Even as Australia reels under a swelling Internet child pornography scandal, a major Australian Internet trade group is calling for Internet censorship through mandatory server-level filtering, saying that while it's one thing to be outraged over child porn it's something else again to punish the majority because of the minority.
Western Australian Internet Association (WAIA) media officer Jeremy Malcolm answered a Family First Party call for mandatory filtering by saying it is not government's responsibility to replace parents, and that dysfunctional parenting that neglects children's Internet sightings is the kind of social issue belonging to the community level.
"What's the difference between parents allowing their children to access pornography over the Internet or through access to their adult magazines or videos?" Malcolm said in a formal statement.
Family First, a new political party seen as conservative by some and liberal by others, has said they want to see work toward an Australian federal government commitment toward mandatory ISP server-level filtering. The party said that government proactivity would be in the best interest of Australian children.
"Reliance on education and end use supervision and filtering take up fails to protect vulnerable children in dysfunctional households where there is neglect," according to a party position paper on the subject. "It also fails to acknowledge that many parents lack the education to take up these kinds of filters. Many parents who are doing their best to supervise kids can still fail to stop this material getting through. Filtering at end user level isn't always effective."
WAIA said such filtering would amount to a small minority providing justification for "unwarranted restrictions on the rights of ordinary Internet users to access material freely online," not to mention being badly thought out and unworkable, especially with Family First itself estimating that implementing server-level mandatory filtering might cost in the millions, "some or all of [which] could be passed on to Internet users."
Malcolm said the idea won't be as workable as Family First believes. "Internet content filters at ISP level are expensive and ultimately, the user can get around them," he said.
The WAIA's zapping Family First's mandatory server-level filtering call came at a time when an Internet child porn sweep dominating Australian news headlines took yet another twist, with two more of the suspects in the big sweep revealed to be New South Wales police officers – one of whom worked with the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Squad. The two have been suspended from duty though charges have not yet been lodged formally.
The head of the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Squad, Superintendent Kim McKay, told the Australian Broadcasting Company that learning one of her own officers was involved in Internet child porn distressed her heavily.
"It has had a big impact on myself and on my squad," she said. "I have full confidence in the people of my squad. I believe that they have the best intentions in terms of these investigations, and as you can imagine I have briefed my squad this morning and they are absolutely devastated and we have employed counselors to them to support them through this process."
In fact, at least one New South Wales politician, opposition leader John Brogden, said the squad should suspend all operations until the entire squad membership is investigated "thoroughly" to restore public confidence.
"It's not out of the question that we could have an individual involved in child pornography networks themselves who is ensuring that investigations are corrupted to protect others who are involved in a network," Brogden told the AuBC. "That's the real concern. We've potentially got insiders in child sex networks, who are doing the investigations."
