Internet filters for idiots

There isn't a single bigger tech topic right now than Internet filters, with the government going ahead with plans to test filtering technology with a group of high-capacity ISPs. Except, you know, without the high-capacity ISPs. Strike that bit out and put "a bunch of ISPs that virtually nobody's heard of, plus Primus" and you'd be somewhere closer to the objective truth.

The real problem with this story, from Bluescreen's perspective, is that it's a tough one to get any real research on. It's all political, you see. Bluescreen knows very little about politics beyond the fact that it means the local primary school has a tasty Saturday sausage sizzle every couple of years. Bluescreen likes a well barbecued chunk of what may have once been a pig or at very least soy beans as often as possible, so it's quite looking forward to the possibility of the government collapsing faster than an Icelandic bank over the current finance package debacle, if only so it can be the first at the squeezy sauce bottle come Saturday.

Still, that level of political knowledge just won't cut it, and that means that Bluescreen has to go and play with the big boys. The political journalists.

To share a shameful secret, political journalists scare Bluescreen, whether it's the heavy drinking bearded types (often the women) whose livers can beat out the exact morse code for "This government has a mandate from the people" right up to Laurie Oakes' awesome and yet terrifying rendition of the Truffle Shuffle. If he ever ends up on Dancing With The Stars, many, many people will regret the shift to HD.

In any case, at least here Bluescreen had some bargaining chips. Political journalists may be able to handily drink Bluescreen under the table, but they're not really that technology savvy; many of them date from an era when putting something that resembled a golf ball into your typewriter was cutting edge, scary technology.

And Bluescreen knows technology, especially filtering technology. Bluescreen's seen it all come and go, from whitelists for dodgy URLs that were out of date before you'd finished installing them to a certain package that claimed to be able to discern image differences such that it'd block pornography but not block "ladies in bikinis". This was vaguely effective, but lab trials showed it had no problems with images of ladies erm... "frolicking" with equine creatures.* Which is probably not what the makers intended.

So Bluescreen traded a few nuggets of tech knowledge for some insider info direct from the Canberra press gallery. So called, apparently, because it's where they go to hang politicians. Anyway, after a moderate drinking session, Bluescreen's Canberra correspondent got talking to some colleagues, who talked to somebody in the janitorial department, who then approached the department-of-leaking-stuff-to-the-opposition for the official word as to which filtering technology had been pre-approved to win the trials, in accordance with standard Government operating procedure.

Except that this time, there genuinely isn't just a single one.

Filtering technologies being assessed, so our janitorial spy tells us, include everything from the aforementioned whitelisting and image scanning all the way up to the mandatory introduction of Google Nothing. It's alleged that certain rural members of the Labour party were of the impression that Internet filtering involved Barramundi and lots of cheesecloth, but that couldn't be confirmed in writing, as apparently the individuals involved can't write yet, and had eaten their crayons again.

Bluescreen did stop to ponder over the chosen ISPs and consider contacting them, until he remembered that they'd probably be under a gag order anyway. In the case of Webshield, Bluescreen's email might not get through on the grounds that the company filters everything anyway, and one of Bluescreen's close relatives once fell foul of an Internet filter that viewed his blog as highly pornographic**

There's always the one moderately large ISP in the list, Primus, and as Bluescreen was about to go ferreting around, the company pre-empted this by releasing a statement.

Apparently the filtering technology will "be offered on an opt-in basis and customer participation will be totally voluntary. The ability for the customer to opt-in to the trial provides them ultimate freedom over their internet experience.***".

Bluescreen can't write comedy like that, but it wishes it could. If customers can opt out, will Primus gather any useful filtering information at all? What's the point in opting out if it's going to be a mandatory filter? Moreover, didn't the previous government offer exactly the same kind of Net filtering under an opt-in arrangement, only to have three familes actually take them up on the offer. And didn't at least one of the teenagers affected just crack the filtering within five minutes anyway?

Perhaps more pragmatically, will Primus be forced, under new filtering rules, to rename its "Big Kahuna" ADSL2+ package to something less confronting?

Bluescreen suspects that searching Google for "Big Kahuna" with no safe search provisions might not be wise. So perhaps some renaming is in order, to, say, a less confrontational name. Bluescreen suggests going for a name that couldn't possibly offend anyone, while still getting across the "Big Kahuna" message of providing lots of access. Something like (and Bluescreen would like a cut of the profits if Primus does use this) "Well I Do Say, That's An Awful Lot Of Data Mildred?". Nobody could possibly be offended by that. It'd be WIDSTAALODM for short, which has another great upside -- it'd be worth an awful lot of points in a Scrabble game.

Alex Kidman gazes deeply into the inane world of big tech for APC. Sometimes it gazes back.  In other words, it's satire... we take no responsibility for your kernel crashing.

*Scarily, this is absolutely true.
** Once again, utterly true. Apparently naked stick figures are hardcore filth. Who knew?
*** A genuine quote.