Federal Government’s Mandatory Internet Filtering Proposal
Background
In August 2007 the previous Federal Government under the leadership of John Howard launched a $189 million NetAlert — Protecting Australian Families Online program that aimed to reduce the exposure of children to potentially harmful images on the Internet 1. The then Communications Minister Helen Coonan spent the lion’s share of the money — $84 million — on a filtering scheme to offer free to every family, filter software that could be installed on home computers. Media reports at the time quickly reported that a 16-year-old schoolboy could easily crack the software. 2
The Government software is still available to download on the NetAlert website.
Lab tests on ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering
In June 2007 the then Minister Coonan directed Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to conduct closed environment testing on ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering. The ACMA report 3 released in June 2008 showed that all of the products tested degraded Internet performance, with two of them reducing speed by more than 75 per cent. One filter reduced network speed by only 2 per cent, but it was one of the least accurate at identifying inappropriate and illegal websites. It also mistakenly blocked many innocent sites.
Rudd Government’s ISP Internet Filtering Policy
In December 2007 Federal Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy announced that mandatory Internet filters would be introduced to protect children 4. At that time Senator Conroy said that it would be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.
Senator Conroy said at that time that anyone wanting uncensored access to the Internet will have to opt out of the service. He also said that the Government would work with the industry to ensure the filters do not affect the speed of the Internet.
Then in May 2008 the Australian Government committed $125.8 million over the next four years to support a comprehensive range of cyber-safety measures, including law enforcement, education and filtering 5. The measures were to include Internet Service Provider (ISP) filtering. i.e. funding to develop and implement ISP filtering, including undertaking a real world Live Pilot.
The Government’s plan was to implement two levels of ISP filtering 6. There would be a high-level blacklist of prohibited sites and a lower level blacklist of inappropriate or unwanted material. Users would be permitted only to opt out of the lower level blacklist, whilst it would be mandatory for ISP’s to block all access to the high-level list, known as the 'ACMA blacklist'.
ACMA blacklist
The ACMA blacklist of prohibited or potentially prohibited internet content operates under Schedules 5 and Schedule 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 via a complaints based mechanism 7. Following a complaint, content that is hosted overseas and is assessed as prohibited or potentially prohibited is included on the ACMA blacklist. Australian based content assessed as prohibited is subject to a 'take down' notice.
The ACMA blacklist is not publicly available and is exempted from the Freedom of Information Act 1992. However ACMA has recently stated that the blacklist now included about 1300 entries comprised predominantly of URL’s relating to child sexual abuse images. The list also includes URL’s relating to other categories of material, which would be refused classification under Australian law.
A more comprehensive ACMA blacklist of content of the sexual abuse of children is being developed as part of the Government's cyber-safety plan. ACMA is liaising with the UK based Internet Watch Foundation, and the US based Cybertipline, for access to their blacklists of such material. In the medium term, this may see the ACMA blacklist increase in size to 10,000 entries or more. 8
The 'live' pilot
In November 2008 the Government called for "Expressions of Interest" from ISPs interested in participating in a 'live' ISP filtering pilot 9. The pilot is to be conducted with the cooperation of ISPs (including mobile telephone operators) and their customers and is expected to commence before 24 December 2008 and run for a minimum of 6 weeks.
Participating ISPs will have to at a minimum filter the ACMA Blacklist and optionally filter lower level inappropriate and unwanted sites for the period of the trial.
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