SAGE-AU: Ditch compulsory Net filter, ‘it’s a botch’!

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 25 March 2009 19:17

IT Industry - Deals

There’s been a warning that publication of the Federal Government’s “black list” of pornographic and violent websites has fatally damaged its proposed compulsory Internet filtering regime.
 

SAGE-AU, Australia’s peak body for System Administrators, claims that the Australian Government’s proposed compulsory Internet filtering regime has been fatally damaged by publication of the government’s ‘black list’ of pornographic and violent websites.

The president of SAGE-AU, Donna Ashelford says the black list’s appearance on wikileaks.org demonstrated the futility of the government’s proposed censorship regime and there was a need for fresh thinking.

“Publication of that list has, in effect, given every 15-year-old in Australia a guide to porn online,” Ashelford maintained.

"The Government's trial has both fatally damaged the cause of Internet filtering, and damaged Australia's global reputation, since the government appears to be trying to block legitimate websites from the Australian public.
 
“It also appears that the release of the blacklist was not a leak, but rather a reverse-engineering of the software the government provided to home internet users, which raises serious questions about the security of the list.”

According to Ashelford, the secrecy of the blacklist itself creates a public hazard.

“If you release it to the public, it becomes a guide to the content you are trying to keep out. If it is neither released nor effectively vetted, it can be used inappropriately to block legitimate content.”

SAGE-AU - the System Administrators Guild of Australia - is a not-for-profit professional organisation representing system administrators in Australia, and it has called on the federal government to apply fresh thinking to its approach to addressing objectionable content online.

“They need to step back, define what the problem is and then come up with a workable solution to that problem,” Ashelford suggested.

SAGE-AU says it continues to support the three-phase plan it released last November to provide for safety of children using the Internet, including encouraging "family-friendly" ISP services; improved parent education; and, more rigorous enforcement with increased budgets for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the Australian Federal Police to identify and remove illegal content from Australian hosts.