Yesterday, Australia's so called Minister for the Information Economy announced that a system of mandatory filters will be deployed in a bid to curb access to material that has be refused classification by the government's censorship and rating board. The government says that their "approach to cyber-safety has been informed by the Government’s trial of internet filtering and extensive industry feedback about the most appropriate way to improve safety online".

The good news is that those not wanting the government to filter their feed can work around any proposed filter so easily that one wonders why the government is even bothering. Perhaps they're playing a smoke and mirrors game to distract us from the colossal failure that their emissions trading legislation has become and the complete collapse of anything resembling common sense in Copenhagen - a forum that our government is strongly championing.

The filter that's proposed simply won't work. The sort of material that the government is proposing to ban (child pornography, depictions of sexual violence and the like) isn't kept on websites for long periods of time. Many of the sites appear and disappear in hours - they are likely travelling salesmen that stop for a short time to sell something and then move on.

Bypassing the Filter

The filter works by simply blocking access to sites that are on a government blacklist. That blacklist will be a secret until the next time it's leaked (the original blacklist was leaked almost as soon as it was created!).

Some sites will be easily opened. Simply Google for something that's on the blacklist and rather than opening the link to the search result click the "Cached" link. This will direct you to a copy of the content that's stored on Google's servers as part of their index. Somehow, I doubt that the Australian government is going to block Google.

Alternately, you can sign up for one of the hundreds of free or cheap VPN services that are available. These create a secure connection between you and a proxy server that collects the content for you and sends it to you. The connection is encrypted and inaccessible to the government.

Protest

It is incredibly important that everyone should protest against this stupid, ineffective waste of taxpayer dollars. Not only is the scheme trivially easy to bypass, it will be open to abuse. Perhaps not by the current government but laws don't expire at each election.

Imagine if Australia engages in an unpopular war (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq?) and footage, stories and images come out of those places that embarrasses the government. It's conceivable that they could use this filter to attempt to block access to information.

I encourage all Australians to write to their local member and protest this Big Bother approach. If the goal is to protect children then find ways to teach parents and guardians how to work with their children to use the Internet sensibly. It will be cheaper and far more effective.