Governmental Filtering Idiocy

[prk]

Dear Ms McMenamin,

With regards to your comments in the Australian IT, specifically:

"It is beyond belief that some representatives of the Australian internet service provider industry are reluctant to install filters that would prevent access to child p*rn*graphy." - http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23021828-5013038,00.html

I question the priority you place on protecting children.

What is really beyond belief, is that rather than take action against child p*rn*graphy the Government of Australia would rather hide the issue behind a "you can't see it so it's not happening" filter.

Perhaps, rather than wasting money on covering up the existence of child abuse, the resources could be better spent on tracking the criminals down and putting them behind bars.

The latter course of action will actually have an impact in reducing child abuse, something I'd have thought you would be in favour of, given your organisation's vision - "To Protect All Children From Sexual Abuse and Exploitation".

Sincerely,

prk.

Comments

[chrisb74.livejournal.com]

This silliness hasn't hit me yet but I'm the query from up above will come down one day.

I have to ask, if the Brits are blocking 35,000 requests a day for kiddie porn, are they actually tracking and tracing them! That's a lot of requests and if you're going to the effort of blocking it, surely logging isn't that hard and would do a lot more to help the issue.

Of course, anyone with half a brain in the IT industry knows that you can't block the public from doing stuff, especially when dealing with a huge criminal organization like the child porn industry. It'll probably just encourage child porn 'sites' to create VPN/P2P type solutions that make it even harder to track them down...

Look on the bright side - chasing this impossible task will keep us employed for years to come. I got a good 6 months of work out of the last 'simple' request to web proxy the entire user base that would save us squillions and was guaranteed to work by a vendor before it was deemed impractical and never likely to work.

Chrisb.

[prk.livejournal.com]

It seems entirely political - an attempt to satisfy the Family First Senator in order to have him approve other legislation in the Senate.

I doubt they care that it won't work - objecting to it on technical merits isn't likely to have any effect.

IMO it needs to be approached politically rather than technically.

prk.

[discordia13.livejournal.com]

It's also being driven on religious grounds. A lot of the senior politicians got into power this time because they played the xtian card with their constituents.

I expect it will mostly blow over when they work out how big the web actually is and how it routes around filters.

[ascetic-hedony.livejournal.com]

Word. x lots
Of course, I want the money that they have earmarked for this plan moved into encouraging people to work for Child Protective Services so that we can try and pick up more of the family situations in which a child is used for filming. Of course I'm a little biased here :)

Really though, the focus should be on the child that is being filmed, not the waste of sperm that's jacking off to the finished product. Statistically, there's more viewers than victims - maybe it's easier to catch the viewers, but that does nothing to stop the initial abuse.

[prk.livejournal.com]

The response (shared with permission):

"Thanks for your comments. I do appreciate other opinions and I hope that you do as well. I certainly do want to stop the sexual abuse of children and have been working on this issue for over 25 years. My comments were meant to
be provocative to garner the opinions of people out there both for and against. To tell you the truth I dont beleive that ISP filtering will be totally effective but it may reduce access to child porn. Of course I know there are other ways around this as well. But I think the debate is healthy and worthwhile and maybe together as an IT expert and child protection specialists we can come up with a workable solution. I dont support the current govt intitiative to ban porn sites as I believe people havea right to view these. I am just desperately trying to find way to reduce child porn proliferation and any attempt for me is a good attempt. If it doesnt work then it doesnt work and go back to square 1.
anyway thanks for your feedback"

The bit which really scares me there is:

"I am just desperately trying to find way to reduce child porn proliferation and any attempt for me is a good attempt. If it doesnt work then it doesnt work and go back to square 1."

In my mind that's pretty much the same as "The end justifies the means".

*twitch*

prk.

[maharetr.livejournal.com]

Hell, yes. Well said.