This is a timely discussion given the article about religious freedom in Australia - has anyone been following Labor’s policy about mandatory internet filtering for all Australians?
The BBC ran a story on it here
Australia trials national net filters
Is the Rudd government about to erect a Great Firewall of Australia - introducing a form of internet censorship that will infringe upon the freedom of computer users to browse the worldwide web?
...the SMH has been covering it here, and Crikey here.
Finally, there’s also a blog called ‘Somebody think of the children!’ that’s following the issues too, eg Will your blog be banned in Australia?.
At first glance, some people probably think “If they want to filter out all the bad stuff, what’s the problem?”
Well, the problem is the “illegal” material hasn’t been defined, this isn’t a simple black list of ‘bad’ sites, it’s automated, draconian filtering the ISP’s are forced to perform on any and all content you’ve requested from the web. If the Government has the power to determine what is and isn’t let through at that level, it opens up a range of problems, especially if they’re lobbied by particular groups to filter things out.
The questions for us, for instance, are:
- Given anti-vilification laws, could religious content be deemed “illegal” and be filtered out? Could Sydneyanglicans.net be blocked as “illegal” if it carries material deemed at some point now or in the future as vilifying other religions? If it’s illegal in Vic say, and there isn’t state-based filtering (there wont be), will the govt be inclined to ban it nation wide?
- Given anti-discrimination laws, if Sydneyanglicans.net runs an article with the orthodox line on homosexuality, will that be deemed illegal, and the site blocked? You can imagine it wouldn’t be too hard for someone to lobby Labor via the Greens, for instance.
- If we have discussions here on things we’re opposed to (porn, say), or topical events (pedophiles involved with the church being prosecuted), or other issues (eg appropriate sex ed for kids, say), will those words be enough to trigger the filters to kick in? This is, as far as I understand it, actual filtering, not a simple blacklist as I mention, so the chance of false-positives is quite high.
And that’s not to mention the technical problems (slowing everyone’s internet down), the cost (tens of millions of dollars from the govt, and costs the ISP’s will have to pass on), and the fact that whatever filtering is imposed will probably be trivial to bypass.
It’s a terrible policy, and it’s particularly egregious that the minister responsible for it, Stephen Conroy, seems to have a habit of implying anyone opposed to it is pro-child pornography (as the Crikey article points out).
If the govt wants to blacklist child porn sites, which is done in some parts of Europe, then that’s one thing. The Minister likes to point them out as examples, but what the Govt is proposing goes far, *far* beyond that into very dangerous territory. It’s not a simple blacklist, it’s extremely draconian ISP-level filtering which you will not be able to opt out of. For the reasons outlined above, I think we should all be opposed to it.
It’s easy to take our freedom of speech for granted, but it’s quite worrying (in my view) that the Govt is proposing to interfere in such an extreme way in online communication.
