Feeed Me!

Apparently when Kevin-07 was elected, one of his election promises was to propose a mandatory ISP level filtering (read: censorship) scheme, which was completely ignored by the media and the electorate at the time. Ever since, the Rudd government has been pushing for this scheme without actually demonstrating any need for it.

I have long believed that successive Australian governments have consistently messed up digital and technical legislation, because at heart, they do not understand technology (Don't get me started on the the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999). There are probably many reasons for this, but I think I can safely generalize by saying that the entire 'class of 2008' Government did not go to school with computers. Whilst they have young advisers who are for the most part computer literate (lot of Gen-Y's working as junior staffers), I doubt very much that in their current positions they are able to drive legislation.

So why would a government from one of the most open Western liberal democracies want to implement a system that mirrors China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea??

I think the answer is twofold:
1. As discussed above, I believe that those that hold the "reigns of power" do not understand the technology and are therefore confused and perhaps scared of the ramifications. The rapid advance of technology is putting massive computational power in the hands of individuals for the first time in human civilisation, and all governments across the world are struggling to understand how those forces are transforming societies.

2. The totalitarian impulse. It is the 'inevitable' process that power begets power, and those that have it, only want more. You see this in every aspect of human society. Religion and cults generally want more and more followers and want to be the last word on all their behaviour, public and private. Government institutions who start off with a narrow mandate, gradually increase the scope of their activities to include things the founders never imagined. Companies need to grow, and turn into multi-nationals, and as their size increases play more of an active role in what it's employees can and can't do. Individuals who want to make it illegal for everyone to smoke in their cars, watch certain films, play certain video games, etc etc.

The totalitarian impulse is not new and this impulse was recognised very early on in human civilization. As I discussed in a previous post, the whole idea behind the Magna Carta (the document that one could argue launched this whole liberal democracy thing) was to restrict the power of the sovereign (king), and to enshrine the rights of the citizen with respect to the governing power.

I'm not suggesting that Rudd and his government intend to make Oz a Great Southern Dictatorship, and nor would I argue that the totalitarian impulse is confined to the left. However, this unasked for legislation will impact on all Australians on the incorrect premise that will "protect the children, and what's worse (or typical if you're a cynic like me), is the Minister's clumsy use of rhetoric to brand any opposition to this filtering scheme as a vote of support for child pornography (via Libertus)

"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree."
Source: Senator Conroy, ABC News, 31 Dec 2007

1. Conflating all pornography with child pornography is an intellectually disingenious position, and I would argue that the Minister himself does not believe that viewing adults engaged in consensual sexual activites (which, for the record, is currently legal in Australia), is anywhere near the same thing when it involves minors.

2. The internet filtering scheme as proposed by the Government will only attempt to filter websites. Ie. web pages with questionable (or "illegal") material. Web pages are only one part of the internet, and users can swap files using Peer-to-peer networks (P2P... think Kazaa or Napster) or Usenet (newsgroups) or a veritable smorgasbord of other methods. Only a very stupid or a very soon to be caught and incarcerated pedophile would use web pages. In other words, the "clean-feed" censorship scheme is a solution that does not solve the "problem" that created it.

There are many other cogent arguments against the clean feed scheme, however I want to focus on the issue that the average Aussie is slowly waking up to: in liberal democracies, laws are proscriptive (ie. they tell you what is NOT allowed, or in other words, everything is allowed unless "it's on the books"). In dictatorial systems, the state has prescriptive laws (ie. they tell you everything that IS allowed, and if it is not on the books, then it is not allowed).

The "clean feed" system, which is essentially a blacklist of websites that the Government will decide are inappropriate for Australian citizens, has no transparency or oversight, no set of clear rules that defines an "illegal" website, and is now exempt from FOI submissions.

The scheme will not be effective, is not asked for, and will only erode the democratic rights of the average Aussie for no clear benefit.