Is Conroy deceiving the public about what his filter will ban?
Senator Conroy says awarding him the title of Internet Villain of the Year is misguided and that the people have been mislead into what the Government is doing in terms of filtering the Internet. However, in doing so the Minister for Communications has shown he is either deliberately misleading the public about the type of...
Filter may be voluntary says Conroy
Is Senator Conroy feeling the heat? In response to questions from Senator Minchin during estimates about how the Government would impose mandatory ISP filtering, Senator Conroy said one option is that it could be on a voluntary basis where ISPs could voluntarily agree to introduce it. But wait, isn’t it mandatory? Conroy is a little...
Senator Conroy keeps telling the same old story: It’s not about free speech
Everybody remembers when their granddad would sit them on their knee and enthusiastically recall a crazy story that happened to them in 1939. It was likely a ripper of a yarn. Unfortunately for you, Granddad probably forgot he’d already told you the same story the last fifty times you visited. Senator Conroy is a lot...
Australian Government’s attempt to gag ISP filter critic backfires
Breaking: SMH has revealed how Belinda Dennett, a policy adviser for Senator Conroy, tried to ‘bully’ Internode Network Engineer Mark Newton into keeping quiet with his criticisms of the Government’s clean feed proposal. Newton wrote on Whirlpool earlier this week that he had received personal attacks from Conroy’s office, but didn’t mention what they were....
Greens Senator quizzes Conroy on filtering
If you’re up for a bit of late night reading (or maybe that’s now early morning), check out the October 20 Hansard for Environment, Communications and the Arts (Complete PDF / Partial HTML) — Greens Senator Scott Ludlam questions Conroy and his team about filtering. The juicy bits (or the ‘horrifyingly bad parts’ as Simon...
Conroy’s Office: Groups opposing filtering hold extreme views
Tech Wired Australia has conducted an interview with Senator Conroy’s media contact, Tim Marshall. I suggest you listen (unless you suffer from high blood pressure). Update: Transcript here. Marshall accuses lobby groups who oppose mandatory ISP filtering of having extreme views and not having too much interest in the facts. Pot, kettle, black I know....
Why the Tasmanian filtering trial is a failure
Senator Conroy’s office could spin a thread of gold from a lump of crap, I’ll give them that. But if you’ve read the Tasmanian filtering report, it probably didn’t take long before you noticed red flags. I decided to compare the report to what Mr Conroy says in his press release and show why the...
Media reaction to filtering report
It’s a shame that some major news organisations were happy to run a rehash of Senator Conroy’s can-do-no-wrong press release about the Tassie filtering trial report. Thankfully, not all media was so accepting. In Crikey, Stilgherrian points out that even though the report found ‘most’ filters achieved over a 92% success rate in blocking sites,...
Clean feed trial complete
A laboratory trial of the Government’s ISP filter has finished and a report is now in Senator Conroy’s hands. Conroy’s office says it’s too early to comment on the Tassie trial, but we do know live field trials are next and that letters circulating suggest the Government plans to coordinate with other countries who have...
Australia signs onto free Net, forgets filtering plan (momentarily)
IT Ministers from around the globe converged on Seoul this week to discuss the future of big bucks on the Internet. Australia was just one of many countries to sign the Seoul Declaration for the Future of Internet Economy (PDF) and Senator Conroy was more than happy to put his name to this: WE ARE...
Fast broadband network will increase bad behaviour: Conroy
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...
Cyber-Safety budget report card: Children lose
Even if you support Senator Conroy’s plan to introduce mandatory ISP filtering in Australia, you have to admit it has little to do with ‘cyber-safety’. Actually, Conroy’s entire cyber-safety initiative may have little do with safety or protecting children. Irene Graham writes: The Federal Government’s ‘Cyber-safety Plan’ Budget 2008-2012, announced on 14 May 2008, allocates...
