The internet filter won't work - and here is why

Sometimes in life we are presented with a solution to a problem that looks great. It seems to solve all our problems and give us exactly what we need. But often when we look a little closer at the solution we can see that it is ineffective, or sometimes even worse than the problem.

It is our strong belief that this is exactly what the proposed Internet Filter by the Australian Federal Government is offering us. As many have rightly argued, it is important for us to protect our children. This is a right and noble goal which we support. But it is difficult to believe that the Internet Filter will achieve this in practice. Here are a few key facts:

• The filter is only blocking Refused Classification content, not pornography or the vast majority of content on the internet we would consider offensive, or what we would like our children protected from.
• The proposal for the internet filter will only block URLs or web content. The vast majority of illegal content traded on the internet is not traded on web pages, but on private Peer to Peer networks, via "Torrents" or private chat rooms. These technologies are designed to be untraceable and it would be impossible for any filter technology to block these methods for accessing content. While our Children may not access content this way, the filter will be ineffectual at stopping the traffic of this material.
• The proposal for the filter will only block 10 000 individual web site addresses. This is not 10 000 web sites, but it would cover 10 000 "documents" which would include images, web pages and movies. It is very conceivable that a single web site could come very close to using the full 10 000. News stories regularly report on the seizing of computers with thousands of illegal photos of children - it is hard to believe that this is in any way sufficient to tackle the problem.
• The filter is easily bypassed. There are hundreds of free, and legitimate programs on the internet that will enable anyone, not just "tech-savy" computer users to bypass the filter.
• There are better ways to protect our families and children. We should keep computers in open places, supervise our children, install software on our computers that provide internet usage monitoring, or offer much better filtering, and we can teach our children and ourselves to use the Internet responsibly. None of these are 100% fool proof solutions - but a concerted effort to use any/all of these will offer far more protection for our children and families than the proposed filter will be able to.

We think that the internet filter is bad policy primarily because it is completely ineffectual and provides a false belief that we are "safe". The danger in the filter is that we are left believing that it is a cover-all solution to all of the problems of the internet, when it is little more than a band-aid fix on an open and gushing wound. It will not protect children, it will not make any dent in the accessibility of illegal content, and it will not even be able to effectively deal with the content available on web pages.

On a side note, we are particularly disappointed with groups like the Australian Christian Lobby, who have labelled anyone who is opposed to the filter as "condoning" child pornography, terrorism and other illegal activity. We most certainly do not condone this activity. Rather it is the staunch supporters of the filter, who have been educated about its capabilities and continue to support it, that are in fact doing the community as a whole a disservice by leading us to believe we are protected when in fact we are not.

So could we make a better filter? Yes and no. Filtering technology already exists and is commonly used in many work places and homes. These filters cover much more content and provide much better protection for an individuals computer. But they are designed to protect a small number of users, not the 4 million Australians that use the internet. If we were to attempt to implement this across the internet, it would be difficult to determine what should be filtered in a method that catered to the entire Australian community. It would also be technically difficult (there is a massive amount of information), would almost definitely slow internet speeds down, and would still not block all offensive and undesirable content, and still be easily bypassed using free material available on the internet.

The best solution is to educate parents, families and individuals to use the internet responsibly, and put the money that might be spent on an internet filter into better resourcing our cyber crime units in the Federal and State police to identify and catch the perpetrators who are creating and publishing the material in the first place.