Australia – you know that country you keep hearing about implementing draconian measures – we’ll there at it again. This time the Australian government is attempting to legislate doxxing by outing online trolls who post comments that are disagreeable to the “official narrative”.
From Reuters:
Australia will introduce legislation to make social media giants provide details of users who post defamatory comments, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.
The government has been looking at the extent of the responsibility of platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, for defamatory material published on their sites and comes after the country’s highest court ruled that publishers can be held liable for public comments on online forums.
Quite rich coming from a country who has forced all ISPs to keep metadata records of customers for a minimum of two years, to be used by the police at request.
The Australian government is very familiar with suing it’s citizens who criticize the government so this will at least be in line with their recent actions and shouldn’t fool anyone preaching that parliament is just full of old politicians who are merely out of touch with the way the internet works.
Under this new government mandated doxxing legislation, if a user refuses to remove the content within a short period they will be asked to consent to release their personal details publicly. After the user refuses to consent, a court order can be made requiring their personal details to be released.
The Australian government intends to shut down free speech and criticism and any publisher or citizen doing so, may be sued into bankruptcy.
Remember in Australia to get a SIM card, whether prepaid or not, you need an ID. The next step in online censorship is the removal of anonymity through the use of internet passports, where users are only able to access the internet with real identities tied to their ID.
VPNs and Tor will continue to skyrocket in popularity as more countries pursue efforts to push digital IDs. New Zealand is moving forward with legislation to implement their National Digital ID program, while the UK is not too far behind them.
As Canada braces for similar authoritarian measures with the online harms bill, it looks like more Canadians will be getting acquainted with VPNs to browse the internet free from global tyranny.