Pirate Party Australia continues to consider the continued policy of Internet censorship advocated by the Australian government to be misguided and irresponsible[1]. Pirate Party Australia also welcomes the findings that ISP filtering is ineffective by the Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety in their Interim report released recently[2].

The Joint Select Committee found that the biggest obstacle to taking down illegal content such as child pornography is not lack of legislation but bureaucracy of multinational hosting companies. It found no evidence that legislation based ISP level content filtering will be better than the voluntary framework currently in place. In fact the Joint Select Committee reports that under the voluntary framework more content can be removed compared to what is provided for in the Broadcasting Services Act.

“These findings echo Pirate Party Australia’s view that legislation based ISP level content filtering is ineffective and that resources are better spent elsewhere, such as implementing an international framework to coordinate between AFP and hosting companies to promptly remove child pornography and other illegal content,” said Brendan Molloy, Acting Secretary

“Instead, we have an incompetent Government who believes shrouding the eyes of the world will fix all of its problems. Hiding a problem doesn’t make it go away. This ‘It’s too hard to do it right’ approach of the Government needs to stop now.”

In addition, the Joint Select Committee made nine recommendations designed to tighten online privacy, including removing the small business privacy exemption, review of small businesses holding significant amount of personal data, and implementation of a Do Not Track model in consultation with browser developers, ISPs and advertisers.

Pirate Party Australia strongly endorses these recommendations and encourages the Government to further strengthen legislation protecting individual privacy online.

“We would like privacy protections to extend far beyond what currently exists. We think recent events highlight the urgent requirement for strong mandatory breach notification and data protection laws that will work to create incentives for organisations to place a primacy on the protection and integrity of personally identifiable data.” said Party President, Rodney Serkowski.

[1] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/web-censorship-makes-entrance/story-fn6b3v4f-1226079764356
[2] http://www.itnews.com.au/News/261146,no-support-for-isp-filter-in-cyber-safety-report.aspx