Oh look...."the church" is behind this.  I'm so surprised!

While I support the need to have some kind of control over the popularity of sites that encourage anorexia, child porn, terrorism and what-not, I certainly see the danger in the Australian government's latest move.  The sad truth is that no government -democratic or otherwise- is immune to corruption, no matter how much they might claim to be, and this proposed "filtering technology" will most likely end up being abused.

And what's more they'll probably end up charging us for it as well.

In the end it comes down to the age-old question Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "Who watches the Watchers?" (also the title of a Star Trek: TNG episode ).

Everyone knows it.

And they wonder why so many people have such little faith in their governments.

I have friends in China and it is easy to bypass their system, their only restrictions are in searching on Google and Yahoo. There are plenty of sites there involved in pirated stuff so maybe the Chinese Government are not concerned about that.

Oz apparently hired a wizkid who bypassed their propsed system in 30 seconds or less and so the Government hired him to construct a better system. Still whatever happens it will soon be cracked and broken. Generations X and Y will not be happy about this filtering and will soon vote any Government out that introduces it and vote in any party that re-introduces freedom again just like the Government was ejected during Vietnam when Labor ran on the platform of national service being cancelled and bringing the troops home. This time Labor may be ejected the same way.

The filter needs to be stopped though as the next logical step will be blocking any site against the elected Government at the time - a permanent monocracy leading to oligocracy. It is not the Governments role to keep citizens under control it is the citizens role to keep the Government under control.

I see obesity as a bigger problem than anorexia and anyway what about banning size zero fashion models on the catwalk.

Most paedophiles here in Ireland and I believe in Europe are caught either via sting ops or email monitoring - most all email is apparently read by goons - gmail keeps copies of all their email indefinitely apparently.

Anybody wanting to give an opinion either way  Email senator.conroy@aph.gov.au while you still can. I fear for corruption of the keepers of the information gleaned - who watcheth them? It would be like "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" a true film of a high ranking official who confessed to a murder he committed but was not initially believed due to his position and power.

If it does go ahead will Scientology and cult sites be blocked? Many of them give large sums to Government ministers I believe.

More here http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7233

Instead of filtering the masses why dont goverments try to get these countries that allow such stuff, to be sanctioned or what ever they do Politically to make them remove these sites? Instead of infringing on the average citizens civil rights you would think it would just be easier to stop the stuff from being available all together.