6 August 2010

Liberals against the internet filter

| johnboy
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Readers wrestling with their eventual decision on which major party to place last on the ballot will be interested to learn in The Age that the Liberals are now committed to dumping plans for a mandatory internet filter.

(For those wondering, yes it’s not a Canberra story, but it does go to the continued existence of websites like ours that could fall foul of capricious decision making if a filtering mechanism came into being).

Labor's proposed internet filter

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The thing I don’t get is why you would want to introduce a filter when the open web has been the most successful tool in tracking down and prosecuting paedophiles, in history. Never before have we been able to clearly identify and successfully prosecute child molesters. If nothing else we should wait till they change their habits. Finding their encrypted traffic amongst the rest of the communities attempts to beat the filter will be a lot harder. Leave it open, keep targeting the few that want to hide.

IMO school chaplains and the demonising of the role of government in the economy are bigger threats to our society – I’ll be voting for, among other things, the NBN – with or without a filter.

The Internet Filter is, as most slightly tech-savvy readers know, simply a joke. All it does is cause the pedo’s and other nasty Internet users to use proxies and drives the devious to create other ways round any ‘filter’ – which would be even harder for the daft ‘authorities’ to detect/crack and so harder to catch the freak’s who like looking at pictures of naked kids.

I used to think of it jokingly. But it has got a serious side to it as it proves that the people who are pushing for it have absolutely no understanding of how the internet works and yet they want to use our tax dollars to do this! What happens when it is proved not to work? Will they just (as they do with the drug laws) start pumping our $$$$ into something that will just turn into a Cash Cow for unscrupulous ‘Filter Wall’ dealers who say ‘Buy ours, it is only $10M and much better than the one you’ve got!

All this while I’m battling with Hospital ‘IT wannabe’ depts because nurses computers are dreadfully configured and prcatically unusable in most instances. Disgraceful it is, disgraceful. Makes me seeth and whinge like a banshee….

Waiting For Godot1:20 pm 08 Aug 10

The cat did it said :

The problem for those considering punishing Labor over this issue is that the Libs are more naturally aligned with the Christian Right, and so are MORE likely to cosy up to the Christian Right in return for support over issues like net filtering- look at the NSW Libs, in particular. Much as I think Conroy’s proposals were breathtakingly stupid, the rest of the party seemed to be able to exercise some moderation over him, to the extent that the proposals were iced. I don’t think that the Libs would behave the same.

Well, you’re right about one thing. The Liberals didn’t do the same as Conroy. In 2005 the Australian Christian Lobby expressed concern about porn on the Net and put pressure on both the Howard (Liberal) government and the Beazley-led Labor opposition to “do something to protect families and children”. The Howard government considered filtering at the ISP level but abandoned the idea when experts told them it would slow down the Net and catch too many non-porn sites. Instead the Howard government formulated NetAlert, a piece of software they offered for free to any parents who wanted it. When Rudd and Labor gained office Conroy announced on New Years Day 2008 that they would be bringing in censorship at the ISP level. Despite repeated pleas to abandon the idea millions of dollars were poured into the idea. Most people thought there would be an opt-out provision like in all other western democracies. Instead in November 2009 – during the Copenhagen climate conference when everybody was diverted – Conroy announced that Internet censorship would be compulsory. Repeated emails and other protests to Conroy’s office have been ignored – they haven’t even replied. Conroy began calling everybody who criticised the Net filter a child porn addict including Senator Kate Lundy. The putting of the filter “on ice” – as they did with the ETS – was simply an attempt by Rudd and Gillard to neutralise an unpopular issue until after the election. Don’t be fooled – if Labor is reelected the Internet filter will be back and toughened up. Gillard has already stated that she strongly supports the Internet filter.

I have voted Labor all my life since I first voted for Gough Whitlam in 1974. I even voted Labor when Mark Latham and Bill Hayden were the leaders. But I will state right now that I WILL NOT be voting Labor this time – or at any time in the future – because of the Internet filter. As far as I am concerned Labor is now dead and Senator Conroy – as well as Rudd and Gillard who stood by and did nothing – killed it.

The cat did it7:18 pm 07 Aug 10

The problem for those considering punishing Labor over this issue is that the Libs are more naturally aligned with the Christian Right, and so are MORE likely to cosy up to the Christian Right in return for support over issues like net filtering- look at the NSW Libs, in particular. Much as I think Conroy’s proposals were breathtakingly stupid, the rest of the party seemed to be able to exercise some moderation over him, to the extent that the proposals were iced. I don’t think that the Libs would behave the same.

Hells_Bells746:08 pm 07 Aug 10

Oh don’t worry Tetranite, I’m over it!

But sorry for leading that one astray, was just what my head told me not to trust them, doesn’t mean my head’s always right.

I have no idea who to vote for anymore. I’m just listening to things like this trying to decide.

Clown Killer2:11 pm 07 Aug 10

Like they said that they would not bring in GST?

To be fair, Howard said “This” Governmnet would not bring in a GST. That governmnet ceased when he called an election with the GST as a central issue. He won that election. The new Government that was formed brought in the GST. It’s a disservice to voters to suggest that they are so dumb as to not be able to tell the difference.

Tetranitrate2:03 pm 07 Aug 10

Hells_Bells74 said :

It’s still bloody hard to trust a party that brings in a GST when they said they wouldn’t. But it is damn hard to trust any of them, infact I don’t.

That list of who we vote for was lame enough.

Oh seriously, get over it.

It isn’t as though they promised they wouldn’t bring in a GST, then brought one in just after the election.
They said they wouldn’t and didn’t do so when they were elected in 1996.
When they instead decided they did want to bring one in, they took it to the 1998 election and won (barely). This idea that they somehow decieved the country is bull – there was nothing stopping voters outing the liberals over the GST in 1998, and they very nearly did.

Maybe if Labor gets in again, they won’t have a balance of power issue, with small / useless / religious-bent parties to appease – and that dum-dum filter can disappear entirely…

Looks like the filter “will all be history soon anyhow… good on GetUp!…

Rawhide Kid No 211:00 am 07 Aug 10

Rawhide Kid No 2 said :

Interesting that Joe Hockey posted on Facebook this morning that the Libs would scrap the Internet filter.

Like they said that they would not bring in GST?

Sorry #14 Outta Control said. I’m a bit mixed up this morning what with all this election talk going on.

Rawhide Kid No 210:53 am 07 Aug 10

Interesting that Joe Hockey posted on Facebook this morning that the Libs would scrap the Internet filter.

Like they said that they would not bring in GST?

gospeedygo said :

Yes but what are the Libs doing about giving Australia decent internet speeds?

Why, cos you wanna download your terrorist handbook and dodgy russian porn quicker?

HA!

🙂

So…the libs are willing to give us an unfiltered feed over a crumbling copper network after they’ve scrapped the NBN? Wow, thanks for that.

Don’t get me wrong -I hate the filter policy, and believe it should be scrapped completely. I’m wondering whether the whole ploy of delaying it pending another ‘review’ is really designed to push it into the background until Senator Fielding gets the boot he so richly deserves, and there is no need to suck up to him to buy his vote in the senate any longer.

My hope is that if labor are returned, that the libs and greens block its passage through the senate, that labor will finally have an excuse to drop it completely without losing face. Surely that must be what it’s about – it’d be scary to think that Conroy is trying to kick this thing back to life because he actually believes in it, rather than for some political gain.

Even if it did become reality, I’d much rather be able to connect to a fibre network to bypass the filter, than connect to my ADSL connection that was horribly unreliable for a good 18 months while Telstra got around to actually fixing various line faults…

gospeedygo said :

Yes but what are the Libs doing about giving Australia decent internet speeds?

not making it slower by filtering the net.

Yes but what are the Libs doing about giving Australia decent internet speeds?

Yeah – I didn’t _want_ to vote for the libs. I personally loathe Tony Abbott and all he stands for.

– But that’s a “preference thing” –

Now I have no choice: I MUST vote for the libs (After the token preference-cascade protest below the line).

I CANNOT support The Internet Filter as it stands. It’s the most idiotically evil concept I’ve ever known to exist in my lifetime. Sure, the German Nazis were worse, but that was well before my time. Nevertheless, they both started “for the children”.

Please, Julie Giz: Just make it optional (but default) and mandatory for ISP’s to offer – That’s be just as effective and much more acceptable.

Its bizarre. Those for censorship are the Lib’s natural allies.

harley said :

Where is the “this is the only decent policy the libs have” option?

I’m against the filter 99%, but I’m 100% against the libs. I’m happy to bypass the filter if required.

+1, except for me it’s more like 110% against the filter, 130% against Libs.

I hope not, Outta Control. I really worry about the religious Right. I no longer support the Salvos, even though they do good stuff, because of the control that they had over Howard when he was PM.

I cannot understand why Conroy and the ALP persevered with this Internet filter issue for so long. It was hardly ever a vote-winner, as the proponents were not necessarily naturally Labor, and the opponents were much more likely to switch votes because of it.

I reckon that Conroy should be giving a sigh of relief, and quietly thanking the Libs for (hopefully) taking this off the election agenda.

Hells_Bells747:00 pm 06 Aug 10

It’s still bloody hard to trust a party that brings in a GST when they said they wouldn’t. But it is damn hard to trust any of them, infact I don’t.

That list of who we vote for was lame enough.

Outta Control said :

I’m just hoping that there is nothing sinister in this – ie: that the Libs have been “got at” by the Christian lobby and that they won’t scrap the filter after all.

What was more worrying was the rest of his statement that the filter was bad because all the bad stuff wasn’t on web sites but was sent by email. Get ready for mandatory email filtering – much harder to get around and not subject to claims that it will slow down Internet browsing. I’ll bet they introduce it as mandatory spam filtering so it looks beneficial.

Excuse me while I put an extra layer on my tin foil hat.

old box + http://www.ipcop.org/index-pn.php +addons +dansguardian + 2 hours = all the content control you will ever need.

Plenty of other free, effective, open source goodies around too.

What your offspring view is *your* responsibility, not the gov’s. The usual caveats regarding using technology to solve a social issue apply.

I was never planning on voting Labor anyway, but since this is the ACT it doesn’t really matter.

Firstly, Labor’s decision to postpone the introduction of the filter until after the election is a tactic to avoid having to actually implement the filter (because by the time the review is completed and the bill enters the senate, the Greens will have balance of power), but being able to turn around to their buddies in the Australian Christian Lobby and say “Hey, we tried…”

Secondly, while the Liberals were never going to support the internet filter, Joe Hockey DID NOT claim it was the Coalition’s policy. He said that he didn’t personally support the filter, even if it was opt-in, and would prefer the government make available software filters for parents to install on their own computers. A sensible comment in an interview with an incompetent and extremely left-wing Triple J host.

I’m not too concerned by what Labor would block in 2010-2013. I am very concerned that if labor requires all ISPs to implement the technology, then what happens if Family First or One Nation or Greens or whomever gets into power in future years decides to block information or political thought.

That is why the filter is different to normal classification/censorship – the filter blocks a type of communication, and then let’s bits through. Too much central control gives too much power to be abused.

Outta Control5:29 pm 06 Aug 10

Interesting that Joe Hockey posted on Facebook this morning that the Libs would scrap the Internet filter. Within a few minutes 6 people Liked the post and there were five congratulatory messages. Less than ten minutes later Hockey removed the post. I’m just hoping that there is nothing sinister in this – ie: that the Libs have been “got at” by the Christian lobby and that they won’t scrap the filter after all.

moneypenny26125:08 pm 06 Aug 10

johnboy said :

Under what criteria was the brisbane dentist banned NickD?

IIRC the URL was either blacklisted by mistake or because the site had been hacked by Russian child porn purveyors. I think the regulator ACMA issued a press release about it.

The current criteria used by ACMA are based on the classification scheme used for films and books. It is my understanding that the ALP mandatory filter proposes to use the same criteria – which is crap because the classification scheme has not been updated for donkeys years and does not cater well for the internet age.

The RiotACT would really only be at risk if posts incite or provide instructions about crime (one element of the current RC classification). It’s that element that causes grief for the euthanasia activists and the like (because suicide or assisting suicide is still technically a crime in most Australian jurisdictions). Ditto abortion.

Still, the Liberal policy is to promote ‘free’ PC filters – I’d rather my taxpayer dollars were spent on something other than fully subsidising the supply of Net Nanny’s filter into Australian homes. So the Libs have not won my vote.

If concerned citizens want to protect their children from web nasties they can buy their own filters just like I’d hope they’d buy their child a crash helmet for when they ride a bike. Parental responsibility and all that jazz.

cmdwedge said :

Excellent news from the Libs. The filter is just the thin edge of the wedge.

+1

Thoroughly Smashed4:48 pm 06 Aug 10

Less likely to vote ALP sure, but no more likely to vote LIB.

Where is the “this is the only decent policy the libs have” option?

I’m against the filter 99%, but I’m 100% against the libs. I’m happy to bypass the filter if required.

That’s part of the issue. Labor doesn’t want you to know what is banned, or why.

Stupid, useless policy. People shouldn’t be fooled by Labor’s attempt to hide the policy by announcing a review.

Will I still be able to follow Scunthorpe United?

Hells_Bells744:14 pm 06 Aug 10

It doesn’t take much to convince me against Labor these days.

georgesgenitals4:07 pm 06 Aug 10

You don’t like the Libs much, do you JB…

Woody Mann-Caruso4:06 pm 06 Aug 10

Or that nefarious school canteen supplier! Just think of all the children they could’ve molested with Paddlepops.

Whether you voted labour or liberal didn’t matter. As long as there was enough people of the right parties to block the bill in the senate was all that mattered.

We are assured of that now, just make sure you vote for different parties for the house of reps and the senate.

Really the libs don’t disagree with filtering, just the technology that was being used.

Under what criteria was the brisbane dentist banned NickD?

Under what criteria would this site be banned exactly?

While I think that the internet filter is an awful policy, there’s no need to be alarmist about it.

Excellent news from the Libs. The filter is just the thin edge of the wedge.

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