Evidence-based policy? Not on this filter!

Stilgherrian

Politicians use the term "evidence-based" quite differently from police detectives or scientists.

Senator Stephen Conroy provided a glorious example earlier in the week when announcing that Australia will indeed get mandatory ISP-level internet filtering some time in… well, maybe in 2011.

For politicians, "evidence" isn't something to be gathered with forensic precision and preserved through a documented chain of custody. Nor it is something to be compiled transparently, justified through meticulous research and refined in the purifying fire of peer review.

No. For politicians, "evidence" is something to be plucked from wherever it can be found and sprinkled to justify a previously-chosen policy like so much magic fairy dust.

The Rudd government's internet censorship proposal is not about protecting the children. It's about politics.

If the plan were really about protecting the children, and if it were really evidence-based, the government would have first have figured out what risks children actually face - online and everywhere else. They'd then figure out the best methods of countering those risks. Then they'd figure out the most cost-effective ways of implementing those solutions.

If we did that, we'd probably find that the risks are the very same ones that child protection experts keep banging on about. Bullying by their peers. Abuse from within their own homes and families. Poverty and its associated health risks. Obesity.

But this is politics, not child protection.

This policy is probably about a Senate preferences deal between Labor and Family First. It's certainly about the political demands of a small but vocal and well-connected minority of conservative Christian voters and the devilishly evil internet.

The political solution has already been chosen: compulsory censorship by an automatic filter. The political goal is to sell that policy to the voters.

This goal has been advanced through two means. One, framing the debate in the most emotive terms possible. Two, commissioning a field trial with such a narrow focus and vague success criteria that it was bound to generate some useful evidential fairy dust.

"Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics," said Republican activist Morton C Blackwell in his Laws of Politics.

Proponents of mandatory filtering have consistently mentioned only the very worst kinds of material that would be blocked, repeatedly, like a mantra.

Senator Conroy on ABC TV's Q&A : "That's material like websites that promote incest; websites that promote rape; websites that promote child pornography or child abuse…"

Conroy again on SBS TV's Insight: "I have only ever identified [the material] as Refused Classification in terms of child porn, bestiality, rape, incest sites, those sorts of things."

Conroy yesterday: "RC-rated material includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use."

Clive Hamilton, who's been pushing for mandatory filtering since he co-authored the 2003 report Youth and pornography in Australia: Evidence on the extent of exposure and likely effects, took this tactic to extremes in The Australian, leading his opinion piece with a 274-word fantasy about a schoolboy being exposed to everything from golden showers and fisting to defecation and something involving a horse.

In a fine piece of work, Senator Conroy kicked off this campaign on 31 December 2007 with the statement, "If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor government is going to disagree," simultaneously invoking the frame while denying it.

Hamilton and his compatriot Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby have also deployed this "extreme civil libertarian" straw man. Repeatedly. Yet they never name one.

Amongst all this rhetoric, Enex TestLab's report on the field trials almost seems like hard science, especially with 52 pages of graphs.

"Our pilot … shows that ISP-level filtering of a defined list of URLs can be delivered with 100 per cent accuracy," Conroy said yesterday. "It also demonstrated that it can be done with negligible impact on internet speed."

But the trial was deeply flawed.

Conroy admitted to Triple J's Kate O'Toole in April that there weren't any fixed criteria for success.

O'TOOLE: So do you have a rate of over-blocking in mind that would be unacceptable?

CONROY: Well as I've said, let's wait to see what the trial shows us.

O'TOOLE: And then you'll put the goal posts up afterwards?

CONROY: As I said, you want to pre-empt the trial, then we're happy to wait to see what the trial comes back to us with. Perfectly happy.

Conroy's "100 per cent accuracy" doesn't relate to people viewing all child abuse material, merely that on the blacklist of "prohibited online content" compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) following complaints from public.

ACMA has told Senate Estimates that on 30 September the blacklist contained a mere 1175 distinct web addresses (URLs). Of that total, 54 per cent were Refused Classification (RC), and only 33 per cent of the RC material related to child sexual abuse. The remainder of the blacklist was 41 per cent of URLs leading to X18+ material, and 5 per cent to R18 per cent material which didn't have a "restricted access system" to prevent access by minors.

This is, of course, a tiny fraction of the more than one trillion pages on the internet.

Conroy didn't mention that the filters tested by Enex can't deal with non-web protocols such as instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing or live chat - where problem material is more likely to be found - or that "a technically competent user could, if they wished, circumvent the filtering technology."

Despite all this, though, Conroy is actually delivering on Labor's policy.

Cut through the vague "protect the children" stuff in Labor's Plan for Cyber-safety and the filters may well actually "prevent Australian children from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by ACMA", and the government does plan to "ensure that the ACMA black list is more comprehensive."

Politics, not child protection.


ABC 17-12-9

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2773952.htm?WT.mc_id=newsmail

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