http://smh.com.au/news/0201/21/opinion/opinion5.html Alston's X files: the secret truth about Internet censorship Your access to the Web is being censored by the Government - but it refuses to reveal exactly what it is we are not allowed to see. The Last Word by Lauren Martin "All you have to do is press P," sputtered a quaintly outraged Senator Paul Calvert at a memorable hearing last century, and millions of porn sites would come across your computer. "Free of charge!" Well, it didn't work for me. Not then, not now - tired as my poor P key could be, these 2 years later. But lurking across the keyboard was the X button. Worked then, works now (though these sites don't give much free of charge). Yes, there is Internet porn, two years after Calvert and Co trumpeted that they'd fix all that with online censorship, laws that came into effect on January 1, 2000. And two years after the captain of this cyber-smut crusade, Communications Minister Richard Alston, suggested that anyone who panned his supposed crackdown was in cahoots with pedophiles and drug-pushers. But two years later - and this would be comic if it weren't being argued so seriously - the Government still won't reveal what it's banned. It won't even reveal what it finds acceptable. The Australian Broadcasting Authority, charged with restricting the Internet, is censoring its own censorship. It refuses to disclose or describe what its five public servants and several million extra taxpayer dollars are protecting us from. Even more astounding is how David Flint's footsoldiers claim, ASIO-style, that if the ABA can't operate this scheme in secrecy, it "might as well close up shop".
