Thursday 17 December 2009

Prime Minister, you're banned!


Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd received this NSW North Coast email concerning mandatory national ISP-level Internet filtering via his online contact form on 16 December 2009:

Dear Prime Minister Rudd,
I have read the ENEX Test Lab "Internet Service Provider (ISP)Content Filtering Pilot Report" and the accompanying discussion paper.
I am sincerely concerned that your government intends to impose mandatory national ISP-level Internet filtering on Australian society.
I still consider this censorship scheme open to both bureaucratic and political abuse.
The scheme will considerably add to the end-user costs of a typical Internet connection home account and, these cost will be prohibitive for low-income households.
It is doubtful that unrestricted Internet surfing by any determined IT literate teenager would be stopped by such a filtering scheme (ditto for adults seeking unlawful or pornographic material online), but it will probably limit Internet access to a large number of citizens on the federal electoral roll who may not be as technologically savvy.
When it comes to imposing an Internet filtering scheme - this is very much a multiple player game.
So I have removed and blocked KevinRuddPM from my own Twitter account and I intend to place www.pm.gov.au on the restricted URL list created by Internet Explorer on my personal computer.
Needless to say I may become strangely blind to Labor candidates' names on the next federal ballot paper I am required to mark.
Sincerely,
[redacted]

1 comment:

Dave Bath said...

Nice. And it cannot be long before crackers hit the filtering lists at the ISPs, injecting blocks for politicians, unscrupulous businesses...