Government porn filter poses greater risks

Family First Senator Steve Fielding. Time to stop the pork barreling and time to start preaching responsible parenting instead of government intervention.

The Federal Governments plan to force all internet service providers (ISPs) to filter online pornography and violent content will see Australian’s access to the internet controlled in the same manner as users in China, Burma, Vietnam, North Korea and Saudi Arabia experience.

In other words, the plan, aimed at protecting children from non-childlike content, will see the rights of all Australian internet users eroded to a level that equals the worst levels of internet censorship in the world.

While internet users not wanting their service filtered will be able to contact their ISP and opt out of the pornography filter feature, the plan has the potential to dramatically impinge peoples ability to use the internet and will give the Australian Government an unprecedented level of internet censorship power.

ISPs are also warning that such a plan to filter internet pornography will see internet access speeds reduced to a crawl.

For an industry that already suffers from considerable criticism from users over high pricing and slow access speeds the compulsory internet pornography filtering and resulting slow down in network speed is sure to see increased dissatisfaction from “clean feed” users forced to subscribe to higher cost service plans to achieve even moderately acceptable internet access speeds.

Online civil libertarians are concerned that the Federal Governments’ online pornography filter places the freedom of the of the internet at stake, while a large question mark hangs over how successful such pornography filtering will be.

Dale Clapperton from the internet user group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said mandatory ISP filtering of internet pornography will not only erode internet freedom but also will not improve online safety for children.

According to Mr Clapperton the internet pornography filter will lull parents into a false sense of security. If parents are concerned at the content their children will be exposed to online they “should not allow their children to use the internet unsupervised,” he said.

Under the plan the Australian Communications and Media Authority will prepare a blacklist of unsuitable sites and all ISPs will be required to block access to these sites on internet services provided to households and schools.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the “clean feed” will prevent users accessing prohibited content. Everything possible has to be done to shield children from violent and pornographic online material.

In reality the dangers posed by the government plan are considerably greater than just censoring internet pornography access and has much wider ramifications.

More importantly, the danger to children doesn’t come from them accessing internet pornography sites and viewing images of people having sex, but rather from online chat rooms – something the Governments pornography filter plan will not and cannot control.

In addition, what at the beginning starts off as a pornography filter to prevent children having access to “unsafe websites”, can easily later be expanded to filter and censor access to other online content according to whatever the government of the day dictates.

For example, access to news and information sites a future government deems unacceptable could be blocked if the government doesn’t like the content.

The internet pornography filtering system could also be expanded to stop content such as movies, music and software from being downloaded.

The software, motion picture distribution and music industries will, I am sure, be quick to rush off to the courts and say if the Government can stop internet pornography from being accessed then ISPs can also stop the illegal downloading of their copyrighted products as well.

In addition, the requirement for users having to apply to have their internet service unfiltered sets a dangerous potential for them to be unfairly labelled as aficionado’s of internet pornography, when in reality many may just be desirous of faster internet speeds.

Internet access and content is something democratic governments should keep their hands off. There is ample software products already available to prevent children accessing unacceptable content such as internet pornography and it is only a matter for parents to bother taking the time to find them out and then have the willingness to purchase and install.

For Macintosh users the parental controls built into Apple’s OSX 10.5 Leopard operating system allows parents to not only limit access to pre-defined sites, but also to restrict email and online chat to a list of pre-approved addresses and accounts. Parents can also limit the times that children can access the internet and the time that they spend online.

The parental controls also keeps a log of all sites visited, websites that have been blocked, applications used and can automatically sends an email to a pre-determined account if the child attempts to exchange email or chat with someone not on the pre-approved list.

While the compulsory ISP pornography filtering might give people like Family First Senator Steve Fielding, who has campaigned heavily for ISP pornography filtering, a nice warm and fuzzy feeling, the move is one that has far greater ramifications than what many people are presently considering.

More importantly, as was seen during the recent pro-democracy protests in Burma, internet filtering does not work. The only way the government there was able to prevent news from getting out was to shut down all international telephone lines.

Today human rights activists in China, Iraq, Vietnam, North Korea and other countries manage to circumvent strict internet censorship policies imposed by their governments to get their messages out to the world.

Having worked in countries with internet filtering systems in place I can say from first-hand experience that it does not work. I have always been able to access whatever content I want, despite whatever internet filters were in place.

The end result of the Australian Government sticking its nose into internet content is that people will do the same as they did before the internet became so popular in the last 10 years and sign up with ISPs in other countries.

This will have the dual effect of not only taking money away from the local ISP market but also tie-up international telephone circuits being used for data transmission instead of being available for voice calls.

In fact, given the charges offered by some private telecommunications companies around the world today many users might find the data transfer speeds faster and the costs on a par with what they pay now, while not having the concerns as to who is looking at what data they are sending or receiving.

Though this last point is somewhat of a moot one, as the Defence Signals Directorate has long been able to monitor every single telephone, telex, facsimile, radio and data transmission coming into and going out of Australia.

As owners of the Australia’s largest, most powerful and fastest supercomputers, capable of processing billions of bits of data every second, nothing is transmitted by any electronic format that the Defence Signals Directorate cannot intercept.

What at first blush sounds like a wonderful idea, is one that is fraught with dangerous possibilities and is a path Australia should not head down in too much or a rush.

Rather than introducing legislation and potentially onerous requirements on ISPs to filter internet pornography, what is really required here is responsible parenting and parents who either take more of an interest in what their children do online, or are responsible enough to inform their children of the potential dangers of internet use.

It’s about time the Australian population took responsibility for itself, instead of continually shirking personal responsibilities and looking to government for solutions.

The good senator Fielding should get off his pork barrel and look for more worthy issues to campaign on,
lest Australia becomes the first country in the world to voluntarily give its government the right to censor the internet.

Internet pornography is not a government problem. It is a problem for those people who don’t want to look at it or who don’t want their children to look at it. In any event, paedophiles don’t troll for victims on pornography sites, they lurk in chat rooms.

In response to posts on the blogsite this story previously resided on the following facts emerged:

Porn only accounts for some 12 per cent of the pages on the internet.

US revenue from internet porn was $US2.84 billion in 2006.

There are an estimated 266 new internet porn sites put on the internet every day.

70 per cent of porn site visits occur during the 9 to 5 working day when children are at school.

To ad some perspective, the number of Chinese web blogers in 2006 went from 17.5 million to 47 million people. If each person writes eight blog pages this will exceed the number of porn web pages that are estimated to exist on the internet (estimated at 372 million porn pages).

All of the responses can be read here: http://jlefevre.bigblog.com.au/post.do?id=186822#currentPostComments

More information and why the compulsory internet pornography filtering by the Australian Government will be infective can be read here: http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/#SS_2

ENDS:
© John Le Fevre, 2008

Censorship; Internet; Internet filtering; Internet porn

Australians want fewer Muslims

Eleven years after being elected to the Australian parliament on an anti-Asian migration platform, Australian politician and former take away food shop operator Pauline Hanson is making a fresh bid for parliament on a platform based on banning Muslim migration.

And according to a poll conducted online by the Channel 9 television networks ninemsn.com on August 12, the majority of Australian’s agree with her.

Of 80,149 respondents, 71 per cent indicated that they agreed with Pauline Hanson on (banning) Muslim immigration.

Muslims comprise just 1.5 per cent of the Australian population, yet the poll follows a similar one conducted on the same web-site on February 16 of this year in which 75 per cent of 41,307 respondents agreed that the Australian Government should cap immigration for particular religions.

In her maiden speech to parliament on September 10, 1996, Ms Hanson achieved national and international notoriety when she claimed Australia was, “in danger of being swamped by Asians” due to high immigration and the policy of multiculturalism.

At the time Ms Hanson claimed, “they have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.”

She also denounced the, “privileges Aboriginals enjoy over other Australians”, advocated the return of high-tariff protectionism and generally decried many other aspects of economic rationalism and what she perceived to be ‘political correctness.’

Following her maiden speech both of Australia’s major political parties moved rapidly to distance themselves from her comments, while sections of the Australian media labeled her xenophobic, a term she didn’t understand.

Her comments caused outrage throughout Asia and had many Asian leaders questioning Australia’s racial views.

In ramping up her run for a Queensland Senate seat in the federal election due to be called later this year, the 53-year old politician claimed, “mainstream Australians are terrified that we’re going down the European track, with problems with Muslims. They are very frightened their culture and way of life is being taken away from them.”

In calling for a total moratorium on Muslim immigration, Ms Hanson claimed, “people have a right to be very concerned about this because of the terrorist attacks that have happened throughout the world.”

She further claimed that since calling for the moratorium on Muslim migration she has “received many calls from people all over Australia concerned about the effect of Islam,” and is “attracting thousands of backers.”

“I think that we need to look at getting out of the 1951 convention of refugees, and not being forced into taking refugees in this country that bring in diseases, who are incompatible with our lifestyle.”

The outspoken would be parliamentarian also said that if Muslim women knew how much they had been oppressed she would receive their support as well. “I think that if Muslim women realise how they have been treated I probably would get a lot of support.

“Maybe we should look at the female genital mutilation that happens to young girls in this country… if people want to live by these ways then go back to the Muslim countries,” she added.

Ms Hanson also criticised the Australian Government over a A$29 million donation to the Indonesian Government to fund Islamic schools. “Ordinary Australians are treated with contempt yet again by the Howard Government.

“Australia cannot expect to buy off terrorists by pandering to them. Militant Islamists keep reminding us that they will destroy us and our way of life yet those in Canberra seem to suffer from collective deafness. The only way for Australia to stop ending up like the UK is to halt further Muslim immigration.

“Labor and Liberal have sold out mainstream Australians and they don’t want to make Muslims, refugees and multiculturalism an election issue – but I have news for them – I will,” Ms Hanson said.

To further her bid she has applied to register the ‘Pauline’s United Australia Party’, which would result in her being grouped with other Australian political parties on the election paper and give her a better chance at scoring the 4 per cent of the primary vote necessary to receive election funding of A$2.05 for each vote she attracts.

Despite the prospect of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds, Ms Hanson has denied suggestions her latest move was motivated by money.

On her web page Ms Hanson, who in July 2006 was named by the influential The Bulletin Magazine in it’s list of 100 Most Influential Australian’s, claims, “we have a unique identity and culture, shaped not only by Western tradition and our Anglo-Celtic heritage, but also by the nation-building efforts of many generations of hard-working Australians.

“Our immigration policy should therefore be coherent with sustaining our own national identity and culture.”

While claiming Australia is “one of the most tolerant and inclusive nations in the world”, she goes on to claim, “proponents of high immigration and multiculturalism are effectively trying to abolish Australian nationhood. At some point we must be allowed to exercise our democratic right to choose who can live amongst us.”

According to Ms Hanson, immigration-driven population growth is worsening Australia’s water woes, while “high immigrant intake levels are also responsible for increased air, river and ocean pollution, more carbon emissions, further land degradation, increased use of natural resources, further biodiversity loss, further congestion of roads and public transport, and more pressure on health, education and other public services.”

Despite having a land mass marginally smaller than Canada, and a larger arable land mass, Australia has a population density of 2.5 persons per sq.km, compared to Canada’s 9.27. By comparison Indonesia has a population density of 134 per sq.km.

Ms Hanson was elected to parliament as an independent MP for the Queensland seat of Oxley at the 1996 election after being disendorsed as a Liberal candidate because of her strong views on race and immigration.

She failed to win the neighbouring seat of Blair in 1998, a senate seat in 2004 and a position in the NSW upper house in 2003.

Ms Hanson’s racial views drew broad international criticism but her One Nation party briefly enjoyed strong support in Australia on issues such as immigration and trade protectionism before she lost her seat in 1998.

She was jailed for three months in 2003 for fraudulently spending electoral funds before the judgment was overturned.

There is little doubt that Ms Hanson’s comments will again cause confusion in the region and result in Australian’s outside of their country being questioned on their country’s level of racial and religious tolerance.

If the sad fact be truly known though racial and religious intolerance are matters that just bubble under the surface for a significant portion of the Australian population. Like a festering sore it often only needs a minor scratch before the rottenness oozes through to the surface.

Over recent years there has been a number of serious incidents of public brawling based on ethnic and religious differences, while more minor but no less serious attacks on people due to their religion or ethnicity are not uncommon.

ENDS:
© John Le Fevre, 2007

Australian journalism’s day of shame

The revelation of comments allegedly made by Federal Treasurer Peter Costello to three Canberra press gallery journalists over a presumably boozy dinner more than two and a half years will forever damage the relationship Australian journalists have with their sources.

Australian journalists have in the past had an admirable reputation for protecting their sources and respecting the confidences of those who provide them with background information.

Indeed, Australian journalists, like their counterparts in other countries, have been prepared on numerous occasions in the past to go to jail rather than reveal their sources of information.

The decision by the trio, Tony Wright of Melbourne’s The Age, Paul Daley of The Bulletin, and  ABCTV journalist Michael Brissenden, to suddenly all decide that previously agreed to off-the-record comments were in fact quotable raises serious ethical questions.

The fact that Mr Brissenden couldn’t quote the correct date for the dinner in itself also raises questions as to the accuracy of the rest of the comments he claims he noted at the time.

The organisation that represents Australian journalists is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). In addition to being the journalists union it is also their professional body and sets a code of ethics it expects all Australian journalists to follow.

The code of ethics states, “respect for truth and the public’s right to information are fundamental principles of journalism.”

Item one of the code of ethics states journalists will, “report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost  to give a fair opportunity for reply.”

Item three states journalists will, “aim to attribute information to its source. Where a source seeks anonymity, do not agree without first considering the source’s motives and any alternative attributable source. Where confidences are accepted,  respect them in all circumstances.”

While each of the three journalists concerned has attempted to justify their change of heart in the last couple of days, it is doubtful if this will wash with majority of people.

Don’t expect to see any action being taken against the three by the MEAA though. It became pretty much of a toothless tiger many years ago, and in any event is primarily concerned with looking after its members working for large Australian media organisations, not with taking its AUstralian journalist members to task.

For that reason I stopped being a card carrying member of the MEAA many years ago.

Whether the Federal Treasurer made the comments or not is not particularly relevant.

What is relevant though is the judgement and motivations of all three Australian journalists not to use the comments at the time they were made. A time when they were most relevant, or at the very latest, at the time when they claim the treasurer said was the deadline for certain things to occur.

There is little doubt that the comments would have lead themselves to blistering headlines at the time along the lines of “Costello Gives PM Ultimatum”, “PM . . . Dead Man Walking”, “Costello Claims Howard Can’t Win,” or ‘Costello’s Plans For Top Job”, or such.

The fact that all three, agreed to treat the comments as off-the-record or deep background and to not use them in articles they were writing at the time, or since, raises a host of questions.

Whether the comments were off-the-record or not is really not in question.

Mr Wright said in The Age on August 15, “it was never said during the dinner that the conversation was on or off the record and such meetings were widely viewed as providing background information.”

He further says, “the treasurer’s press secretary David Alexander rang and told them his remarks were off the record. He and Mr Daley decided to instead use the information as background for other stories.”

The common theme to the justifications by all three in breaching a fundamental tenet of journalism is that they did so because Peter Costello was asked about these comments and he said, “no, I didn’t, not from me, (and) by-the-way, journalists make things up”, and suggested that the comments had been fabricated by the journalists.

The actions by the three only serve to highlight the continuing decline in Australian journalistic standards.

Once upon a time the Australian public were amongst the most informed people in the world. Australian journalists regularly broke major stories and exposed corruption and dastardly deeds.

Australia’s major media organisations were prepared to spend money funding investigative teams of journalists to dig up stories and come up with banner screaming headlines that pricked the Australian conscious.

At the time news rooms were mostly the domain of crotchety old men whose cynical view of life was forged from extensive experience at plying their craft and was something akin to a badge of honour they wore.

To these journalists of old a “scoop” was a matter of pride. Confidences were protected and their word that something was off-the-record was better than any contract the best legal brains could draft.

Enter any major news room now and what older and experienced journalists that still remain are sitting at the copy editor tables, editing and reshaping the material supplied by young, fresh faced graduates who increasingly rely on press releases as the primary source at least of their stories.

Media organisations these days will not pay the money necessary to fund investigative teams of journalists, or the salaries reasonably expected by those with many years of experience.

While Messrs Wright, Daley and Brissenden might attempt to justify their actions and smirkingly sit in front of TV camera’s waving sheets of paper and proclaiming, “these are my notes of the meeting”, the harm they have done is considerable.

To young Australian journalists just starting their careers they have shown them that a “scoop” isn’t of such importance anymore to a journalist.

To those people that journalists rely on for their background information they have shown that an Australian journalists word that something is off-the-record really means that it is only off the record unless the journalist wants to use it against you at some time.

And finally, to the public who consume the product that journalists turn out, they’ve shown the way that essential facts and information are with-held, distorted and manipulated by those the public place their trust in to inform them.

As I said, the actions of the three raise serious questions of ethics. If not journalistic ethics, then at the very least questions as to their own personal morals and ethics.

And coming only a few weeks before a federal election is expected to be called, one can only wonder what other reason’s were behind the disclosure by the three at this point in time.

ENDS:
© John Le Fevre, 2007

Australian journalism; Journalism ethics; MEAA; Code of ethics; Tony Wright; The Age newspaper; Michael Brissenden; Paul Daley; The Bulletin magazine; ABCTV Australia; Canberra press gallery