Locking Down The Net
From GetUp
The Federal Government is going ahead with plans to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist.
Testing has been released on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Our children deserve better protection - and that won't be achieved by wasting millions on this deeply flawed system.
Despite opposition from all sides on the plan to filter the interent in Australia at IPS level, Senator Stephen Conroy and the Rudd Government still plan to go ahead. This is both disappointing, and a little unnerving. Not only is our government ignoring advice from leading industry professional on this matter, it is also ignoring mass disproval from the Australian public.
What is unnerving about all this though is what exactly will be filtered. The Government is planning to filter out content that it deems 'inappropriate' and 'unwanted'. Obviously sites focused around child pornography are big issue, and needs to addressed, but at what cost?
Refused Classification (or RC) is a broad category of content that includes not just child sexual abuse material but also socially and politically controversial material -- for example, educational content on safer drug use -- as well as the grey realms of material instructing in any crime, including politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia. This type of content may be unpleasant and unpalatable but we believe that government should not have the right to block information which can inform debate of controversial issues.
The Australian Google blog posted this earlier this morning, which sums up the dilema that Australians are now facing. Another side to this though is what may become 'inappropriate' in the future. We are at the start of an era where group action is easier to organise than ever before and public opinion can be voiced to the world in a matter of seconds. There is no current way for this to be easily silenced, and nor should their be, but I fear that laying such power in the hands of our government could lead to misuse, resulting in such voices and groups being blocked or cut off.
Another issue in all of this is one of responsibility. If protecting our children from the negative aspects of the internet is the main goal, as Senator Conroy states, then responsible parenting should be the first step. We do not stop all cars from driving to remove the chance of children getting run over, we teach them to use designated crossings and look both ways before crossing the road. We provide supervision. There are always going to be people who drive dangerously and break the law, but they are the ones who are, and should held accountable,
not the rest of the nation.
Yes the government should be doing something about child pornography and violent websites, but sacrificing our civil liberties in order to do so is not the answer.
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