Conroy, don’t keep the Internet filtering trials secret: Minchin

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 24 December 2008 07:35

IT Industry - Strategy

Opposition Shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Nick Minchin, continues pouring on the pressure, stating: "Senator Conroy was forced into damage control mode after it was exposed that he had sat on a report for 10 months that found ISP-level filtering would be impractical and ineffective, as it would slow down the Internet, be easily circumvented and would both under block illegal content and over block acceptable content.

"On the defensive, Senator Conroy tried to infer that the report commissioned by the Howard Government bore little relevance to Labor's plan to mandate ISP-level filtering and was simply the work of a hostile industry.

"These arguments are deeply offensive to the four highly-regarded experts who were commissioned to conduct the independent feasibility study and also unsustainable," Senator Minchin said.

"The findings of this report are extremely relevant to what Labor is proposing and provide credible evidence as to why many believe this policy is ill-conceived and deeply flawed.

“The study was complemented by laboratory testing of filtering technologies which added further weight to the key findings.

"There are also serious questions being asked about the efficacy and credibility surrounding the 'live' filtering trials the Government now admits have been delayed until mid-January.

“These secretive trials have very little support and if they are to add any substance to this debate, Senator Conroy must publicly outline who is taking part and on what basis.

"It is up to the Minister to demonstrate that these trials will be conducted in a credible way and that means committing to a totally independent audit to enable the public to have some degree of confidence in any findings," Senator Minchin concluded.

As noted in yesterday’s article, Australia is at great risk of becoming the “Soviet Socialist Republic of the South”, and lumped in with China, North Korea, Iran and other states as Internet laughing stocks of the world.

If we can't get an unfiltered Internet, what's the point of having it at all? We may as well go back to the 'Tyranny of Distance" and just tell the rest of the world that Australia is closed for business. Digital economy? Who needs one of those? Knowledge nation? Nah, noodle nation, right?

Continued on page 3, where Benjamin Franklin teaches us a lesson... please read on.