netalert

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The Senate Estimates Committee should be interesting today. Questions will be asked about the former government’s NetAlert program: $189M spent for just 144,088 filters installed — and only 29,000 of them still being used. Yes, just like all parliamentary proceedings, there’s a live webcast.

18 February 2008 by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

Liar, Coonan, Liar!

15 December 2007 in Internet, Politics, Transparency by Stilgherrian | No comments

Well surprise surprise! The (former) government’s campaign to promote their dodgy NetAlert filter — it was cracked by a teenager, after all — over-stated the risk to kids on the Internet. And Senator Helen Coonan seems to have fibbed about what was in the government-commissioned report.

One advertisement said a survey had shown that more than half of 11-15-year-olds who chatted online were contacted by strangers…

[Coonan] refused to make the research public, saying it contained personal information. The Age has obtained the research, a survey prepared by the Wallis Consulting Group, under freedom of information laws. It does not contain any personal information…

[The claim] regarding stranger contact does not appear in the government-commissioned research. The question was not posed in this form. Participants were asked: “When chatting online, have you ever been contacted by someone you haven’t met in real life?” More than half answered “yes”.

So, a “stranger” is anyone you chatted with online, even a friend of a friend, who you just haven’t met physically. A “contact” could have been spam. Gee, we all have them, don’t we?

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NetAlert filter is crap, as expected

22 October 2007 in Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

The government’s claim they can “protect the kiddies from teh Internet” with a magic filter is bound to be crap, because every review of said filters has revealed flaws. Many, many flaws. But perhaps this time things are different because, y’know, technology advances?

No.

Peter Bowditch downloaded Integard, one of the filters us taxpayers are paying for through the government’s NetAlert program, and was unimpressed.

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