THE GOVERNMENT OF AUSTRALIA PROPOSES TO CENSOR THE INTERNET

[sue]

Australia's Federal Government has announced it will proceed with
controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-commissioned
trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and
would not slow down the internet.

But critics, including the online users' lobby group Electronic
Frontiers Australia and the Greens communications spokesman Scott
Ludlam, said the trial results were not surprising and the policy was
still fundamentally flawed.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would
introduce legislation just before next year's elections to force ISPs to
block a blacklist of "refused classification" (RC) websites for all
Australian internet users.

The blacklist... would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism,
Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies...He
(Conroy) said about 15 western countries had encouraged or enforced
internet filtering, and there was no reason why Australians should not
have similar protection...


The fear is that well-meaning filtering slides into censorship, and
opens the door to blanket blocks on all manner of subjects deemed
disagreeable by governments. The twitterverse was predictably scathing.

One tweeter going by the handle "incorrect" wrote "This moronic
filtering proposed by Conroy should be referred to as 'the old Chinese
remedy"'. drunkenkoala tweeted that "for a democratic country this sure
does seem like china or iran". asphotos blasted "Chairman rudd you
communist" while om-henners mused "I have to wonder whether Stephen
Conroy read 1984 and thought 'I could totally do that"'. sunlightandsnow
pointed out that "there's definitely some stuff that could be classified
as violent porn, lots of rapes etc in the Bible ..."

This response to the the Australian Government's announcement yesterday
confirming plans to implement mandatory filtering by internet service
providers (ISPs) of certain categories of online material does not
suggest that the twitterati are pro-child pornography, partial to incest
and bestiality, or keen to incite violence. It does suggest that many
people think it is important to fight for openness and the free exchange
of ideas, qualities fundamental to the internet.

Part of the problem is that it is not just the worst-of-the-worst
material that would be blocked by the Government's proposed filtering
standards. Access could be denied to sites on which victims of sexual
abuse detail their experiences, sites that provide educational
information about drug use and academic sites that describe the
motivation and behaviour of terrorists.

Perhaps that's a price the Government is willing to pay in order to - as
its spinmeisters put it - "improve the safety of the internet for
families". But at what point does "filtering" undesirable content to
protect families become censorship that undermines free speech?

When the Chinese Government blocks citizen access to sites reporting the
events of Tiananmen Square in 1989 or the push to free Tibet from
Chinese control, is that filtering in the interest of national social
cohesion or political censorship and a denial of free speech?

The fear is that well-meaning filtering slides into censorship, and
opens the door to blanket blocks on all manner of subjects deemed
disagreeable by governments. In France the law bans search engines from
returning results that link to Holocaust-denial websites. Similarly, in
Germany, Google searches do not list sites promoting Nazism.

These are subtle examples of censorship compared to some countries. The
government of Ethiopia - which happens to own the country's only ISP -
blocks the websites of opposition bloggers and parties. In the United
Arab Emirates online communication is monitored and inflammatory remarks
can land you in gaol. Websites relating to women's rights and free
speech are blocked in Saudi Arabia. Burma has extensive restrictions to
cyberspace access (even though an estimated 1% of the population has
internet access) and in Cuba it is illegal for private individuals to
have any access to the internet.

You can see where the slippery slope leads. At what point, then, might
it be acceptable to "filter" contrary views on a delicate issue? A
hypothetical: what if it were government policy that climate change is
real, that it is caused in large part by human activity, and that no
action to combat climate change could have a calamitous effect on the
planet and threaten the existence of the human species (not to mention
family safety). Should that government block access to sites that
promote climate-change denial?

Blocking access to child pornography, incest, bestiality, incitement to
violence and so on is a no-brainer. Of course we want to limit exposure
to such heinous material. We might even be willing to trade off some
freedom of speech to ensure it.

But while it is hard to fault the intention, it is impossible to have
faith in the execution. Anyone with even a 101 understanding of
technology knows that there are ways to get around the kind of filtering
tools the Government is proposing. Virtual personal networks,
peer-to-peer sharing and other file-security systems are available to
anyone who wants to distribute illegal materials anonymously and
undetected. The bottom line is that the Government's plans to filter
refused classification content won't work anyway. Given this, is the
Government's mandatory filtering plan worth the effort and the hassle,
let alone the risk of creeping censorship? Have your say while you can.

[MikeWB]

It's funny how when Western leaders go to China they complain about China's civil rights policies and yet the West itself is moving closer to Chinese model than China's moving to Western model.