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20 April, 2006
Internet filtering is to be trialled
in Tasmania. What is it and does it work?
Internet filterting has become a hot political issue in the last month with
the both the Federal opposition
and government
proposing ideas. Most of this comes from a concern by Liberal
Senator Guy Barnett about access to inappropriate material over the Internet.
To this end, the Senator has organised an trial of ISP based filtering in Tasmania.
Up until now, Internet content filtering has been mainly the responsibility
of the user, you can monitor usage, buy filtering packages or modify your own
computer to block unwanted content. With ISP or backbone based filtering, it
is all done before the information gets to the users computer. This means the
user has little, if any, say in what is appropriate.
Another issue is why just pornography? There's no shortage of race-hate sites,
religious and political fanatic sites, or sites pushing false or misleading
political agendas, not to mention those that try phishing scams, traffic pirate
software or install spyware. Again, we hit the problems of definitions: One's
person acceptable site might be offensive lies to another.
This is why the industry tends to favour user-based filtering. Rather than
having big brother decide what is appropriate, homes and offices can decide
what they want to block. This takes a lot of responsibility and cost off government
and the Internet providers.
The Open Net Initiative,
that tracks internet filtering shows it is feasible in countries that filter
for political or religious reasons. Saudi
Arabia restricts pornographic and extremist sites. China
has by far the strictest and most effective blocks while Singapore is probably
the most advanced country that filters the Internet. Interestingly, Singapore's
also seems to be the loosest filter, this is probably due to the resources required.
Even if we do get a national web filter, things will still get though. Nothing can make up for responsible use and supervision: It's important make users, be they kids, teenagers or employees understand they are expected to use the net responsibily and that parents and business owners supervise that usage. While the Tasmanian experiment is worth watching closely, a nationwide filter is probably not going to happen, if you are concerned about net usage you will have to start filtering at home.
What should we filter?
Theres no doubt most people are concerned about inappropriate material on the
Internet. Defining inappropriate material is the biggest problem: Where do we
draw the line? Is a topless picture of the latest "It Girl" pornography or glamour?
And do we just filter pictures and video and allow stories, messages and blogs
through the system?
Does filtering work?
In a word, yes. But to effectively operate, the government will have to centrally monitor Internet sites as well as deal with complaints from the community. This means a massive increase of resources for the Australian Broadcasting Authority and some sort of licencing regime for Internet providers.
Will it work?
Probably not, searching for "+the" on Google returns over 24 billion
pages. While the majority probably don't contain offensive material, the resources
required to monitor even a modest proportion of them is huge. It's a task too
big for the industry and it's unlikely governments would provide the funds, the
Electronic Frontiers Foundation makes this point in their critique
of filtering proposals.
How to protect your system
Given it's unlikely governments are going to protect your family and computer
from the nasties of the Internet, it's up to you do it. For businesses, a hardware
filter is the best bet and can be setup for $2,000. Home users can buy filtering
software for under $100, the Federal government's Net Alert program has a list
of the most
common ones.
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