Posted on by Stilgherrian

Conroy has the Internet filtering report… do we?

Yesterday I heard that the Enex TestLab report on the Australia’s Internet filtering trial has been delivered on schedule.

A spokesman for the minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, confirmed that saying, “I can confirm that the Australian Communications and Media Authority has provided the Minister with a report on its trial of internet filtering technologies. The Government will consider the report and comment in due course.”

So, will the report be released?

Yesterday I suggested, “It’s a govt report. If results are what’s needed politically, we’ll get a summary. If not, we’ll never hear anything again… This is called responsible government, and what Kevin Rudd thinks is a new era of transparency and evidence-based policy. Bah!”

That is all… for now.

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5 Replies to “Conroy has the Internet filtering report… do we?”

  1. If it’s a new era of transparency it’s because we, the citizens, make it so… through community-developed initiatives like OpenAustralia. Not because of anything the Government is doing.

  2. @NathanaelB: OpenAustralia is indeed a wonderful thing, but it also “only” makes available in a far more useful and flexible form information which is already in the public domain. The real challenge is making available all this taxpayer-funded research which informs government.

    Why, for example, do we have to wait for the Minister to read and make a statement about a report before we, the citizens, see it? As the old saying goes, “If you’ve got nothing to hide…”

    1. If the Government wanted to build an Oil Rig on/at Bondi Beach (probably not the best comparative example to Internet Censorship, but run with me for a moment) and commissioned an Environmental Report to see what impact it would have, received the report, didn’t release the commissioned report but instead wrote a report about the report saying it was all good, what would happen?

      Would that be accepted and allowed to continue by the public? Hell No! They would insist on seeing the actual reports findings, not the padded version from the Government saying “All good mate”.

      Would they even be allowed to conduct the report, get the results and then use the results to say what is an acceptable level of pollution/risk allowing them to set the goal posts where ever they want? Hell No again! That would have to be clearly stated from the get go.

      So why can they get away with such an underhanded and dishonest tricks with the filtering “trial”?

      Why was there no mention of the Filtering Policy in the ALP national conference agenda yet it appeared in the ALP National Platform and Constitution 2009?

      Why are they hiding so much from the public, yes still claiming to be transparent and open?

      Conroy, I hope you’re days of being an incompetent or willingly ignorant Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy are very, very limited.

    2. @Akira Doe: Actually this is an old post. The report was made available on 8 July 2008, just a few days after this original post: ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering Trial

      That said, your point is a valid one. Senator Conroy has committed as recently as last night to release the report on the Phase 2 (“field”) trials of Internet filters. The trials are complete but he has not yet received the report.

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