It's getting closer and closer to elections time in Australia and our newspapers seem to be shying away from reports about the intended Australian governments plans to install a Internet filter to stop us accessing information. At such an important time I think the intended censorship debate (and the never before attained government powers they're allowing themselves) should be at the forefront of this election but not much is being said about it in all of our papers Some points I've considered, please feel free to shoot them down or add some more. * government can block access to any page, anywhere on the Internet. * noone will know what pages have been blocked except government. * someone will need to trawl CP sites in order to add them to a list. * tracking is in place to track visitors to CP sites already. * filtering will stop pedos visiting CP sites, so now we won't be able to track them and will not be able to work out who these people are. * sites with copied content are deemed illegal so of course will be on the banned first. - that's half the Internet surely. That fact that this intended filter is not forefront of every news bulletin is surprising to me considering they will be the first one's targeted when they report a story against governments wishes, whether it be the current one or an unknown entity going into the future. So, what do you think of the government censoring filter? Should we push for more information and keep spreading the word or should we sit silently and just let it happen?
Could you people really be that apathetic about the possibility we're allowing for another Hitler? I pity your grandchildren if so. An interesting opinion piece I found here about why the Greens won this election. http://centralpoint.com.au/opinion/peterk.cgi?record=1 ------- As a nation of Greens voters, Australians have declared that we never wanted a government that was hell bent on taking away more of our already diminishing freedoms whilst spinning us outright lies to acheive it. No Mr Speaker, by voting in the Greens, Australians have guaranteed the Internet will be free of government abuse. The Greens understand that the corporate's relentless profit-driven need for increasing Internet censorship laws will never outweigh the people's continuing and moral need for open and unbiased transparency when a person or organisation is making decisions affecting our lives. Australians require and have a right to full and open debate without censorship and with the Greens government, they are guaranteed that Mr Speaker.
It's the wrong way to do things, of course - we ALL know that. The filter will never happen in Australia, 96% (I think 96%, it was mid 90s, anyway) voted AGAINST it. It's never going to fly here.
Doesn't the Australian government do some filtering already? I seem to remember filtering being a big priority when I did some consulting down under about a decade ago.