$189 million to block “terror sites” and pornography

The federal government announced a few days ago that $189 million will be spent on internet filters for Australian homes and internet service providers to protect Australian families from pornography and, of course, “terror sites”.

A “black list” drawn up by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which covers Australia-based pornographic and terror sites, will be expanded internationally after consultation with the Attorney-General.

The AMCA will also receive 14 additional internet regulators.

A seven-day-a-week hotline will be established to help parents put filters on their home computers. All families will receive the filters and they will be sent to public libraries.

It’s a bad idea on so many different levels. But it has, at least, put Australia on the front page of Slashdot.

According to a Sydney Morning Herald article, the Australia government has decided to take the controversial step of having internet service providers filter web content at the request of parents, in a crackdown on online bad language, pornography and child sex predators. ‘The more efficient compulsory filtering of internet service providers (ISPs) was proposed in March last year by the then Labor leader, Kim Beazley. At the time, the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, and ISPs criticised his idea as expensive. Three months later Senator Coonan announced the Government’s Net Alert policy, which promised free filtering software for every home that wanted it. She also announced an ISP filtering trial to be conducted in Tasmania. That trial was scrapped. Today Mr Howard will hail the ISP filtering measure as a world first by any Government, and is expected to offer funding to help cover the cost. Parents will be able to request the ISP filter option when they sign up with an ISP. It will be compulsory to provide it. The measures will come into effect by the end of this month.’

People can opt in to the program but do they have control over what is filtered out? Most of the current content filtering applications allow people to select classes of content to filter. For example, a person might choose to allow websites about bomb making, but not pornography. It remains to be seen whether this will be the case with the ISP filter but somehow I doubt it: if you sign up to the government program, you will just have to accept that the government knows best what is inappropriate for you and your family to read.

Bill Muehlenberg, writing in Christian Today, also has criticisms of the plan. He’s disappointed that people should have to explicitly opt in to have their internet browsing filtered. The entire internet should, by default, be filtered by the state, he argues, and people should have to explicitly choose to opt in to the internet (presumably when they reach adulthood):

John Howard did announce a policy on protecting families from Internet dangers, but this had been hinted at previously. He did say a national ISP-level filtering scheme would be introduced, but on an opt-in level.

While any moves to protect children and families from Internet porn and other nasties are welcome, this could have been given a stronger direction, as in an opt-out plan. That is, it should apply to all, except for those who want to opt out of the filtering system.