Stephen Conroy needs to remember that half-truths are as bad as outright lies

The Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Central Propaganda , Senator Stephen Conroy, has reached the stage where he will say almost anything to shepherd his mandatory national ISP-level Internet censorship into being.

It is hardly believable that he imagines that any sensible person believes that the Rudd Government will spend over $44 million dollars on such a limited filtering scheme (as set out in media quotes below) and the possible re-implementation of a government free filtering software offer.

Given the number of half truths Senator Conroy has already uttered concerning his Internet filtering plan, I would not trust him not to be secretly relying on regulatory provisions to widen his net, once legislation was passed, and implement the wider form of censorship many legitimately fear.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald on 2 June 2009:

Results of the trials are due to be published in July but, in response to a freedom of information request, the Government has admitted that "there are not success criteria as such"...............
The ACMA blacklist of prohibited URLs, which forms the basis of the Government's censorship policy, contained 977 web addresses as at April 30, according to ACMA.
The Government initially planned to censor the entire blacklist but, after widespread complaints that the list included a slew of legal R18+ and X18+ sites, the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, backtracked, saying he would only block the "refused classification" (RC) portion of the blacklist.
According to ACMA, 51 per cent of the blacklist, or 499 URLs, is RC content.
Based on the Government's budgeting of $44.5 million to implement the filtering scheme, this means the policy will cost $90,000 per URL.

Smart Company reports:

Conroy's office also confirmed that "unwanted content" - which the Government previously said it would block under the scheme - will now be blocked on a voluntary basis by internet service providers. The "unwanted content" refers to some material that is rated R18+ or X18+.
"ISPs can offer to filter additional content if they choose to, as an optional service for families," the spokesperson said.
"The Government is also considering optional ISP content filtering products for those families who wish to have such a service."
The decision comes after Conroy said last week in a Senate estimates hearing that the list of sites to be blocked may be submitted to an independent body for regular review, a decision welcomed by the ISP industry.
Conroy's office also confirmed that "unwanted content" - which the Government previously said it would block under the scheme - will now be blocked on a voluntary basis by internet service providers. The "unwanted content" refers to some material that is rated R18+ or X18+.
"ISPs can offer to filter additional content if they choose to, as an optional service for families," the spokesperson said.
"The Government is also considering optional ISP content filtering products for those families who wish to have such a service."
The decision comes after Conroy said last week in a Senate estimates hearing that the list of sites to be blocked may be submitted to an independent body for regular review, a decision welcomed by the ISP industry.

Some of Conroy's misleading statements entered into Hansard about his original plan:

1. On 10 November I released an expression of interest, seeking the participation of ISPs and mobile telephone operators in this live pilot. The pilot will specifically test filtering against the ACMA black list of prohibited internet content, which is mostly child pornography, as well as filtering of other unwanted content.

2. The list could contain 10,000 potentials. When you look around the world at Interpol, the FBI, Europol and other law enforcement agencies and you look at the size of the lists that they are actually using at the moment, 1,300 would not be sufficient to cover the URLs that we would have supplied to us with the purpose of blocking. So let me be clear about this: the pilot will seek to test network performance against a test list of approximately 10,000 sites.