1st Aussie Gov Site Falls to Anonymous’ “Operation:Titstorm”

When Anonymous first sent out their press release yesterday announcing that they would be taking action on the Australian government over recent Internet censorship laws, many assumed that it would come in the form of a DDoS attack.

Most would have been right.

The group, which is targeting 10 sites on their priority list, have taken down the primary target, the Australian Parliament House website. The site has been up and down intermittently since going down several hours ago.

Another site on the list, that of Communications Minister and outspoken Internet censorship proponent Stephen Conroy, was down briefly as well.

UPDATE: Reports from Reddit.com comments indicate that several sites have been down throughout the last several hours.

“The impact of DOS attacks is frequently felt less by government agencies than by System Administrators, many of them SAGE-AU members, who are responsible for managing websites and servers,” the group said in a statement. “As one member commented after a previous DOS attack on Australian government servers, the result was to ‘waste the time of long-suffering System Administrators who had to stay back at work after hours to clean up the mess’.”

Below, you will find the video assumed to have been posted by the group as well as the text of a message they sent out yesterday.

Greetings Australian Government Officials, Members of Local and International Press, and the General Public. We are Anonymous.

Austrailia [sic] - 2/8/2010 - Over the past several years, we have maintained a close watch on the actions of the Australian Government with particular focus on its stance towards internet censorship.

Australia’s laws on internet censorship are already among the most restrictive in the western world. Their government filters more internet content than any other Parliamentary Democracy. For some elements within the Government, including Telecommunications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy, this still is not enough. Late in January of 2009 he proposed legislature that would lead to mandatory ISP filtering for all of Australia. The stated goal is to prevent Australia from viewing “illegal and unwanted content” on the internet.

Anonymous’ concern with this legislature is twofold.

First, the ambiguity of the term “unwanted content” is completely unacceptable. No government should have the right to refuse its citizens access to information solely because they perceive it to be “unwanted.” Indeed, the only possible interpretation of “unwanted content” is content that the government itself does not want to be seen.

More importantly, Anonymous does not approve of the steps already undertaken by the Australian Government to control what their populous sees. Claiming to be cracking down on “simulated child pornography,” many depictions of women with small breasts in pornography have been banned. Officials cannot claim that they believe the models in these movies are in fact underage, as the production the titles that have been affected are heavily regulated to ensure the age of the models. Instead they are relying on earlier ambiguous wording that allows pornography featuring models that “appear to be” under 18 years of age to be treated in the same manner as actual child pornography.

The repercussions of this censorship of a natural body type on the psyche of Australian women cannot be understated, but this is not Anonymous’ concern. The Australian Government will learn that one does not mess with our porn. No one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason.

We are Legion.
We do not Forgive.
We do not Forget

Expect us.