Filtering the Internet

John Howard’s announcement of a $189 million Internet filter program must be challenged on a range of grounds. Is it an appropriate role for government? Will we be getting value for money? Is it practicable? Who will control the regulators?

From a conservative government, it is a turn around from the rhetoric of the past. The Liberals are supposedly the party of private enterprise, not public pandering. Isn’t this the kind of socialism we expect from Rudd’s mob? Individuals should make decisions and pay for matters related to personal privacy and family values.

If parents want to buy filters shouldn’t the market provide them and the users pay? Why should taxpayers foot the bill for something that is voluntary and private? There is no shortage of filtering programs and services already available on the Web. Some are free and none are expensive. You can even choose ones purporting to be Christian, whatever that means.

How many new teachers or police would $189 million pay for? 2,500? 3,000? Perhaps it is too cynical to ask how much of this $189 million is new money, given the expenditure on the current NetAlert program. Is this a re-badging of NetAlert with some free software thrown in? Is it just another vote buying exercise?

The government has provided plenty of free advice through NetAlert. Its objective is to “promote a safer Internet experience, particularly for young people and their families”. The website claims it “provides practical advice on internet safety, parental control and internet filters for the protection of children, students and families”. Unfortunately it is not available online at the moment.

The effectiveness of the software must be queried. The software being promised hasn’t been finished yet. Will it block sites with particular words? If this is the case it could cut off access to online dictionaries, encyclopaedia, literature and academic papers, among a long list of important places that may contain the nominated “offensive” vocabulary.

About five years ago I was teaching Pride and Prejudice with Year 12 students when a key, but innocuous, website was blocked by the Northern Territory Education Department regulators who turned out to be based in California. Perhaps we’ll ban all chat and social networking sites. Who knows what people might write?

More bizarre is how it might deal with images? Goodbye to Michelangelo’s David? Will flickr and other photo services be cut? Do we stop all video access? At least we would be protected from government announcements on YouTube and political websites and blogs like Kevin07.

If you think this is a joke, my political blog, Labor View from Broome, has been blocked by the Victorian Education department and by China. Perhaps they were offended by the post “Beat me! Beat me!” which showed Mark Vaile and Kerri-Anne Kennerley whipcracking together.

Apparently in Victoria they block servers not just sites. So much for selective targeting. Google, who own blogger.com, might be interested in that! There are many obscenities on the Web. Fast food and barbie ads, for instance. What about images of violence, war and starvation?

Earlier this year I recommended a podcast to teaching colleagues trying to implement Web technologies in their classrooms. It was Michael Wesch's video “Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us”, one of several excellent videos presentations found on YouTube. You guessed it. The education department had blocked YouTube.

I almost forgot audio. How will they stop offending song lyrics and other sound files? What about the kinds of services offered now by telephone which grace the classifieds in our local papers?

Doubtless there will be options to turn the filter on and off so that adults can use the Internet. This will inevitably lead to a competition to develop a hack to get around the censors. Teenagers will know how to get around the filter within a week or find computers without the blockers. Censorship doesn’t stop curiosity, it encourages it.

Blockers may help against the worst aspects of the Web but they are not a substitute for the kind of openness and values that help young people to deal with modern media. The current plethora of filtering programs not only offer to block pornography and the like: they enable you to spy on your children “remotely in real time”; check where they have been logged on; to whom they have communicated; and keep a record of their keystrokes when you’re not looking over their shoulders. Just what kinds of family values are we trying to protect?

The PM’s media release says that we will be able to block websites selected by the Australian Internet regulators. Who are these regulators? What criteria and guidelines will they use? Will their responsibilities be confined to pornography? Who will oversee our guardians? Federal Ministers like Kevin Andrews? Will the regulators decisions be subject to appeal? Will we even be able to find out who is censoring our websites and blogs without going through expensive freedom of information processes?

We must question the cost and effectiveness of this latest vote grabber, which has not been thought through properly. The Minister for Communications Helen Coonan has previously rejected a similar idea called "Clean Feed" from Labor. The government have accused the ALP of being an echo. Looks like a case of mine’s bigger than yours this time.

Children, especially teenagers, need to learn about the benefits and the dangers of social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace. Giving them the skills to protect themselves and their privacy is a much better solution than doing it all for them.

Just as light cigarette filters didn’t stop cancer, we cannot filter out all the evil aspects of modern society. Finding solutions to an increasingly confronting world will not be as easy as clicking a mouse.