The Great Firewall of Canberra

As a res­i­dent of our national cap­i­tal, the ref­er­ences in the media to “Can­berra” as an anal­ogy for the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment some­times bug me, as they must equally bother the res­i­dents of places like Wash­ing­ton DC and other seats of gov­ern­ment. But that’s a minor issue in com­par­i­son to the seri­ous issue fac­ing Aus­tralians with the pro­posal to impose manda­tory fil­ters on Inter­net traffic.

Per­son­ally, I’m a lib­er­tar­ian. So long as you’re not hurt­ing any­one, I see no rea­son for gov­ern­ment to get involved in stop­ping you from doing any­thing. Pro­vided it’s legal. Using the Inter­net in this coun­try is legal, or it was the last time I checked. The impo­si­tion of the pro­posed manda­tory clean feed, and the opt-​​out only (thus poten­tially tar­ring the opter-​​out with an unde­served brush) approach is nanny stat­ing at it’s very worst.

At best the pro­posal suf­fers from the well-​​documented flaws in exe­cu­tion that could slow Australia’s already slow Inter­net speeds to a crawl. At worst, it’s cen­sor­ship on a scale with the most oppres­sive regimes in the world. Elec­tronic Fron­tiers Aus­tralia would appear to agree — the dis­cus­sion on their blog is run­ning hot on the topic.

If, like me, you feel this pro­posal is ill-​​considered, bad pub­lic pol­icy, I encour­age you to do some­thing about it. At the very least, write a let­ter to your local MP. For more ideas, take a look at No Clean Feed.

And for those not sure, edu­cate your­self! There is already a great deal of pub­lic mate­r­ial worth reading:

• read the ongo­ing dis­cus­sion at Elec­tronic Fron­tiers Aus­tralia in par­tic­u­lar their crit­i­cal analy­sis of the proposal
• explore the excel­lent crit­i­cal think­ing by mem­bers of Australia’s dig­i­tal com­mu­nity — Gavin Heaton, Peter Black, Stil­gher­rian (1, 2)
• the dis­cus­sion (1, 2) at Whirlpool, par­tic­u­larly this piece from a self-​​identified Chris­t­ian mother
• the let­ter from Inter­net indus­try expert, Mark New­ton, whose employer Sen­a­tor Stephen Conroy’s office then sought to lean on in an attempt to shut him up
• this excel­lent piece in The Bris­bane Times

And here’s the thing. One of the core argu­ments in the government’s posi­tion is pro­tect­ing our chil­dren. Sorry, but that’s my job as a par­ent.

My daugh­ter has been using the Inter­net since she could sit at a com­puter and she’s about to turn 11. She’s had a per­sonal, unfil­tered, unchecked by me email address since she was five and she has admin rights on the com­puter she uses. We have well defined, well under­stood rules for her Inter­net use. The com­puter is in an open part of the house. In all her time using the Inter­net she has never wit­nessed any­thing unto­ward, been spammed, stalked or oth­er­wise bothered.

I’m think­ing she and other kids don’t so much need pro­tec­tion as we as adults need not to abro­gate our par­ent­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties and learn about and under­stand the Inter­net. Par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of our children’s use of it.

If you need some help, ask me. I’ll give you a hand.