half-a-dozen hijacked in January 2008. However, we were satisfied that the material that was being driven through those web pages was hosted overseas, so technically they met the requirement to be listed because they were hosted overseas even if they appeared to be hosted here. That was a phenomenon that happened in January 2008, so we had a handful of URLs that had been referred to that may have been on the list at that time in some form. As far as we are aware, that phenomenon of hijacking sites is really a compliment I think to the way Australia conducts itself that organised crime thought it would be able to fly under the radar by driving that material through Australian hosted sites because we have such a good reputation here. But we did work around this hijacking of sites with the Australian High Tech Crime Centre and with the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK and a lot of public attention was brought to that phenomenon around the world and that practice appears to be passe. As you asked how many URLs on our list would relate to Australian businesses, there were a handful at a particular point in time. That has now passed. We would understand that the list contains overseas hosted material, perhaps a little more transparently overseas hosted than in this case where it might have appeared there was an Australian presence.





Senator LUDLAM —But for the most part anything hosted locally is hit with a take-down notice long before it gets onto this list; is that right?





Ms O’Loughlin —Yes, it would go onto the list. It would be subject to a take-down notice. We have had over 7,000 complaints since the scheme commenced in 2000, and I would say the vast majority of that would be overseas hosted.





Senator LUDLAM —Minister, have the comments that you made before about proposed reviews of the way the list is set up and so on been subject to a public announcement or are we hearing about that for the first time?





Senator Conroy —No. I did not watch myself on SBS Insight after the program was taped because it was actually pre-recorded, whereas I understand it is normally live. But I think I indicated that on the Insight program. I say that not having watched the final cut, but certainly I indicated that in front of the audience and I am assuming it went to air. But I know they did cut some of the discussions.





Senator LUDLAM —Will the proposed measures that you outlined briefly for us before be subject to any form of consultation or are you just anticipating an announcement down the track?





Senator Conroy —No, I am happy to have suggestions on improved transparency. As I said, if we are moving from the current system to a new system which is more robust, I think it is a reasonable proposition to suggest that there could be more stringent accountability measures.