Which, frankly, is bloody fantastic.

Now you might think that a technology professional such as myself might support the idea -  sorry, no dice. The technical implementation of the filter has more holes than a block of swiss cheese, here’s just a couple of the key points that have me wondering:

1. Trials of the filter were conducted by just 9 ISP’s, none of them majors, and no information as to the numbers of users each of those ISP’s had signed up to the trial. (Although it’s rumoured that one ISP had just 15 users!
2. If a site is added to the blacklist, who does the adding? And against what criteria? Is there a going to be an unfiltered internet to be monitored for potential inclusions? (Stories of MP’s caught “researching” pornographic websites are sure to abound!) And given that it’s supposed to be a secret list, how do you get your website off of it, if you don’t know you’re on it?

As said technology professional, I won’t be supporting the filter, regardless of its noble aims. The reasons for this are best explained in this excellent analogy left as a comment on a news article that appeared earlier today:

“Unbelievable. Imagine if this was happening in a different portfolio, say one to do with transport.

Say a new, but old fashion toll booth style system was being setup on the Sydney Harbour Bridge to check that children in cars were wearing seatbelts because parents weren’t trusted to buckle up their kids.

The new system can handle only 1,000 cars per hour. If any more cars try to use the bridge they cannot be processed fast enough and the traffic backs up and eventually grinds to a halt.

That’s ok at the moment because currently less than 1,000 cars will pass though the bridge per hour.

However, with the expected growth of the city it is forecast that many 1000′s more cars will be using the bridge every hour very soon after the system will be put in place.

The Government have decided to build and put in place the system anyway to protect the children because something must be done and will only undertake a review of the system should more than 1000 cars try to use the bridge per hour.

Would the people of Sydney allow the Government to spend millions of dollars setting this up knowing that it will fail once more than 1000 cars start using the bridge, which has been forecast and then allow the Government to spend even more money trying to fix it?

Of course not, in fact I doubt everyone else around Australia, not just those in Sydney (who would be affected by this hypothetical situation) would approve of this massive waste of money.

I find it very, very sad that just because the ISP Filtering and the NBN are in a communications portfolio the majority of Australia’s think they’ll not be able to understand the issue and just agree with or eat up what ever Conroy spoon feeds them.

As I was trying to say with the example above, implementing an Internet filter would never be accepted and there would be a huge backlash if the people actually understood what is going on because just as the seatbelt checking stations above would wreck the transportation system in Sydney, ISP Filtering will cause massive problems to the Australian Internet.”

Australia – 55th in the world

Now you can hardly say Australia has a stellar reputation for speedy internet links anyway (a measely 55th in the world, according to the latest Akamai State of the Internet report), and yet this filter could potentially slow them down even more? Madness!

Oh, and if the technical reasons weren’t enough, even the communications minister putting the proposal forward has indicated that the filter can be bypassed and those doing so wouldn’t be prosecuted. Eh?

So, quick recap then:

The Australian Government wants to spend $24million on an internet filter that secretly monitors a (relative) handful of sites, potentially slows down internet access and can be legally circumvented.

Yep, that sounds like a great plan to me… (forgive me for sounding jaded, I do have to disclose that I have little faith in politicians from the outset, but when one of them comes up with a plan like this, can you wonder at it?)

What do you think? Is the internet filter a good idea or a bad one? All comments are welcome.

photo credit: eleanor.black