Great Firewall Coming To Australia In 2010

So is Australia the new Iran? Should you encrypt your hard drive or install a VPN before visiting Australia next year?

Well, it’s not the law of the land yet, but at a sudden press conference on Tuesday it was announced that Australia will next year join the ranks of countries who censor the net.

The announcement says that all Australian ISPs will be required to filter access to a government-supplied blacklist containing “refused classification” (RC) web content. That would include nasty stuff like child pornography, but also a broader range of content: fetishy sex, instruction in crime (such as euthanasia), any computer game not suitable for under 18s.

While this issue can crossover into something at once less useful and sinister. The censorship push started its life as a kid-friendly measure, to improve safety of the internet for a ban on pro-anorexia sites and pornography in general. 

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) clamouring to have bittorrent trackers added, and may include lists imported from overseas police departments. The list will be seen as a cyber-safety policy, where ISPs would be required to provide a filtered solution to families, but, unless the political winds change, Australia is set to join a club with some rather unsavoury members.

Just as worrying is the fact that once this list is in, a conga line of special interests will be approaching the government to have not mandatory and secrets unlike censorship decisions made in other media, blocked URLs will remain secret and expressly excluded from the public.

[Via Electronic Frontiers Australia]