Mike Fitzsimon on the internet filter
One of the other speakers from Saturday’s rally was Mike Fitzsimon from a Cancer and Colitis support group. Mike’s group’s support forum may be filtered by the government’s “Clean Feed”, making it harder for post-surgery cancer and colitis victims and their carers to find information.
Mike has written a post about the issues he sees surrounding the proposed filter. Mike is a technology consultant and has a bit to say on the effectiveness of the filter and the overblocking of safe sites. Mike compares a filter that blocks 87% of child porn as being as effective as an 87% complete pool fence. You still have to teach that child how to be safe as if there were no pool fence.
A brief excerpt of Mike’s post:
The real message
- To all parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts of Australian children, I say “Senator Conroy’s plan is dangerous for children. Don’t let your guard down. If necessary, use the in-home filters which you can supervise. 87% of a pool fence is worse than no pool fence at all.”
- To the child protection groups who appear to have hitched their wagon to Senator Conroy’s train, I say “You are being taken for a ride. Do not be responsible for creating an environment that places children at risk.”
- To people looking for help with medical, social and human relationship problems, I say “Senator Conroy’s plan will block up to 1 in 12 of your legitimate websites.”
- To citizens concerned about child pornography, I say “Senator Conroy’s tens of millions of dollars will not get one paedophile one metre closer to a courtroom. Spend the money on AFP detectives.”
- To all Australian taxpayers, I say “Senator Conroy is wasting your taxes on something which only appears to be doing something. Not only does it not work, it actually makes the Internet more dangerous for children.”
Elsewhere, Stilgherrian takes the gloves off at Crikey to take a swing at Clive Hamilton, Stephen Conroy and Bernadette McMenamin of ChildWise, peas in a pod when it comes to accusing their enemies of supporting child porn.
Those points should be our motto.
Brilliant.
I’m doing a survey on my blog about this: http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2008/12/10/sex-and-politics-australias-new-political-party-takes-on-the-mandatory-internet-filter/
I find this issue to be so fascinating – it is sparking so much discussion about important issues: illegal content online, censorship, child protection, place of government in all of it, etc.