Published in News

Aussie government now censors Web critics

by on24 October 2008

Image

Not a good start


Anyone worried
that the Australian government might use its controversial Web filtering program to bury criticism have had their worst fears confirmed.

Already the Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the Internet. ISPs and the government's own tests have found that presently available filters can’t spot the difference between legal and illegal content and can degrade Internet speeds by up to 86 percent.

However, it is clear that the office of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy has ordered ISPs to shut up about their criticisms. It all started when Mark Newton, an engineer at Internode, has heavily criticized the Government and its filtering policy on the Whirlpool broadband community forum, going as far as saying it would enable child abuse. He said the plan would inevitably result in significant false positives and degrade Internet speeds tremendously. Those views were subsequently widely reported by technology media and blogs.

Conway’s policy advisor Belinda Dennett, penned an email to Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton in an attempt to pressure Newton into reining in his dissent. It is understood the email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed on to senior Internode management.

Newton said that this level of bullying was "outrageous" and Senator Conroy was "misusing his influence as a Commonwealth Minister to intimidate a private dissenting citizen into silencing his political views." Lately, Conway has been saying that anyone who didn’t support his Internet filtering policy are supporting child pornography. This has included fellow opposition politicians such as Greens Senator Scott Ludlam in Senate Estimates this week.

Ludlam was worried that politically-sensitive material could be added to the block list and otherwise legitimate sites. However, it is fairly clear that Australia is dubbing people who disagree with it as child molesters and leaning on ISPs to suppress figures that show how the most outrageous attempt of net censorship outside China and Iran.

These are the people that Australians are expected to trust not to censor the Web of content that they don’t like. It is a bit like putting Hitler in charge of a site about Jewish history.
Last modified on 25 October 2008
Rate this item
(0 votes)