I’m sure most people have heard of the government’s internet filtering system, which they have said would have an opt-out feature.

While keeping that promise, they are now planning to add an additional blacklist – one which it is impossible to opt-out of, and one which all ISPs will have to block sites from. The blacklist itself will be maintained by the government. It will effectively give the government control to block anything they want, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

News Articles:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1399635276&eid=-255
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm

Action site of sorts:
http://nocleanfeed.com/takeaction.html

I would encourage everyone contact Stephen Conroy. I’m going to conduct an investigation over the constitutional legality of this proposal (contact me if you wish to help). The Rudd government has commented on this issue, stating that if “child porn” conflicts with the freedoms in our constitution, they are going to disagree. Well I think this is a total load of rubbish. It doesn’t take that big of a stretch of the imagination to see just how easily such a blacklist filter can be abused by the government, for matters which have in fact nothing to do with child pornography nor the protection of minors. The government can’t just “disagree” with the constitution, it doesn’t work that way – not even if they have some hypothetical moral excuse to do so.

Governments have historically appealed to popularity to institute policies of political control over their subjects, and this is yet another shameful attempt to do just this. I believe that every Australian has a duty to protect the neutrality of Australian internet, and ensure that there is no compulsory filtering.