Australia = China

Stephen Conroy is an idiot.  A somewhat intelligent one, however, but an idiot all the same.  He thinks we Australians will let him introduce a "secret" government Internet filter that there's no accountability for - the government will ban sites it wants to and there's no way to justify what's being banned and worse - no need to justify what's being banned as there's no authority to which it has to answer.

Conroy claims it will protect children and make it impossible to stumble across child pornography.  Well, if this idiot wanted to do a bit of (disgusting and disturbing) research using his own brain, he'd realise that the vast, vast majority of child porn isn't available on the open web, but it is hidden behind gates that need authentication before you can get to the content - often behind VPN connections using military-grade encryption protocols.

The likelihood that anyone will accidentally stumble upon child porn is extremely low - as this means that the authorities will stumble upon these sites and be able to find and prosecute their members.

And now in addition to an expensive, ineffective Internet Filter that even the child advocacy agencies and organizations such as Australian Council of State School Organisations, the Australian Library and Information Association, the Internet Industry Association, Google, Yahoo! and iiNet all argue against on grounds of, well, its ridiculous cost and utter ineffectiveness, the Governement is trying to have all Telcos/ISPs record every single site we visit on the web.  Need more proof?  Have a read of this Sydney Morning Herald story.

So, even though Conroy's functionally retarded Internet Filter won't be used to record the IP addresses of visitors to sites that are not on the banned list, they are looking at introducing, through the back door, more legislation to record every single web page that you visit.

Now, I don't visit any sites that I need to be concerned about, but that's not the point.  I don't live in a nanny state, in a "restricted rights" society like some of the more draconian communist or religious states.  And I don't want to.  If I did, I'd move to China or Afghanistan or somewhere else the government wants to restrict my rights and freedoms in an oppressive way.  I don't want to see an Australia where the Government introduces draconian, privacy-invading legislation like this and doesn't consider it "in the public interest" to let us know this is happening (or at least being proposed).  This is most definitely not the Australia I grew up in.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie