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Why the Proposed Australian Internet Filter is an Outright Con

by Bill Hely on March 3, 2010 · 0 comments

Is the Internet censorship filter proposed by the Australian government really about protecting children, or is it just a politically motivated waste of money and resources?

I keep seeing in various magazines and newspaper articles, letters to the editor and suchlike, people declaring themselves in favor of a government mandated Internet filter implemented at the ISP level.

Invariably their position is that the government’s line of “protecting children” can only be a good thing.

Rather than condemn these people for their belief we should be striving to educate them. They either have no knowledge of the situation and are simply taking protection at face value or, more likely, they are amongst the many who have been conned by the the lies, obfuscation and misdirection that have emanated in a steady stream from the office of the Federal Communications Minister.

Many thousands of gullible people have fallen for a carefully woven and very intentionally devised fabrication.

It is neither commonsense nor logical to introduce an extremely expensive scheme that simply cannot provide the protection that is claimed for it, yet that brings with it many negatives. Every technically aware person in this country knows that to be the case, and thousands of them, from top-flight IT professionals on down, and from both sides of the political divide, have done their best to convince a pigheaded communications Minister of this fact.

The well-publicized shortcomings of the proposed filter are far from speculation. The results of the recent tests conducted by ISPs under the government’s direction revealed a very different picture to that which the communications minister and his spin doctors have put forth.

Consider also that every single participant in those tests (the ISPs themselves) acknowledged that bypassing the filter will be relatively simple.

In the early days only a few technically able Internet users will know how to bypass the filter. But in a very short space of time these techniques, which are trivially simple to implement, will become common knowledge and widely used.

Further, the tests themselves were a complete sham, as they did not assess real-world conditions in relation to bandwidth and traffic volumes. The government deliberately mandated that the tests be conducted at speeds below those available right now, and significantly below those to be available under the proposed National Broadband Network.

It is abundantly clear that this filtering plan is much more about politics and control than about child protection, and that it actually introduces a new danger of its own.

Thanks to Sen Conroy’s lies, half-truths and unsustainable promises parents, carers, teachers and all manner of people who have responsibility for children will be lulled into a belief that their charges are protected, while in reality that will be far from the truth.

Sen Conroy has precious little support for his plan from any significant community group — not even from most child protection agencies and religious organizations (so often the unrepresentative vocal minority), and certainly not from the technical intelligentsia.

So before you speak out in favor of this ridiculous filter on the grounds of “child protection”, please educate yourself to the real facts. Follow the links below for more information. Conroy is doing his best to hide the truth and wants you to ignore those facts that he can’t hide. Never forget that this man is a politician first and foremost, and the only “truth” he is bound by is that which serves his agenda.

Oh, and one final thought: Who do you think are going to be the first to run a Google search for terms like “bypass Internet filter”?

It’ll be the kids of course, and they’ll find all the instruction they need. Checkmate, Stephen Conroy.