Once you’ve read the article, please leave your comment below on what you believe is going on with the proposal.

Please use family-friendly language for the benefit of our younger readers.

Unsurprisingly, 96% of voters said that they would be voting against Mandatory ISP Filtering/Censorship.  However what was surprising is the support for the NBN with a whopping 82% of the votes.  Although this is a very small sample, the combination of of NBN and #OpenInternet was clearly the crowd favorite with 78% of the votes.

With the Hung Parliament seeming more likely by the day, it will be fascinating to see what impact the new government will have on the NBN and Internet Censorship.  We will all wait and watch eagerly for the result.  One thing that is assured, regardless of the governments constituents, we all need to remain vigilant in the defense of our digital rights.

QUESTION: Do you think that the poll accurately reflects the result of all Open Internet supporters? (Please leave a comment below)

The EFA poll last week showed 94% of voters will have their vote swayed by the controversial Internet Filter Policy. The poll asked “Will the Proposed Internet Filter affect the way you vote in the Federal Election?”.

We received over 1,100 votes over 4 days and the result shows the policy has significant influence on voting preferences by voters on both sides of the debate. Given the overwhelming influence of the policy on voters who participated in our poll, isn’t it time to see the issue discussed from all candidates standing for election?

Until Joe Hockey’s comments on Triple J’s Hack program last Thursday night, the Internet Filter has hardly been mentioned by either of the ALP or the Coalition parties during the first two weeks of this election campaign. As there is evidence of substantial support to see the controversial censorship policy scrapped, it has been surprising this issue hasn’t received its fair share of air time in the electoral debate.

An even bigger mystery is why the major media outlets have not been asking questions and driving the debate as, at the very minimum, a viable election issue that will win or lose votes.

If you’d like to see the Internet Filter debate play a larger role this election, you can do something about it. Here are 7 things you can do to draw attention to the debate:

1. Visit/Write/Call/Tweet your local candidates and tell them how you feel about the Filter.
2. If you see a candidate in the street campaigning, go up to them and ask them for their position, and the position of the party they represent.
3. Call talk-back radio shows and share your opinion, or even our poll results.
4. Write a letter/email to the editor of a newspaper and share your opinion, or ask why they aren’t providing adequate coverage of this issue.
5. If your able to get to the Town Hall meeting in Sydney tonight, ask a question about the Internet Filter to Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott.
6. Email and Tweet morning news programs with questions and comments about the Filter
7. Email and Tweet other TV programs where Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott are appearing with questions and comments about the Filter

If we all took just one action from this list, it would be impossible for the debate to be ignored. Lets all do one of these in the next 7 days.

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Have a look at the description of the position and get in touch.

The filter is not going away, and opposition remains strong in many quarters. Keep an eye on Gizmodo this week for some interesting discussion.

But there’s also a set of concerns about the dark side of the new technology, if I can use that expression, and, you know, clearly you can’t walk into a cinema in Australia and see certain things and we shouldn’t on the internet be able to access those things either. So, Stephen Conroy is working to get this in the right shape.

Minister Stephen Conroy has been describing the debate in the terms of what can be purchased at newsagents, and now the new PM is talking in terms of cinemas. It’s not surprising – though it’s certainly discouraging – that our leaders can’t or won’t take the time to think through the challenges of regulating a global and dynamic communications platform. Instead, they try and cheat by applying old and simplistic ideas to the net.

Can Conroy get the filter in the right shape? Not without going back to the drawing board and actually designing a policy with a coherent goal, taking into consideration how the internet actually works. Sadly, it looks like the old policy is what will be delivered to the Parliament after the election will be of the “internet as a giant newsagent” variety.

We’re excited to announce that EFA have today launched a new campaign to raise public awareness of the Government’s internet filter: “Time to Tell Mum.”

The campaign features comedian Akmal Saleh and exhorts Australians to tell their mums about the filter plan and what it won’t do for Australian families.

One of the big challenges in the debate so far has been combating the myth that the filter is – or ever was – a cyber-safety tool designed to keep kids safe online. It’s not. It’s designed to “harmonise” censorship laws, not protect children from inappropriate content. It’s censorship for its own sake.

We know that the more people understand the proposal, the less there are that support it. This is an opportunity for those ‘in the know’ to help in educating the wider community, with a focus on parents who are the most worried about cyber-safety issues, but won’t be helped by the policy. We hope this campaign will reach some new people, and further highlight the myths about Conroy’s Filter.

You can watch the video and share it with your friends here:

http://www.timetotellmum.com

Oh… and tell your mum.

Below is the text of his statement in the debate.

Let me begin with a short anecdote.

On Monday night as we watched Four Corners and Q&A, my not-quite-13 year old daughter, Hannah, made a particularly interesting observation. “Gee, Dad,” she said, “I think I’ve just seen more rude pictures in that story than I’ve ever seen on the Internet.”

Hannah has been using the Internet since she was four.

Certainly, much of that time it has been under our supervision, but increasingly it’s not. When Hannah uses the Internet, she uses a connection at home that is completely unfiltered, neither by the router we use nor by activating the fairly comprehensive parental controls that come as a standard part of modern operating systems. She has administrator access to the machine she uses and she also knows and understands how to access and manage the home network.

Knowing I was coming here today, I conducted something of a straw poll of that observation amongst friends and acquaintances with kids of a similar age. I deliberately avoided asking only “‘Net savvy” parents.

Universally, the experience was the same; none of our children had ever inadvertently encountered pornographic or other offensive material on the Internet, let alone material of the kind that falls under the umbrella that the National Classification Code defines as Refused Classification. None of the children had filtered or managed Internet connections. All of them used computers placed in public spaces in their homes and several had their own computers in their rooms.

The most recent research into public opinion on the filter, carried out by the Safer Internet Group consisting of Google, Internet Industry Association, iiNet, Australian Council of State School Organisations and the Australian Library and Information Association and others shows a marked increase in doubts about the filter amongst parents.

There is significant opposition to the government’s filter as proposed. Rather, parents first want greater education options and at-home filtering and as a next-best option, an opt-in filter. Mandatory filtering runs a long last.

So too, our friends internationally, including most notably the US Ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, speaking on Q&A have come out publicly against the filter as it stands. Ambassador Bleich, an internationally recognised authority on human rights, was particularly clear, when he said:

“We have been able to accomplish the goals that Australia has described, which is to capture and prosecute child pornographers … without having to use internet filters. We have other means and we are willing to share our efforts with [the Australian government].”

The arguments of the government and its supporters in favor of the filter regularly hang on the matter of RC material. On this, I’d like to first highlight two matters of interest that seem to cause some real confusion.

First, is the myth that all RC material is illegal. This is simply not true.

The fact is that of all material classified RC, it is only material depicting the sexual abuse of children that is that is illegal to own. For good reason. No reasonable person in today’s society believes that such material is suitable for adults to access, let alone children.

Material that falls under the RC umbrella is unquestionably sometimes distasteful or controversial or contains or depicts concepts of an adult nature; drug abuse, explicit material about abortion, guides to assisted suicide, violence. Whether you personally approve of such things or not, none of this material is illegal to possess in this country; it’s perfectly legal for me or you to own a copy of Baise Moi or The Peaceful Pill, just not to make it available for sale.

Yet the filter seeks to change this. Our classification system in Australia is something that largely works and is designed to empower adults and minors alike to make appropriate, relevant choices. When implemented, and have no doubt, the government’s plans for the filter are far from abandoned, it will take away adults’ ability to decide for themselves whether or not to access material that is by-and-large, legal in this country.

Second, is the fantasy that stumbling across material that is RC on the public web is something that occurs with frightening regularity. It’s not even easy to stumble across R- or X-rated material, not all of which is pornographic in nature and none of which will be targeted by the filter. You have to go looking for these things very deliberately. Looking for material that is RC is even harder.

The material the government proposes to filter is, in some cases, completely appropriate to access. For that which is not, child sexual abuse material, it is well known that the criminals who trade in this matter do so using tools and protocols that will not be managed by this or any other filter. Rather criminals trade their materials in private networks.

Additional dollars and human resources for law enforcement by the Australian Federal Police ought to be supported. It is only through the diligent and successful efforts of the AFP and its overseas collaborators that those people purveying child sexual abuse material are apprehended and put in jail where they belong.

Let’s look in turn at a number of the other issues around the proposed filter.

First, the matters of cyber-safety, education, self-determination and digital citizenship.

There is no question that as adults and particularly as parents, we wish to protect our society and children from danger and from exposure to deeply offensive or inappropriate material. Certainly, as a father, this is paramount in my concerns.

In order to do this, I have a responsibility. As a parent as and a member of society, it is incumbent on me to educate myself, my child and those who I come into contact with about issues such as good digital citizenship and appropriate online behaviors. Doing so helps us, particularly, to protect ourselves from threats the filter will not even address such as cyber-bullying (and bullying in the flesh-and-blood world), from online predators, from identity theft.

These issues are certainly much higher in the minds of the parents, teachers and students I speak to regularly as a part of my work than are matters like RC.

Despite the marked increase in this country of policy that erodes our freedoms, pushing back against personal determination and our ability to make decisions for ourselves, the fact is that the vast majority of Australians are not complete dullards who need the Nanny State to tell them how to run their lives. Rather, they are perfectly normal, intelligent people who are capable of self-determination, of critical thinking and decision-making.

Australian parents are largely not irresponsible and incompetent at bringing up their kids. Most of them are entirely the opposite, doing a fine job of parenting and making appropriate decisions about child rearing. They are perfectly able, as parents and adults, to decide what is and isn’t appropriate for their children to see online and elsewhere. Equally, they are able to teach their children, with help from educators, law enforcement and others, how to behave as reasonable digital citizens.

The millions of dollars the government proposes to spend on the filter, a technology that will not actually work as advertised and will be easily circumventable, would be far better spent on law enforcement and on thorough programs for teachers and parents to educate themselves on risks, on teaching how to manage their own and their children’s access to the Internet, on appropriate online behavior and, where they wish to, how to filter their own computers directly and by choice; provably the most effective form of filtering and placing the power to conduct themselves firmly in the hands of individual people rather than in the hands of a government.

In more than one research study, both here and overseas, strong evidence exists that the risks to minors of exposure to unwanted, by which I do not mean only illegal, material, are considerably overblown. Children are not irreparably damaged by seeing things that may be distasteful or inappropriate online, particularly if they are surrounded by a framework of parents, mentors, educators and other support services that can help them make sense of these things.

Even if some form of filter is ultimately introduced, it would be far better if such a thing was opt-in rather than mandatory, as it was in Labor’s original pre-election policy. This leaves the decision-making in the hands of parents, where it belongs. Indeed, many opponents of the current filter scheme have stated that their objections would largely be mitigated of opt-in was the choice.

I don’t want to spend a great deal of time on the technology, as the concepts here have been argued at length and in detail by others. Suffice it to say that, in spite of Senator Conroy’s arguments to the contrary, there are major technical issues with the filter that remain unanswered or lacking in enough detail to be satisfying:

• secure web sites, such as we use for online banking and e-commerce cannot be filtered without making them less secure
• there remains a risk that if a popular and culturally valuable sites such as Wikipedia, the National Gallery of Australia or YouTube were subject to a filtered URL, overall access to those sites may be measurably degraded
• the introduction of the NBN and networks running at those speeds have not been tested under filter conditions at all
• only material published on the web will be subject to the filter, other distribution methods such as BitTorrent, email and instant messaging, often used by criminal networks to distribute offensive material, will not be subject to the filter
• bypassing the filter is, as admitted by Senator Conroy on more than one occasion, a trivial exercise, even for relatively non-expert users
• mandatory filtering is less flexible and customisable than home-based, on-router or on-computer filtering

All of these issues require evidence-based, thorough answers.

The blacklist itself is problematic on a number of fronts. These too have been discussed at length, but let’s look at them briefly.
The list is secret. In a world where open government in modern democracies is receiving significant attention, this is, at the very least, interesting. We hear arguments that a secret list protects us from exposure to the URLs that contain the offensive material. However, if the URLs are filtered, in what way do we risk exposure? The argument fails its own logic. Beyond that, it’s simply offensive to me to think that any government believes that I am incapable of enough independent thought to determine what URLs I do and do not visit.

By its very secrecy, if my website ends up on the blacklist, I am unable to know how and why it got there. It’s also unclear how I get off the list if I’m there unjustifiably. What happens if someone opposed to your political views or faith manages to get your site on the list?

Secret things have a tendency to leak through the cracks. The blacklist has already been leaked once. It’s not inconceivable that it will happen again. And again. And again.

The list is tiny. In a world where the public web is now in the trillions of pages, a list of something around 10,000 URLs barely scratches the surface of any pool of offensive, let alone illegal, content that may exist.

Which brings us to criminal networks distributing child sexual abuse material – I’ve already mentioned this, but it bears repeating – these networks do not use the public web to distribute their wares. The technologies they do use – private networks and peer-to-peer – will not be filtered.

The only effective way the distribution of this illegal material can be stopped is through active law enforcement. The AFP has a highly competent cybercrime unit that could be more effective if it was the beneficiary of additional funding and resources.

Last, to matters of filtering and free speech.

Senator Conroy, on Monday night’s Four Corners, stated clearly that for the purposes of the filter, his government’s policy was to filter RC content only and that he would be amongst the many voices raised in protest should some subsequent government decide to broaden the scope of the filter.

The filter covers material legal in other forms and media. It lacks accountability and appelability which are at odds with our open democracy and markedly different to equivalent decisions that are open to scrutiny when subject to other media.

While the Senator’s and the government’s hearts may certainly be in the right place, we cannot be so certain about unknown future governments and their thoughts on the nature of what could and should be subject to filtering. It is entirely possible that over the long term not only material that is RC will be subject, but perhaps dissenting political voices, matters of taste or voices belonging to certain faiths may be censored.

So, here’s a summary of the issues as I see them:

• there’s no serious Internet content problem to solve – you just can’t inadvertently stumble on RC or child porn on the Internet
• even if there was, few want the government to solve it this way – there are better, more effective, more workable and more societally acceptable options
• the technology presents a real risk – we’ve seen the trial results and the extensive analysis which points out the flaws
• the blacklist itself is a problem – it’s secret, unappelable, deals with material that remains legal, it’s already been leaked and will again (you’ve heard of the Streisand Effect, right?)
• the filter will not address criminal distribution of illegal material – it’s far better to ensure funding and resources for law enforcement, who are the only people equipped to deal with this problem properly
• the filter impinges on the freedom of Australians to determine for themselves  – it represents a real shift in the ability for Australians to determine what is and isn’t appropriate for them to view online and significantly changes a fairly workable classification system in other media to cope with a medium that is changing rapidly
• the filter will be administered by governments ill-equipped to do so – the technology and policy are complicated and problematic. We’ve seen several policy and program stumbles lately, do we want one over this?
• there is no guarantee that future governments will not change the scope of what is filtered – the suppression of material based on moral or political grounds is anathema to what Australia is about

This is far from a simple issue.

I’d like to close with a few words from Will Briggs, an Anglican priest from my wife’s home town of Somerset, Tasmania. Will is a strong voice in the discourse on the filter. He said:

“[This issue] is best [addressed] through clear information, balanced argument, reasoned debate…[on the] multiplicity of issues… [it is] a debate which is not simply about sexual ethics but about freedom of speech, the reductionism of morality, and the role of government in society… by… simplifications in this case [we] look like simpletons.”

On Four Corners, reporter Quentin McDermott will examine the filter in a story called “Access Denied”:

A story that reveals how an apparently well meaning attempt by government to protect children from video nasties on the net turned into a policy that critics say promotes censorship and reduces personal freedom.

Twenty one years after the world-wide web was born it’s hard to know how we’d live without it. But for all its benefits there are dangers too, especially for children. Child pornography, bestiality and other forms of extreme and illegal sexual material are freely available for anyone to view. Central to the Federal Government’s policy on cyber safety is the introduction of a mandatory filtering system, aimed at protecting children from the worst excesses in cyber space. Now reporter Quentin McDermott looks at the potential impact of the Government’s plan.

Following Four Corners, the panel on Q&A will look at the future of the Internet.  The panel this week is Brendan O’Connor (Minister for Home Affairs), Sophie Mirabella (Shadow Minister for Innovation), Kaiser Kuo (Beijing-based internet consultant), Brett Solomon (Internet activist), and Helen Razer (broadcaster and commentator).  If you want to ask a question about the Internet filter, you can do so here.

The Rudd government’s internet filter has always been a kind of policy duck – flapping on the surface, quacking all the right things but with lots more happening underneath in the murky waters. It seems like a repeat of just the kind of expensive and more than likely ineffective policy that will create controversy in the future for the Rudd government. However obvious to the rest of us, it looks like Labor may have not got the memo. Reports are that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is only delaying the fight over the filter until after the election where it might be in a better position to spin it their way and have no electoral repercussions. But with the obvious problems with the policy ahead, wouldn’t it just be better to ‘‘do an ETS’’ and cut their losses?

…

Conroy and Rudd can easily sit in Canberra huffing and puffing, ”we’re tough on child porn”, ”we’re tough on border protection”. Unfortunately for the majority of people that know this policy is a waste of time, that stomping in Canberra and leaving the fight until after the election might just convert a few ex-Howardites and make it worthwhile in the immediate term for the government. Until, that is, something inevitably goes wrong with a policy as flawed as this. If you’re already dumping policies, why not dump this while you can.

Read more here.

The Rudd Government’s hare-brained proposal to censor the internet was descending into complete farce with the Prime Minister admitting he didn’t have a clue what was going on, Liberal Senator Sue Boyce, said today.

“Yesterday, Mr Rudd at a media conference, admitted that he had ‘no advice’ about whether or not the legislation would be introduced before the election and fobbed the matter off to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy,” Senator Boyce said.

“This is despite the fact that Minister Conroy’s spokeswoman was quoted in the media yesterday morning (Thursday) as saying the legislation would be delayed at least until after the June sitting of Parliament,” she said.

“If Minister Conroy can’t even keep the Prime Minister informed then there is no hope anybody else will ever be able to get any sense out of him on this issue.”

Senator Boyce said Senator Conroy had announced last December that the legislation would be introduced in March this year and the delay only confirmed repeated warnings by independent experts that the so-called “filter” was proving to be impossible to implement.

“It is ridiculous to try and assert as Minister Conroy does at every available opportunity that his proposed internet filter will protect us all against child pornography and other disgusting and depraved websites. He knows, as everybody else knows, it simply won’t work,” Senator Boyce said.

“The revelation by Electronic Frontiers Australia that Minister Conroy’s Department has a closed online forum to discuss the issue and that his Department had admitted in an April 13 posting to the forum that there wasn’t even draft legislation shows how hopeless the project is,” she said.

“Actually, I feel sorry for Departmental officers who have the impossible job of trying to devise legislation and come up with some sort of filtering technology that will even try to meet their Minister’s absurd promises.”

Senator Boyce said the fact that Minister Conroy had refused to say if there would be any penalty for circumventing any internet filter if and when it was ever imposed was a tacit admission that it was doomed to failure.

“It would be political suicide for a government to impose penalties for an offence which millions of Australians would inadvertently commit every day,” she said.

“If and when the Prime Minister bothers to find out just what is happening, he should tell Minister Conroy that this mandatory internet filter idea is as futile and as useless as GroceryWatch and FuelWatch were.”

“Mr Rudd has become very experienced at announcing that promises and programs are to be dumped. Let’s hope he will be well enough informed to announce the dumping of this program in time for World Press Freedom Day next Monday.”

April 30, 2010

Media Contact: Russell Grenning 0448 193 903

KEVIN Rudd has put another election promise on the backburner with his controversial internet filtering legislation set to be shelved until after the next election.

A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said yesterday the legislation would not be introduced next month’s or the June sittings of parliament.

With parliament not sitting again until the last week of August, the laws are unlikely to be passed before the election.

Labor promised before the last election it would force internet service providers to block access to illegal content such as child pornography and X-rated images.

But the US government, Google and free speech advocates have said any efforts to censor the internet would slow download speeds, stop the free flow of information and be ineffective.

Senator Conroy’s spokeswoman said the government was not deterred by this criticism.

The government was still consulting with internet service providers and considering public submissions; once that process was complete, it would introduce the legislation into parliament, the spokeswoman said.

Read more here.

However, in a blog post for ZDNet, Ben Grubb reports that neither Kevin Rudd nor Stephen Conroy are commenting on the reported delay:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today said he had “no advice” to suggest that the Federal Government’s plans to implement a mandatory internet filter would be delayed until after the federal election, despite a report saying it would.

At a press conference announcing the Federal Government’s “anti-smoking action” this morning, ZDNet Australia asked the Prime Minister about a report that appeared in The Australian today saying that the introduction of the legislation required for the filter would likely be delayed until after the federal election.

The Prime Minister said he had “no advice to that effect”. He later said when questioned if the legislation would be introduced this year: “Look, can I ask that you put that to the relevant minister. I don’t have any other advice to what I put to you earlier.”

ZDNet Australia had already this morning questioned the office of the relevant minister, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, about the reported delay.

“The government is committed to the cyber-safety policy, which includes [internet service provider (ISP)] level filtering of refused classification content,” Conroy’s office replied in a statement.

“A public consultation on improved transparency measures has been held and the department is now working with other government agencies to consider the submissions and examine whether the ideas can be used to enhance the proposed accountability and transparency measures. The department is also continuing to consult ISPs on the implementation of ISP-level filtering.

“Once these processes are complete the legislation will be introduced into Parliament.”

When the minister’s office was asked again whether the report in The Australian, which said the legislation would not be introduced in the May or June sittings, was correct, the office said that the legislation would be introduced once the processes mentioned in the original statement were complete. Since then the office has said it is unlikely to be heard in the May sitting.

So what’s the deal? Has the filter been ditched because it’s a political lemon? And why won’t the government talk?

Read more here.  Either way, it looks as though the Government is feeling the pressure and that this delay is most likely related to the growing opposition to the filter in Australia and around the world.  That said, it appears that the filter is still Government policy, and as such Electronic Frontiers Australia will continue to fight the introduction of the filter, regardless of whether the legislation is introduced before or after the election.

Electronic Frontiers Australia today revealed what it said was evidence that Stephen Conroy’s department was hosting a protected online forum to discuss controversial issues about the Government’s internet filter initiative, including the lack of a complete draft of the planned legislation as of several weeks ago and the possibility of making it an offence to promote methods of circumventing the filter.

Delimiter has sighted apparent screenshots from the forum possessed by the EFA. The digital rights advocacy group believes the site is being hosted internally by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE). In the screenshots, ISPs such as Pacific Internet and Webshield — which will be required to implement the scheme if it goes ahead — discuss the filter with un-named departmental officials.

The office of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has been contacted with a list of questions to respond to the information contained in the forum.

In December, Communications Minister Conroy had stated the filter legislation would hit Parliament by March, a time frame echoed by Labor Senator Kate Lundy in early February.

But in a posting on the forum which appeared to be dated April 13, the Department wrote that at that stage “there is no complete draft of the legislation”, although the drafting process had commenced.

“One of the purposes of consulting with ISPs through this forum is to seek feedback on issues that will be covered in the legislation, which the Department can then take into account in the drafting process,” it added.

No decision had yet been taken on whether the Government would publicly release an exposure draft of the filter legislation, as it has recently done with similar broadband legislation, the department wrote.

In essence, DBCDE added, the legislation will require ISPs to filter URLs on the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s Refused Classification (RC) blacklist, without specifying exactly how they did it — “consistent with usual drafting practice and the desire to keep legislation as technologically neutral as possible”.

Read more here.

But by trying to control the net, Conroy raises expectations that such a thing can be done. When the measure fails, as it will, there will be pressure to crack down harder, to restrict freedoms further. And what happens when various pressure groups – well intended, no doubt, every one of them – decide that they would like views opposing theirs censored, and start to pressure governments to limit net access further?

It’s encouraging to see the SMH’s editors take a firm stand, and bring the issue into focus for a wider audience. Consider dropping them  a note of support.

Recent revelations that the U.S. Department of State had broached the subject with the Australian government, followed up by a diplomatically-worded butdamning statement by U.S. ambassador Jeff Bleich on Q&A last week leave little doubt that Australia is on the U.S.’s watch list. The Obama administration drew a line in the sand in January with Secretary of State’s Hillary Clinton’s landmark speech on internet freedom. Despite disingenuous attempts to spin it otherwise, Senator Conroy’s mandatory censorship scheme clearly crosses that line.

This has not been lost on Senator Boyce. In her letter, she questions Senator Conroy’s assertion that the U.S. government merely asked for some background information on the censorship plan. “I am sure that [State Department spokesperson] Mr Clay would have chosen his words carefully and I find it difficult to reconcile a statement that the US Government had ‘raised concerns’ with Minister Conroy’s assertion that the US Government had only asked for background information.”

Referring to Ambassador Bleich’s comments, Senator Boyce goes on to say,

It is a deplorable situation when Australians have to rely upon the frankness of a foreign diplomat to provide information about bilateral discussions on a very important matter because relevant Australian Ministers either dissemble or just refuse to say anything.

Given the Ambassador’s statement that the US Government has been “able to accomplish the goals Australia has described … without having to use internet filters” I would appreciate your advice as to whether the US Government has advised the Australian Government about how that has been managed in the USA, when that advice was provided and to whom.

To those following the debate it will be well known that the mandatory filtering plan has drawn criticism for its technical flaws, confused goals, free-speech risks and ever-shifting details. The fact that it is drawing international opprobrium is not new – for instance, Conroy’s receipt of the “Internet Villain of the Year” award – but the remarks by the United States show just how seriously this is being taken.

When Reporters Without Borders named Australia as a country “under surveillance” as an internet enemy earlier in the year, the Minister tried to deflect the blame onto EFA for misleading them. Are we also to blame for misinforming Secretary Clinton, ambassador Bleich, and even President Obama himself? Or could it just be that it’s possible to understand Senator Conroy’s policy and harbour serious concerns without being sympathetic to child pornography? While we don’t expect the Minister to concede this any time soon, the broad array of organisations opposing the filter is making this line of attack increasingly untenable.

In any case, EFA looks forward to hearing the Ministers’ response to Senator Boyce’s timely questions.

The full text of the letter is available here.