Family First Senator Steve Fielding has won a seat reserved for minor party and independent senators on the Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety. He beat Greens Senator Scott Ludlam by two votes.

AAP reports:

A ballot was held in the upper house on Tuesday to decide which minor party or independent senator would be appointed to a federal parliamentary committee on cyber-safety.

In a very close secret vote, Senator Fielding was awarded the job with 34 votes to Senator Ludlam’s 32.

The Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety will look at online bullying, stalking, sexual grooming, the development of addictions, identity theft and privacy breaches.

The committee, which was proposed by Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Anthony Albanese, will investigate and report on:

• abuse of children online (cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking and sexual grooming);
• exposure to illegal and inappropriate content;
• inappropriate social and health behaviours in an online environment (e.g. technology addiction, online promotion of anorexia, drug usage, underage drinking and smoking);
• identity theft; and
• breaches of privacy.
• increasing awareness of cyber-safety good practice;
• encouraging schools to work with the broader school community, especially parents, to develop consistent, whole school approaches; and
• analysing best practice approaches to training and professional development programs and resources that are available to enable school staff to effectively respond to cyber-bullying.

Of course, Albanese also noted that the government will introduce into parliament legislation for mandatory ISP level filtering.

Not only that, I’ll even agree with Senator Conroy when he says “Young people are highly engaged with the online world and it is important that they have the knowledge and experience needed to be responsible cyber-citizens.” Too right Senator. Now if only you could take some of your own advice and make education the key to helping young people navigate the Internet safely.

I’ll also go on record and disagree with accusations that Senator Conroy acted insensitively in light of the Victoria bushfire disaster when he released today’s SID press release mentioning content filtering. The inclusion of policy in the release, no matter how bad, does not devalue the loss of life or fire-fighting efforts of those affected by this tragic event. I do not believe it was insensitive to release this PR the day before the event.

However, what should be noted about Senator Conroy’s press release is that what he called ‘ISP level filtering‘ in the 2008 SID PR, he’s now calling ‘content filtering’.

Safer Internet Day 2009
When: Tuesday, February 10
International Website: http://www.saferinternet.org

1) ‘Filtering in Oz: Australia’s Foray Into Internet Censorship‘ by Derek Bambauer at the Brooklyn Law School in New York argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.

Bambauer writes:

Australia’s decision to censor Internet content pre-emptively is likely further evidence that the debate over filtering has shifted, from whether it should occur to how it should work. Cyberlibertarianism is alive and well, as the discussions in Australia’s press and Parliament prove, but it is no longer ascendant. This shift disguises an important change in focus for regulating information. Filtering looks easy and cheap, and calls to block access to material that is almost universally condemned – such as child pornography, extreme violence, or incitements to terrorism – are hard to resist. But this focus confuses means with ends. The key question is what set of measures best achieve the end, or combat the evil, at issue – and how tolerable their countervailing drawbacks will be.

EFA has a review of the report here.

2) The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University: ‘Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies’.

New York Times writes:

A high-profile task force created by 49 state attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem, despite years of parental anxieties and media hype.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that older adults were using these popular sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report compared such fears to a “moral panic” and concluded that the problem of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

Regular STotC updates will begin later this week when I arrive back in Australia.

Senator Conroy may not be Santa Claus, but he knows when you’ve been bad! According to our favourite babysitter in Canberra, his planned national broadband network will mean we’ll see an increase in cyber-bullying and other bad behaviour online:

“With the development and roll-out of Labor’s national broadband scheme, we expect that there will be an increased opportunity for bad behaviour,” he said.

“So it’s very important that we try and not wait till the horse has bolted.”

This comes after Conroy’s new Cyber-Safety advisory group met for the first time. What a joke.

Kids bullying kids online because they got an Internet speed increase? They’ll more likely spend their time playing Halo. Is this man serious?

Irene Graham writes:

The Federal Government’s ‘Cyber-safety Plan’ Budget 2008-2012, announced on 14 May 2008, allocates $25 million dollars (or more) to ISP ‘blocking’ of web sites unsuitable for children to see (in year 2009-10), while its ‘razor gang’ has shaved $2.8 million off the increased funding for the Australian Federal Police’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team (“OCSET”) that had been budgetted by the former Coalition Government (see figures in August 2007 budget paper, and media release of 14 May 2008 issued by The Hon Bruce Billson MP, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy).

In addition, Labor’s Budget has delayed the former Coalition Government’s planned increase to 90 members of OCSET in 2009-10 until 2011. The Labor Government claims that its budget will result in 91 additional AFP members dedicated to online child protection by 2011. However, it is entirely unclear how that could be achieved with a budget of $2.8 million less than the Coalition Government had budgetted for 90 members by 2009-2010.

In late 2007/early 2008, allegations were made that the AFP’s OCSET refers matters for investigation to State/Territory police services because OCSET is inadequately resourced, and that the NSW child exploitation internet unit is also insufficiently funded and resourced to investigate all referrals received from OCSET.

Read Irene’s full article here.

When you consider people like Anthony Pillion, manager of filtered Australian ISP Webshield, and Child Wise CEO Bernadette McMenamin are on board, the odds of mandatory filtering being found a good solution are disappointingly high.

Pillion has a business interest and for McMenamin the gesture alone of protecting children is better then doing nothing, even if it has no chance of working. Here’s part of her letter to Stilgherrian:

If filtering of child pornography cannot work then why is there so much anger, fear and resentment to any attempt to block child pornography and other illegal sites?

It’s a bit of a no-brainer, but Bernadette failed to see it: Nearly all of us would prefer to spend the money somewhere that would actually help prevent kids becoming the victims of child abuse. Not waste it on a filter that won’t reduce production of illegal material or the amount of children being exploited. Plus there’s more then just illegal websites on the hit list — ‘inappropriate websites’ are also set to get the axe.

Thankfully, the group does contain at least two people opposed to mandatory filtering: Sue Hutley from the Australian Library and Information Association (who asked Conroy questions about his plan that we all want answered and is opposed to filtering in public libraries) and Peter Coroneos from the IIA.

The first meeting of the Group is scheduled for late May 2008. Let’s hope they aren’t blinded by what they see as a quick solution to protecting children.

Now it gets scary…

Conroy’s also putting together a Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee to investigate and report on cyber-safety issues.

Irene Graham knows why that often spells disaster. From STOP:

Those who remember the activities of the “Senate Select Committee on Community Standards Relevant to the Supply of Services Utilising Electronic Technologies” will know why the plan to establish a ‘Standing Committee” also gives me cold chills.

She covers that committee on her site:

The Committee consistently recommended increased, draconian, censorship and attempted to justify its recommendations with views such as:
“…the community costs of events such as the Port Athur and Hoddle Street massacres is so high that the interest of the community should take precedence over individual liberty…“

Ack.

Labor will spend $126 million over four years on their Cyber-Safety plan which Senator Conroy says will create a safer online environment for Australian children. That’d be nice if Mr Conroy’s idea of cyber safety didn’t include mandatory ISP filtering for all Australians.

The Cyber-Safety Plan will provide a range of initiatives to combat online threats and protect children from inappropriate material on the internet, through activities such as an education program for teachers and the community, Internet Service Provider level filtering of an expanded Australian Communications and Media Authority blacklist, examination of options to allow families to exclude other unwanted content, a Youth Advisory Group to assist the Government to formulate age-appropriate measures to protect children, an expanded Consultative Working Group focussed on cyber safety issues, a dedicated website for children and research projects on cyber-safety issues.

From 2009-10, Internet Service Providers will receive a one-off subsidy towards the costs of installing Internet Service Providers filters. This funding will largely occur in 2009-10 with funding in following years only for new providers.

Cyber-Safety Plan Expense Breakdown:

Read the Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Budget.

You can download the draft code here as a PDF. Details of how to respond here.

We educate children about keeping safe in the real world, and now we need to educate them about staying safe on the Internet. And guess what: It’s actually much safer on the Internet than outside!

Read the full News.com.au article here, and the recent ACMA report here.

- Mike

Sure they could have gone with something along the lines of ‘Detective Warns Parents To Educate Kids on Net Safety,’ but that wouldn’t have been nearly as fear-inducing would it.

The problem with headlines like the one Brisbane Times used is that they make a lot of parents so scared, they simply ban their children from using FaceBook and MySpace. Of course, kids being kids will defy their parents wishes and won’t be any wiser about the dangers.

Ignore the sensationalism and focus on talking to your children about using social networking websites safely. With some education and a bit of parental advice, there’s no need to start bolting up the windows and barricading the doors. Here’s the QLD police’s guide on net safety which might help you in speaking with your kids.