Childwise & Conroys Filter

Childwise, an organisation which was interviewed on SBS news Sat 13/12/08 in support of Conroy’s Kiddie Cache has been copping a LOT of flack online about their support for the filter. I decided to to contact their CEO directly to find out why they support it. Some of the vitriol I have seen directed at their CEO I feel is very unhelpful. IMHO I think the focus of any campaign to stop a filter, should be on educating the media and the public and not sounding like a bunch of screaming hotheaded porn lovers. Below is the email trail with the most recent email 1st.

———————————
You are a decent man Jim and respectful.
I agree that we need to manage to blacklist and only illegal porn should be on this.
Lets work together on managing how the best option is]
kind regards
Bern
—– Original Message —–
From: Jim Stewart
To: Bernadette McMenamin
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 5:47 PM
Subject: Re: SBS News

Hi Bernadette,
Thanks for the response.

Sorry to hear about the rude hotheads, that sort of “behaviour” helps no one.

It is heartening to hear your position. It makes a lot more sense to me now rather than the sound bite on SBS. The problem that I have with the ACMA blacklist which the Govt is using, is that it also contains legal material. Also no one can actually get a hold of this blacklist. Not that I have any interest in it, just that I have a healthy distrust of politicians of any persuasion and what Stephen Conroy may deem “offensive” I may not find offensive. In short it places too much power in their hands. Personally I would prefer the online community attack sites that are engaged in child porn and take them off the air. Or finding ways that can harness the power of the online community to track perpetrators down across jurisdictions. However if the filter was just about child porn that would be a very different discussion. Unfortunately it isn’t.

The reason the Net is the fastest growing industry this planet has ever seen is because every machine on the net is essentially just as important as the next. This means excellence thrives whilst ideas, services and products that don’t resonate with their target audience disappear very quickly. This filter will fall into the latter category.  An article published today on wired http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/tor-anonymized.html illustrates how the masses can get around these filters and blacklists already. So people who really want to look at things on a blacklist will.

The Internet has thrived despite various Govt and Corporate attempts to ‘lock’ it down. Re the cost I have read reports in the press that the budget is $44 million. If I can find a source from the Govt I’ll send it through.

So I couldn’t support a Govt secret blacklist. It does nothing to protect anyone, doesn’t stop the “consumers” of the material and puts too much power into the hands of bureaucrats. Technically, it has to slow down access even if it is only a blacklist although a keyword filter would make things even slower. It seems to me to be an extremely cynical exercise by Senator Conroy.

So whilst I understand your position more clearly, I still respectfully disagree.

Thanks for the clarification.
All the best
Regards
Jim

+61 3 9770 8176
Skype | jimboot
ICQ | 7886979
AIM | jimb00t
MSN | [email protected]
.Mac | jimboots
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On 15/12/2008, at 10:38 AM, Bernadette McMenamin wrote:
Thank you Jim for your email. You know out of all of the dozens of emails I have received from those opposed to the filtering scheme yours is the only polite one. Most of the emails are angry bitter and abusive calling me a either a communist, fascist or a George bush lover. Thank you for your kind comments about our work because believe me protecting children from sexual abuse and not simply grand standing to get publicity is that we do. This has been so distracting and taken us away from our real jobs working with children who have been sexually abused and exploited in Oz and overseas.

For the record I just want to let you know my position. we will still probably agree to disagree but that is OK.

• Child Wise only supports a filtering a black list which contains child pornography and other illegal material eg non consensual sex, bestiality
• we do not support filtering out what children should see if it is legal- this is parents responsibility and to some extent this can be found through either filters or using ISP;s that provide this service
• The filtering scheme works in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries and Swtiz and UK (but UK is more problematic)
• NZ have just had trials and these seem to be effective report still to be released. No slow down and cost to consumer would be an increase of 40 cents per user per year
• again these schemes only focus on child porn sites and this is what we support
• Yes some of the comments by the Minister has led to the concern so I hope he makes it clear what will be filtered
• I believe the trials are the way to go because if they do not work (and of course if they work in other countries then why not here) then there is no argument

If they do work effectively without slow down nor cost and only block out banned sites then would you support the scheme then?Hundreds of millions of dollars is already spent on policing when only a few guys are picked up after a twelve month investigation. it still needs to be done but policing cannot be the only solution. Inhope the worlds peak body of hotlines found that just last year alone there were 280,000 new cases of child pornography reported and confirmed. 20% of these images involved children of three or younger.
I know filtering is not the whole answer but I want to give the trials a go to see if it can remove the commercial sites and the know child porn sites as one strategy. The Govt are not spending millions on this scheme by any means
anyway they are my views
thanks again
Bernadette

From: Jim Stewart [mailto:]
Sent: Monday, 15 December 2008 9:30 AM
To: office
Subject: SBS News

Hi Bernadette,

I saw you on SBS news on Sat night. I attended and spoke at the Melbourne rally on Saturday for Australians against the proposed Govt Internet Filter. I hadn’t heard of your organisation before but I was quite amazed at the tremendous work you do. People like you and those that work with you are a credit to our society. So thank you.

I wanted to let you know that no one is advocating that illegal activity online should be ignored. If someone is using the net for illegal activity they should be prosecuted. Whilst I take your point about the Govt blacklisting sites, Senator Conroy has also been quoted on saying that other material that could be potentially “offensive or damaging” to children will also be blocked. This is why we WILL have false positives. This is why it WILL be like the old style filters you referred to.

This is what will destroy the AUstralian Internet industry as we know it. As someone who has worked in this industry for 15 years, I can tell you that all aspects of Australian business will suffer because of a useless piece of technology that will simply give parents a false sense of security and slow speeds back to what they were 6 years ago.

There are far better ways to protect our children online. The Govt would be far better spending the millions on education.

I wish you all the best in the future.

Regards
Jim Stewart

+61 3 9770 8176
Skype | jimboot
ICQ | 7886979
AIM | jimb00t
MSN | [email protected]
.Mac | jimboots
Yahoo | j_a_stewart

Jim

Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.