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PGTS Humble BlogThread: Internet Freedom/Filtering |
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Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger |
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Internet Filter - Full Back-flip And Pike? |
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Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:14:29 +1100On the 9th of November, Stephen Conroy announced that the Australian government would abandon it's plans for an Internet Filter. There was considerable rejoicing amongst web libertarians ... Loud (though brief) crowing from the opposition ... And so, the whole mis-begotten venture, having struck the cold hard iceberg of ISP resistance seems about to sink into the depths of the news archives ... Or is it? |
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According to transcripts from ABC radio, Senator Conroy said:
We've reached agreement with all of the telco service providers that they will block the worst of the worst - the child abuse pornography material that's available on the public internet ...
Police have issued notices to a whole range of companies, and the few remaining companies that make up about 10 per cent will (soon) start receiving notices ...
In some ways this is encouraging in other ways it is laziness ... The Interpol blacklist was probably one of the sources of the original ACMA black list that was so widely touted by Senator Conroy as a "pilot study". The list was flawed, inconsistent and out-of-date when it was revealed by Wikileaks ... Although many of the flaws may have been due to ACMAs "additions" ... It is difficult to believe that it has improved considerably, since then. However, falling back to the default position does represent a significant back-down from the more wide-ranging grandiose scheme as outlined at the beginning of 2010 ... Perhaps a back-flip?
Although the Internet Filter might be going out with a whimper rather than a bang, your humble blogger is now faced with a quandary, dear reader, because if the idea does wither and die, he no longer has a reason to exist! But rather than sink out of sight like the unworkable, problematic and (soon to be?) defunct Internet Filter proposal, your humble blogger might live on, and continue to give you the benefit of his musing about Microsoft, Google and the attempts by some misguided politicians and bureaucrats to control the Internet ... For the time being, and for posterity, dear reader, your blogger has summarised his humble scribblings on the Australian Internet Filter, below:
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January 2008: When your humble blogger heard of the proposal to build The Great Firewall Of Oz, he was at first bemused ... Then annoyed. Eventually rousing himself from his torpor, after being distracted with the conservative definition of sarcasm, yours humbly joined the fray and penned: You Just Can't Keep a Bad Idea Down. ... And the related entry: Who needs a policy? ... And eventually resolved to inject a little humility into his online ramblings.
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November 2008: Your humble blogger briefly summarised the many objections to the Internet Filter in this blog post.
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March 2009: With considerable trepidation, your blogger tried searching for child pornography on the web. The results were summarised in a blog post titled: Conroy's Clean Feed. The title suggests that your blogger was now playing the man rather than ball ... To which your blogger must plead guilty as charged ... Note: now that Senator Conroy is no longer burdened with the heavy lead weight dud "Internet Filter " policy in his saddle bags, his ride might be smoother. Around the same time there was a disturbing new development during the ACMA Blacklist Fiasco, when the Communications Authority attempted to black list Wikileaks for leaking the ACMA black list (some of which was probably the Interpol black list) ... It became apparent that if the filter ever did work, ACMA would probably use it for political purposes ... Or at the very least cover up evidence of their own incompetence.
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May 2009: After Senator Conroy told a senate estimates committee that the scheme could become voluntary, your blogger wondered how it could possibly be a Voluntary Mandatory Filter? ... And speculated that it might be preparation for a back-flip.
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December 2009: However, rather than a back-flip the manoeuvre began to resemble ten somersets on solid ground ... The minister for Communications and Broadband declared: Internet Filters were a success! - But for whom?
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February 2010: Your humble blogger began to speculate about The Credibility Gap, and whether or not this might become an election issue.
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May 2010: The Internet Filter was being examined by mainstream media programs such as "Four Corners". If it continued until the election campaign, could the Internet Filter become a wedge issue?
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July 2010: The Labor party under-went a major re-organisation. Australia had their first female prime minister. However as far as the Internet Filter went, she was still singing The Same Old Song.
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August 2010: Your blogger thought he felt an Election coming on, and tried to summarise the issues for IT and communications.
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September 2010: We all knew who the winner was. -- Or did we? There were hopeful signs that the Liberal party had A New Approach To Communications.
Now if it seems that your humble blogger is gloating, dear reader, let him assure you that he is gloating with a deep and abiding sense of humility.
And if your blogger could once again venture his own humble opinion ... That if someone had evidence of child abuse ... It would seem a far better use of public resources to identify and arrest the few perpetrators foolish enough to display evidence of their crimes and to prevail upon hosting providers to provide information and/or take down such websites rather than attempt to coerce all ISPs in the world to block transmission of those websites (even though they are small in number).
The crunch will come when and if the government tries to force all ISPs to agree to block any list of sites, no matter how small, using only notices from the Federal police. Because there is no existing framework for this, and it would almost certainly require new legislation ... ISPs would be well within their rights to insist that they do not host the sites and are not responsible for the content. In fact agreeing to block them may even be a tacit admission that they are responsible for the content and could become some form of "precedent".