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Aussie officials target protest sites
11:13 Friday 4th October 2002
Reuters
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Anti-globalisation protestors are using the Web to illegally incite violence against the police, claim the authorities in Australia
State officials in Australia have applied for anti-WTO Web sites to be banned for allegedly promoting violence.
New South Wales police commissioner Michael Costa asked federal authorities to take the message boards offline because they carried suggestions for activists to bring baseball bats and marbles to protests during the November 14-15 mini-summit in Sydney.
"These people have gone too far," Costa said in a statement.
"They are telling protesters to arm themselves with baseball bats, sling shots, firecrackers, gas masks and marbles. They intend to harm police and police horses and put community safety at risk," he said.
Costa's submission, which is being investigated by the Australian Broadcasting Authority, has generated a heated online debate about censorship of the Internet in Australia.
Freedom of speech campaigners said on Friday the law that covers Internet content, which is aimed mainly at enforcing pornography statutes and comes under broadcast rules, mirroring the classification system used for films, is too broad.
The law allows for bans on information that "promotes, instructs or incites in matters of crime or violence".
"Just how (they) interpret it is extremely difficult to know because instructing crime could mean an article for locksmiths on how to mend locks," Irene Graham, executive director of Internet pressure group Electronic Frontiers Australia, told Reuters.
Sharon Trotter, manager of the content assessment section of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, insisted in an interview with Reuters on Friday that the "threshold is quite high".
The film classification board is expected to come back with its views on the message boards' content in about two weeks.
Costa's office said the sites included IndyMedia Melbourne, a vibrant community information and message board service favoured by activists and hosted outside Australia -- leaving any ban potentially ineffective.
WTO shopping list
In the run-up to the World Trade Organisation meeting in Sydney, which comes a year after member states launched a new round of trade talks in Doha, Qatar, a number of activist sites have received postings such as a "WTO Shopping List".
The list displays links to sites on how to make smoke bombs and flares, or body armour, and Web sites selling gas masks.
It also suggests good places to buy marbles to throw under police horses' hoofs, laser pointers and "funny string", and has links to downloadable files on weaponry and tactics appropriate to civil disturbances, and on how to counter police infiltration.
IndyMedia said the bulk of its content on the WTO, all posted by the public and did not call for "aggression against police".
It said violence at WTO meetings was "always" a product of out of control police, an allegation that protesters levied at police when clashes broke out at a World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne in 2000, in which 12 people were arrested.
November's WTO meeting in Sydney, Australia's largest city, is expected to bring together 25 countries, including the US and the EU.
Anti-WTO activists vigorously oppose the free-trade agenda promoted by rich countries because they do not believe it protects poor nations from exploitation by multinational firms.
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