Optus flags participation in Net filtering trial
- 22 April, 2009 16:32
- Comments 2
Australia’s second largest internet service provider, Optus, will belatedly take part in the federal government’s controversial internet filtering trial.
The announcement follows the March withdrawal of Australia’s third largest ISP, iiNet, from the trial. At the time iiNet’s managing director, Michael Malone, described the Internet filter as a “waste of taxpayers’ money”.
Optus had previously flagged its interest in taking part in the trial, as long as customers were included on a voluntary basis. Optus representatives were not available for comment at press time.
Australia’s largest ISP, Telstra BigPond, has also refused to take part in the trial. Despite this refusal, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said in a statement that the government is working with Telstra on the technical testing of ISP filtering technologies.
“These tests do not involve actual customers, and therefore are not being conducted as part of the pilot; however, it is hoped that the results will feed into the government’s policy considerations,” said minister Stephen Conroy in a statement.
Optus joins the fourth largest ISP, Primus, as well as six other ISPs, including Webshield, Highway 1 and Nelson Bay Online.
According to the minister, Optus will, for the purposes of the trial, filter the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) blacklist of prohibited and potentially prohibited sites. The sites, which fall under material that would potentially be refused classification, include those with content such as child porn, bestiality and the incitement to commit an act of terrorism.
The Internet filtering trial has been mired in controversy, with the ACMA blacklist being leaked to Internet Web site Wikileaks. The blacklist included 2300 sites with many legitimate URLs and Web sites blocked. At the time, minister Stephen Conroy issued a statement condemning the leak, saying that the list was misleading because the real blacklist contained far fewer URLs.
Significantly, today’s announcement also said that the government is considering optional ISP filtering products for families that wish to have such a service.
The minister also announced the publication of ACMA’s second report on international developments in Internet filtering technologies. The ACMA report found that ISP-level filtering plays an important role in preventing inadvertent access to child porn.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email Computerworld
- Follow Computerworld on twitter
- Six tips for choosing a unified threat management (UTM) solution
- Justifying Business Intelligence Applications
- Selecting an Application Lifecycle Management Vendor: An Ovum Report
- Closing the print security gap - The market landscape for print security
- How to Choose an SMB - Unified Communications as a Service (UCAAS) Solution
-
A comparison of Telstra's 4G phones
-
Drupal gains ground down under
-
NBN build gaining momentum daily: Quigley
-
Chambers: Networking's changing competitive landscape
-
The NBN, service providers and you... what could go wrong?
-
Teach Yourself Visually Windows 7
-
Windows 7 for Dummies® Dvd+book Bundle
-
Office 2007 for Dummies
-
Office 2007 All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies
-
Windows 7 for Dummies®
-
MYOB Software for Dummies 6E Australian Edition
-
Windows 7 for Seniors for Dummies®
-
Microsoft Office
-
Excel 2007 All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies
Comments
Anonymous
Not happy, Kevin
The concept of The Filter as a secret government shield to "protect the children" is so flawed that even Krudd and Conjob must know it cannot deliver what they claim.
The major drawback is that it won't work - the bad guys will go straight round it (because they can). This raises the question of why the government (which is very Net-aware) are persisting with this nonsense.
There are two reasons, which have nothing to do with Net purity. Krudd thinks he can chisel some votes out of the technically ignorant but well meaning christian lobby, on the basis he is "doing something about the Internet". And he wants to be able to secretly ban any "inappropriate material" (his description), which can be gradually expanded to include opposing political positions.
The worst part of this sad affair is that many parents will believe the Krudd rhetoric and stop supervising their kids on the Net, with disastrous results.
Anonymous2
Ridiculous
Let's see:
-The results of all technical trials so far have been nothing short of disastrous.
-A whole stack of non-pornorgaphic sites have been blocked.
-So have some R and X-rated ones. Australian citizens are legally allowed to access such material, so why is it being filtered?
-Public support for the filter is virtually non-existent.
-Child porn "sites" are not where the real paedophile stuff happens. Child porn rings operate behind encrypted file transfers on highly secretive networks. It can take months of investigation by some high-level law enforcement agencies from around the world to beat these guys. A crude, heavy handed, site-specific filtering system would be utterly useless against them.
Umm, Mr Conroy, what exactly makes you think the filter is such a good idea?
Still, I don't think it will go ahead. The government would lose so much face if it did, and it's on the list of things which may be cut in the budget- and how much trouble has Conroy got them into? They're probably just trying to find a way of getting out of it without saying "yes, we were wrong".
Post new comment