Issue Watch: The internet filter, and why it’s practically a non-issue

Labor’s proposed Mandatory Internet Filter has made a lot of enemies for the party, particularly as a policy that seemed to be more something one would expect of the Howard-era socially conservative Coalition. The potential for the expanded filter, as currently proposed, to be abused is of great concern to almost anyone interested in civil rights. But it didn’t start out quite so bad for Labor, who took to the 2007 election a proposal to block child pornography. Techies were concerned about the potential for a filter to be detrimental to network performance, but the general populace didn’t pay that much attention.  It wasn’t a problem for the then-Rudd government; “No child porn” isn’t exactly a hard sell.

But it is a hard task.

As a populist policy in ’07, it was a success. In practical terms – even before the more recent bloat – it was never going to work as advertised, for a wide range of reasons.

The filter itself

In general terms, the proposal is to require all Internet Service Providers to block all internet addresses on a secret blacklist, determined by a government department.  While the original propose to limit this list to child pornography, however more recently it has been suggested that the scope of the list would expand to cover Refused Classification, gambling and other ‘objectionable’ content. The secrecy of the list is, allegedly, to prevent the list being used as a ‘shopping list’ for objectionable content.

This betrays the first problem with the proposed filter: it won’t really prevent access to ‘blocked’ content. The Labor party would like people to think that the filter is like a sheet of wall over the screen that prevents any ‘bad’ things from being seen. For the casual user, it’ll probably prevent access. But like a wall, it blocks out things it’s not meant to. A Queensland dentist had his website added to the precursor to the filter’s blacklist by mistake, without being informed. In reality, that virtual wall is a bit back from the screen. For anyone who wants to bypass the filter, the holes around the edges may as well be wide enough to fly a jumbo-jet through. Anyone that can google ‘proxy’ can get around it, by simply connecting to an allowed address that connects to a blocked address for you.

Facts are bad

So, anyone that really wants to get around it can. It’s not likely to prevent pedophiles from accessing child pornography. Especially since the vast majority of child pornography is traded not on websites, but through email and peer-to-peer programs. Neither of the latter two methods will be blocked by the proposed filter.

Herein lies the greatest concern about the government’s motivations and intentions with this policy. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the issue (which, being nice, we’ll assume the responsible Minister Stephen Conroy has) would know that a URL filter would do practically nothing against child porn.  But of course Conroy quite quickly expanded his proposal to include content that had been, in essence, banned by the Classification Board (as well as other ‘objectionable content’). The Classification Board classifies a few thousand things a year – film, video games and so on. If you’ve been on the internet recently, it’s pretty big. Attempting to classify everything on the internet – or even the things on the borderline – would be impossible. There is another issue with applying the Classification Guidelines to the internet, and that is that the guidelines are not set up to deal with the internet. Recently, a video game was refused classification solely because it was online only. So if RC content was blocked by the filter, content related to this game would be blacklisted … for being on the internet.  Sense much?

Finally, there is the the civil rights concern, the potential for abuse. The blacklist’s secrecy means that a government could, in theory, block access to material that it deemed counter to it’s political interests. Some people would suggest it to be a bit melodramatic to draw comparisons to the repressive uses of the Great Firewall of China. Maybe. But Stephen Conroy himself quoted the Chinese filter as an example of one that ‘worked’. He failed to mention that it did so by blocking pretty much everything and rendering the internet all but useless. Despite these concerns, Labor has provided no answers as to how such abuses could be prevented.

So, what does this mean for the election?

The filter as an election issue

Simply put, it’s not an issue, at least not worth deciding between Labor and the Coalition for. A lot of people are under the impression that because Labor is pro-filter, the Coalition must automatically be against it. But that doesn’t work for refugee policy, so why would it be a reliable assumption now? It’s true that the Liberal party has made a lot of noise about the filter, scoring political points from Labor’s pain. But they have not firmly committed to opposing the filter. In this context, it’s worth remembering that as much as the Labor party has become increasingly conservative since coming to power, the Coalition has a much stronger history of enacting socially conservative legislation. Not to mention Tony Abbott’s extreme conservatism.

But that doesn’t really matter either. Because there is virtually no chance that the Greens won’t hold the balance of power in the Senate in their own right.  If the Coalition is as serious about blocking the filter as they say, they can do that from opposition with the support of the Greens. If they’re actually pro-filter, and just letting Labor take the heat on it for now, they’ll help Labor get it through the Senate. Basically, it doesn’t matter which way the Coalition will actually vote on the filter: it’s irrelevant which of the major parties you preference before the other.

The only real anti-filter vote is for an explicitly anti-filter party, such as for the Greens or Australian Sex Party. Anyone that tries to tell you otherwise is either ignorant or trying to scam you into voting for Tony Abbott. If you want to vote for Tony Abbott, that’s up to you. The same if you want to vote for Julia Gillard. If you’re unsure, I’m sorry, but the filter isn’t a good issue to base that decision on. Just remember that the power of the minors in the Senate is only one example of why a vote for a minor party (preferably below the line so you decide your own preferences) is not a wasted vote. Everyone that tries to tell you that is a liar.