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Conroy avoids issues: charity role unexplained

Conroy avoids issues: charity role unexplained

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy responds to email complaints with a long letter that avoids the issues: he doesn’t explain why the government now plans to filter all adults’ internet access (instead of filtering children’s access, as promised pre-election). He also fails to explain why a UK charity, with no responsibility to the UK or Australian parliaments, should decide which websites Australians can access.

Senator Conroy responds to inquiries about internet filtering with a form letter.  In the current version it is interesting that, for a Minister of the Rudd Government, Senator Conroy avoids referring the Labor election platform promise of multi-level filtering to a now one size fits all filter.

The Labor plan for cyber-safety clearly indicated that a clean feed filter’ would be offered to homes, schools and public facilities accessible by children.   His current advice avoids all multi-level filtering but only addresses the introduction of ISP-level filtering.  There is no explanation or justification as to why has been necessary to change the Labor Party pre-election undertaking.  It is generally considered, that the Rudd Government is clearly focused on delivering what it promised in the election lead-up without alteration.

So Senator Conroy believes in freedom of speech provided of course that speech is acceptable!  And he looks to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to reinforce his belief that supervision of internet content is in good hands.  This is the Act that, buried off in Schedule 7, says that the Australian Communications Media Authority (ACMA) may, by legislative instrument, determine what is relevant and hence acceptable.  In practice that means an unelected body can administratively determine on whatever basis it chooses to ban material.

But it gets better.  As Senator Conroy notes, the ACMA blacklist includes access to the UK Internet Watch Foundation’s (UKIWF) list of unwanted material.  This is the same Foundation that recently banned Wikipedia in the UK and, in lifting the ban, said it did nothing wrong.  The UK Internet Watch Foundation is also a ‘self regulatory’ authority, which means its mandate and operation was not established by parliament nor is it subject to parliamentary scrutiny.  It only has charity status. 

In effect the ACMA has outsourced its role as to determining what is ‘prohibited’ material to an overseas charity that is not subject to any parliamentary control; Australia’s internet censorship is being guided by a United Kingdom charity!

Senator Conroy also considers that Australia has strong criminal laws aimed at preventing people from possessing or distributing material relating to child sexual abuse, including over the internet.   While the Australian Federal Police and State police have been successfully prosecuting offenders under this legislation, there has been no substantive evidence presented by Senator Conroy that the extension of filtering will significantly improve the detection of offenders to justify both the cost and intrusion of surveillance into everyday computer traffic.

Senator Conroy does not address the merits or rights for government agencies to inspect every email a citizen sends, and every website a citizen visits, the same as Australia Post opening and reviewing every letter received in Australia.

Interestingly, Senator Conroy appears confused on whether the pilot is ‘a real world live pilot’ or is ‘a closed network test’.  Senator Conroy states that funds have been provided for the live pilot (p2) but then refers to the filtering trial to be against a ‘test list’ of 10,000 URLs that will be undertaken on a closed network, not involving actual customers.  Senator Conroy now says the make-up of the list is not an issue. 

What the Senator conveniently side-steps is that any filtering is an invasion of privacy and that the process can ban sites for unwanted material.  The UK charity (UKIWF), on its web site does say that it is working with organisations to stop sites such as those dealing with anorexia which it recognises are not illegal.  Clearly, Senator Conroy is yet to explain the administrative and legislative processes that will underpin internet filtering and appears intent on avoiding doing so.

What Senator Conroy does say is that the ACMA blacklist is also developed by complaints from the public.

What Senator Conroy does not say is how he and the parliament will guarantee that internet censorship will not be abused and misused to achieve political ends, prevent free speech and invasion of privacy.

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