The government of Australia, long known as leaders in digital government, has announced an ambitious project that is getting plenty of global attention. Arguing that the porn problem has reached epidemic levels in society and hurting families, a "Family First" government program is being initiated which has mandatory new filtering guidelines for ISPs.
Arstechnica.com said it this way, "Liberal democracies aren't generally pleased with massive state-run mandatory Internet filtering schemes, but Australia's government is plowing ahead with just such a project...."
"Family First would consider a mandatory ISP-based filtering system that protects children by blocking illegal content like child pornography, but allows adults to opt out of filtering to access material classified R18+ or less," said the party.
While many groups have lined up against the program and call this censorship, the government argues that parental responsibility simply isn't workable and that children are finding damaging material online.
A related article was published back in August 2007 by Arstechnica.com which announced the $189 million (Australian) anti-porn tech initiative. According to that article,
"Approximately $89 million will be used to establish Australia's National Filter Scheme, which will impose burdensome filtering requirements on ISPs and provide Australian citizens with free* access to PC-based Internet filtering software. The filtering systems will leverage the Australian Communications and Media Authority's official Blacklist, which is based on the country's National Classification Scheme. According to a statement issued on Friday by communications minister Helen Coonan, the Australian Communications and Media Authority is also evaluating plans to extend the Blacklist to include 'terrorism and cyber-crime sites upon prescription by the Attorney-General.'"
Arguments against the program are made on the basis of degradation of Internet performance and limiting the free speech of adults. And yet, it is hard to argue with the Australian government's assertion that this "illegal content" problem is now out of control in cyberspace. The challenge becomes defining what content is illegal with current technology and not blocking content which is legal for adults.
ABC News in Australia offered commentary by Michael Meloni on the high price of internet filtering and the need to focus on children. Here's a quote:
"To provide a safer environment for children online we need to focus on areas posing a real threat to young Australians like cyber-bullying, identity theft and online predators. Filtering does nothing to reduce these risks. Just like we educate children about staying safe outside, we need to educate them about staying safe online. Walk them through it just like we'd walk them to the park. If that means educating parents unfamiliar with the Internet as well, then let's do it."
While it would be inappropriate for me to take sides on this effort as CISO in Michigan, I understand the sense of urgency. No doubt, the free speech advocates have great points against limiting the freedoms of adults in society, but it is also government's responsibility to protect it's citizens against crime. The challenge becomes how far can and should governments go to restrict adults, fight predators or help children.
There are entire books on the history of this topic in America, including the Children's Online Protection Act of 1998 (which includes action required by the states), the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) of 2000, and related actions taken by the courts.
So why do I put this information about Australia in an American magazine? These same issues are still very real in the USA. New questions come up every day about our government role at a federal or state level. I expect this topic to get much more attention here in 2009 and beyond than it did in 2008. The debate here has been somewhat delayed, due to the election campaign and the economy.
What are your thoughts?
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Although you are probably familiar with these arguments, you did not enumerate them in your essay above.
Firstly, who gets to decide what constitutes offensive content? What oversight do they have, what accountability, what transparency? And who watches the watchers. Every state filtering system in use today relies on secret blocklists, with no one to take responsibility. This effectively becomes government in secret. At the least, governments must make public their complete blocklists along with the reasons each site has been blocked with accountable procedures for getting a website removed from blocking.
Secondly, it has been our observation that no censor in history has ever known when to stop. Perhaps they get a little self-righteous or drunk with their own power. But inevitably the sphere of censorship becomes ever more bloated.
Thirdly, there's a practical component here, too. Couldn't the Australians find a better way of using $189 million to really benefit people instead of employing the bludgeon of censorship? One might call Internet censorship an unwinnable war because there are 5-7 billion webpages, hundreds of millions of blogs and, at a conservative estimate, at least 10 million nominally pornographic sites.
In our view, censoring the Internet is allowing parents to relinquish their child-rearing and instilling moral values to the government. We should be educating parents how to raise responsible children not telling those children they're too stupid to look at a website.
To block or not to block, that is the question. An important point that can not be overlooked when it comes to internet porn and kids is the the problem with ID Validation... making sure the viewer is 18 or older! The second point are companies whose sole purpose is to peddle porn to unsuspecting surfers by buying up un-renewed URLs and mis-keyed URLs such as kidpicks.com (the real kid site is kidspicks with an s) and turning them into porn portals!
Being in the business of blocking porn, I can tell you, it's not easy for a parent to stay on top of the game; internet porn is a moving target! Between proxy anonymizers, passwords, back-doors, and the hundreds of new URLs a day...parents and traditional filters don't stand a chance. Yes, porn is everywhere... and yes most porn is legal... and yes, as a parent or adult who wants to self-censore it should not have to be a full time job!
Mr. M – My Internet Doorman
Turning on the TV lands you in a world of sexuly based advertising, I dont see half as many of these adds on the internet. TV must be regulated first, the internet is the only place we have left to speak freely.