Isn't it great when you can actually watching crap rolling down the slippery slope?

... as in the new internet censorship scheme in Australia?

I don't think, after this post from Thoughts on Freedom, that you can legitimately call it filtering any more:

The Federal Government’s unspeakable internet filtering plan just got a whole lot scarier:

THE Federal Government’s controversial internet censorship scheme may extend to filter more online traffic than was first thought, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy revealed today.

In a post on his department’s blog, Senator Conroy today said technology that could filter data sent directly between computers would be tested as part of the upcoming live filtering trial.

“Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial,” Senator Conroy said.

Oh good. Because stateful inspection of every peer to peer connection in Australia is sure to go off without a hitch.

When the government first came out with the filtering plan, I remember mentioning to less tech-savvy friends that it would be useless at stopping child porn because it couldn’t filter P2P networks. I didn’t mean that as a suggestion.

Coming soon, to an internet near you?

Comments

Anonymous said…

Are these people too stupid to know what cryptography is? Or do they think it is possible to ban steganography? Though it does appear to me that for really incredibly stupid legal decisions the British have no peers.

December 27, 2008 at 2:34 PM

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