Notice to our Australian friends

WOW!

Angus this is really bad news for our friends "Down Under": Starkers, Ausvet and so many others!

I can't believe they really plan to waste so much money in an effort to curtail basic Human Rights. What in the world (literally) is going on there?

This is the LAST thing one would expect from a Democratic country.

Excellent Post!

Oh look...."the church" is behind this.  I'm so surprised!

The point is to censor child pornography? And yet they won't get to the peer-to-peer base? hmn.......And who is to say what is going to get through this. It will become a Hackers dream. And for everyone else, a total nightmare. I hope it does not go through .

While I support the need to have some kind of control over the popularity of sites that encourage anorexia, child porn, terrorism and what-not, I certainly see the danger in the Australian government's latest move.  The sad truth is that no government -democratic or otherwise- is immune to corruption, no matter how much they might claim to be, and this proposed "filtering technology" will most likely end up being abused.

And what's more they'll probably end up charging us for it as well.

In the end it comes down to the age-old question Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "Who watches the Watchers?" (also the title of a Star Trek: TNG episode ).

Everyone knows it.

And they wonder why so many people have such little faith in their governments.

We have that here, too (Netherlands). It's just a few sites that contain bad stuff (child porn), but still. They may expand it later...

I have friends in China and it is easy to bypass their system, their only restrictions are in searching on Google and Yahoo. There are plenty of sites there involved in pirated stuff so maybe the Chinese Government are not concerned about that.

Oz apparently hired a wizkid who bypassed their propsed system in 30 seconds or less and so the Government hired him to construct a better system. Still whatever happens it will soon be cracked and broken. Generations X and Y will not be happy about this filtering and will soon vote any Government out that introduces it and vote in any party that re-introduces freedom again just like the Government was ejected during Vietnam when Labor ran on the platform of national service being cancelled and bringing the troops home. This time Labor may be ejected the same way.

The filter needs to be stopped though as the next logical step will be blocking any site against the elected Government at the time - a permanent monocracy leading to oligocracy. It is not the Governments role to keep citizens under control it is the citizens role to keep the Government under control.

I see obesity as a bigger problem than anorexia and anyway what about banning size zero fashion models on the catwalk.

Most paedophiles here in Ireland and I believe in Europe are caught either via sting ops or email monitoring - most all email is apparently read by goons - gmail keeps copies of all their email indefinitely apparently.

Anybody wanting to give an opinion either way  Email [email protected] while you still can. I fear for corruption of the keepers of the information gleaned - who watcheth them? It would be like "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" a true film of a high ranking official who confessed to a murder he committed but was not initially believed due to his position and power.

If it does go ahead will Scientology and cult sites be blocked? Many of them give large sums to Government ministers I believe.

More here http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7233

It smacks of the things that begin fascism.  Sort of like eavesdropping without warrant or search and seizure without warrant here and now.  Just keep trimming a little fat off the Constitution so the mindless masses don't notice and then....Wham, you wake up one morning and you can't speak without fear of a neighbor turning you into the "police".  Paranoid, perhaps a little, but then....

Instead of filtering the masses why dont goverments try to get these countries that allow such stuff, to be sanctioned or what ever they do Politically to make them remove these sites? Instead of infringing on the average citizens civil rights you would think it would just be easier to stop the stuff from being available all together.

Now THIS is the real McCoy. Right on DigitalCHET. Much as I advocate free speech, I do agree with what you've listed as the "undesirables/dangerous stuff". But that's me and maybe many others, but no one holds the "right" list of stuff, and therein lies the problem.

The problem isn't just QCIC, it's also who gets to say what gets filtered out. THAT is ripe for abuse. And who gets to appoint those people? That's ripe for abuse as well.

I really don't see a solution, even theoretical to this topic.