School students across the country (anyone know if all school’s participate?) will again take part in Safer Internet Day this year. Organised by ACMA in Australia, Safer Internet Day (SID) is an International event to promote safe and responsible use of the Internet, and unlike some of the Government’s other so called ‘cyber-safety’ initiatives this is one I’ll happily support.

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