Christian Pastor falls for Conroy’s Con
Fri 1 Jan 2010It’s sad to see well-meaning people taken in by Conroy’s Con. For example, Pastor Ruth Limkin writes in the print and online versions of today’s Courier-Mail, “Filtering of websites does not make a nanny state.”
Conroy has made a courageous decision to trial and now proceed with ISP filtering of refused classification material.
It is one for which he will receive much hate mail, but one for which he should also be applauded by those who realise what he set out to do which is to protect our children from the very worst, illegal material online.
Mrs Limkin mentions that “an independent body, as opposed to the Government, will determine classification of internet sites.” She doesn’t seem to notice that the sheer size of the internet means that this approach is doomed to failure. And children will be immediately at risk.
I submitted the following as a letter to the editor…
Ruth Limkin, please! Open your eyes. You have been taken in by Conroy’s Con.
In July 2008, Google’s index of unique URLs hit one trillion and is “increasing by several billion pages per day”[1]. There is no way our nation will ever afford the army of bureaucrats necessary to protect children by creating a “blacklist” of all the bad stuff.
By supporting Conroy’s solution, you are actually placing children in harm’s way. Parents will let their guard down, thinking “The government is doing my job for me.”
You are also supporting a huge waste of our taxes on something that won’t get one paedophile one meter closer to a courtroom.
A better solution would be parental supervision, aided where necessary by in-home filtering software targeted at the age group of the children.
Conroy (and our Labor government) is harnessing your, no doubt well-intentioned, aim of “protecting children” to build something far worse than a nanny state. It is censorship.
An Australia with an easily-manipulated censorship scheme in place is not the Australia I want to leave to my children.
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[1] We knew the web was big…
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html
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Update 1 Jan 10:
Good news. I’ve just had the phone call. Watch out for this letter in tomorrow’s print edition of the Courier-Mail.
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Update 2 Jan 10:
Here it is as published, along with a more technical letter from Jonathan Bendall.
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Update 4 Jan 10:
Monday’s Courier-Mail included another letter. This one from Bill Hely.
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For more information, see my earlier posts:
January 1st, 2010 at 13:50
[…] Christian Pastor falls for Conroy’s Con « MikeFitz with overflow bit set… mike.brisgeek.com/2010/01/01/christian-pastor-falls-for-conroys-con – view page – cached It’s sad to see well-meaning people taken in by Conroy’s Con. For example, Pastor Ruth Limkin writes in the print and online versions of today’s Courier-Mail, “Filtering of websites does not make a nanny state.” […]
January 1st, 2010 at 13:55
That is so clearly written. Excellent. I hope the Courier-Mail does publish it - though as part of Murdoch’s empire currently under threat from the internetz it might not. The mainstream news media currently has a vested interest in promoting the Internet Bogey - which is something we need to bear in mind in our campaign.
January 1st, 2010 at 16:06
[…] Christian Pastor falls for Conroy’s Con […]
January 1st, 2010 at 22:37
[…] Christian Pastor falls for Conroy’s Con (Mike Fitzsimon, 1 Jan 2010) Mike’s response to the above pastor, explaining where they are wrong in their understanding. […]
January 2nd, 2010 at 17:58
They are great letters. It’s disheartening to see people across society in positions of power abusing it with their general ignorance like this woman. I saw a poll. The primary group that has a pro-filter position are women (and then slightly older people, too).
January 2nd, 2010 at 18:25
Thanks for your comments, Pam and Orcra.
It’s hard to blame folks for their ignorance. The government has done a top job of framing the debate on their terms, presenting the censorship filter as a “clean feed” forcing opponents to appear “not clean”, dirty.
January 3rd, 2010 at 13:46
[…] of all, Mike Fitzsimon responded to a pro-censorship article in the Courier-Mail. Mike had a letter to the editor published in response to the article – you can see it at the […]
January 5th, 2010 at 10:13
Mike, many thanks for playing a part and helping with the exposure of this nonsense.
Newspaper Editors are reluctant to publish comments that they perceive as containing too much technology, so my letter was brief of necessity.
A more detailed version, complete with specific arguments, can be found on my blog at:
http://computerandonlinesecurity.com/blog/censorship/a-worthy-goal-doesnt-justify-a-stupid-solution/
Keep up the good work.
January 5th, 2010 at 14:23
I can’t imagine how it is that Conroy can just tell plain lies and continue to get away with it. His own report shows the filter is not 100% effective, and he comes out and says it is.
The public don’t look, and the journos don’t expose this nonsense for what it is. Shame on them all.
January 6th, 2010 at 14:08
Good letter - exactly the kind of lines the campaign needs. Measured, non-technical and mainstream.
Cheers
Alex
January 10th, 2010 at 22:04
Internet filtering… cripes… Ok.. I can see that Kids need protection, but education is a better policy than denial… always has been.
Mike your logic here is good… I feel that Senator Conroy has hitched his wagon to something he feels will win him public sympathy. I guess he feels as strongly as he does because of the child protection aspect. The problem is that aspect is very short sighted as you so aptly point out.
There are plenty of net nanny / family protection programs available without imposing censorship. Some of them are built into browsers now days.
The good senator might take a page from history, where they burned “subversive” books in Berlin, looted art galleries to “Protect the public interest”.
Cheers Wile.