Senator Stephen Conroy's twice-removed predecessor,
Richard Alston, gained the nickname "the
world's biggest Luddite" for, among other reasons, his belief
that broadband was mainly for pornography and gambling (cf this
illuminating 2002 ABC interview).
Pretty soon, the government will be screening and filtering our
email as well as making blogs like this one disappear.
It appears modern-day users are finding their own choice
nicknames for Conroy and Rudd, who is looking rather like a Luddite
after working to swaddle Australians in cotton wool and amniotic
fluid by filtering all of our internet access.
Last week Mia Garlick — assistant secretary for the Digital
Economy branch of Conroy's Department of Broadband, Communications
and the Digital Economy, and one of the people responsible for
vetting the minister's recent
blogging joint venture with Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner —
spoke at a Communications Alliance conference on the future of
broadband and struggled to find a diplomatic way to describe the
feedback.
"We got over 2,400 comments," Garlick said of the blog, which
was posted to solicit feedback for the government's Future
Directions Paper for the Digital Economy, but became a sounding
board for Australians' rejection of the filtering scheme. "Many
were about [web] filtering," she elaborated. "Quite a phenomenal
amount, actually."
Asked whether the off-topic abuse Conroy copped would rule out
similar experiments in the future, Garlick was cautiously
optimistic. "I think a lot of people were worried that the force
of the comments directed at the other topic [filtering] would
dissuade us from doing it again," she said, "but I think we did
get some valuable lessons from it. Most people seemed to think it
was a good way — more informal and transparent — for the
government to communicate."
If the blog was transparent, Rudd and Conroy's Australia filter
is anything but. Signalling a huge shift in conventional thinking
about the role of ISPs — and promising to turn Australia into a
digital pariah on the world stage — the filter program took a
frightening turn for the worst last week when it was announced that
six relatively small ISPs — Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U,
Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1 — would participate in six-week "live"
filtering tests.
Starting small will give the government base data to work from,
as it seeks to refute widely-held fears that the filters will slow
Australia's internet access (which seems to be a foregone
conclusion). Customers can opt in for now, although I'll be
curious to know how many will actually do it; I bet the number will
be far lower than signed up for NetAlert, the Howard
Government's ex-online safety initiative that was unceremoniously
axed on 31 December after the Rudd Government's
now-incredibly-ironic-and-pointless
budget cuts early last year.
I know Rudd has an enthusiastic rapport with China, but it's the last internet model Rudd would want to emulate.
With NetAlert nobbled and the Great Firewall of Australia still
in its infancy, Australians now have exactly no
government-supported way to protect their children from online
nastiness — at least not with technology. No, it looks like
parents will have to rely on good old-fashioned supervision to
protect their kids, at least until the Good Minister has hit the
jackpot and this pointless filter goes live.
I think it's fair to assume that most Australians don't want
it (feel free to correct me below if you disagree). However, having
axed NetAlert, Conroy has painted himself into a corner. Lacking
alternatives, he simply cannot cede to the vociferous masses and
back down on the filter unless — and many feel he's hanging out
for this escape route to present itself — it proves technically
impossible and he can shelve the plans whilst saving face.
The whole thing seems a bit churlish, and I wonder whether
Conroy and Rudd are fully considering the implications of such
broad censorship. After all, if you really are judged by the
company you keep, Australia's internet policy will rightly be
placed in a bucket with that of countries like Iran
and China, whose legendary net censorship predilections were
reinforced with the recent discovery that the government is
actively monitoring and filtering instant message conversations
sent via Skype.
China's government recently came out to say that it's all to
protect the children, although I suspect the children would be
far better off if their parents stopped getting jailed for alleged
thoughtcrimes
that would be shrugged off in most Western countries. This sort of
behaviour — and filtering of communications — is simply not
compatible with the ideals of democracy and freedom that Australia,
like so many countries, loudly champions.
I know Rudd has an enthusiastic rapport with China, but it's
the last internet model Rudd would want to emulate. Indeed, in a
modern democracy like America — where freedom of speech is
sacrosanct thanks to England's authoritarian colonial rule — a
proposal like this would have been laughed out of the House and
Conroy ridden out on a rail by his own electorate. Australians do
not have an explicit legal right to freedom of speech or
expression, although hundreds-strong protests suggest that many
people believe we should.
Senator Conroy has couched this debate in terms of stopping
child pornography. While nobody wants this filth on the internet —
heck, my suggested punishment for its perpetrators involves a small
room, handcuffs, a big jar of honey and a randy Grizzly
bear — there are already a host of laws punishing such
behaviour. Ditto copyright infringement, which is also
on the agenda as Conroy tries to throttle the internet and wash
it clean.
Conroy's magnum opus, systematically implemented against the will of many, is already making Australia a global laughing stock
Anti-censorship activists often talk of the "slippery slope"
towards more widespread censorship. As putative champions of
transparent government, it's frankly terrifying that Labor seems
determined to keep the mechanisms of its web censorship regime
secret; secrecy breeds suspicion, especially in cases like this.
Pretty soon, the government will be screening and filtering our
email as well as making blogs like this one disappear.
In the short term, the biggest question about the filters is not
whether they work (they do), or whether people want them (they
don't); it is, simply put, whether governments should be able to
use telecommunications providers as instruments of censorship or —
as seems to be the accepted standard in countries where net
neutrality is actually taken seriously — whether telcos should
just move the bits and let other people worry about what they
can be reconstructed into.
Just as civil works companies can't be held responsible for
building roads used by terrorists, or Energy Australia charged as
an accessory for supplying electricity used to manufacture
amphetamines, it seems ludicrous to force ISPs into this role
simply to fill short-sighted political agendas. Conroy's magnum
opus, systematically implemented against the will of many, is
already making Australia a global laughing stock and attracting the
attention of human rights campaigners, which is not attention that
Australia wants or needs.
Ned Ludd led an uprising of textile workers who were worried
technology would replace them; ultimately, it did (as a curious
aside, many were sent to Australia as punishment). And just as Ned
Ludd's anti-technology movement failed, the internet world will
ultimately move on with or without us. Conroy may clean up
Australia's internet but being left behind, socially and
technologically, seems far worse indeed.
Since Conroy's filter has already copped loads of ridicule,
I'm interested to hear from people who think it is a good idea.
Are there cogent arguments in its favour? Hype aside, what are the
real risks? Bonus points if you can spot why this blog might be an
inadvertent casualty of the Great Firewall of Australia.
