The subject of todays article is one which is becoming increasingly frightening to myself and so it should to you as well. I am talking of course about freedom, privacy and equality when it comes to using the internet to request and send information.

Be it the content that we choose to view, the viewpoints we wish to present or even the skillsets and subjects which we choose to study it has always been my belief that it should be up to us as individuals what we choose to view or not view and put in place our own rules and “filters” should we not wish to view or access certain selections of content

We are all well aware of the many countries which attempt to censor the freedom of speech of its people be it speech expressed person to person, in the media or now over the internet and as such it is generally accepted that such countries filter and monitor the content going in and out in order to maintain a control over its people.

I am sure that we are all aware of the Great “Firewall” of china and the and the conditions that the people of China are subjected to whenever they connect out to the WWW. I have always found it barbaric and controlling and I was always thankful to live in a country where I was sure that such things could not occur.

If however like me you read any sort of international news you will now realise that this sort of thing is now coming into our own backyards under the guise of “protection” and “saving the children”. Allow me to point out just a few resources that you may find alarming should you live in the country who will next be affected by such nonsense.

Australia: http://nocleanfeed.com/

The Government is refusing to release concrete details on the plan. However, we know that ISP-level filtering has been ALP policy for some time and is being zealously pursued by the Minister. What we do know is this:

• The feed will be mandatory in all homes and schools across the country.¹
• The filter will censor material that is “harmful and inappropriate” for children.²
• The filter will require a massive expansion of the ACMA’s blacklist of prohibited content.³
• The filter will target legal as well as illegal material.⁴

What we don’t know is just as important.

• Will there be any way to opt out from the scheme?
• What age level is the country’s Internet to be made appropriate for? 15? 10? 5 years old?
• Who decides what material is “appropriate” for Australians to see?
• Who will maintain the blacklist of prohibited sites?
• How can sites mistakenly added to the list be removed?

There are a number of other articles floating around including a recent article that states Australians will NOT be able to opt out of this filtering which means that once it comes into effect the Government of the Australian people will be deciding what the nation can and can not view on the internet.

I have a number of friends who in the past have been most paranoid about the activities that they undertake online and go to great lengths to ensure that their identity was always kept private and I simply responded the same way everytime when asked why I did not and it was because I saw no real reason to doing so. More and more however when I see articles like this arising from around the world I come to the conclusion that the time is now to do something about my privacy and my right right to both freedom of expression and speech without allowing our Governments to dictate what we can and cannot say and what we can and cannot view.

Quite a large group of people would ask me what I have to hide to despise such monitoring and filtering. Their argument states that if I am doing nothing wrong then what do I have to hide? Going off that argument then I am sure you would have no issues at all with me filming you through your front windows while you shower or spend time with your family. I mean you have nothing to hide right?

In part two of this article I outline some simple steps that you can employ to get around such attempts to pervert your right to privacy and freedom of choice and I outline and give my impressions on a communitity which is attempting forge ahead in this area and offer you a space to do as you see fit without the fear of being censored or monitored.

I would ask that if you have an opinion on this article regardless of if you agree with it that you leave a comment below.

Alternatively you can discuss this on the forums:

http://snatchforums.net/index.php?topic=17.0

Sorry for the lack of updates as of late. I have been quite busy actually living my life and I find that I have less and less time these days to update even though I do have large ideas for the snatchbot.net

Further updates await so its off for now.

Yes I of course know that it has been quite some time since my last post. I find it quite difficult to raise the energy to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard as it would be in this case in order to actually create a post. That being the case I will try to keep this as simple as possible.

• The cibby entered the mechanics and has cost me 1381 dollars
• I am dating a beautiful woman that has completely stolen my heart
• I bought, attempted to sell and have ended up stuck with an EeePC
• I dont like the EeePC
• I bought a new XBOX360, GTA4 may possibly be the first good game I have played in a long time
• I did NOT get a loan for 13 000 dollars
• I dont like my grandfather practically living with me
• Working 21 days straight IS worth the money

I have actually started work on my new CMS and I hope to god to have it running soon. It takes me so long because I can never lock down a design that I like which makes it hard for me to build all the code around it. I am deeply shocked and offended at my continued use of wordpress.

I came across what I consider to be quite an interesting site upon my return home tonight. Now some of you may already be familiar with it if you read digg or gizmodo however I thought I would throw up a link and a quick description for those who may of missed it.

The site is called Payittome

It is being developed by a european man by the name of Renaud. The concept goes that you send in a picture and description of whatever latest high tech gadget that you really want, at this point selections are made at random from the items submitted and pasted up on the website.

It is the creators hope that these will then be seen by advertisers who are more then happy to purchase the product in return for advertising on the site.

I wont go into to much more detail so I suggest that you visit the page for more information:

http://www.payittome.com/

I figured it was again time for an update.

After finally going through the stats for the website it would appear that 90% of my visitors are americans that access the site via an RSS feed so hello to all my american freinds! On that same note I would assume that you should have better things to do then however around waiting for a post from my lazy arse.

I am making a new section for the site which will focus on game and game related reviews. This is due to the recent purchase of a Nintendo DS and a burning desire to get away from the bullshit most review sites tend to spew out.

I would of launced it already however I ran into a slight hitch. I was messing around with the wordpress code when I finally realised that it is crap as hell if you actually want to change anything. I then decided to rewrite my old PHP based CMS system to take care of the new section.

At this point I may end up actually starting it off with a new wordpress install and then switching to my CMS later seeing as how I can use the same tables to pull the data as wordpress does.

Also I have decided to add a FULL photo gallery. This is in repsponse to a random email asking me for some more photos so ensure that you check back in the next couple of days for that.

Well that is all for now, work in the morning.

Some of you that have arrived here may be wondering why it is now snatchbot.net in your browser instead of scriptkiddies.org so I suppose that I should explain that to begin with.

I had a misunderstanding with my previous host which resulted in me stupidly loseing my SQL tables for wordpress. Well I hear you saying, that explains the site but what about the domain name man!??

Well you you see the domain name itself is under an old MelbourneIT reseller account that I used to manage my domain names while employed in my previous position. Now, due to accounting issues with this reseller I am currently unable to redelegate the domain name to point to my current hosting.

Anyway I trust that you will all update your bookmarks and I hope that you do all continue to visit in the future.