Colin Jacobs, Vice-Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia, writes in response to my piece from the other day on the direction of the No Clean Feed internet filtering campaign [MB]:
I’m afraid you’re going to hear a lot about some pretty unpleasant subjects this year. Among them will be bestiality, incest, child abuse, and occasionally even “snuff films”. The person you are most likely to hear talking about these things is Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy, as he is out defending the Rudd Government’s controversial decision to legislate mandatory Internet censorship in 2010.
I don’t blame him for talking about these things, because we all agree they’re bad. Blocking something universally agreed to be bad probably seems like a pretty uncontroversial policy. Naturally, nobody is actually arguing in favour of bestiality, incest or child pornography, the possession of which is a serious criminal offence. But by mentioning these things, you can try and reframe the debate – not whether the Government has identified a real need for secret new censorship powers, but whether it should be possible to view incest movies or not. (If that was the debate, then opponents of the filters would have to be a bunch of creeps, and who cares what a bunch of creeps have to say?)
But here’s the thing. When you throw a net around something, to be sure you’ve gotten it all you need to make sure the net is big enough. With a physical net you might get the occasional dolphin with your tuna. With a censorship net, things are just as fraught. No matter what criteria you set for inclusion on the blacklist, there will be some around the edges that are controversial inclusions. There has to be some grey between the black and the white, information that violates the letter if not the spirit of the law. This is where the debate should be focused.
The Government’s net filter will target material that’s Refused Classification – a sort of limbo between illegal material (child pornography) and material able to be distributed for sale as classified content is. All the above nasties would be refused classification. But it’s a pretty big net. Plenty of sexual material that might be considered a bit weird by the average punter would make the list despite being far from abhorrent or illegal. Material promoting drug use or instructing in crime would be banned – not just how to blow up a building, but how to safely use recreational drugs, or detailed discussion of euthanasia. This could be spun as a kind of collateral damage in the war against bestial pornography, but to win a minor battle we’re ceding a lot of ground. A secret blacklist, no matter how well intentioned, is a very real and legitimate free speech concern.
All, as the Minister concedes, to prevent people from “accidentally” stumbling across objectionable images. It has been noted elsewhere that the filter is useless as a law enforcement aid in the fight against child pornography. Cyber-safety for children doesn’t even enter the picture.
Of course, even if you’re inclined to trust the Government’s characterisation of the material to be banned, you’re trusting them – and the next Government – not to widen the net any further. The rhetoric today is on bestiality, but tomorrow the edges can always shift. “Thin end of the wedge” arguments are often dubious, but it’s hard to imagine future governments resisting the pressure to crack down on other objectionable material forever, especially when an election is in the offing.
In short, naturally nobody cares very much about blocking the very nastiest material. However, by its nature that material is so nasty that very few people want to see it, and it’s rare enough that nobody – especially children – are accidentally stumbling across it when reading their email or shopping online. The Government is willing to risk roping in plenty of other sites along with these nasties. Perhaps you think that’s an acceptable risk, and compatible with an open democracy.
If so, that’s well and good – but that’s the real debate we should be having, not scary talk about the worst of the worst.
One presumes that the current ACMA blacklist includes Australian euthanasia sites that advocate or detail euthanasia methods (or they would block them if they appeared). There are still a number of OZ websites that link to overseas info or are around the kind of margins you are worried about. I wonder what will happen to these sites under the proposed filter. As babyboomers approach our exits it is likely that more people will push for euthanasia legislation or seek information about alternatives.
Thanks, Colin, great post. This is something about which my son is very passionate (27yr old) and I happen to agree very strongly with him. This type of legislation, along with the anti-terrorist nonsense is a further slide down the slippery-slope. I plan to contact everyone I can re the info on No Clean Feed.
I am more than prepared to accept the occassional mistake or inclusion of a website that might slip past. This is a very, very small price to pay for the successful blocking of this material. What exactly is it that the anti clean feed lobby are arguing for? That nothing is done and we just hope police catch those doing it? Block the stuff and fund investigations to arrest these people too. Is it they fear a hypothetical future where the government may (or may not) extend the restrictions? As I have argued before this is like saying let’s not have a police force just in case we one day become a police state. It is a position that makes action against evil impossible because people are paralyzed by fear of a potential future action by government. If the government one day decides to block a socialist (or a Liberal party!) site I will be the first fighting against it. Until that time I back the government totally and am disgusted by the hysteria and dishonesty of the anti clean feed lobby in trying to compare this to China.
Spana – the service fees for a home based filter or filtered ISP service, already readily available, is an even smaller price to pay for far greater success in blocking that material.
To use your comparison – the police – we know the police are there. There are very clearly defined rules and oversight of what they do. When they step out of line we know about it, there are enquiries, media stories, reports… This censorship filter would allow the Government to arbritrarily and compulsorily block access to information without telling you what has been blocked or why. That would be like having a secret police that could do whatever it liked, never be accountable to anyone, arrest you while you were walking down the street and throw you in jail with no phonecall to let anyone know what had happened. Would you allow such a police force?
We don’t need to be concerned about a government in the future – this Government has already gone too far by saying it wants a veritable tool of tyranny and using kids as their smokescreen to get it.
And by then it will be too late.
I look at Iran, where the majority of the population appear to want to reform their government, but they have little recourse besides marches and having their heads broken. Once you’re in a police state, it’s the police that have the power, not you. Eventually a tipping point may be reached, where the police/armed forces act to relieve the existing government of power – and we’ve seen innumberable such coups in South and Central America, various African nations, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Somehow those don’t seem to work out quite so well either.
So the argument here doesn’t equate to “let’s not have a police force just in case we one day become a police state”. It’s “let’s not become a police state” – period.
Thanks for writing this, it was a very well measured piece. I’m very unaware of what actual harm if any is done to a child if they do come across even the most unpleasant of content that is out there. It goes without saying that the actual children who are being physically abused and humiliated need to be protected. Sites that host child porn need to be taken down (are there any countries that are not actively taking down inappropriate material?)
The future of computing as I see it is heading toward people using low powered netbooks and with PCoIP using a remote virtualised computer, which won’t be located in Australia nor within Conroy’s filter. Using a cheap VPN now already makes the goal of this stupid filter impossible. Maybe we should shrug with indifference and let the Save the Children squad lilt at their windmills as this might help hasten PCoIP solutions which I think will have many unrelated technological benefits (such as making very high powered computing power available very cheaply and data that is much more secure)
I recall you using this exact same argument last time. You might be prepared to; a lot of people aren’t. What was the take-up of the personal filter that the Howard government supplied again? :/
The second half of this sentence, starting from the word “successful”, is your problem Spana.
It’s not successful, by any measure. The only people it will stop are the people who wouldn’t find it anyway (google safe search, heard of it?). The people who want it, will find it in a jiffy. Further more it doesn’t/won’t/can’t address the torrent and file-sharing networks, where interpol reckons the vast majority of stuff is traded. So what is it addressing? Nothing.
Colin, Kathryn, Greg, patrickg: Good post, and good responses to Spana!
If individuals, families or institutions want filters, they can get them. The governement should certainly publicise this, and could make cheaply available their preferred model. If you want to have your access to some sites blocked, you can. But you don’t have the right to require others to agree with your preferences.
The real problem with what Conroy wants is the central governmental control of what is and what is not censored, and the secrecy of the blacklist. No government should be given the power to arbitrarily and secretly control information flow like that. The facts that Conroy wants this and thinks that this is acceptable indicate that he is a totalitarian, and an unsuitable person to be a cabinet minister in a democracy.
And that is quite independent of the scope-of-filter issues, not that those wouldn’t already be bad enough. Kiddiepr0n is already illegal, so people involved with it can already be shut down/taken in. But at the other extreme, it is ludicrous to catch in the net sites discussing arguably-victimless crimes such as drug use and euthanasia. These activities are legal/decriminalised in some other civilised jurisdictions, may well become so here one day, and the numerous interested individuals deserve access to information from diverse sources rather than just the government line. And that’s before we get on to censorship of miscellaneous dentists, the Cockburn family, and Scunthorpe town council.
Speaking of “snuff films”, to my mind one of the most vile sadomasochistic snuff films of all times was The Passion by Mel Gibson. A film that was lauded with great enthusiasm by many people on the right of the culture wars, including the then Pope.
It was also lauded as a great missionary tool!
Currently the chances of ‘stumbling across’ illegal child pornography images online are very small. If it wasn’t a VERY unwise thing to do, I’d challenge people to try and fine even by actively searching it out on the internet.
There currently is a secret blacklist of course, but the big change proposed will be that it will be implemented via a compulsory filter. But it will still not catch an extra single child porn peddler or user.
I think the government secret censorship is a concern, especially over time. But even for people who aren’t worried about that, or think it’s a price worth paying to make illegal material harder to access, what this policy will do is spend a lot of money to put in place something that won’t achieve its stated purpose, BUT will lead a lot of parents and others to assume the internet is now ‘safe’ (or at least safer) for their children to use. A lot of people are concerned about the oceans of porn and other less savoury stuff on the net – and while people don’t ‘stumble across’ it as often as is sometimes alleged, it is hard to avoid regular invitations to indulge your curiosity with a single click. It is advisable for parents to monitor what their children are doing in the internet, the same as they would regulate what TV they watch and other sorts of things. The government’s plan won’t help this, but if anyone believes the rhetoric that it might, they may run the risk of watching their children’s online activity less thoroughly than they otherwise would.
The government’s compulsory internet filter will not make the internet any safer for children to use unsupervised, nor will it make police detection of users of illegal content any easier. One thing worse than an expensive government initiative that doesn’t work – let’s face it, there are plenty of those – is when people are fooled into thinking it does work, and change their behaviour accordingly.
I haven’t seen mentioned the damage this measure is doing to our global reputation. It was reported here in the Philippines, as a simple objective statement of fact, as Australia adopting a ‘China style’ internet censorship scheme, the first democracy to so so. Well it’s a change from proselytising our superior Western values I suppose.
Interesting point Ken L – I hadn’t thought of that one.
I’m usually not much of a fan of the ‘damaging our reputation overseas’ line as a reason not to adopt something (not that I don’t agree it’s a problem, but the main issue domestically is whether a policy is a good idea or not – whether it pisses off/worries or gives bad ideas to people in other countries doesn’t usually worry most voters). I agree it is a valid concern – I just don’t think it helps sway voters or the government.
The ‘turn the boats’ back and ‘pay a poor country to warehouse refugees’ policies adopted by Mr Howard undoubtedly influenced policy in other countries in a bad direction – both developed and poorer countries. It also undoubtedly made it harder for Australia to have any meaningful impact internationally when arguing a human rights line – still does I imagine, especially when it comes to refugee issues.
Anyway, while I think the comparison to China is overkill (I can’t see our government ever trying to block Facebook or the BBC – secretly or otherwise), the fact that people and governments in other countries might think we have might provide extra encouragement for them to suggest the same thing.
Thanks for the comments.
It’s clear from Spana’s comment that I ought to have made it clear: even if you accidentally stumble across something horrible, the chances are still going to be very low that the filter will actually catch it. It will be caught if somebody else found the site first, took the trouble to complain, it was deemed to be RC, was added to the list and the list was up to date at the ISP. Out of millions of dodgy web pages, a list of a few thousands sites is going to be a broad, but very coarse, net.
The Peaceful Pill handbook, the euthanasia site run by Philip Nitschke’s Exit International was on the current ACMA blacklist for reasons that would get it onto the new list, so that’s far from a hypothetical concern.
Andrew’s post was spot on. The debate isn’t a trade off between free speech and child safety, it’s a trade off between free speech and a false impression that something is being done about child safety. Once you understand that, opposing this policy is really a no-brainer.
Ken – indeed, it is bad for our reputation. I wrote about that in Crikey here, and Conroy’s only response was to dismiss it blaming the loss of reputation on the filter opponents for making a fuss!
Andrew Bartlett’s point about parents mistakenly thinking the internet will be safe and letting their guard down is exactly what I was thinking when I drew this cartoon, “87 Percent”.
It was an attempt to explain the issue in terms our mothers could understand.
It seems almost transparently obvious to me that this is really just another way to police copyright. Virtually every stupid piece of legislation in the western world for at least the last 10 years has had copyright enforcement as its aim, whether explicitly or not.
Mike Fitzsimon: Actually, I think my mother understands the issue better than you do, but I’m sure she’d thank you for your concern.
G’day Lauredhel, I’m certainly pleased to hear your mother is so enlightened. Does she have any tips for me? Cheers — Mike
Mike, surely Lauredhel’s point is that it’s not an innocent choice to imply that ‘our mothers’ are likely to be less able to understand.
But don’t you know that mothers are, by their very nature, technologically ignorant?
Thanks, Mark. You’re correct; I should not have singled out mothers. However, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of Australia’s parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts want to protect children and therefore think that a “Clean Feed” is a good thing. After all “clean=good” and what’s a “feed” anyway? And it’s the existence of this vast non-computer-savvy majority that allows Conroy to treat the rest of us with contempt.
On the other hand, everyone in IT (except the vendors of filtering products) can see what an unworkable dog Conroy’s ISP filtering scheme is. We know it will never achieve its stated aim.
However, as I’ve said in other places many times, the “Stop Wasting our Taxes on Ineffective Censorship” cause is lost if we think it can be won by online polls, blog posts or just being technically correct.
All of us geeks need to get offline, go out there and talk to Australia’s mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles and aunts – Lauredhel’s mum excepted. Glad to hear she’s already onside.
Nick @ 16: “Virtually every stupid piece of legislation … has had copyright enforcement as its aim…” which, in turn, translates as “propping up of dinosaurian oligopolistic media companies” more often than not. Interesting point.
In the meantime, if The Great Firewall of Conroy gets up, the Yanks and Google will invade to knock it down again. Here’s something for Conroy to put in his pipe and smoke.