Won’t somebody please think of the children?

One year since Howard’s criminal gang ( Johnny Coward is a hunt ) was uncerimoniously booted out of parliament, you could be forgiven for thinking Australia is on the way to more liberal times. Not so.

Steve Conroy, of the far-right of the Labor Party ( itself a far right institution ) has teamed up with Steve Fielding ( the Senator from Hell ) to bring us compulsory internet filtering at the ISP level, the likes of which is only in place in China, North Korea and Iran.

Like all good bullshit, this is being sold to us as a way of protecting children. For good measure, Fielding has also lied through his teeth before parliament, claiming that UK, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand have already implemented similar filtering systems, which of course they haven’t.

In reality, this has absolutely nothing to do with children. It’s a power play on the part of Family First, a bunch of ultra-conservative loony toons that have somehow managed to get a senator elected. The mind boggles. This doesn’t mean that Australia is suddenly lurching towards ultra-conservatism. It doesn’t mean Family First is now a power to reckon with. In fact it says more about the weakness of Labor and Family First than it does about their strengths. Labor need Family First to back their pointless legislation such as increasing luxury car tax. Wow … there’s an important issue for you. While I’m not against taxing rich bastards and their luxury cars, do we have to sell our freedom for it?

There are of course other issues working behind the scenes. Senator Fielding and his supporters want to turn Australia into a religious fundamentalist state. This includes controlling what information we have access to and what we’re allowed to discuss. Also targetted are pro-anorexic sites ( um … go anorexics! ) and euthanasia sites ( and no, I don’t want to kill myself, but each to their own ). Note that it will also include news coverage of the above issues.

But does this have anything to do with children yet? Well, maybe. You see, fools like Fielding and Conroy both have the same approach to changing the world. They look at their own shortcoming – say for example their own obsession with child pornography. Then they extrapolate that everyone else must suffer from the same affliction. So they try to legislate against it. Fair enough. The problem is that Conroy, our so-called Communications Minister, has absolutely no idea about communications, and even less about internet communications. He’s just a power-hungry fool like his friends in Labor’s far-right faction. Instead of having any sizable impact on the availability of their immoral content, all they’ll manage to do is stop the very least ingenious and patient of people, while making things far more expensive and slower for everyone else.

Personally I think the best way to stamp out child pornography is to have compulsory checks of all PCs and laptops of all politicians, starting of course with Fielding and Conroy. This approach is much cheaper, less intrusive into existing infrastructure and civil liberties, and sure to net a much bigger catch anyway.

What neither of the kiddie-porn Steves tell us about their internet filter is that it doubles as an internet logger. Do you want your government snooping into your frequenting of internet forums? Do you want them to know what you’ve posted? Do you know what happens to people in countries that have such internet logging who speak out against their government ( again … China, North Korea, Iran )? They’re not happy campers, I can guarantee you that. The Australian Federal Police have already been wasting millions of taxpayer dollars spying on antiwar activists. This information is being shared with anti-terror authorities. Same goes for environmental activists. It’s not much of a stretch to think that people caught up in our new internet filter will be targetted by anti-terror police or private thugs ( Howard employed private thugs to assault Maritime Union – MUA – members ), or worse let, start disappearing. That’s what happens in fundamentalist states.

Links:
Whirlpool forum for activists to organise resistance to ISP filtering
GetUp! Campaign
Doron Katz’s blog on the topic