> > Okay, okay, okay. But other than that, it's a good > idea isn't it, this ISP filtering the 'net for the > Govmint man?
One problem that arises is that because this is an 'opt-out' strategy, by opting out you may be put onto a "list of deviants" that could be used in a variety of illegitimate ways - both from a malicious government (eg, sanctioned eavesdropping warrants etc), and even from the less scrupulous individuals within the government that may or may not have access to the "list of deviants" through the course of their duties - some people may use this information for blackmail on people who don't wish to be named as having opt-ed out, particularily because for the most bizare and shocking of reasons, being an opponent of filtering puts you in the pro-kiddie-porn camp in some people's and some media organisation's eyes. Another problem is that this filtering could be used for political reasons - eg, filtering out sites that are critical of the government and/or it's policies (and combined with the above it becomes particularly awesome). Although we have no solid laws enshrining Free Speech, we do have an implicit expectation of it in Australia, and I think this community esspecially should be doubly cautious of anything that could impact that expectation. And another one sort of related to the last - this could also be used for less than desirable commercial reasons - politians with a somewhat tenuous understanding of emerging technologies (ie, all of them) may be easily swayed by campaign contributing corprate entities interested only in their bottom line - you could find the filtering technology bent toward blocking p2p protocols for instance because the government "received advice" that it was only used for illegal reasons. And of course the (already mentioned) fact that there was, at one stage at least, a suggestion that https be forcibily decrypted so that the authorities can snoop on your encrypted transactions, breaking any notion of trust on the web. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
