Australia was one of the first countries to deploy massive Net filtering. The main reason was to fight online child pornography (as usual reason). Now the Children support groups are criticizing the measure.
In a joint statement with lobby group GetUp, both Save the Children Australia and the National Children's & Youth Law Centre believe the resources could be better spent on law enforcement agencies battling to eradicate child pornography on the internet. (from Australian IT)
So why have these Net filters at all? The following wikileaks article caught my eye: Australia secretly censors
Wikileaks press release and Danish Internet censorship list, 16 Mar 2009The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.
In late 2008, Wikileaks released the secret Internet censorship list for Denmark, together with a press release condemning the practice for lack of public or judicial oversight. Here's an extract from the press release:
- The list is generated without judicial or public oversight and is kept secret by the ISPs using it. Unaccountability is intrinsic to such a secret censorship system.
- Most sites on the list are still censored (i.e must be on the current list), even though many have clearly changed owners or were possibly even wrongly placed on the list, for example the Dutch transport company Vanbokhorst.
- The list has been leaked because cases such as Thailand and Finland demonstrate that once a secret censorship system is established for pornographic content the same system can rapidly expand to cover other material, including political material, at the worst possible moment -- when government needs reform.
- Two days ago Wikileaks released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand. Of the 1,203 sites censored this year, all have the internally noted reason of "lese majeste" -- criticizing the Royal family. Like Denmark, the Thai censorship system was originally promoted as a mechanism to prevent the flow of child pornography. (Source: wikileaks)
Emphasis added by myself. So why do these lists need to be kept secret? When wikileaks released the secret Australian censorship list, it seemed that
"half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist." (source:
boingboing.net)
So who decides what gets on this list. If they have the possibility, they WILL use these systems as "they" see fit. So common sense hasn't set in yet. The next country to jump into the deep end is New Zealand.
If you thought that net filtering and grandiose firewalls were the exclusive preserve of West Island (or "Australia", as the locals like to call it), think again. New Zealand is showing that it, too, is ready to play its part in the great Antipodean censorship stakes.
Last week, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) announced it was setting up a filter system that will allow internet service providers to stop people accessing child pornography.
The filter system has already been trialled in hundreds of thousands of New Zealand households, and Internal Affairs deputy secretary Keith Manch confirmed that the voluntary system will block access to around 7000 websites carrying images of child sexual abuse. (Full story at The Register)
In the end, criminals will circumvent these filters and citizens will be limited by secret black lists in what they can view and what not. Money down the drain. And a step closer to totalitarian states.
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