Don't mention the filtering trial!

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 March 2009 01:21

Opinion and Analysis

Communications minister Stephen Conroy, by his own admission can talk under wet cement, and it was a talent he demonstrated in spades when questioned about Internet filtering after opening Cisco's new customer briefing centre in Sydney yesterday.

While he might have spoken at length, Conroy said very little, except to claim that: he had repeatedly been misrepresented on his many statements about Internet filtering; the argy-bargy over what was and was not on the supposedly leaked blacklist was largely irrelevant since the real black-list was not something new dreamed up for the filtering trial but had been maintained for several years as representing banned content - refused classification (RC) - under the Broadcasting Services Act; if possible access to such content should be blocked; and the trial was simply designed to see if blocking technology could be extended to a wider range of material.

So did the government have plans to mandate the provision of filtering to a much wider range of content than that already classified RC? Conroy repeatedly refused to answer that question. Yet he repeatedly stressed the government's commitment to blocking RC content, "the real filth".

Well good on him, but I suggest that if this is a primary aim, by devoting time and resources to this highly unpopular trial to see if blocking of a much larger range of ill-defined and undesirable content is technically feasible he is simply delaying the achievement of that praiseworthy goal.

Blocking "the real filth" is easy
In February last year he was presented with a report from ACMA "Developments in Internet Filtering Technologies and Other Methods to Promote Online Safety." It was the first annual report under a direction issued by the previous government for the ACMA to investigate such developments. It made very complementary mention of Cleanfeed, a technology developed by BT for the specific purpose of blocking a small number (around 1100) of web sites associated with child pornography, as identifed by the Internet Watch Foundation.

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