Although the final details of the filtering plans have been kept secret up to now, the Minister is on record as being firmly committed to a mandatory clean-feed internet to Australian homes, schools and public computers. A limited trial by the ACMA is already underway, with a "live" field trial to follow later this year. We must act fast before millions of dollars are squandered on this technically impractical and democratically unworkable solution in search of a problem.

The Government is refusing to release concrete details on the plan. However, we know that ISP-level filtering has been ALP policy for some time and is being zealously pursued by the Minister. What we do know is this:

• The feed will be mandatory in all homes and schools across the country.¹
• The filter will censor material that is "harmful and inappropriate" for children.²
• The filter will require a massive expansion of the ACMA's blacklist of prohibited content.³
• The filter will target legal as well as illegal material.⁴

What we don't know is just as important.

• Will there be any way to opt out from the scheme?
• What age level is the country's Internet to be made appropriate for? 15? 10? 5 years old?
• Who decides what material is "appropriate" for Australians to see?
• Who will maintain the blacklist of prohibited sites?
• How can sites mistakenly added to the list be removed?

Although all of us want to see children protected from content that could be disturbing or harmful, the clean-feed filter is not a good way to go about this, and could actually reduce the safety of children online. Let's look at why.

The clean-feed, if attempted, will be a technical disaster. The Internet does not work in a manner that would let a filter be effective, and the World Wide Web contains far more content than could ever be effectively rated by a Government organisation. The host of technical hurdles include:

• A filter would require ISPs to examine all Internet traffic, causing enormous expense and technical headaches.
• A filter will slow Internet access down by up to 78% according to a Government report.⁵
• No software yet exists that can accomplish what the Minister is trying to do.
• Millions of web sites, with the list changing on a daily basis, would need to be monitored by Australian bureaucrats - an impossible task.
• Illegal material is already hidden and so would be difficult to find to even add to the blacklist in the first place.
• Any determined user - including children - could bypass the filter quickly using an anonymizer service.
• The clean feed would be less customisable and effective than a PC-based filter.

In short, as the best experts in the country unanimously agree, Conroy's plan does not make sense technically.

Although the initiative is intended and marketed as a tool to help protect children from the dangers of the Internet, this paternalistic scheme raises some troubling issues that affect all Australians. As a source of daily information, the Internet increases in importance every day. Do we really want the Government of the day deciding what Australian adults can and can't see? Do we want Australia to join a censorship club in which Burma, China and North Korea are the founding members?

• The list of prohibited sites will probably be secret, so it will be hard to know what content the Government has effectively banned.
• The feed will be compulsory in all homes, even where there are no children.
• It is unknown whether there will be any way to have content removed from the prohibited list.
• How far will the list go, now and in future? Will it filter out material on sexual health, drug use, terrorism.. even breastfeeding?

In short, even if it worked the clean-feed filter would be terrible policy. By censoring the entire country's Internet access down to the level of a child of indeterminate age, it robs Australian adults of ability to make their own decisions about what content they view.

• Most Australians don't want the filter. Support for this overly broad policy is virtually non-existent, even from child-protection organisations. A recent survey shows that 51.5% of Australian net user strongly oppose the plan, while only 2.9% strongly support it.⁶
• One size doesn't fit all. A single filter list can't deliver results that are appropriate for all parents, teens and children, with no way to modify the filter for your household.
• The protection for children is minor at best, an illusion at worst. The filter does nothing to protect children from real threats like cyber-bullying, online sexual predators, viruses, or the theft of personal information. It may provide a false sense of security to parents, reducing effective monitoring of their children's online activities.
• The money is better spent elsewhere. The filter will cost tens of millions of dollars to attempt. Yet the Government's own studies admit education is more effective than filtering in protecting children, and that "content risks" are less dangerous than other risks.⁷
• No other democracy has such a scheme. Comparable systems in Europe only filter a handful of illegal sites, and then only to prevent accidental access. ⁸
• Those that want filtering already have it. The Government already offers filtering software to any home that requests it, free of charge.

If you care about your online rights, let the Minister know what you think of his plan to censor Australia's Internet.

Authorised by Electronic Frontiers Australia, Copyright © 2008.
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1 See Conroy announces mandatory internet filters to protect children, also Labor's Plan for Cyber-Safety
² See above.
³ See Labor's Plan for Cyber-Safety: "...the Current ACMA blacklist under the Howard Government is inadequate. It does not contain enough sites to protect our children from harmful and inappropriate content... Labor's ISP policy will prevent Australian children from from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by ACMA..."
⁴ As above, "harmful and inappropriate". Also, from this Labor article: "What category of material will be banned under Labor’s plan? Labor will require ISPs to filter out R, RC and X rated material as part of a clean feed for home internet connections."
⁵ Developments in Internet Filtering Technologies and Other Measures for Promoting Online Safety p. 48: "‘level of performance degradation… [ranging] from 18% through to 78%’." Also see Education the Best Filter for Young Australians on the Internet "Findings from recent NetAlert research into the use of filters in the broadband environment confirms that accessing the Internet through a content filter at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level leads to a significant reduction in network performance."
⁶ Whirlpool Australian Broadband Survey for 2007
⁷ See above report, also Education 'as effective as internet filtering' or Education the Best Filter for Young Australians on the Internet, see also Developments in Internet Filtering Technologies and Other Measures for Promoting Online Safety for more discussion of Internet risks
⁸ For a description of BT's system, see this Register article. See also ISP "Voluntary" / Mandatory Filtering