Australian Internet Censorship
Filed under: Blogging
Apparently Australia’s beloved Senator Conroy will be finally forced to answer to the public tomorrow (Tune on on ABC1 at 9:30PM). I posted a question and was reminded of how scary this whole affair is.
One person with views in direct opposition to the views of many, is allowed to make a decision for the many. How did we get to this? I personally have no idea. I’m not sure who represents me politically and how its possible for Conroy to impose something that nobody wants. Individuals and businesses and technology analysts alike are ringing all the warning bells in all the communication media of the country, and yet the government proceeds as if all is well.
There are all sorts of arguments against the filter floating around but the ones that concern its technical feasibility worry me. We should not be forced to defend our freedom of speech on the grounds that it just so happens that today its not technically achievable without a big nationwide drop in internet speeds. We should never have to defend ourselves by saying ‘we don’t have the hardware to do this’. Just saying ‘we don’t want this’ should be enough.
If I could question Conroy on national TV, I would ask these questions:
There are plenty of client-based internet filtering options available for those who want to use them. They cost nothing to the tax payer, they don’t enforce censorship on those who don’t want it, they do not put strain on our already weak broadband networks. Why not promote those? If they have failed in some regard, why would an ISP-wide implementation succeed?
The filter’s purpose is supposedly to prevent the distribution of child pornography. How can this be justified when the leaked blacklist was only half made up by child porn sites. Furthermore child porn is mostly trafficked over peer to peer networks, trusted networks, or dark-nets. How is the filter supposed to be effective when it can handle none of those?
Why is the blacklist secret? How can someone be fined by linking sites of the blacklist if they have no way of knowing what those sites are?
What is to prevent this or future governments for using the filter to censor political criticism or any views they do not agree with, especially if the blacklist is kept secret?
What justification is there for trying to implement the filter in the face of massive opposition from the nation, at the expense of their tax dollars and freedom of information?
Tags: censorship, politics