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You are here: News > News > Controversial Australian-Wide Firewall May Not Be Compulsory
| » IT Security NEWS |
| » 27 May 2009 |
| Controversial Australian-Wide Firewall May Not Be Compulsory |
| Just last December, hundreds upon hundreds of angry Aussies turned out in protest rallies against the Australian government's plans to forcefully filter web content throughout the entire continent without the consent of its citizens. Once the Australians' anti-censorship sentiment had reached its fever-pitch, the anti-censorship movement DLC (Digital Library Coalition) took immediate advantage, coordinating demonstrations during one weekend in seven cities that included Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Reports at the time stated that there were at least 300 picketers assembled at Sydney's Town Hall to express their dissatisfaction over the Rudd administration's proposed online censorship plan. According to a blog post written by Brenton Fletcher, an attendee of the DLC rally right at the stairs of Adelaide's Parliament House in South Australia: "People need to pay attention and protest this issue, because the current government is much more serious about the filter than governments have been in the past.” Fortunately, the Australian government may have heard the pleas of its constituents just five months ago in regards to the censoring of Internet content, as evidenced by it seemingly backing away from its original suggestion of imposing its continent-wide Net Nanny regime with actual legislation. To be more precise, Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy said to a Senate estimates committee yesterday that the so-called Great Australian Firewall could develop as a completely voluntary policy for the industry instead of a mandatory rule enforced by an actual law. The infamous proposal was suggested as a method of suppressing odious material featuring bestiality, incest, rape, violence, child pornography, shock sites, and a lot of other offensive and possibly illegal content. On the upside, the firewall regulation will help the government lessen instances of Australians falling victim to cyber attacks, malware, adware, spyware, viruses, worms, trojans, vulnerability exploits, phishing expeditions, and the like. On the downside, the blacklists apparently included content like ordinary pornography, business sites, gambling sites, poker sites, and certain Wikipedia pages. If anything, the planned firewall would have turned Australia into China in terms of online censorship. At this time, there's a chance that the Labor government may be opting for the less harsh choice because of the lack of Australian Upper House support to implement the legislation. At any rate, Conroy insists that ISPs may adopt an industry standard to block content. The communication minister reportedly states that they are presently facing two options: one involving mandatory ISP filtering enforced by legislation, the other involving voluntary filtering that's already available to ISPs. As of this writing, the Australian government is undertaking a filtering trial project with the cooperation of nine ISPs. They expect it to end by either July or August. |
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