Internet growth statistics are mind numbing: hundreds of millions of users, millions of web sites, and a flood of new content entering the sea of the internet every day. This is a significant problem for the Australian government, which champions censorship of the internet. It is impossible for any person or organisation to examine every new web site, page by page.
Nevertheless, there are many filter products sold that claim to be able to pick out any suspect sites. Suspect in this case means failing have the approval of the US censorship lobby: conservative Christian groups, opportunist politicians and people with nothing better to get upset about (the products generally come from the US).
(In this discussion I am leaving aside the issue of crime carried out via the internet. For example, someone posting evidence of violent crime or child pornography would almost certainly be breaching national criminal laws. The cases I am considering are those where supporters of censorship are trying to implement rules that are generally not law in their own country.)
There is a large and flourishing community of people who vigorously champion free speech on the internet. A few weeks ago the Digital Freedom Network (<http://www.dfn.org>) posted the results of a competition to identify the most ridiculous results of internet filters.
First prize went to a student from Carroll High School in the US. One of the simplest ways for a filter to work is to prevent access to an internet site that contains words related to drugs, sex, violence and hatred. A notable victim of such filters is news. In the case uncovered by the US student, the drug-sensitive guardians of internet wholesomeness decided that words such as high were offensive. This meant that students could not find anything to do with high schools, including their own school site.
In addition to blocking sites, the filters may block words or parts of words, so in one case class became cl***.
Hillary Anne seems a pretty innocuous name, but that shows how naive you are. Filters are smarter than you they found the race-hate word Aryan sneakily hidden there. The name Heather is a no-no too, containing the phrase eat her.
Netnanny, Surfwatch, Cybersitter, N2H2 and Wisechoice are among the filter programs that will prevent you if you try to visit the site of Dick Armey, majority leader of the US House of Representatives and a staunch defender of filters (did he really think that his first name could be mentioned in public?).
Live in a place like Sussex and of course you are asking for trouble. Words like adult, teen, couples, mate obviously suggest pornography. And you might not have noticed the three and four letter profanities in cucumber and analysis.
Once you know how the filters work, it is simple to corrupt them. For example, Bennett Haselton from the anti-censorship site Peacefire sent the following sentence through Cybersitter: Gary Bauer is a staunch anti-homosexual conservative who sees the gay movement as absolutely pure fascism and thinks movies of men with men are the greatest terror.
With the offensive words removed, it emerged as: Gary Bauer is a staunch anti-conservative who sees the gay movement as absolutely pure and thinks movies of men with men are the greatest.
BY GREG HARRIS