Conroy: Don’t believe the myths on the ISP filter

Adam Diver says:

08:15am | 07/04/10

“The Government has held a public consultation on improved transparency measures to ensure the public have confidence in the list and the submissions will feed into the legislative framework.” But we cant disclose any information on this increased transparency but trust us it will be in the legislation , no details will be given at this time or any time in the future.

Scott says:

08:47am | 07/04/10

Go home Conroy. It’s still censorship regardless of your spin.

Chris L says:

09:08am | 07/04/10

“The National Classification Scheme makes no reference to political or religious comment.” You’re correct that it makes no reference, but that means very little doesn’t it? You’re opening the door and whether you intend to be trustworthy or not (and I see no reason to trust you) future governments would have free reign to abuse this new legislation and technology.
“The Government has always maintained there is no silver bullet when it comes to cyber safety and we have never said ISP-level filtering alone would help fight child pornography or keep children safe online.” Again you are being very careful in your response. The fact is we’re saying the filter won’t have even a partial benefit toward stopping child porn. Even if someone somewhere has stumbled accidentally upon child port on the web (which I very much doubt has ever happened) all you are doing is applying a blindfold. I guess the idea is if we cannot see the problem then the problem does not exist.
Conroy, you and I disagree on what consitutes “inappropriate material” and I do not plan to surrender my judgement and free will to you. This is still meant to be a free country and freedom of information is vital to this.
Your typical response might be to say I just want to watch pornography or read about euthenasia or the effects of drugs and my response is “So what?”. You might think these things are immoral, I’m of the opinion that organised religion is misguided and dangerous but you don’t see me trying to force my opinion upon you.
NO TO THE FILTER!

Contract Variation Farmer says:

09:14am | 07/04/10

All that money on a url/tcpip access list.  The consultants on this are having a laugh.

annie says:

09:09am | 07/04/10

what world are you living in Stephen it must be a parallel universe coz it’s not my World I assure you. Oh and ps I get unlimited wireless broadband including free national and local calls for $65 a month and I’m very happy with the internet speed what price will the NBN be I wondere why wont you release more details. Come on at least try and look like youer in the 21st century

David says:

09:27am | 07/04/10

What debate are you welcoming, when you ignore the factual advice of so many intelligent, considered views?

Irrespective of your abhorrence towards the kinds of “refused classification” stuff you list (which is right), part of the point is what becomes “refused classification”?  No debate there that I’ve heard, instead just a big, broad brush prevent “it” from being accessed.  There’s an ideal that has your kind of attitude at its core.  It’s called communisim.

You and the government you represent (as opposed to the people who elected you) have crossed the line.

SD says:

09:31am | 07/04/10

Conroy:

What will it take for you to realise that your selfish agenda is not wanted by the Australian population?

To re-cap thus far:
Getup has received over 120,000 signatures against your draconian filter. Another petition hosted at TakingItGlobal shows over 35,000 signatures. Electronic Frontiers Australia has collected 14,000 signatures.

A recent Age poll showed that 95% of all readers were fundamentally against the filter - from a sample of 25,000 readers. Given that such polls usually generate much lower sample sizes (i.e. 1000+) this large sample size alone provides a measure of how much Australian citizens care about this issue.

Plenty have voiced their concerns with your filter- including Microsoft, Google and the US State Department. Many Australian academics have publically condemned your filter. Many more Australians have written to you personally, expressing their concerns for the proposed filter and even offering alternatives.

Are you proud of wining internet villain of the year in 2009?

So what will it take?

How long are you going to push your personal agenda upon the people of Australia?

Perhaps you realise that you will be inevitably voted out in the next election regardless of how you act on the filter now- and wish this to be your legacy to future generations.

Never fear Conroy, you won’t be quickly forgotten: the joke that is the NBN and the way you score $400,000pa jobs for your mates is legacy enough.

Mr Pastry says:

09:31am | 07/04/10

All disturbingly old world centralised control.  Completely at odds with the new worlds distributed control potential and just plain soviet and evil.  As per others I have been on the net since BBSs and I have never stumbled across the content that is to be blocked.

Marty says:

09:23am | 07/04/10

Mr Conroy, if you looked out your window and saw a child being abused, would shut your curtains(filtering) or call the police and have it stopped?

jim says:

09:35am | 07/04/10

Conroy, you filtered your own website that is not related to child pornography.

The same filter you propose is the same filter that China uses to cover up abuses ...

Julia says:

09:35am | 07/04/10

I can appreciate some people don’t like to see porn - I’m one of them. But I don’t see the need for government mandated filters.

Ms Cussens isn’t the only one comparing Senator Conroy’s regime to China, I think the Americans have their concerns too.

What you do is you put your own filters on. It’s like insurance, if you can’t afford to pay to insure your car, you can’t afford a car.

If you can’t afford to pay for a filter for the internet, you can’t afford the internet.

Chris says:

09:41am | 07/04/10

More crap from the Labor government.

Kevin and Conroy are nothing but bureaucrats.
Had i known this internet filter was on the agenda back in 07, i would have never voted for Kevin

Labor will never get my support, this country is going to the dogs, christians and minorities.

erth says:

10:00am | 07/04/10

This is a massive vote loser for you Conroy, and it is beyond belief that you continue to defend the indefensible, to appease right wing christians. I am appalled at the Labor government’s arrogance, and if you continue with this policy you will lose mine, and countless other’s vote. As said before, it’s not your internet!

Ol Mate says:

10:00am | 07/04/10

I will show you at election day what i think of your censorship Mr Conn-roy.
I, and many many others.

dice1164 says:

10:08am | 07/04/10

Surely this is big enough issue to warrant a referendum at the next election, after all isn’t democracy about the will of the majority?

Mark says:

10:26am | 07/04/10

This filter is not a war on child porn. Its a war on ideas. All this effort on a project that 98% of Australians reject just to appease the moral police in Canberra. Well, at least you’ve wedged the Liberals on the issue, yeah?

Scott Glennon says:

10:31am | 07/04/10

@Stephen,

I do not agree that content be refused classification, everything should be classified. Just because you decide that terrorism training is RC, should not stop someone from researching it. Comparing Newsagencies and Libraries who already block purchase/hire of these materials, to the internet is moronic. We choose what we want to see on the internet, and personally I’d like that choice to remain without your interference.

Howard previously released a filter using a similar list you trailed, the uptake was pitiful. Because Australians didn’t want a filter then and if you hadn’t noticed, they don’t want one now either.

Your self promoting web site removed topics relating to your filter policy, which one can only assume is because your embarrassed or concerned that your own governments policy is tarnishing your future career potential.

Your governments web sites have been vandalised by Anonymous, and you can’t even find them. How can we place faith in you and your policy when you can’t even bring those who defy you to justice?

Your intentions, I’d hope are in the interest of Australian’s. But Australian’s are not interested. How much longer does your policy have to waste our tax dollars for your party to realise this?

Stephen, I don’t trust you or your government with the future freedom of the internet in Australia.

Daniel says:

10:38am | 07/04/10

Mr Conroy,

What is your guarantee will you give that this filter of yours will not be used for nefarious purposes by your government or some government in the future?

None? Well, then don’t implement it or you will be recognised in the annals of history as the cause of a censored society.

Pam says:

10:45am | 07/04/10

Senator Conroy, will you please elaborate on what you mean, specifically, by “URL based websites”, and for bonus points explain just what a non-URL based website might be? No I am not giving you any hints. Your answer is pass/fail. Most likely fail. If I tell you that you are breathtaking please don’t be flattered.

Aikon says:

10:48am | 07/04/10

Sorry Mr Conroy but I simply do not believe anything you say.  I hope this matter sees you and the rest of your incompetent ministers get booted out at the next election. Stay out of my life…you are not welcome!

Hamish says:

10:51am | 07/04/10

If this is the best Conroy can do, it really shows up how stupid this filter is. No one who wants to find child porn will be stopped by the filter. No serious terrorist is going to be stopped. It’s just another 100+ million down the drain to support a spin obsessed government. It’s a classic ‘we can’t actually do anything about it, so we’ll just blow money making people think we’re doing something about it.’

Let’s just say on the off-chance someone’s child accidentally accesses child porn (how this would happen I don’t know but hey this entire policy seems predicated on the idea). What are people worried about? That the child will become a paedophile on the basis of seeing child porn? Seriously?

The fact is that everyone who approves of a filter wants to get rid of all porn, probably atheist websites, probably pro legalisation of drugs websites. Who knows what else? Maybe even anti-global warming websites.

That, and if anyone seriously trusts this Labor government to ‘manage’ what information we are ‘entitled’ to access they’re probably too stupid to even realise if they’re looking at child porn. Considering how obsessed this government already is with manipulating what the public knows, the original list of URLs, which we all can’t be trusted to see, is clearly just the tip of the iceberg.

Bleary says:

11:08am | 07/04/10

Well that went well hey Conroy! Plenty of support out here it would seem…..or not.
Conroy/Labor = epic fail.

Hunter says:

11:02am | 07/04/10

If this spin is the best you can do then it’s by by Mr CONroy. Why persist with an expensive intrusive plan that can’t work but can leave itself open to abuse. Why not listen to the experts and to the electorate for once?

Sean says:

11:24am | 07/04/10

100% accurate….
I find it hard to believe that anyone with any experience or qualifications in this area would make such a churlish claim of any technology.
Just not possible outside of fiction and marketing spin.

Yes, there is a lot of misinformation getting around…
The party tells me so.

HigherSpecies says:

11:15am | 07/04/10

Any legislation with the purpose of limiting what you can learn about, know or discuss, should be considered a crime against humanity.

BigBro says:

11:17am | 07/04/10

This (proposed - I hope unsuccessful) Net Filter is just another example of responsibility being taken away from individuals and taken over by Big Brother.

There is already enough poor, illogical and ill-thought out rules, regulations and policy.

marley says:

11:29am | 07/04/10

Stephen says that ” The National Classification Scheme makes no reference to political or religious comment. Under our policy we will only block material that is Refused Classification.”

When I hear him talk about “policy” I shudder. Policy is not the same as law. It might be “policy” to only block certain material today, but as we know all too well, government “policy” can change in the blink of an eye.  If the infrastructure and the legislation is in place to allow the blocking of any sites, the list of sites can be broadened at the whim of the government of the day.  So, what Stephen is actually saying is, “trust us to do the right thing.”

And you know what, I don’t.  It makes no difference what side of the political spectrum you’re on, no government should get an open ticket like that.

NCG says:

11:37am | 07/04/10

Mr Conroy,

Surely you must be bored and just looking to stir up the hornets’ nest again? Your mandatory filter is a complete waste of time and money, you’ve been told this on numerous occasions, by people like myself, who are authoritative on the subject of IT security & compliance. You even admit it won’t do what it was pitched to do; “stop child pornography”.  Don’t back peddle on this; you made this statement, the public remembers it, you are now hiding from it.

You’re above diatribe mentions the blocking of terrorist content, little post 9/11 don’t you think? A failed rally cry for the masses, which might have worked a few years ago, but few are buying that line today. Frankly I like the fact that I can research, unchecked, information on terrorism to better understand the situation and form a rounded opinion, rather than rely on the usual media outlets, which all have their own agendas.

For me, an internet filter mandatorily imposed on a society is a 21st century version of religion which serves to dumb down and control the masses. Seems to me politicians would rather keep people from having the ability to question them, than being intelligent enough to hold that position of influence in the first place.

Good day sir.

Andrew says:

11:40am | 07/04/10

Conroy I think you guys thouught you were on a vote winner here, but unfortunately for you it ain’t. Portraying yourselves as moral crusaders won’t wash with most Aussies, nice try though, you’ll just have to drop it and think up something else mate.

Patrick says:

11:30am | 07/04/10

I think the biggest flaw with Conroys argument (apart from the ridiculous premise that a filter will work at all) is that the internet is NOT a bloody newsagent or corner store. It’s the internet. BIG DIFFERENCE MR CON.

If I walk into a newsagent, I can see all the titles on the magazine shelf, completely UNLIKE the internet, where you only find what YOU look for, it’s not the same as a room full of magazines where all are readily visible, you have to input your preference of website to a search engine, the search engine lists all the similiar sites. This is the only real way kids can “stumble” upon porn, and I highly doubt anyone has EVER accidentally stumbled across child porn, because that is not on the mainstream internet. Things that are illegal, are hidden.

Also, you posting your retarded arguments on a website, thinking you might get some positive support if you bullshit some more? Great idea mate, us web-users TOTALLY love your policy (end sarcasm).

The only reason you are getting away with this policy so far is that the majority of people are like you, and have no fucking clue how the internet works.

Joe says:

11:42am | 07/04/10

Mr Conroy,

This single policy is going to result in Labor being kicked out of office at the next federal election. I have never seen Labor voters so enraged at your totalitarian internet policy. Why you continue to support a policy that is clearly so unpopular with the Australian public just goes to show how out of touch and arrogant you are. Even though 95%+ of those participating in online polls continue to reject this policy you continue to push ahead regardless, showing your utter contempt for the electorate. The electorate will have their say at the ballot box Mr. Conroy and the backlash is going to be huge.

You’re living in the past, a past when nanny state governments could decide what their citizens could watch and what information they could access. That was the 20th century Mr. Conroy and the internet has changed all that forever. It’s now the 21st century and we’re not going to let you treat us like children any longer.

I was a Labor voter, now I will never vote Labor again. And I personally know dozens just like me, former Labor voters who will fight this until the very end and will take great joy in helping to kick you and Mr. Rudd out of power at the next federal election.

SR says:

11:34am | 07/04/10

A simple google search for ASACP org will provide a person with 4000 + URL’s to websites that contain commercially and legally produced pornography that feature adults only and does not contain imagery of children being sexually abused, bestiality, real sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.

These URL’s comply with US and international law (to which Australia is also a signatory to) with regards to child protection. However the Senator has said that “The Rudd Government does not support Refused Classification content being available on the internet”.

The problem is that many (if not most) of the above mentioned URL’s would be considered Refused Classification in Australia and “potentially illegal” which means that the content will be blocked.

There are two types of Refused Classification in Australia, RC legal and RC illegal content, however “potentially illegal” material will be blocked (the UK has had its share of problems with this “potentially illegal” content terminology). In fact RC, X18, R18 and MA15+ content will be potentially blocked by the proposed filter.

By this measure I am sure that ACMA will also block “potentially RC material” (both legal and illegal), which will also include (unfortunately) content normally classifiable as R18, MA15 and even PG material within Australia.

The Senator has some ‘splaining’ to do…..

gizzt says:

11:44am | 07/04/10

Theres nothing illegal (RC is NOT illegal to access for free) on the blacklist itself as evident by searching the ACMA blacklist leak on google and accessing the URLs on said list one by one - you are quite free to do this if you want as there is nothing illegal about the list.

Can Conroy tell us ONE country where child/animal/rape porn or abuse is legal? - if Conroy can not then that completely defeats the purpose of this filter filtering illegal content (even though it is already evident by going through the list itself).

I also challenge Conroy to just sit down and go through the sites himself just to see pointless this all is.

Markus says:

11:36am | 07/04/10

“The Rudd Government does not support Refused Classification content being available on the internet. This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.”
You can’t even get your facts straight in your own argument.
Child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality and sexual violence are not RC, they are ILLEGAL. Like any illegal content, they are punishable by law.
RC content is not illegal. This includes, but is not limited to, fetish pornography, online poker/gambling, pro-euthanasia discussions, detailed instruction on correct and safe drug use (to prevent infections, HIV spread).
The Attorneys-General are already discussing how the Classification system is antiquated even for games, and you want to apply this archaic beast to something as unclassifiable as the entire internet?

“The National Classification Scheme makes no reference to political or religious comment. Under our policy we will only block material that is Refused Classification.”
‘Makes no reference to’ is not the same as ‘has promised not to include’.
Given that the definition of Refused Classification is content portrayed “in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults”, the definition of what a ‘reasonable adult’ entails could be changed at any time to block both these areas, and who knows what else!

Jay says:

11:48am | 07/04/10

Pedophiles will obtain their ‘entertainment’ from peer to peer networks, you wont stop them. Or even make it more difficult for them. Just like making pot illegal hasn’t stopped that booming industry.

On the parenting side of things…leave that to the childrens parents.

Jason says:

11:59am | 07/04/10

My child is protected from net nasties by close supervision and by local PC based monitoring software which can be switched off using a password. 

How about you tell us the truth about ACTA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement) and how this web based filter is only the first of a broad raft of international controls to be placed on the internet.  Australia is participating in negotiations, but you never mention it?  Perhaps it is because it negates the need for national web based filtering, covers P2P protocols AND you are a dirty LIAR!

Ellie says:

11:50am | 07/04/10

I seem to remember one of the promises of the Rudd Government being that they would implement high-speed optical fibre internet for Australia. That still going on or are we ‘settling’ for censorship instead? Or was that misinformation as well? Can we have a list of Top 10 Campaign Promises That Never Happened next? We can compare it to a Top 10 Things We Don’t Want That Replaced The Campaign Promises We Never Got.

Max Power says:

12:00pm | 07/04/10

Australia is a Democracy, the majority of the population do not want the censorship, so the Govt should listen to the will of the people and drop the censorship.
Govt’s in Australia need to be reminded by what ever means necessary, that they serves us, we don’t serve them.

Lachie says:

12:03pm | 07/04/10

I do believe you’re the source of all the ‘misinformation’ Mr Conroy.

Frank says:

12:07pm | 07/04/10

I just cant help but think that the religious right is involved in this. Thats why euthanasia sites will be blocked. Why does the Rudd govt owe the religious right a favour? Surely the religious vote in Australia is tiny. So why is the Rudd govt persisting with this clearly flawed and unwanted piece of freedom reducing infrastructure? Clearly we have underestimated the political power of religion in this country.

A Bob says:

12:10pm | 07/04/10

Well, that’s torn it. I was still 75% in favour of going Labor a week or two back, but the recent changes to the Liberal line-up moved that towards 50%. Now, your cynical, bare faced arrogance has pushed me over. You should consider youself lucky that you’ve only lost my vote.

Ryan says:

12:18pm | 07/04/10

We don’t care what BS you spout Conroy, there is one plain and simple FACT here, the filtering of the internet for WHATEVER REASON you personally believe we need is nothing more than a communist suppression of freedom of speech.
What is surprising to me is that the rest of the population cannot see that the ENTIRE Labor (communist) party is pushing this and have the same goal.. a one party state!

Mixter says:

12:24pm | 07/04/10

The real problem with human control of the internet is that it is already too big and too fast for humans to manage.  There are simply too many new websites and changing websites for someone to classify it all.  To think that $100M is going to even scratch the surface is naive.  And sadly, a naive minister for technological matters is not what we need.  Worse still, the internet knows no geographical boundaries.  Proxies and false forwarders effectively conceal the source and destination of the data.  To think that a ‘National’ scheme is even relevant demonstrates how clearly you are failing to comprehend the Internet.

Saddest of all, Mr Conroy, is that it is your job to understand these things.  Your failure to do so humiliates Australia.

You are supposed to be the best of us, and to represent the totality of us, and sadly, you are conducting yourself as the worst of us.

The King says:

12:27pm | 07/04/10

“Let’s be clear, the only content that will be examined with a view to blocking, is content which is referred by an individual complaint or by an international agency. “

Sure it will Mr Conroy.  I believe you.  No arbitrary decisions to block websites because of conflicting ideals, personal agendas, and political expediency.  Just how dumb do you think we are?

Simon the pieman says:

12:31pm | 07/04/10

Is there an ‘Anti Conroy Filter’ Facebook group yet?

daysleeper says:

12:22pm | 07/04/10

Dear Stephen,

If you want to protect children, I keep hearing that DOCs (now Department of Community Services - http://bit.ly/cqR8Gn) is severely underfunded. Perhaps they could do with a slice of that money to support trained staff to, you know, actually help to protect children.

The internet filter is an unpopular pie in the sky project that will serve the worst facet of democracy - the vocal minority.

If the trials are as successful as you state, please release the results publicly so that we can see for ourselves how the trials were set up, and their results. That way we can make an informed decision.

It’s ridiculous to ask us not to believe the lies, but then at the same time not to give us all the information.

Mark (Not Day) says:

12:23pm | 07/04/10

Mr Conroy,
You state: “Unless the URL’s requested are on the RC Content list, the web traffic will not pass through a ‘filter’. “

Well how does the filter ‘know’ you are requesting a URL that is on the list then?

Defies logic - therefore all traffic must go through this filter - case closed, you have been proven to be lieing.

Peanut Hunter for PM says:

12:33pm | 07/04/10

I am going to run for Parliament on the ticket I will unwind any internet filtering by the looney Labor. Then I will spend the rest of my term following up every idiotic, armchair expert, nanny state dribble that the Labor and Liberal parties continue to trot out in the name of all Australians. Someone needs to hold these moralising peanuts and their special interest minority group lobbyists to account.

Wallaby says:

12:37pm | 07/04/10

Well Senator, that went well didn’t it!

I’m not going to rehash all of the posts above. Just let me say that it is crystal clear that you have no idea what you are doing. The entrie concept of what the net is seems to be beyond your understanding.

Also, may I add that when you inevitably make a mistake and accidently block legitimate commercial web sites, and damage their business you had better have deep pockets. When the lawsuits for damages start to fly, leave me, as a tax payer out of it. You are on your own.

Jamers Hunter says:

12:31pm | 07/04/10

Yeh yeh, I can tell when Conroy is not lying ! It is when his mouth is shut.

randomizer says:

12:41pm | 07/04/10

Are there any jobs open as a secretary at the Minister’s office? Getting paid to copy/paste all day is my type of work.

Ben says:

12:32pm | 07/04/10

Stephen Conroy, there is only so many times you can regurgitate your press releases. Your regurgitations have never addressed the core issues at hand and never will. Labour came to power in 2007 promising to help parents make the internet safer fir children, instead your filter is censoring, nannying and controlling the free flow of information to adult Australians. Labour never again for me.

Kallan says:

12:42pm | 07/04/10

You want filter our internet? Then the government should pay for our net plans.

How is it fair that we have to pay full price for a service that will be limited in speed, content and freedom.

Duke says:

12:37pm | 07/04/10

NO other western democracy has or is making their ‘filter’ MANDATORY!  THAT is what makes you a threat to our reputation, our intelligence and our democracy and puts ME in the same cage as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.  STOP LYING!  We all know you are carrying the can for Rudd’s stupid mistake on this, just grow a pair, admit it, resign and let Kate Lundy back into the portfolio and go back to kicking heads in Victoria.  You make one long for the days of Alston, at least we could trust his open tech stupidity, you are a different breed, mixing tech stupidity with self delusion of intelligence and rote promulgation of blatant lies.  Thousands will desert the ALP over this, in my case after 40 years of loyalty.  Shame on you.

Bolshy Bugger says:

12:48pm | 07/04/10

Sorry Steve, as a life-long Labor voter with an abject hatred for all things conservative, I will be hoping Tony Abbott becomes PM ASAP if you enact this law.

You know the technology doesn’t work, you know government departments are unable to apply a common-sense approach to classifications and you know this will do nothing but restrict access to politically sensitive issues such as euthanasia, possibly abortion and who knows what else in the future.

This is, to recycle a drastically over-used cliche, the thin end of the wedge. It has no part in Western democracy and neither does any minister or government that would consider such a plan.

Adam says:

12:48pm | 07/04/10

“I welcome debate on our policy”—I guess that’s why you try to use your public position to silence citizen opposition (http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/government-gags-web-censor-critics/2008/10/23/1224351430987.html), imply those that oppose it are paedophiles (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm), and modify publicly funded information systems to hide debate (http://www.news.com.au/technology/conroys-website-removes-references-to-filter/story-e6frfro0-1225834474153).  Yeah, you’re all for open debate….as long as it’s with people that agree with you (http://www.efa.org.au/2009/12/01/christian-lobby-thank-conroy-for-filtering-update/) and don’t point out the massive flaws make up the bulk of your swiss cheese of a policy (http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/top-ten-internet-filter-lies/).

Ben says:

12:45pm | 07/04/10

Does Conroy ever say anything new to attack the growing and evolving criticisms? The reason nobody attacks the other aspects of the government’s ‘cyber-safety’ plan is because they are uncontroversial. Keep them, drop mandatory Internet censorship. It’s that simple.

I also laughed at Conroy still clinging to hope that ‘high traffic sites’ (however he defines them) will agree to self-censor for the Australian government. Yeah good luck with that. Let us know when you come up with another plan.

Ian Matthews says:

12:54pm | 07/04/10

Disperse people, there’s nothing to see here. Wasn’t it Comrade Conroy and The Boy Who Lived In A Car who wanted to censor parliamentary mail-outs?

Adam says:

12:56pm | 07/04/10

Conroy says that the internet should be controlled by the ACMA, the same as videos and books…..to protect our children from sex and violence…but what he doesn’t tell you is that the majority of those videos and books were refused classification because of “other” reasons (http://www.efa.org.au/Images/mandatory_blocking_table1.gif).  But of course, with the website urls being hidden…you won’t know what “other” reasons have caused a website to be blocked.  More holes form in your swiss cheese policy Conroy.

Anthiony says:

01:08pm | 07/04/10

15 years ago porn on the internet was impossible to avoid,in the last few years it’s become almost impossible to’accidently’ come across it,as for child porn,only once in 15 years have I inadvertently found it and that was around 12 years ago and I reported the site then.
This filter is about child porn,it’s about controlling everything we see and hear,the child porn freaks have their own ways of getting what they want and this filter won’t even go close to stopping them.
I can bypass this ridiculous filter in 2 seconds ,all this is going to do is temporarily block the not so computer savvy until they too learn how to bypass it,millions of taxpayers dollars wasted on rubbish and it won’t even slow down the kiddy porn freaks for a second.

Anthiony says:

01:09pm | 07/04/10

15 years ago porn on the internet was impossible to avoid,in the last few years it’s become almost impossible to’accidently’ come across it,as for child porn,only once in 15 years have I inadvertently found it and that was around 12 years ago and I reported the site then.
This filter is about child porn,it’s about controlling everything we see and hear,the child porn freaks have their own ways of getting what they want and this filter won’t even go close to stopping them.
I can bypass this ridiculous filter in 2 seconds ,all this is going to do is temporarily block the not so computer savvy until they too learn how to bypass it,millions of taxpayers dollars wasted on rubbish and it won’t even slow down the kiddy porn freaks for a second.

Scott Glennon says:

01:12pm | 07/04/10

@Stephen,

Does the Labour government intend to make it an offence to bypass the proposed internet filter?

Does the Labour government intend to filter out those sites who offer these services already or in the future?

If no, your filter has about as much use as Lindsay Lohan without makeup.
If yes, international organisations will make a fortune outsmarting you, or Australia will become very familiar with existing applications which outsmart the current networking design of the internet, TOR for example.

JamesK says:

01:05pm | 07/04/10

Is this idiot for real?
Refused classification is not all illegal. over half of refused classification material you can LEGALY import into Australia for personal use!
He doesn’t understand his own bloody portfolio or anything remotely technical about what he is doing

Jamers Hunter says:

01:18pm | 07/04/10

Just noticed that Conroy has an Economics degree ...Ha de Ha.
Economics is the only subject that doesnt study facts.They study noting but failed theories. Look at all the Economics experts and how they managed to give us the world economic crisis ?
What a grounding for some one who wants to sell Lies to the People.
More “caflic” morality. Go to confession then spend the rest of the week playing with school boys.
sick sick sick.

Johnk says:

01:19pm | 07/04/10

The only logical reason Kevin is allowing Steve to do this is because he is feeding him just enough rope to politically hang himself. Although he should have enough rope to go from here to China by now. Or it is coming up to the end of financial year and you just have to spend those budgets, which WE pay for. Either way I’d prefer they spent OUR money on something that will help, which is definately not this silly filter.

Miles says:

01:20pm | 07/04/10

The only myth that I don’t believe about the filter is that it’s for our benefit in any way, shape or form.

adamm says:

01:24pm | 07/04/10

just as conroy “went around” victorian government law for surrogacy and went to nsw…..the australian population will “go around” your stupid, useless filter….

SCOB says:

01:28pm | 07/04/10

Australia :
A First World Country with Third World Leaders

Alexander says:

01:18pm | 07/04/10

That is some nice SPIN Mr Conroy.  You should pay well for the people who did that for you.  But it still stinks.  No amount of polish is going to make this turd smell good.  Yes the article you are rebutting has some poorly made points in it, but you are still hiding behind the smokescreen of kiddie fiddlers and horse porn.
As many people have said, the RC category is not inclusive of the ILLEGAL material you are trying to use to scare people into swallowing your load of crap filter policy.  It will not achieve its objectives.  Regardless of your advice from ISP’s my experience with large scale filters tells me that they don’t scale easily and they do slow things down quite a bit more the that poetic 1/70th of an eye blink.  They are so easy to bypass as to be trivial for anyone that wants to do so, and best of all, the bypassing in most cases will also effectively make the browsing anonymous.
Mr Conroy, you are lying to us.  You may well be lying to yourself as well, or maybe you staff are lying to you, but you are definitely lying to us.

it's all politics says:

01:22pm | 07/04/10

“ISP Level filtering which would block RC material on URL based websites through a public complaints mechanism.”

Great, so now censorship will be driven even further by the whim of the religious right and other people who don’t represent the majority. Will there be an anti-complaint system? Can we appeal against a blockage of, say, information about homosexuality or discussion of the ethics of euthenasia?

Well of course not since you won’t publish a list of the banned content, so nobody will know what you’re blocking. This is why your filter is compared with nations like China - because it’s the same. It’s censorship without any checks and balances.

You carefully paint anyone who opposes your view as though they wanted to access despicable material, when actually people simply want free speech and the right to discuss issues that perhaps some people are uncomfortable adressing.

So what if the next government is led by the Mad Monk Abbott and decides fundamentalist christian values should decide what’s RC? Shall we block all discussion of sex before marriage, vaccines and refugees?

I hope the Family First vote was worth it, Mr Conroy.

SC says:

01:23pm | 07/04/10

Conroy, your “facts” are bunk as evidenced all over the comments above. And there is no way the Australian public is going to let you slide in an open slather license to censorship under the guise of child protection. No one is arguing child protection is a bad thing, so cut back the legislation to what your electorate overwhelmingly supports and don’t give the classification board more power to play nanny to adult Australians.

Ben says:

01:33pm | 07/04/10

So it won’t make children any safer, and it won’t make child pornography disappear…So tell me, Minister, why is it every time someone criticizes the filtering scheme, you immediately play the “pro-child porn” card?

How can you say there was no slowdown, when your own trial guidelines specifically limited trial participants to having connection speeds less than 8Mbps? In case you haven’t noticed, ADSL2+ goes up to 24Mbps, Cable is 30Mbps, HSPA is 42Mbps, and fibre well beyond that.

It won’t stop P2P, it won’t stop proxies and VPNs and other encrypted traffic, it won’t do a god damn thing.

A fully software-based filter, such as, I don’t know, one of the four previously provided by the Howard Government for free,  allows parents to define what their child can or can’t do. It can control *applications* that can be run, shut down chat software when it detects explicit conversations. Run in *whitelist* rather than blacklist mode, so you can define what pages your kids can access.

The ACMA list that was ripped out of one of these previous software filters already showed that perfectly innocent, non-RC stuff was on there, such as Bill Henson photos that were classified by the OFLC as *PG*.

There are no provisions to prevent the abuse of the filter by this, or indeed any future, government.

JC says:

01:36pm | 07/04/10

Single issue i will be voting on this election.

This is an idiotic idea on just about every level.

Keen observer says:

01:26pm | 07/04/10

Good thing you’re a Senator, Conroy, or you’d be out on your ass at the next election as no electorate would keep you as their representative.
Get it through your thick skull; people don’t trust you. People don’t trust any government for that matter, and having the list of banned sites not given any oversight or regulation is doubling down on secrecy for secrecy’s sake.
Give people a pc-based filter that they can opt-in to, and leave the rest of us out of your conservative authoritarian christian fantasies.

Joe says:

01:27pm | 07/04/10

Government control of the internet must not happen. It is blatantly obvious that the majority of Australians are against it and yet nothing definite on this critical issue by either Rudd or Abbott.
Maybe they are both in favour of it which is a very frightening thought indeed!
If that is the case then we are all sitting around waiting for an opposition to the proposal which will never happen.

Jason Tractor says:

01:42pm | 07/04/10

I think there’s been enough debate and informed discussion for the ALP to reconsider it’s policy of mandatory censorship of the internet. And yet here it still stands - immovable and non-negotiable.
Let’s face it. It’s just the arrogance and pride of the Rudd Government, and the complicit stupidity and laziness of the ALP membership that will see this legislation passed.
People need to stop wasting their breath on this government. They haven’t listened, they won’t listen. Take action through other means.

DF says:

01:46pm | 07/04/10

“...this material is not available in newsagencies, it is not on library shelves, you cannot watch it on a DVD or at the cinema and it is not shown on television.” - These are also not meant to be mediums of free speech. I don’t believe the world’s largest medium of free speech should be censored for the Australian people.

Mick says:

01:48pm | 07/04/10

Ahhh Steve, mate.

come on, do you really think you’re going to survive the backlash this is going to create come election time?

Think of all the 18-30yr old voters who were raised using computers, and know more about the workings of the internet then you could ever dream of.

Your logic is flawed and the fact you won’t just admit that you’ve got it wrong makes me pity you to be honest, how can one sleep at night knowing that roughly 95%(according to the polls) of the country hates your guts.

It’s about time the hard working, honest tax payers of this country take it back from people like you and your ACL buddies.

You can’t control us, you cannot stop us, for we are the voice of this nation.

AllStar says:

01:40pm | 07/04/10

Roll on the election!

Tony says:

01:54pm | 07/04/10

You do not want debate on your policy Mr. Conroy. You want everyone to roll over, shut up and simply except the censorship jackboot you and your buddies at the ACL want to impose on the rest of the country. Sadly, I fear you will get your wish, and that will be black day for all.

Scott says:

01:56pm | 07/04/10

I am so sick of hearing the “silver bullet” line from Conroy. We are saying this filter won’t have ANY measurable effect on the protection of children.

It’s not hard to be disillusioned with the current state of government. The leaders of both major political parties are hell bent on pandering to the moral crusaders in our society. I am ashamed of myself for voting for the labor party last election. In my defence, I didn’t know about this policy and would never have believed I would see this sort of stupidity in Australia. Don’t worry I have learnt my lesson, I will not be voting Labor again.

marley says:

01:58pm | 07/04/10

Well, if this article was an attempt to “test the waters” I think Stevie is probably off somewhere with a very large towel and a hairdryer.

Harquebus says:

01:58pm | 07/04/10

Stephen.
You can talk all you like but, 90%+ of Australians just do not want it. When are you going to get that into your head. The will of the people and all that.
My vote will be based on this issue only and I will be voting last all those who support your draconian compulsory censorship laws.

Seth Brundle says:

02:05pm | 07/04/10

Why are you bothering to explain, Conroy.  Pretty soon you will be able to simply censor any voices of discent.
I personally will be basing my future votes based on this Filtering issue.  Why would I want to be lead by people who want to restrict my access to information?

Grant says:

01:58pm | 07/04/10

@ Stephen Conroy

I really hope you have taken the time to read these comments.

The broader community does not support your censorship plan, you are not in touch with what the public wants, and this is adding significant political damage to a already perceived incompetent Labor Government.

Senator, consistently labeling RC content as ‘child abuse, bestiality and pro rape sites’ is disingenuous and you are very well aware that the scope is far far wider.

For example, a private website for “swingers”, that contains uploaded footage or images of spanking or foot fetish is considered RC.  (social issues)

A website forum discussing the ideological merits of terrorist activities and information or images is RC.  (political issues)

A website talking about medical procedures related to abortion and the ideological juxtaposition of this subject would be considered RC.  (health issues)

A website for young gay and lesbians to discuss and or exchange information regarding their sexuality or sexual health would be considered RC.  (health issues)

The internet is not a medium like printed publications, television or radio. It is a forum, it is a free flow of information between individuals.

This is an issue of freedom of speech, the US Government has condemned this, Google has condemned this, and the international French organization Reporters Without Borders has condemned this.

If you enact legislation I will consider you to be in contradiction of Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which the Labor party is meant to support of which the Australian Government is also signatory. 

This whole thing makes me sick to be federally represented by you.

zorella says:

02:10pm | 07/04/10

Bored. My grandma could bypass it, it’s too expensive, 90%+ people don’t want it.

Get rid of the whole idea and get something more interesting and intelligent.

wolf says:

02:01pm | 07/04/10

Comrade Conroy
I would love to know where you stand on a site like wikileaks.  If the ‘leaked’ list which you assure us wasnt geniune but threatened to fine anyone linking to is anything to go by then it will.  Oh thats right the ‘fake’ ‘leaked’ list WAS on wikileaks.
Just yesterday wikileaks broke the story about the death of two reuters reporters in Iraq (check it out before it’s RC’d on http://www.colateraldamage.com).  Sites like this are extremely valuable for getting stories out there which otherwise may be suppressed by authoritarian regimes.
So tell us honestly Comrade is wikileaks, which is mainly political material that is embarrasing to governments on your list?
The other concern I have is around my internet speed.  I have been playing EVE online for around 3 years now.  It have paid roughly $700 in that time to keep my account going.  If the game becomes unplayable due to your filter, are you going to refund that money to me?  What about other australians who play time sensitive subscription MMO games such as WoW, Guild Wars and others?
Other than that I would like to endorse the comments of Jason Taylor above.  I could suggest a magnum bottle of champagne would be of a suitable size to express my outrage.  You could even film it and post it on the net secure in the knowledge that your magical filter would save you the embarrasment of anyone in this country ever witnessing the event.
If you press ahead with this I will never vote labour in my life again.  I will happily preference such enlightened souls as one nation, the shooters party or even the liberals before labour.  I don’t care if it turns out they support the filter too the fact is you introduced it and that is unforgivable.

Madeleine says:

02:03pm | 07/04/10

Well, if Labor loses the next election they know who/what to blame…

J says:

02:15pm | 07/04/10

Sorry Labor, my vote is gone.

Brian says:

02:15pm | 07/04/10

Recently, things which have been refused classification include images of female ejaculation and pornography involving small breasted women (who are in their late twenties) in case we get confused… Apparently men who don’t like massive titties or like to see women enjoy themselves are some sort of deviants. For evidence, view the Sex Party website. The report may have been taken down, but searching should find it if it’s still online.

Josh E says:

02:16pm | 07/04/10

The proposed filter is a mere band-aid fix, which won’t achieve it’s intended goal. The government needs to focus on the root cause of these problems if they wish to solve them.

$conroy = $labour = “FAIL”;

James says:

02:16pm | 07/04/10

All this money, time and effort waste could have all been avoided if they did what they told us they would do in the first place. 

That was to install and OPTIONAL filter.

Make it OPTIONAL and all this will go away.  Except of course the money that has already been wasted.

These turkeys have 1 mandate that they seem to have forgotten, and that is to spend the money of australian citizens in a thoughtful and benificial way. 

If there was a way to remove Conroy from office and the government that he is a part of because of this it should be vigurosly persued by the opposition.

James says:

02:23pm | 07/04/10

Why isn’t this money being used to track access to these specific websites the government seeks to block to catch those attempting to access these sites and the rest allocated to the AFP to analyse the information and make arrests of those breaking the law. 99.99% of the population would have no idea where to access this material anyway. Thus making the filter in the form the government describes it 99.99% ineffective. This filter is supposed to protect people from RC material. The thing is it fails on this count as well. Those who want to access RC material don’t need protection from it. Those who need protection from it don’t know where to look anyway. Blocking access to RC material will only make it more difficult to catch those who actively seek to do the wrong thing by forcing them to access this material through more clandestine means. If people are going to access it, they tend to be up to no good, let them access it and then monitor their activities after that. Chances are these people have criminal tendancies of some form which can be identified before they act on even more sinister activities (if they haven’t already).

Darren says:

02:26pm | 07/04/10

“The Refused Classification Content list cannot be made public because if it was, it would simply be a catalogue to direct people to specific URLs that are Refused Classification.”

I always find that statement interesting. They don’t want to make the list public because they don’t want people to go to those URLs, but if the filter works like it’s supposed to, aren’t they blocked anyway? We won’t be able to see them. All that statement says to me is that the goverment doesn’t have confidence in their own filter.

Earth Waratah says:

02:26pm | 07/04/10

Anybody who listens to the Rudd Government and believes them, are complete and utter twit!

simon says:

02:36pm | 07/04/10

High traffic sites like YouTube and Facebook are not included in the policy,

is this anything to do with speed or are we just not policing the rich?

Terry Wright says:

02:40pm | 07/04/10

Someone I know was going through a really bad patch in her life and had started injecting Oxycontin pills. A friend did it for her the first time and a few days later, during a severe bout of depression, she tried to do it herself. She crushed up the pills and was just about to inject herself when she thought she should maybe find out if she was doing it right. After 5 minutes on the internet, she realised that had she gone ahead, she would have either died or maybe lost her arm. She hadn’t filtered the dose properly as well as heating the solution which would have put a heap of melted wax into her veins. You get the picture. Luckily this scared her straight and she got professional help.

Conroy is committing people like this to a nasty, unnecessary death. They use the internet to find safety advice and since Harm Minimisation brochures keep getting pulped by state Labor governments, where else can they find this important information?

I hope the ACL and Conroy feel real Christian about the dozens of deaths that will result from their idiotic filter.

Bob jones says:

02:43pm | 07/04/10

Stephen Conroy,

I am a 31 year old IT professional and now I am a 31 year old IT professional EX labor voter.

I have voted for labor my entire voting life. I actually believe in most of labors policies and for the ones I don’t they do not sway my vote
HOWEVER, this is the one policy that swayed my vote. Why, because of your instistent pigheadiness to listen to the professionals regarding this.

Is the filter provider a friend of yours? How many dinners and vacations has he taken you to? Because its bleeding obvious the only reason this filter is going in after so much critisicm is due to a little handout..

Labor, you have lost my vote, unfortunatly I would rather have the idiot Tony Abbot and his party leading then the likes of party with you on its front bench.

Rick says:

02:39pm | 07/04/10

Internet has his bad and good things, as far as I’m concerned liberte and freedom of speech has no price.

The internet has become the new tool to express our view about any subjects and that tool is becoming a nigthmare for our so-called servants of the people who are behaving like a bunch of autocrates with no respect whatsoever to our democracy.

Filtering the internet is the way to strip democracy which is our freedom to debate freely wihtout any coercions.

A theocracy locates ultimate authority in a person of God and surrender your freedom locates ultimate authority to dictatorship.

Peter says:

03:04pm | 07/04/10

Sorry Mr Conroy, I don’t believe you.. I don’t believe in secret black lists, and your comment about censoring drug use and violence, well I see these things on free to air TV just about every day. Sorry Mr Conroy, you have not earnt any trust. It breaks my heart Mr Conroy, that because of you (yes mainly you), I will not be voting for Labour come the next election.

Richie says:

03:13pm | 07/04/10

Mr Conroy, if you are intent on introducing this filter, you need to be more up front with parents and unpack that ‘silver bullet” comment a bit furthur. You need to explain that it won’t work on peer to peer networks, won’t make chatrooms safer and a lot of kids will find ways to circumvent it. When they say “Well what good is it?”, please don’t use one of your glib “Won’t somebody think of the children” replies. Finally, a bit of homework for you - please google the word ‘hubris’ and reflect carefully on what you find.

Peter says:

03:13pm | 07/04/10

Yes, Conroy is the same person who uses the clause in the Telstra prospectus about “regulatory change” to establish another government teleco monopoly and to steal assets and customers from Telstra. Yes I bought shares knowing there could be some regulatory change, but I could have reasonably expected that the government that sold the Teleco wouldn’t establish a monopoly company to compete against it, I could have reasonably expected that Telstra customers would not be stolen by the Government to migrate on to the NBN, and I could have reasonably expected that Telstra will still be able to compete in the already competative Mobile space (ie denying 4G licences).. You want Telstra to sell it’s stake in Foxtel and it’s cable, but what about Optus and it’s pay TV venture and it’s laziest HFC network in the world? Are you forcing them to sell theirs, and split their wholesale arms? No.. This is purely a personal attack on Telstra with no logic behind it…

Willem says:

03:14pm | 07/04/10

100% accurate vs 100% effective - its a big difference and one that should really be at the heart of the discussion.

I’m not sure what ‘myths’ Conroy is referring to, because most of the objections they all seem rather plausible to me, and the continued sidestepping of the issues, doublespeak and using selective data out of context is downright criminal, especially when you are asking us believe that a complaints based system could ever work effectively to protect us from…. information.

billion says:

03:15pm | 07/04/10

so funny I nearly fell of my chair “Mr Conroy says not to believe all the myths”  thats hilarious… he is the one spreading the biggest myth of all…. Ask any tech, anyone who is actually an expert in the business and they will all tell you this is a crock .... stop employing people to make decisions on such things that don’t know what they are talking about…. the filter “for the children” is nothing more than a scam designed to bring in a law desirable for their needs…. any technician worth his or her salt can help protect your children from the internet with good software, firewalls, keyword blocking,  etc etc etc…. do NOT believe what the government is trying to push on to you .... the people of australia are no longer stupid enough to believe you Mr. Conroy and your ilk

thomas vesely says:

03:20pm | 07/04/10

“Establishing the Government’s 300 strong Youth Advisory Group and Consultative Working Group on cyber-safety “..............................and out of what christian cabal would our moral guards come from ?

Neuraxis says:

03:23pm | 07/04/10

So we are meant to trust the government. No to abuse a filter which once in they can add too and likely take away more and more freedom of speech from the general public. I don’t understand 80%+ people don’t want this thing put in place why is the government persisting down this path?

Jon says:

03:24pm | 07/04/10

Teaches all the labor communist voters right (pun intended) - should have realised this before u fell for their lies - NSW has been listening to Labor lies for 15 years and have ruined this once proud state.  The same is being done to our nation.

Sally says:

03:19pm | 07/04/10

Senator Conroy,

I do not want the government of Australia involved in mandatory internet censorship organised around a secret blacklist of websites. Your article does not deal with the concerns raised by people here, and it does not address my concerns.
The costs and risks of your plan, now and in the future are too high for the limited results that even you admit you are aiming for.

It is clear you are not hearing the people on this one.

I will vote on this issue.
I will not vote for any party that supports your internet filter.

Joe says:

03:24pm | 07/04/10

As someone said above, “Follow the Money”.
The media moguls are losing a fortune because they cannot control the internet. The filter will become their way of forcing us (by limiting our choices” to use their outlets/websites and the internet will become as bland and biased as our current tabloids, magazines and tv programmes.

scando says:

03:36pm | 07/04/10

No no Mr Conroy is right!! Don’t believe anything about the filter… espically if it came from his office.

petertom says:

03:38pm | 07/04/10

“Ms Cussen claims the Government’s policy won’t protect children from viewing harmful ‘stuff’ online. As I have said, the Government has never claimed filtering is a silver bullet solution.”

LOL. Its like some tortured logic. How dare the public think we implement effective and practical policies, while using their tax money! Continually misleading the public about the effectiveness of this policy is very dishonest of the critics. As I’ve said before its completely useless stop implying that this policy was meant to do something in the first place! - Stephen Conroy.

“There are technologies that can filter a defined list of URLs, with negligible impact on network speeds, including on the National Broadband Network.”

Why wasn’t this tested for then? And if this testing was included in your trial why wasn’t it included in the report? You’ve got a lot hinging on whether the technology can scale to those sorts of speeds. I think some actual concrete evidence would be good. And not just ‘some’ dude told me behind closed doors that it works wonderful!

6c legs says:

03:38pm | 07/04/10

Look, I know that *I’M* not the brightest when it comes to computers, and this is the first time that I’ve really paid attention to the whole ‘internet filter’ furoe (time to be across all the arguments ect)

Senator Conroy, why not just employ some com-savy dudes/dudettes to keep an eye out for the particularly naisty websites - they can then either shut down the bad/creepy/criminal ones, report them to the cops, whoever, and the rest of us who’ve never even stumbled across porn (poisonally I hate the stuff), or criminal sites can just get on with our ‘internet lives’?

Why can’t parents lay down set rules and introduce boundaries to their kids at an early age (have rules about internet usage), then perhaps their small children wouldn’t be coming across the stuff. Is the problem of small children stumbling across vile content really that common? (don’t get me wrong, it must be very confusing to any small child to witness porn any sort of.) But couldn’t the problem be solved by people who are paid to actively search out and ‘destroy’ the content, and, it would cost a whole lot less?

Look, even my suggestion seems too simplistic to me - but just occaisionaly, “less is more’’ ????????

thomas vesely says:

03:39pm | 07/04/10

unaustralian,undemocratic,untrue,unelected,unconroyed.

Kat says:

03:35pm | 07/04/10

And why do we expect anything more from our politicians? We do vote a political party into power, but what we don’t chose the Ministers - unfortunately for us most of the Ministers don’t have the background, experience and sometimes even the most basic knowledge in the portfolio they are given. Just look at the mess Peter Garrett has made of his portfolio.
So why do we expect anything more from Stephen Conroy, a career politician, who has no real background in the IT and telecommunications industry?

This is his background (from the Parliament website):
Qualifications and Occupation before entering Federal Parliament
BEc (ANU).
Superannuation Officer, Transport Workers’ Union.
Research assistant.

I am surprised he can even spell ‘Internet’.

jenny says:

03:56pm | 07/04/10

To all the parents saying ‘that although it won’t be 100% effective something is better than nothing’, well it is not.

This something will cost tens, or more likely hundreds, of millions of dollars per year and provide absolutely nothing of value. The only people that will benefit/profit are the software and hardware vendors selling this scam to our easily misled government.

This wasted money is better directed to policies that will deliver something, and this filter is not one of them.

If your child uses a computer, they most likely already have the knowledge to bypass this ill conceived filter. If they don’t, 30 seconds on Google will give it to them.

The only thing this filter will do is give you, the lazy misinformed parent, a false sense of security. There is plenty of free and easy to use security software available if you really want to know or limit what your children are up to on the Internet. It is available for free, so don’t waste my money because you can’t be bothered having an interest in your child’s safety or online activities.

sphincter says:

03:59pm | 07/04/10

I’ve seen a version of the blacklist on Wikileaks and it’s not only kiddie porn they are planning to block. Some of the mainstream sites that streams legit, non-underage pornography are also included in the list. Granted that some of these sites does not have an ‘18 or over’ notification before you can enter, but it’s still legal content.

Wallaby says:

03:50pm | 07/04/10

This is just the start of the incompetence.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/parliamentary-services-to-probe-trend-micro-filter/story-e6frgakx-1225850540731

adrian says:

04:02pm | 07/04/10

how about this for an idea….....lets create a system that has to tackle at least one million new websites a day…we have at least 20 people doing this job, we can absolutely guarantee there will be no problems..YEH, RIGHT!!....Conroy and his dellusional ideas about censorship are so wrong they are a disgrace to our country

Mike says:

03:53pm | 07/04/10

“I welcome debate on our policy, but let’s make sure the facts are at the centre of the argument” - Stephen Conroy

Good idea Conroy. Bring some facts to the table.

CSallen says:

04:06pm | 07/04/10

If only Conroy read this and responded accordingly.
Usually posts on the Punch are argued from both sides quite heartily, but this just shows how much Australia does not want internet filtering.
The fact that most contentious material is distributed via peer to peer networking and torrent sharing shows that an internet filter will only stop non- tech savvy people from getting what they want off the internet. Anyone that wants to get contentious material such as child porn or even illegal mp3s will find a way to get it- that’s what they do.

Ned says:

04:25pm | 07/04/10

The filter also has another feature, it filters Labor to the bottom of the list on my voting slip.

Andrew says:

04:16pm | 07/04/10

What’s all the fuss about? The only thing this government has done that hasn’t been a complete stuff up is to write cheques to people.

If this policy is implemented in the same manner as the rest of this government’s policies (insulation, the BER etc) then we have nothing to worry about. They’ll probably end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars filtering fishing nets. Once they realise their mistake they’ll cover it up and move onto their next monumental failure. BTW, Steve, could spare me $250m could you? I’ll take you skiing.

Marty says:

04:48pm | 07/04/10

Never thought I’d say it but this issue will make me vote for the Liberals. I will not vote for a government that wants to censor the internet.

Simon says:

05:05pm | 07/04/10

ineffective; the filter company even stated publicly that it was ineffective at broad censorship. the fact that a person can easily get past this by changing from their ISP DNS to a third party, use a VPN, or a proxy, direct ip access ...... this filter is just FUD and a waste of money, and a distraction from more important issues like the failing health care that should have been fixed 20 years ago.
Conroy stop trying to be a super nanny and let the real parents look after their kids, realistically the poor kids cant (get access to/use) a computer, the rich ones can get around anything, when a child is determined they will find a way .... just go back to peddling filters for home pc’s and get everyone to focus more on community issues.

Concerned Citizen says:

05:15pm | 07/04/10

Wish it was election time tomorrow, all either side would have to do is say we will legislate that our internet will NEVER be filtered, and they’d have my vote.

Nick says:

05:25pm | 07/04/10

its been proven time and time again by ISP’s and other leading IT groups/people that the filter wont work, will slow down the internet, overfilter and not stop things like child porn that are mainly transfered peer to peer

kiera says:

05:18pm | 07/04/10

I think the next election will be lost on this issue. The proposed filter is sheer stupidity. I would never have believed something like this would be forced on the Australian people!

Great Grandmother here says:

05:20pm | 07/04/10

I had to scroll for miles to say -“Take your mandatory filter and shove it Rudd and Conroy”  If it won’t work to lessen the issues you claimed it would address then I don’t trust either of you enough to allow this to go ahead without saying again “Take your filter and shove it”

Anthony says:

05:46pm | 07/04/10

Obviously the filter can’t just be assumed to be scalable to higher speeds, more people, and more urls. Thats what the testing should have done. dial up & 4/8 mbit are slow!!!!

Wazza says:

06:00pm | 07/04/10

Senator Conroy,

Your government has sunk $ billions into indigenous housing for the total construction of….............................1 house.

Your god!! The New Parliamnent House in Canberra was cheaper than that!!

Do you think we really trust you lot with an internet cemsorship device?

Brad Coward says:

06:00pm | 07/04/10

Senator, if it’s you telling me to disregard the myths of internet filtering then instantly I’m a more fervent believer of everything that I’m hearing.  I’m naturally suspicious of anyone who tells me that they are from the government and here to help me !

Stuart says:

06:08pm | 07/04/10

We know there is a lot of misinformation surrounding the filter, Senator. You have been responsible for an overwhelming majority of it.

Google, Yahoo, Reporters Without Borders, The US State Department, Amnesty International, former Justice of the High Court Michael Kirby, Save the Children, the Systems Administrators Guild of Australia, along with many other experts in the technological and political issues have slammed the filter. I think the Australian public is smart enough to realise that everyone else doing the misleading is not the most likely scenario.

The only reason the filter will not slow down the filter is you remove any sites that would slow it down. We know there are high traffic sites, including youtube videos, on the blacklist because it leaked last year, and it will leak again whether you like it or not.

It seems the most widespread support isn’t even for a filter that isn’t being proposed - the comments from parents in favour of it suggest they will let their guard down because the government will block pornography for them. It isn’t going to do that. By allowing X18+, R18+ and MA15+ material, but censoring the adults as well, it’s going to make a dreadful babysitter. Parents need to realise that the internet is a dangerous place without supervision and the government isn’t going to make it any safer.

Chase says:

06:35pm | 07/04/10

Not all RC content is illegal, you can read it, you can watch it, you talk about it. The sooner the Australian Parliament is rid of you the better. Conroy you’re a disgrace and I relish the time the Labor vote has either been cannibalised by the Greens and the Liberals or my own Generation takes reign of the ALP.
You’re pathetic.

Roden says:

06:38pm | 07/04/10

This Labor government is the most untrustworthy ever. Why the hell would I believe you Conroy. Rudd and co need to be outed.

Bryce says:

06:54pm | 07/04/10

If they won’t release the list of filtered sites, how can we be sure that they are not censoring our political and religious sites as well????

mutatedwombat says:

07:21pm | 07/04/10

I am beginning to think that the arrival of the Internet has led many of us to reject the kind of government interference in our daily activities that we previously accepted. For example, film and literature censorship. The fact that this has been non-existent online for a generation, without leading to the downfall of civilisations around the world, could lead one to the conclusion that we didn’t really need it in the first place.

Maybe that’s the real reason that our government wants to be seen to impose (albeit ineffective) internet censorship, and the minister responsible keeps asserting that the Internet is not special.

It is special, and if we don’t defend it, it will be changed beyond recognition.

Theo Williams says:

07:12pm | 07/04/10

You can view any website as long as it’s black… what a joke. I thought politicians had enough education and common sense to make decisions based on fact and good judgment. I’m proven wrong again… and i had such high hopes for this government.

I love this article: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/elderly-learn-to-beat-euthanasia-blacklist-20100405-rn6i.html shows how useless all that money (from our taxes) you’ve spent is.

It is not your internet to filter! Now, the NBN, that’s something worthwhile.  Where are your priorities?

Blimey says:

07:24pm | 07/04/10

Again Conroy grossly misrepresents the RC category. Some of RC is illegal to own (as it should be), but most is not.

Does anyone know what happens when someone access a banned URL? Are their details logged and sent to the government or police?

neilmc says:

07:48pm | 07/04/10

Okay. Senator Conroy welcomes debate. I’m going to just pick on this one bit for this comment:

He said “High traffic sites like YouTube and Facebook are not included in the policy, however, it should be noted that these sites have their own policies which prohibit a wider range of content than Refused Classification, such as X18+ and R18+ content.  The Government is continuing to work with the operators of these sites.”

That again presents a gross misunderstanding or misrepresentation of our classification system by our minister. It’s not that the policies of Youtube are broader than RC. It’s that they are different and the government is unreasonable to want to bring international terms of use for one service into line with our broken classification system.

Sure Youtube doesn’t allow explicit sexual content (that we would loosely call X18). Implying that they wouldn’t allow RC is silly or that RC is somehow just more extreme sexual content than X18. There is RC on Youtube now as classified by our classification system. There’s no reason for Youtube to change their policy because the content isn’t illegal to view or posses in Australia, let alone in the US, UK etc etc.

Politicians have expanded the scope of our RC several times (fetish material, depiction or promotion of crime etc). There’s no reason to think that RC won’t be expanded by politicians again (this was misrepresented in very false claims by the minister in a Hungry Beast interview).

Examples of RC as classified by our classifications board that I personally have assessment notices for…... Several clips featuring graffiti, several clips on marijuana. This mandatory censorship mechanism goes far beyond the examples Senator Conroy gives. RC isn’t all about abhorrent sexual practices.

The reason that Labor aren’t filtering high traffic sites like Youtube (despite there being verifiable RC content on there that doesn’t breach the sites terms)? The filter tech can’t handle it. They don’t get their 100% accurate and no slowdown claim if they include RC content on high traffic sites like Youtube (and youtube is just one example of a high traffic site)

I’m a long time Labor voter. I’m not going to forgive this rubbish though.

Lee Smith says:

07:52pm | 07/04/10

After reading many of these comments (after all I don’t have ALL night) I think some grass roots protesting needs to be put into action.  Perhaps we all need to start e-mailing Mr Conroy’s office with examples of sites and URLs he should ban under the public complaints system.  Hmmm shall we start with his site, then perhaps onto a couple of other sites, like acl.org.au, cause it’s just plain offensive, then perhaps the wikileaks site because i just don’t like it then…. the abc news site because the colour combination hurts my eyes…

I can’t possibly vote for a Labour Govt that puts this in place, but I can’t tolerate the thought I put a Liberal government back in power. Sigh - I can see I’m going to have to vote for Grey Power again.

Katie says:

07:46pm | 07/04/10

The Senator is not listening. I think we have established that. What tickles me is that he insists experts were consulted on and were all in agreement with him. I am in the IT industry and have yet to hear anyone endorse what he is doing. It seems he has rather selective hearing when it comes to “expert opinions” and is not listening to the majority who are against this.

What really really really peeves me off about this whole thing… this filter is being pushed through with the absolute “best” of intentions and is deliberately taking advantage of the fact that a huge bulk of Australians don’t understand the technical details or the moral implications and based on these good intentions are wondering “well that sounds like a good idea, what’s the problem, oh it’s just those geeks making a fuss again, but I want to Protect the Children!”.

I am fine with many people not being clued up in IT, but I DO have something against taking advantage of their ignorance.

Most of us are not so much worried about speeds being slow or the current reasoning behind this filter. I am worried about the precedence this is setting and what the future will be like with this power in the government’s hands and no transparency of this blacklist. Censorship is already gone a bit mad in the media - will just one individual complaint ensure I can’t see, for example, a sexy new Lady GaGa video just because a strict Christian declared it should be kept away from the kiddies? (And yes, some of her videos I would not let my really young kids see - but that is the responsibility of the parents, not the government).

There is no way whatsoever that we can have faith in this blacklist without it being transparent, as well as transparency of the process by which links were deemed to be suitable for this list.

I say the money should be spent on education rather than this ridiculous filter that even Senator Conroy admits will not solve the problem.

Paul says:

07:56pm | 07/04/10

Simple answer really - develop the filter, but have it on an “opt-in” basis.

That way, parents can have the control they need & the rest don’t need to worry about the RC conundrum.

GB says:

07:57pm | 07/04/10

All voters have to do if they disagree with the Rudd-Conway ISP filtering con,is to just vote against them at the next Federal election.

Once a labor supporter says:

08:26pm | 07/04/10

About the only truth in Conroy’s statement is “Don’t believe the myths” and most of the rest of his statements are myths themselves.  1/2 truths laced with BS and misdirections.

Like only URL’s to be block pass through the filter, well so do all other URL’s on the suspect sites.

And notice how Conroy says that youtube site is not to be filtered, but he does say elsewhere that individual URL’s will be filtered.  IE the site is not filtered just individual URL’s on youtube will be.  Why else would Conroy say he is still negotiating with Google for them to censor RC clips on youtube.

Ralph says:

08:28pm | 07/04/10

A question: how does a page get taken off the filter?
If it is filtered then no one can check to see if it is ok.
Does this mean the government has an unfiltered feed to check pages?
Taking that a step further, does this mean there is one internet for the government and one for everyone else?

Scott says:

08:33pm | 07/04/10

Its really about the limiting of information to the majority of the public.
Anyone who knows anything about the Internet can bypass/ignore but the majority don’t.

Look up anonymous proxy like Tor. Or if you do a Google search and the page is blocked, click “cached” under google search. Google will not be blocking legal content. So for the informed this means nothing.

This secret list will help the major parties control information to the majority of people that now use the Internet that they were not previously able to control.
This will help keep the big two parties in power.

Maybe I am wrong and we believe politicians are honest.

My main question:
Do you really think that *ANY* government in power will not abuse this privilege? Seriously?

Anthony says:

08:35pm | 07/04/10

You can’t tell us that a filter is for our own safety and then not tell us specifically what is being blocked in the filter.

A secret blacklist of websites that we’re not allowed to see is not only unconstitutional, it is exactly the sort of thing that countries like China or Iran would try to do.

You’re got to be kidding me if you expect to implement a mandatory, nation-wide, internet filter and then still expect to be voted in next election. Ha!

Peter Brown says:

08:44pm | 07/04/10

Heres what I cant fathom, Stephen Conroy must be either deaf to the opposition of his stupid filter or Kevin Rudd is stupid to let Conroy keep going with this. I voted Labor last election but will 100% NOT vote for them in the next election. Get it in your heads now Kevin and Stephen, we do not want your stupid filter. No ifs no buts we do not want it.

Roger says:

08:46pm | 07/04/10

As an Aussie who hasn’t lived in Australia for some time now, it disgusts me the level to which the country is becoming a “nanny state”. 

This line alone “ISP Level filtering which would block RC material on URL based websites through a public complaints mechanism.” should be enough to warn people. 

Looking from the outside in for the past 8 years really highlights the changes happening in our country - it’s time the people stood up!

I mean the money spent on this could be used to actually put a network in place to measure up to the world standard, not to destroy what we have.

censorsh*t says:

08:51pm | 07/04/10

If I were unfortunate enough to have been born in a heavily restricted country - where my basic rights, freedom of speech, freedom of choice and access to information was not available to me, and it was within my power to leave, I would do it in a heartbeat.  That’s why Australia is the lucky country, we have these freedoms.  Now, I don’t want to leave Australia, but this filter will take away my right to information. 
I don’t give a toss about beastiality and child porn - that’s up to the government to baby the inbeciles that can’t control themselves.  But this proposition will restrict me from making my own choices on what information I can absorb.  So what if I want to read and learn about drugs, I’m not a drug addict.  So what if I want to learn about terrorism and crime, that doesn’t make me a terrorist or a criminal.  So what if I enjoy watching simulated violence, that doesn’t make me a violent person.
I like to know things, I like to learn as much as I possibly can about this mudball planet we call earth, and the people that inhabit it.  None of the information you’re intending on blocking will make one iota of difference to the problems facing our civilisation because it happened before the internet, and by golly it happens in places with the filter too! 
Conroy, don’t treat Australians like babies, don’t assume that we are guilty of something because we seek out knowledge, don’t turn this country against you. Give people a choice, direct the $$ to something more effective and worthwhile.

Nicholas says:

09:01pm | 07/04/10

My first thought on hearing about the filter was “Labor doesn’t get it”. They still don’t. The Internet is not like books. It’s not like movies. You can’t block a small list of sites and claim you are doing anything beneficial at all. All you are achieving is a ham-fisted censorship.

This policy will not survive the test of time.

Matt R says:

09:07pm | 07/04/10

I dont know much about politics but this issue alone has ensured I will vote against Labor every opportunity I get for a long time.

This all stinks of bullshit and you’ve been called on it Conroy. I loathe you.

Ted says:

09:36pm | 07/04/10

The governments views of RC are not my views…. I voted for Rudd to be PM not my nanny, next time round I hope he is neither.

nah says:

09:34pm | 07/04/10

Unwittingly I started to read this “article” and thought to myself “wow, this sounds like it was written by conjob himself.” Then checked the author.

Ed says:

09:39pm | 07/04/10

“Ms Cussen’s claims that the policy will make the internet more expensive are also wrong. In Western democracies such as the UK and Sweden, filtering has been implemented with no cost to users.” phew… so this whole process is coming our of your pocket and not the tax payers Steven? just because it is not a direct cost to our internet plans doesn’t mean it isn’t costing us anything, either by higher taxes or more likely less services that our tax dollars should have been spent on.

Right says:

10:13pm | 07/04/10

Senator Conroy the minister for Broadband and Communism.  Ignorant in the workings of the Internet, and ignorant in believing this policy is not a vote looser.  I would suggest you listen to the community not to mention the industry groups telling you that censoring the internet is unworkable, but I’m looking forward to your early retirement, so please continue.

gaz says:

10:06pm | 07/04/10

Stop preying on the weak minded to just accept what you say,  the rest of us have our eyes wide open. Labor is going to lose the next election, and it’s going to lose it by a lot, and it can be put down to the pure arrogance of you and rudd.

Gobsmacked says:

10:09pm | 07/04/10

Thanks for that Stephen.

Makes no difference to me, as an individual.  I will continue to access the internet in the same way I always have, because I have a bit more nouse than the federal telecommunications minister and it will take me all of five minutes to circumvent this idiotic waste of our taxes.

I will also continue to supervise my two young children when they use the internet..since that’s my job.  As their parents.

You can stick this filter Conroy.  It is nothing less than a full frontal assault on our freedom of speech and an attempt to control information. 

I have voted Labor all my life.  I voted you in, much to my chagrin.  I will have no qualms voting you out.

This one issue will change my vote.  You need to drop this and move on, because if you don’t the electorate will drop you.

I cannot recall such pig headed stupidity in continuing to push a policy so widely opposed as you’ve shown on this filter.

Chris says:

10:11pm | 07/04/10

Your comment:dear Senator Conroy, hopefully you can add ret or former to that in november this year. I hate the fact regardless of the benifits to the little ones that you of all people are going to choose what i can look at, when i can look at it and how i can look it it. This is the shame of the whole thing. You policy is a joke and i expect most will vote against you because of this stupid policy and i hope that your team however misdirectional they are are just one hit wonders.

Al says:

10:23pm | 07/04/10

Sorry Labor you’ve lost our votes at the next election.

pnt20 says:

10:34pm | 07/04/10

Ex Senator Conroy: A piece of advice!!!

My 14year old son attends a high school here in Australia, which has mandatory filtering. It takes him 10 minutes for him and his mates to get around the filtering. Wake up Conroy. You have no idea what you are doing and how this is going to stuff up OUR internet. Our youth today are smarter than you give them credit for. Spend the 43billion on Hospitals, instead of some stupid idea.

pnt20 says:

10:35pm | 07/04/10

Ex Senator Conroy: A piece of advice!!!

My 14year old son attends a high school here in Australia, which has mandatory filtering. It takes him 10 minutes for him and his mates to get around the filtering. Wake up Conroy. You have no idea what you are doing and how this is going to stuff up OUR internet. Our youth today are smarter than you give them credit for. Spend the 43billion on Hospitals, instead of some stupid idea.

Jeremy says:

10:34pm | 07/04/10

Conroy reminds me of one of those footy players you see wearing a suit who suddenly thinks he’s clever because he’s wearing a suit. I think he would make a better PE teacher than senator!

Given that 98% of us disagree with the filter, there is a simple solution: vote for whoever you want in the lower house, but vote against Labor in the senate. I’m a Labor voter, but will not support Labor in the senate if they go ahead with this undemocratic policy.

Kate says:

11:19pm | 07/04/10

Wow, so for the next election I’m going to have a choice between the right wing totalitarian Libs, and ...  right wing totalitarian Labor? Do you have any idea what it’s taken to push me, a Labor votor all my life, to think that thought? Well Conroy, that would be you and this stupid filter.

I won’t say much regarding the filter itself as that’s been covered beautifully by so many others, except that those you talk into supporting you now will just get angry when the filter happens and they realise how much you misled them. I’ll just advise that you think this over very, very carefully. And then don’t do it.

Peran says:

11:20pm | 07/04/10

Most of it isnt that bad I like the extra funding for afp and the optional filter…. its this bit that every part of me objects to “ISP Level filtering which would block RC material on URL based websites through a public complaints mechanism. ” Even if ISP level filtering is wrong (and it is) it is easy to get around and a public complaints system simply means that those losers with too much time on their hands who run around screaming wont someone think of the children can impose their imbecilic, small minded and minority opinions on all of us

Angry Voter says:

11:27pm | 07/04/10

Another astounding collection of lies and half truths from the Minister for Censorship!

There is no possible benefit to children (or adults) from this proposal, and much to lose.  Political speech (euthanasia and anti-abortion information) is already on the list of items Australians are banned from linking to.  Yes, merely LINKING TO!  Whirlpool and the EFA were threatened with $11,000 PER DAY fines for merely pointing to the political speech the Govt has already banned in contravention of the Australian Constitution.

And you want us to support a filter built into every ISP?  One you control?  No way!

It’s no longer sufficient for Labor to lose office over this fiasco.  You personally must apologise to the Australian people for your attempt to damage our democracy.  And for making such a complete ballsup of the NBN.

Cly says:

11:42pm | 07/04/10

Spend this money instead on hospitals. It’s useless from start to finish. Conroy is treating the nation like we have the combined intellect of a three year old.

He is the one spreading the myths. Conroy has made it so obvious that he has so little clue as to how intellectually bankrupt this cock-eyed, half-arsed plan is. He’s in it for the votes that will come from those ignorant about or new to the internet,  unfortunately there are too many of those types here and around the world.

It will never, ever work. What a complete waste of taxpayers money it has been to get his pathetic proposal this far - don’t let him go any further.

Ian says:

11:39pm | 07/04/10

Don’t believe the myths on the ISP filter - The biggest myth is that it will actually work properly. 

I have administered a lot of government networks, both Federal and State, and there are so many false positives.  Do we really want to stop people researching breast cancer while allow smart kids to still look at porn.

Where I work now, we have an office in China, do you think they are restricted by the Great Chinese Firewall - NO, they have a work around, a tunnel through to our Australian network and out through here.  There are so many services in the world which offer services like this, and it’s only a matter of time before all the kids are using these and we are being blocked in doing our regular work or research.

Senator Conroy, please do not limit us just because you can’t keep an eye on your own kids!

Josh says:

12:08am | 08/04/10

“The Government’s independent pilot trial found that ISP-level filtering of a defined list of URLs can be done with 100% accuracy”

No it didnt.

The government’s pilot found that blacklisted URLs could be blocked 100% of the time. But it also found that some additional non-RC sites were accidentally blocked as well.

Failure to allow access to legitimate sites is not “100% accuracy”.

And this is why I wont be voting for Labor. Because on the issues that matter to me, my intelligence is treated with contempt and I am presented with nothing but political sidestepping - carefully constructed answers designed to discredit opponents without *technically* saying that their points are wrong, so as to weasel out of it later if called on their statements.

Or another one: “Government does not support Refused Classification content being available on the internet.”
Notice how this *implies* the filter will help remove RC content from the internet, even though the filter has absolutely no effect on the server, only the user. Its only purpose in the article is to confuse readers about the actual capabilities of the filter and, once again, try to convince people while using weasel words to avoid making any actual claim. The conversation is about the filter, and Conroy deliberately brings in matters that are completely unrelated to the filter, in an attempt to confuse the issue.

dd says:

12:09am | 08/04/10

Conroy - No one believes a word you write or utter.

I’m sure you’ll find a 400,000 + job in the private sector when all is said and done. So I guess it’s worth all the personal humiliation and loss of credibility.

Jason says:

12:09am | 08/04/10

Id like to see what conroy says about this thread, im sure he’d brush it off as a whole bunch of child porn supporters

Chris says:

12:15am | 08/04/10

Stephen Conroy, Are you seriously that delude in what I can only see as your Christian Zealot ways that real thinking intelligent Australians are going to believe any of the rubbish you say?
People are waking up to the reality that Labor is trying to bring in it’s own version of 1984 and Chinese political censorship. All wrapped up in the fake cover of protecting children with internet filtering.
How about doing something productive for the people who pay you salary.
Give us a better telecommunication network infrastructure and not the rubbish one announced not so long ago.
Put more money in to cyber crime units with more man power and training.
Facts are that ISP filtering will do nothing to stop or even slow Child pornography. Esp when people accessing it are from the Joe average down the rd to people in high positions of government, law and enforcement and military. Operation Cathedral which broke up the Wonderland Child Pornography club shows it only too well.
That case showed that people had to go through several levels of security to access any content. Only a person who is deliberately looking for such content will be able to find a hint of it and the chances of someone stumbling across child porn, as others have pointed out, are astronomical. If you staff had half a brain between them they would be telling you this every day.
All you will succeed in doing is driving it further underground, causing distributors to setup P2P networks and make it harder for Police to catch the viewers and makers of Child porn.

I’m so glad iinet has the balls and brains to stand up against the China style communist filtering you are trying to bring in and wish Optus and Telstra had have the spine iinet has.
As long as what I view online is not illegal which include porn content that can be legally purchase in any adult store across the country, yes I have viewed it on occasion, it is of no business of yours nor the Australian governments.
It is not up to the government to waste money on doing the parenting that the mums and dads of Australia should be doing.
Nobody wants your internet filtering and last I heard you are in office to govern for the people not over them. It’s about time you did what we are paying you to do instead of running with what looks like your own agenda.

Personally I can’t wait until the next election so I can hopefully help rid Australia of the people who are slowly selling us out to foreign interests and are so intent on taking away what little rights we have while pushing through their own Christian agendas to the detriment of everyone else.

CW says:

12:46am | 08/04/10

Senator Conroy writes “[t]here is a lot of misinformation circulating about the Government’s ISP-level filtering proposal”.

While the above statement is true I think the good Senator fails to take responsibility for much of the confusion over the Internet censorship policy. When asked directly for further information on the policy he often just ignores the request.

A case in point is the Questions on Notice in the latest Senate Notice Paper http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/work/notice/snpf_119.pdf

Questions 2578, 2579, 2580, 2581, 2582 and 2583 were placed on the notice paper 11th January 2010, with questions 2585 and 2586 added on the 18th January 2010.

It is expected that Questions on Notice be answered within 30 days of being added to the notice paper. If Senator Conroy was truly concerned about misinformation or confusion regarding the government’s policy you might think he would attempt to answer the questions put to him in a timely manner.

The answers to those questions are around 50 days late so far, anyone paying attention to the government’s performance in the communications portfolio probably isn’t surprised. The government hasn’t met or exceeded any significant deadline in this area.

Senator Conroy, if you are serious about having an informed debate answer the damn questions! Or are you a troll?

Greg Smith says:

12:50am | 08/04/10

It is trivial to bypass this proposed filter, so blocking prohibited content (most of which isn’t hosted on the Web anyway) for anyone who actively seeks it is a waste of time. Therefore the only goal of this filter is to protect children from accidentally stumbling across something inappropriate, and this should be done either with a client-side filter or with an opt-in ISP-side filter. Applying a filter to the whole of Australia in the name of protecting children is ridiculous.

Alan T says:

01:46am | 08/04/10

Lets face it the government is starting to believe there own lies and rhetoric. I doubt if Conroy can lie strait in bed. I think this article it titled correctly - Don’t believe the myths on the ISP filter - I think Conroy is the spin doctor of the myths.

Ben says:

01:47am | 08/04/10

There are myths surrounding the proposed filter, yes. But the filter in its proposed form is still a complete waste of money and other resources, as well as being needlessly strict. Adults have the choice to make decisions for themselves - not the government. And when it comes to children - blame the parents, don’t make everyone else suffer.

Andy says:

02:36am | 08/04/10

I was completely uneducated on this whole thing until I read this guy’s article and the whole ideology of this plan stinks.

Check it out here - the guy seems to know what he is talking about - http://www.timdavis.com.au/internet/oppose-senator-stephen-conroys-internet-filter/

Kevin says:

03:00am | 08/04/10

A waste of time and money.
Predicated on a lie.
To appease an extremist minority.
Driven by a lust for power.

Daniel says:

03:04am | 08/04/10

Senator Conroy:

You only ever mention a few categories which are listed under “Refused Classification”. Why don’t you address the others?

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_311012

Scroll to the bottom of the page. You will discover “Violence Depiction” and “Sexual Fantasy” fall under the category of Refused Classification, along with other LEGAL categories caught up in the Refused Classification net.

Andrew says:

03:48am | 08/04/10

This is one of the most commented on stories on this site! It’s quite clear that nearly everyone hates this filter…. Any politicians going to look at the statistics evident here?

Peter C says:

04:03am | 08/04/10

Senator Conroy,
                    Thank you for sticking to your plan with this filter. Other politicians might have caved to overwhelming public pressure and rational thought by now, but I am pleased that your arrogance and stubborn belief in your own power has seen you hold your ground. Keep it up, so that when the next election arrives (can’t wait) no one will have forgotten what you are and the public can throw you and your comrades out. Your filtering plan is not the worst thing that can happen to us, the next party in power will dump it.
      Someone like you flying under the radar and gaining control during even more important issues is terrifying. Keep fighting us.

Allan Clutterbuck says:

06:26am | 08/04/10

I just wanted to say that this outrages me. But what gets me even more fired up, is that whenever i try to discuss this with anyone that isnt a serious internet user, they have NO IDEA what im talking about, and just seem to be happy to go along with it. WE NEED PUBLIC EDUCATION. People need to know what this is and what it means to their freedoms, before its too late.

Jo says:

09:00am | 08/04/10

Mr Conroy, I’ve been a lifelong Labor voter, but if you keep pushing the filter…. I’ll be putting you last and encouraging my friends to do the same so that you are removed not only from government, but your electorate. 

This is the issue of our time, Gen X and Y.  Don’t let the bastards filter our net, keep it open for the sake of our political freedom, not just for ourselves but our future generations.

James says:

09:07am | 08/04/10

One thing says it all:
http://www.cafepress.com.au/153degrees.322585245

Your Freedom, Worth Fighting and Voting For.

Conroy, you’re a liar.  You said it was to stop child porn.  Then admitted it wasn’t the case.  Get your filter off of my freedom, I will not Heil you or your Fuhrer.  In fact, if this abomination manages to get passed, I will be posting information everywhere on how to circumvent it which is a very simple thing to do.

People, contact your local member and let them know this filter is unacceptable,

Josh says:

09:08am | 08/04/10

“Don’t believe the hype” is hype

JeffK says:

09:10am | 08/04/10

How utterly ridiculous. You want to explain the “myths” and all you do is spin.

Alex says:

09:46am | 08/04/10

“For Ms Cussen to compare Australia’s policy with countries like China and Iran is ludicrous.”

Except you yourself used China as an example of how this works…?

DanO says:

09:48am | 08/04/10

Unfortunately Steven creating an internet filter on Australian Internet would only drive our Internet further into the ‘3rd world category’.

No matter how you butter it up there are some clear and simple facts that need to be stated:

1. The Internet is FREE SPACE, FREE SPACE does not get controlled.  This space allows some people a voice to where they would never be heard, as a nation we do not need or want YOUR VERSION of this tool.  We live in a democratic “FREE” nation, how about we start acting that way.

2. Don’t lie about ‘protecting children online’ this is a parents job and any self respecting person with half an ounce of nouse is able to do this.  This should not be of the Governments concern, there are greater issues you should focus on.  I don’t think you would find anyone that would think of our Government as ‘parents’ so stop trying to be.

3. This will slow down average speeds of internet in Australia, you are creating a point to where data must pass through, unfortunately this creates an extra bottleneck with limited bandwidth, do the math it will slow it down.  Your tests would be considered to be inconclusive as you have never run the filter on full scale and I would imagine large scaling issues with attempting to create that data pattern.

4.  Do your research mate, THE PEOPLE DON’T WANT IT.  Except for the few who actually believe this is being done with their best interests in mind.

Time to open the doors and cut the spin-doctor stuff because honestly we do not believe you.

At times you look like you almost don’t believe it yourself.

Max says:

09:58am | 08/04/10

I’ll bet that the first sites added to the filter will be torrent indexing sites - because they contain “detailed instruction in crime”.

StefanB says:

09:59am | 08/04/10

Unfortunately most misinformation is coming from government. I’m technical person and I understand how filters work. You are misleading people, to know if internet packets need to be filtered you need to look into the url inside the packet. Secondly, rules to declare content RC are very vague, as we saw last year a news story about some middle eastern conflict that was broadcasted on Australian networks was later marked as RC on youtube because it showed violence and someone did not like it. Meaning while major news networks were complaining how some middle eastern country is hiding from it’s citizens the truth Australian government censored the same news information so Australian citizens could not make informed opinion based on facts. This is where it all ends - don’t tell us what to think but give us the information and we make our own opinion.

Richy says:

10:28am | 08/04/10

Child porn I can understand (but the filter won’t stop that anyway), but bestiality? That’s funny! If somebody wants to look at that, let them, it’s pretty sick, but what about gay porn? I think it’s pretty sick watching two guys go at it, so each to their own, I say.

Random Female says:

10:39am | 08/04/10

How do we go about changing what is refused classification? Can we create new categories other than R18+ and X18+ to fit them in? I’d like to see consensual BDSM allowed rather than RC, as well as a few other things.

If we do get a new category (or change existing categories) to allow what is at the moment considered RC, will the list be updated?

Mr T says:

11:12am | 08/04/10

So the government says “negligible impact” on internet speed… Australia already has one of the slowest speeds of internet in the “developed world” ANY impact is a bad thing. National Broadband Network is a farth.
The filter won’t cost us anything? really? Where’s the tax money coming from? and from the funds that could have otherwise built extra wards in rural hospitals or extra class rooms in schools. Is that to no cost to us? NO!!

It is a complete misallocation of tax resources for something which will not work for the people. There are people who just like to “know” about things. without the harmful intent or any other anti government/people/establishment sentiment. this plan will block access to much of that just because some people might take offense to some of the information presented (for example: pro drugs, pro euthanasia or anything that could blow things up or are destructive) that could be classified RC.

Scott Grundy says:

11:14am | 08/04/10

If this Filter is being imposed is a political strategy to placate Family First it is misguided.  All credible pollsters show that the Balance of Power after the next election is going to be held by the Greens.  They oppose this filter.
So on that basis Senator Conroy would not be proposing this filter.
I thus believe Senator Conroy on the position he states.  He is doing this out of some principle he holds.  Against the evidence and against public opinion.
Ignoring the points made by the likes of Electronic Frontiers Australia and calling them myths does not change facts.

Chris M says:

11:31am | 08/04/10

It is correct to compare your filter with that of China and Iran, it is the same technology after all.

Most pornography is illegal in Australia and with the churchies in charge it will all be added to the filter eventually.

You went to the election with some minor line about internet safety and an opt-in filter and this has morphed into a mandatory country wide filter.

You know (or I guess you’ve been told by people who have a clue) that child porn is not normally moved around using websites, the same goes for most illegal things that everyone can agree on.
Your filter is clearly targeted at the gray areas that the ACL cannot stomach, why you feel the need to intrude on what people are doing in private I have no idea.

There is no need for this filter, its costly and pointless and will be used as a political tool in the future, as it is in every other country with mandatory censorship.

The internet villain of the year award should have been a wake up call, you are going directly against the entire IT community.

Please fall on your sword, we will not sit down and be quiet on this issue. This is big brother going mad with an evangelical twist and if I have to shout from the rooftops and beg every relative to vote green to stop you then I will.

AJ says:

11:29am | 08/04/10

The worst part is that this will not stop child pornography. You can’t just go to “child abuse dot com” and look at it. People meet each other off social networking and anonymous classifieds, they form private groups on things like Yahoo Groups, and they trade material privately, peer to peer so to speak. How exactly is this filter going to do anything except assuage the self-righteous moral outrage of the ill-informed?

Cameron Price-Austin says:

11:36am | 08/04/10

This is so typical of the federal Labor government—a poorly-designed, ill-conceived, unpopular, expensive solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Nortius Maximus says:

12:04pm | 08/04/10

Listen it’s great all these comments, and everyone feels good after venting their spleen. Unfortunately writing these opinions does nothing and will not change anything.

The best way to actually make a difference is to write to your local federal MP and let them know what you think about this and how you will vote at the upcoming election. You should also find out who the main competitor to your sitting member is and also write to them and ask them their position on the filter and let them know your vote is up for grabs. If you did this, you will actually make a difference.  Yes it is work, but you could actually cause the defeat of this government or cause the bill to be dropped.

The list of serving MP’s is here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/mi-elctr.asp

Start writing and calling in to talkback.
cheers
Nortius

Yaddles says:

12:30pm | 08/04/10

My few points on this topic….
If their filter is so good then surely they can tell us exactly what they are blocking…or have they something to hide???  People say this will just tell people in other countries about the sites…but in all seriousness fix the problem get rid of the sites, dont just hide the problem.

If they really want to do it properly then they should give each and every site world wide a classification G, PG, M, MA, R, etc I mean every site, no no no every page as some pages might be suitable for viewing whereas one click into the site and your looking at some girl pleasuring a walrus. Classifying each page will allow parents to know which pages are good for their children, which sites need parental supervision etc. If they don’t If they don’t then they are saying that any site that isn’t blocked if fair game for our children. They keep on saying this is to help parents. They are being the parents so the parents don’t have to worry. The internet will be safe for kids to look at. So the first time a child gets through to a site with info on how to be a terrorist then we can sue the government as they were supposed to be the ones taking responsibility stopping this bad stuff.

There is a problem with the classifying of pages though, as a site may be hosting something distasteful one minute but could have changed its tune the next and taken that all down, but will the people controlling the filter take this into consideration? Nope. I’m guessing once a kiddie porn site always a kiddie porn site. And visa versa, once a site for the Disney Channel could tomorrow be a site for how to build a bomb. So with this issue then the filter people would have to run hourly scans of every page world wide. How silly of me this wouldn’t work….you can change a pages contents in less than a second, so we should make the scans in real time…yeah that’s more like it. We don’t want the children getting access to the site telling them how to make ecstasy in those few seconds it was up.

Hmmmm Conroy you think you can stop bad stuff on the web? Think again smarty pants. There are more sites than you, and all of your extended family have had breathes on this planet. Most of the sites you would never know about and would never find, so don’t tell me you are protecting Australia with your hair brained filter. You wouldn’t even scratch the surface. You plan is not feasible, it is a waste of money and I REPEAT WILL FAIL.

Maybe you can call it the MYKI FILTER. A much cheaper solution would be to give all parents internet filter software for their PC, if they want to use it great, if not its their fault if their kids see a story about Euthanasia (seriously why did you block this Conroy). It would be cheaper than your government run filter. Or wont these filters block out the real stuff you want to block out.  Hmmmm what is that real stuff Conroy???

Or maybe take work with international policing groups to take down the sites with bad content and arrest the people posting it, rather than your ‘if I cant see it it doesnt exist’ approach.

Sorry there is my two cents, there is more to this argument than just that but its seems as though I talking toa brick wall.  (Thought I had better write my thoughts while I can, soon comments like this will get me lynched.)

Baggyone72 says:

12:48pm | 08/04/10

Mr Conroy likes to state that “you can’t buy this stuff at the news agent”. This actually highlights the inconsistency of the current classification scheme. I can go into a newsagent and buy “adult erotica”, not pornography, but stories aimed at an adult audience. Many of the titles include depictions of bondage / spanking.
If such material is on the internet, it will be classified RC, as the classification scheme that applies to print is different to that which applies to film and internet.
So, if I buy such a book at the newsagent, then scan pages from it and post it online, it suddenly becomes RC.

Such inconsistency just creates issues that will only be highlighted by this filter.

Andy says:

01:57pm | 08/04/10

Dear Senator Conroy,

Thank you for the heads up. I will make it a point to not believe the myths on the proposed filter. In return, I would like to offer you a similar heads up;

“Don’t believe you’re keeping your job after the next election.”

Christopher Scott Magor says:

02:14pm | 08/04/10

R-rated games are refused classification in Australia, so one has to question how material would be judged.

I understand the desire to protect children, but filtering the Internet is a head in the sand approach that does not stop the spread of the vile material. The ISP filtering system strikes me as a little sinister because of our government’s constant overreaching from its responsibilities.

We are hit with extra taxes on tobacco, alcohol and there have been moves against salt. What is to say that our government will not take a similar approach to online activities that it deems are not good for us?

The WikiLeaks blacklist, which you claimed to be a fabrication seemed rather authentic to me. I read the names of every site on that list and while a good number of them seemed to be for sites of a most abhorrent nature, there were others on there that were not.

Would the ISP filter be used to prevent adults from accessing Internet poker and gambling sites? Would it be used to prevent adults from accessing X-rated material? Would it prevent people from properly researching the debate on euthanasia?

How would we know which sites are banned? Is it not in the interests of us as a people to know what has been banned and why?

I put it to you, Minister Conroy, that the biggest source of misinformation about the proposed ISP filter is the Australian Labour Party, and that the censorship of information by a government without oversight is contrary to the principals of just governance. I also put it to you that an Internet filter without transparency is not in the interests of our country.

Before the ISP filter was introduced, I would have happily called myself a Labour supporter. At the next election I’ll be voting Liberal.

Philby says:

03:37pm | 08/04/10

“I welcome debate on our policy, but let’s make sure the facts are at the centre of the argument.”

Maybe you should practise what you preach Stephen - I see a lot of misinformation in this piece of yours.

thomas vesely says:

04:37pm | 08/04/10

in my dreams they find kiddie porn on his hard drive.then they find a network of kiddie fiddlers amongst leading catholics.then we can all have a beer and breathe a sigh of relief.and then perhaps we might see the link of sin and a preoccupation with decrying it…

Tim says:

04:28pm | 08/04/10

“...And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment…. It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions—by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice……And so it is to the printing press—to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news—that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”

- JFK “The President and the Press” April 27,1961. Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City, New York.

Paul says:

05:25pm | 08/04/10

Voted labor last election and was willing to commit to a federal labor govt. for the following elections based on the run up to the 07 poll booth.

This issue alone, next election I will be voting elsewhere.

Conroy, wake up. You are poisoning the young vote.

Guy van den Berg says:

08:25pm | 08/04/10

One more vote lost here. No way did I move to Australia, a democracy, to have this happen.

Steven Cathery says:

08:46pm | 08/04/10

“Under Australia’s existing classification regulations this material is not available in newsagencies, it is not on library shelves, you cannot watch it on a DVD or at the cinema and it is not shown on television.”

Well, Whoop Dee F#&%ing Do.  Welcome to the real world. Where grown ups are considered every bit as intelligent and mature as any potential government censorship puppet. The Internet requires you to be an adult and maintain your own standards of censorship and personal approval. If I can’t handle that then I don’t know who can.. I can’t think of anybody who could be a better judge of what I consider appropriate content than I am.

Certainly some stuck up little prick in a business suit, isn’t qualified to second guess my values and make moral dictates on my behalf. Screw Kevin and all the politicians and bureaucrats, who let their chance to develop an interactive dynamic presence on the Internet languish, but continued develop static -one to many- policy proclamation and spin doctoring PR sites, upon which self praise was deemed to be every recommendation.

None of these people had the vaguest CLUE how to enlist the democratic potential of the online world. They never realized the opportunity, to canvas public consent and of the benefits of employing the ‘many to many’ website interfaces such as,forums to bolster democratic principals and amplify community representation.  Politicians on the whole, have never been interested in canvasing public consent or seeking a clear community mandate, neither in the front garden, the back office nor on the net. Yet now they wish to turn around and wield unlimited power and undo the pioneering accomplishments enshrined by freedom of speech, self censorship in the personal approval stakes and freedom to be the judge of what is good for oneself.

No view however distasteful or disagreeable, deserves to go unheard. I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to my dying breath, in defense of your right to say it.. There can be no democracy, without open transparency of information; unfettered, unedited and uncensored.

What makes the Internet the great liberating force that it is, is that nobody owns it and nobody controls what content is published upon it at the larger scales. Information is the ONLY antidote we have for ignorance. And that’s not just the information I prefer, or the information YOU prefer, nor (and perhaps especially not) the information Kevin Rudd prefers, but the great unwashed sea of information that allows each of us to be exposed to the blunt compromised and unsanitized reality of life.

You may expose yourself for the fool you may well be, or expose others for the fools they are, but no matter what you say, it isn’t going to influence the mind of a reasonable person, if all you have is unsubstantiated rhetoric. You may tend your views anonymously or reveal you real life identity. It makes no difference as there’s no easy way to validate you are who you claim to be anyhow. So in a sense we are all anonymous voices out here, That’s a good thing really, as an argument should never rest on personal authority.

What matters is your ideas and let each person be the judge of them, regardless of personal status or reputation. If the neighborhood fool, ever comes up with even ONE good idea, then I want to hear about it, regardless of who invoked it. Conversely, even a person who may rise to such stately ranks of authority and prestige, as the Prime Minister of Australia, may still have a very very stupid idea indeed. On the Internet, ideas must stand (or fall) on their own merit. That requires that each of us has access to uncensored forums of discussion, freedom of speech and the right (if not the obligation) to think for ourselves.

I tentatively honor each and every one of my fellow citizens with the prerequisite intellectual accumen, to live up to this civic responsibility of thinking for oneself (which, in an effective democracy, actually translates to ‘collectively thinking for each other’ too). All that I ask in return for this charitable gesture, is that others do likewise and honor me with the same confidence in my ability to think for myself. That bargain includes YOU TOO Mr Kevin Rudd. There’s a reason why the Prime Ministers vote, caries no more democratic power in the ballot box, than yours or mine. Democracy depends for it’s very viability, on the principal that nobody can or should have the power to monopolize information.

Jarrad says:

10:20pm | 08/04/10

‘The Refused Classification Content list cannot be made public because if it was, it would simply be a catalogue to direct people to specific URLs that are Refused Classification’

Then how will we know that we can trust what is on the list truly is RC?

As its a mandatory filter how can it be justified to keep the blacklist secret?

Isn’t it blocked anyway so that it cannot be viewed as is?

detailed instruction of crime? Does that include instructions on how to jay walk and other frivolous time-wasting crimes?

A complaints based system for the blacklist: so if a family photo is complained about it could be blocked?

Its a combination of the idea of a mandatory filter with a secret blacklist being fundamentally dangerous for accountability of our public sector alongside the fact that our classification system is too vague to clearly define the specifics of what RC is as provided in the crime example.

Finally if terrorism and the detailed instruction of terrorism is a crime, then why is it a separate point in the Refused Classification list? Is there another definition of terrorism that is not a crime which is why it would need to be included?

I hope you see my point.

Richard says:

12:01am | 09/04/10

Aren’t we completely free of the DLP and Bob Santamaria’s memory yet?

Having got internet accepted as part of our Nanny State does Stephen presume to speak for Tony Abbott if and when he moves to the Lodge?

If the filter is breached or ineffective, will Stephen fall on his sword?

David Crafti says:

08:47am | 09/04/10

That article was just a press release of all the stuff he has previously said. You could have just read Geordie Guys’s Conroy Bingo to get the same content.

He is the one misleading the public. “RC content includes…” That’s a non-exhaustive list.
“You can’t buy it in ...” Yes, but tell us about the places where people CAN legally buy it.

What’s with $49M for 91 AFP offices, anyway? Why does each cop cost over $500K to fund?

To oppose this authoritarian stupidity, join Pirate Party Australia.

Johnno says:

09:27am | 09/04/10

What is it with the public. Cant the ysee were all being conned. Failed software seems to be the latest ploy to give money away. John Howard didnt understand technology. His interent filter didnt work, Conroy’ sfilter wont work. All thatmoney for nothing. Doen on purpose to give money away? I wondr if its the latest mystery black hole to throw money into, with no visible trace of where it went. It doesnt sound liek you want technical advice either. So the question is, where is all the money going? No one want to tell us except,: Its going to filter the internet. Sorry folks. That filter will be so clogged it will become unworkable. Any proper explanationon why it costs so much? The braodband will speed things up, the filter wil lby design, slow thing down to the speed were experiencing now. Why bother….

Andrej says:

10:44am | 09/04/10

An internet filter is fundamentally wrong as well as being a solution which doesn’t solve any problems.

Anton says:

11:14am | 09/04/10

The only truth you’ve stated is that we shouldn’t believe the myths concerning the filter. The myths are not coming from the media, they’re coming from your office.

The filter was not 100% effective, it did slow down traffic, even in the test that could not be taken seriously. Trials were only conducted on slow old connections, the 20+mb/s some of us are using, and the new faster connections to come, may well yield different results. Tests were also not conducted by ISPs with savvy user-bases - were the same test to be run on say, Internode, you’re well aware that the by-pass rate would close in to 100%.

The filter isn’t a silver bullet, it’s not even a spit-wad. Come implementation, we can run a pool to see how long it takes for every child in Australia to know how to bypass the filter. Most kids I know already have a fair idea, and will be more than happy to share that information with their peers.

Also, much of the material you listed is NOT RC, it’s illegal, there’s a huge difference - things that fall under the banner of “RC” can be completely legal acts - the classification just means it’s not legal to sell.

Watch carefully the swing against Atkinson - you can bluster on all you like, but there is no-one in the industry who supports you, or even thinks you have a vague notion of what you’re talking about.

Allan Lewis says:

03:47pm | 09/04/10

There are two ways to make the filter actually work.

1. Have all ISPs drop packets they cannot sniff, with the exception of those destined for and originating from a white list of approved users of encryption. If you’re a small online business, you have to apply to the government for the right to host and serve SSL connections. If you’re one of the impractically large number of businesses around the world who need to deal with customers online… well, you get my drift.

2. Make it illegal to attempt to circumvent the filter. Of course the problem with this is that there is no visible difference between establishing a secure to an overseas VPN provider and establishing a secure connection to your bank: either way, you can’t read and therefore filter the encrypted packets.

So yes, you *can* make it “work” but you’ll break too many other things in the process.

wells says:

01:48pm | 10/04/10

Someone needs to summarise the above comments and write a punch article titled: “Don’t believe Conroy’s myths about the internet filter.”

Has a much more truthful ring to it.
Anyone… ?

Mr Cynic says:

07:10pm | 10/04/10

Senator Stephen Conroy,

I feel sorry for some one who is obviously has so little respect for his fellow Australians to continue with this farce.

You stated on ABC National that there were “pnly” 360 WEB Sites black listed (Refused Classification),  however that seems a little fanciful compared to the list supposedly published by Wikileaks.

Is Wikileaks going to be Refused Classification?  Who else will be put on the list? Those that don’t toe the “Party Line” ?

Oh! Wait a minute, we all are, we can’t be trusted!

Kennedy says:

05:50am | 11/04/10

Or maybe “Why the filter is great news for Government, Murdoch and the Media” 250 million anyone shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Zach says:

05:19pm | 11/04/10

I’ve read through a lot of the replies here and I may have missed it, but I don’t see anyone mention an OPT-IN filter!

The internet in a private home, should be policed by the parents of the children living in the house!  Should parents feel the need to filter access to the internet at an ISP level,they should sign up to a plan with an ISP who provides the service!

In addition to that, bring back the filtering software for people to install on their own PC’s and give the people the CHOICE TO DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES!

After all, that’s all we’re asking for =)

LC says:

10:15pm | 05/05/10

To Mr. Conroy,

You can’t censor online material as you would for material in a book or a movie as they are static and cannot be changed, whereas the internet is a dynamic tool that can be changed at anytime. Censoring the internet would be more like censoring the phone system by disconnecting a call when a certain words are mentioned. Hopefully you can already you can see the problems with that. Say you decide to censor the word “Al-Qaeda” in such a fashion. All that will do is hinder the people who want to have a legitimate political conversation over the phone while people who want to praise their activities or find out where to sign up will simply speak in another language or use a code.

Same thing will happen here. Just like criminals can still get guns despite heavy gun control, the pedophiles and other deviants can still get access their filth regardless of the filter. The key issue here is that most child porn is spread around using private, invitation only peer to peer groups and encrypted zipped folders sent through email. Why? Because child pornography is illegal is every country I can name, and sharing it in public places (which is what the net is) is a surefire way to get caught, so they take as many precautions as possible to make sure it is kept as a private matter, just between themselves. It’s the same reason you don’t see marijuana dealers selling their wares in fruit and veg markets and it’s the same reason you didn’t see pedophiles picking up their child porn from the newsagency in the days before the internet.

As for the 355 child porn websites you claimed existed on the net. I assure you that they are obscure sites that would change their domain names regularly to avoid being filtered out or being shut down and the owners caught, so just finding these sites is only possible by looking for them…hard. To filter out these sites is akin to throwing a blanket over a child being raped and doing nothing else to stop the situation. For one thing people who want to visit these sites or others you have blocked can do so through the use of proxies, they reroute their internet browsing through a foreign computer, browsing the net as someone in that country would or use a VPN, which creates an encrypted tunnel between your computer to the host server, which you browse the internet through, and because it employs heavy encryption, your ISP will never know what you’re doing. (I’m not going to go too indepth with these here, that would make the post way too long. But I have provided some further reading at the bottom of this post). These things are household names amongst people living in countries such as China or Iran, do you want them to become household names here, which would make the currently easy job of tracking down and arresting pedophiles on the net much, much harder? Personally I’d rather see my taxes being spent on funding the AFP to monitor who visits the sites and work with international law enforcement bodies to have them shut down and the people behind them prosecuted, rather than being spent on tossing a blanket over them.

You say this is for protecting children, but the most ironic thing about this whole scenario is that today’s children, having grown up around the technology are the ones most likely to know how to bypass it. I have a friend who works in an IT department of a notable school, and he says that knowledge about unblocked proxy servers spreads like wildfire, and provided they don’t get too much traffic or are used to grossly violate the school’s IT policy, they can fly under the radar for weeks or months. Others go the next step and configure their home computer as a proxy server and browse the net through that. These kids aren’t dumb and if they want to see content the filter blocks not much can stop them. Not only that, but they are still vulnerable to legal X and R rated pornographic sites as well as pedophiles lurking on social networking and instant messaging services.

I’m not going to get started on the other issues (overblocking, underblocking, speeds) because if it cannot achieve it’s goal of protecting children then there’s no point in spending taxpayers money on it in favor of other approaches that can work, such as extra spending towards a combination of enforcement and education of kids and parents, and an two-tier opt in filter that covers porn and the second tier additionally covers proxies and social networking rather than trying to enact a easily bypassable censorship system. It’s a good policy to not to believe everything your told, Conroy, but I guarantee you that I’m a lifetime labor voter that’s seriously considering handing my vote over to the greens or the coalition the next time round on this issue alone, and I doubt I’ll be the only one.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/firewall4.htm
http://www.alliancedatacom.com/how-vpn-works.asp

Dale says:

05:32am | 08/05/10

Conroy.  You forgot the most important fact of all.

————
We the people are paying for this, and we do not want it.
———

John Oh says:

08:35am | 31/05/10

All the technical people I know are convinced Mr Conroy should try and get a job in the IT industry. They could then sack him for his lack of expertise and lack of knowledge on his portfolio. It appears he is doing more harm than good in the industry.
Why is he still there? Its not for nothing that the industry now lacks even more direction than before. Its time to take a firm grip on the situation and to stop taking notice of Telstra who are apparently quite happy that he is bogging down others waiting on his lack of direction. Maybe he could google and find the solution to his problems there?

Where did that mexi can go says:

10:21am | 02/06/10

To John Oh.
I doubt that he could even format a hard drive, let alone google.

Ronk says:

04:55pm | 03/06/10

I had my doubts about the internet filter, but the farrago of insanely over-the-top and obviously orchestrated opposition to it here has convinced me it will be a very good thing. I am no fan of this Government, but I don’t agree with most of the posters here who seem to think Rudd is some sort of cross between Hitler and Mao.

To all those here who oppose the filter IN PRINCIPLE (not just because you think it will be ineffective, too expensive or slow down your precious websurfing) please tell us:

Do you also want the same material allowed in films, TV, radio, videogames and every other form of mass communications media, from which it has always been prohibited? Yes or No?

If no, then what is so freaking special about the internet that it must be treated as a sacred cow, unlike every other form of communication?

I have asked these questions over and over elsewhere and have never been able to get a straight answer from those who are otherwise continually voluble about internet filtering and about what a monster the mild-mannered Conroy is..

If

SR says:

12:38am | 04/06/10

@Ronk

I am happy to give you answers to your questions. But I will first say ‘you are obviously too old, too prudish or too supportive of the major media corporations or Government’.

To your first question, the media format/content you describe are all ‘sold’ within Australia and therefore subject (loosely in many cases) to the Classification Act.

Content that is not sold is not subject to the Classification Act. Content that is Illegal Refused Classification (iRC) (but not Legal Refused Classification – LRC) is subject to the Criminal Code and Crimes Act etc, not the Classification Act.

Therefore, generally only media corporations (mainly major ones) that ‘sell’ their content within Australia are subject to the Classification Act and the ACMA (with the exception of the internet which has many ‘minor media content providers’).

In answer to your question that presumes the answer to your first question is ‘No’ I refer you to my answer above. Also you are incorrect that ‘Refused Classification’ communication (legal or otherwise) cannot be broadcast within Australia – refused classification covers text, sound and images (static or dynamic). It takes no genius to broadcast or communicate refused classification within Australia with little to no impediment.

I might also add that legal RC content is often broadcast in the formats you have indicated, however it is often described or portrayed in a manner that circumvents mechanisms within the classification and broadcast framework – you obviously don’t even know when you are observing content that is refused classification or potentially refused classification (the Government is relying on this element with the voters), if you did then you would probably not be supporting this proposed filter.

I would also like to point out that the proposed internet content filter is not about child protection – it never has been. It is just easier to market it as such as clearly you for one, have obviously fallen victim to this argument.

If people only trust major media corporations (who represent shareholders – not ‘your morals’ or ‘your values’) and the Government to provide your children content, then this proposed internet filter is for you.
But if you want your children to be raised with an open mind, to a life beyond the deceptive grip of major media and out of touch politicians who want your children to fear the unknown, this filter is not for you.

Once the Classification Act is applied to all content on the internet to all subscribers within Australia all content will be considered ‘for sale’ whether such content is intended for profit or not.

An important question to ask yourself whether you are for the filter or not is – if my current ISP offered me my internet at half price, doubling your current speed and quota, but they would filter your content and you would not know what content is being filtered, would you remain on you current plan or subscribe to the offered one?

Considered this carefully!

Ronk says:

10:22pm | 14/06/10

@SR: I am neither old, nor prudish nor supportive nor have any connection to the major media corporations or the Government.

Can the obfuscatory doubletalk and explain in 25 words or less why it’s not OK for the government to place EXACTLY THE SAME restrictions on overseas websites that it places on Australian websites. I haven’t noticed anybody complaining that Australian websites are so hogtied by the government taht they are impossible to use.

SR says:

02:53pm | 18/06/10

@Ronk –

Most media content sold for profit within Australia is subject to the Classification Act. The internet is comprised of mainly ‘non-profit’ media content, with a relatively small part of the internet being ‘media for profit’.

I refer you to the Attorney-Generals webpage with the Labor Governments’ Classification policy:

http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/Classification_policy

The first sentence of the classification policy is “In Australia, it is a legal requirement that films, computer games and some publications be classified before sale.”

Also you probably haven’t noticed anybody complaining too loudly in Australia about having their internet content being “hogtied” by the Australian Government because they would simply use an overseas server to host their content. Once this option is removed you may very well hear complaints about the restrictions that Australia places on hosting internet content.

But I do reiterate, if/once the Government enacts legislation to force all global internet content (free, or for profit) to comply with the Classification Act you will see scope creep, you will see a dramatic shrinking of internet content, and you will see the internet as a place of commerce only – Steven Conroy is the Minister for the ‘Digital Economy’.

I apologise for not abiding by your content restriction of 25 words or less, but sometimes censorship is a bad thing.

Ross says:

11:18am | 23/06/10

This filter is all about censorship, always was and will be. If it becomes law, you can wave your freedom goodbye, because there is nothing stopping future governments from adding to it with no oversight from us, the voters.

Rich says:

04:01am | 26/08/10

Misinformation Senator?
I remember that when you eventually replied to my letters, you implied that by objecting to the filter I was in some way supporting kiddie porn and terrorism.
I told you that any compulsory would not and could not work. I briefly mentioned the ease by which proxies can be used to bypass any filter (I have tried it, it IS easy). There are legion other ways that I won’t yet make public, but will if you push ahead with your ridiculous attempt to block our communication.
You didn’t acknowledge the sites put up in error (a dentists, a school canteen’s), you originally claimed that the blacklist posted to wikileaks was a hoax, and when that didnt wash, you claimed it was flawed, and then you put Wikleaks on the new filter!!
Fair and open debate huh Senator (big brother) Conroy?