Optus joins ISP filtering trial

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 22 April 2009 11:32

Business IT - Technology

Communications minister Stephen Conroy's much-maligned trial of ISP filtering technology received a substantial boost today with the minister announcing that Australia's second largest ISP, Optus, had agreed to participate.


The minister has announced three participants to date, but only one, Primus, is in the top 10. Conroy said that consultations with a number of other ISPs that had applied to take part in the filtering pilot were continuing.

Telstra has said it will not participate. However Conroy said today that: "The Government is also working constructively with Telstra on the technical testing of ISP filtering technologies. These tests do not involve actual customers and therefore are not being conducted as part of the pilot, however it is hoped that the results will feed into the Government's policy considerations."

iTWire understands that Telstra is piloting the UK developed Cleanfeed technology which has proved very successful in blocking about 1000 child porn sites in a list maintained by the Internet Watch Foundation. It has been taken up by a number of ISPs around the world.

For the purposes of the pilot, Optus will filter the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA) existing blacklist for a selection of its customers who volunteer to participate.

Conroy also announced the publication of ACMA's second report on international developments in internet filtering technologies and other measures for promoting online safety, saying "The report outlines key trends in the promotion of online safety and e-security. The ACMA report found that ISP level filtering plays a valuable role in preventing inadvertent access to online child sexual abuse material, with police investigation and prosecution important in targeting intentional access to illegal material."
 
According to Conroy, "the ACMA's first report, in 2007, identified that there is no single solution to the problem of online risks and that a range of measures is required to mitigate the various online safety risks. The second report finds that this remains the case."

However as iTWire pointed out at the time, Conroy claimed that the ACMA's first report "notes that a number of overseas countries currently filter their content. ISPs in a number of countries, such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Finland, have successfully introduced ISP level filtering," when in fact the report made no such specific claims.