James Riley
Tuesday, 13 April 2010 16:27
IT Policy -
Regulation
Page 1 of 2
The Obama Administration would continue to lean on the Australian Government to abandon its plans to introduce its proposed internet filter, the United States Ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich says.
Australia should be able to achieve its goals of capturing and prosecuting child pornographers and other online criminals without having to resort to censoring the internet.
Bleich told ABC television's Q&A program that the internet "needs to be free," and that it was a shared resource among all nations, like the oceans, the skies and the polar caps.
"They have to be shared. They're shared resources of all of the people of the world," the ambassador said.
"To the extent that there are disagreements and trying to find the right balance between law enforcement and respecting that general principle, we work with our friends and so we've been working with Australia on this issue," he said.
The US position on internet censorship had been well articulated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January in a referenced speech about plans to introduce filtering in China.
