EFA expresses alarm at Government "Internet censorship"

Stan Beer
Thursday, 16 October 2008 18:28

Business IT - Networking

Online civil liberties organisation Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has hit out at what it believes what it believes is a creeping censorship of the Internet by the Australian Government.

The latest cause for concern at the EFA is the news that the Government's "Clean Feed" Internet censorship plan will not allow Australian adults to opt-out.

The filter, which will be mandatory for all Australians, was initially touted as a "cyber-safety" measure for homes with children. However, according to EFA, recent comments by experts have revealed the existence of a second, secret black list, that would apply even to homes that managed to opt out of the child-safe filtering scheme.

"The news for Australian Internet users just keeps getting worse," said EFA Board member Colin Jacobs. "We have legitimate concerns with the creeping scope of this unprecedented interference in our communications infrastructure. It's starting to look like nothing less than a
comprehensive program of real-time Internet censorship."

According to the EFA, the filtering scheme seems at odds with the Government's campaign promise to improve the speed and availability of Australian Broadband.

The Government's own research has showed that filtering lowers speeds by 30% or more even under ideal testing conditions. The same data raises serious questions about the accuracy of filters, with even the best performers over-blocking hundreds of thousands of innocuous web sites, the EFA stated.

Most worrying of all to the EFA is the ever-increasing scope of the filtering scheme.

"The definition of inappropriate material has never been well defined," said Jacobs. "With Government-mandated software monitoring each Internet connection, we expect the scope to expand further as time goes by. How will the Government resist pressure by Family First or
other special interest groups to permanently block material considered by some to be harmful?"