Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:00a.m.
There is much debate on the Department of Internal Affairs decision to implement Whitebox (the censorship program) in New Zealand.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a somewhat inflammatory 'pro censorship' post on my personal blog, just to get people talking and find out opinions and similar which got some really interesting conversations going. It was great to hear what other people had to say and raise many valid points.
First of all, why are we having this filter put on?
The DIA say this is to prevent paedophiles from accessing their websites which have child pornography. I know you've all heard "but it's to protect the children", heck its even the motto of the creators of Whitebox.
Unfortunately it does not stop the children being molested, nor people posting photos of this on the internet. It does not stop the craving these sick people get, nor does it stop them accessing those websites.
I think the general computer IQ level is far higher than it was years ago, my non-geek children assure me they know all the good ways around school proxies and 'all the kids' use them at school to view MySpace and Bebo.
So how do they somehow think they will stop people who are older and probably wiser from accessing this stuff?
Consider the fact that they are spending $617,000 per year on something that will, for all intents or purposes, not work for 90% of these disturbing people.
If you were thinking perhaps it stops your children accidentally stumbling over this sort of information you would also be wrong.
I've been on the internet since way back in the 90s, and never once accidentally stumbled over it. In fact at one stage I tried to actively search for it, for a blog post I was doing. I had a massive amount of trouble, and ended up giving up.
If you want your children "saved" from viewing unwanted internet items, then use common sense, stop letting them sit on a computer more than 30 minutes a day, and install some sort of filtering, and place the computer in a communal area not the bedroom.
If parents or schools were perhaps interested in filtering then Telecom provides a school service, and post articles such as this, and SafeNZ Networks, who are an ISP, provides internet and email filtering based on keywords or websites.
For some excellent facts and opinions check out these links:
http://thomasbeagle.net/2009/07/09/nz-internet-filtering-faq/
http://tatjna.livejournal.com/592574.html
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6637
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/6625
Companies:
SafeNZ: http://safenz.net/
Whitebox: http://www.netclean.com/eng/products.aspx?subPage=4
Telecom: http://telecom.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/telecom.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1800