Greens unveil rival cyber-safety policy

Renai LeMay
Monday, 16 August 2010 14:00

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The Australian Greens has released its own cyber-safety policy to rival that of the two major parties, with the central planks being an obligation for ISPs to offer PC- or modem-based filtering technology to customers, stronger cybercrime law enforcement and better research and education in the field.

'We advocate replacing the Government's proposed ISP-level filter, which has been sidelined by the Gillard Government and formally opposed by the Liberal and National parties, with a range of interlocking measures to strengthen existing cyber-safety initiatives and tackle cybercrime, particularly child pornography offences,' the Greens' policy document on the matter released today states.

One unusual aspect of the Greens' policy is the creation of an online single portal for reporting cybercrime, which will be used to coordinate inter-jurisdictional police responses '” as well as generating 'valuable data' on cybercrime.

In general, the Greens' approach shares more with the Coalition's PC-based filtering cyber-safety policy than it does with Labor's controversial ISP-based filtering scheme.

In its policy document, the party noted that the Gillard Labor Government had budgeted $40.8 million to fund its own cyber-safety initiatives. However, since Labor has not disclosed how the money will be divided up '” and the Greens are opposed to the ISP filter and a separate ISP grants component '” the Greens claimed it could not quantify the savings that its policy would generate.